Possible new movie for inspiration

[Legolas]

I was doing a little internet suffering and found this,

Alexander The Great

Apparently they are making a movie about Alexander The Great. I'm really excited about this film, and will probably go and watch it, I just hope it doesn't flop as bad as alot of people said 'King Arthur' did....

Anyone else planing on going to see this ?

-- Joey

[doctorsparkles]

I'll probably see it, and it will probably be good. But it will also probably bomb just like King Arthur did and like Troy did after its first weekend. Unfortunately, historical movies like this just don't do very well.

[JPinoy]

There was a poster for the Alexander movie in the Castle room during BrickFest. They also started showing the trailer for it in theaters about 2 or 3 weeks ago. I saw the trailer twice, before watching The Village, and then again before HERO.

Anyhow I have a feeling this movie may come to "Gladiator" type proportions. We all remember how that history based movie went, it was FAR from flopping.

Personally, Im hoping they show the "Battle of Gaugamela" (somewhere in modern Iraq), (because) if they do it would dwarf the "Battle of Gondor" by at least 2x. Alexander's army of 70,000 -vs- Darius' (Da-Rye-Yus) army of nearly 400,000 troops. *day dreams of this battle with Lego minifigures*

BTW, the History Channel has a series called "Decisive Battles" that uses a computer game's engines to show how battles were conducted. So far I saw about 2 of the shows that invovled Romans -vs- Hannibal, and another with Alexander -vs- Darius. Anyhow the game is called: "Rome: Total War". So far I have all the Total War games. Both Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War.

[architect]

I want to see this movie as well. Hopefully they will not take too many liberties with his life. Enough entertaining things happened with a crazy mother, killing his father (probably due to Alexander), marrying a princess, conquoring most of the known world, etc, etc. And hopefully it shows some of his mistakes like India and isnt a "everything Greek/Macedonian is great" type of movie. Balanced historical coverage would be nice.

Ben E.

[TwoTonic Knight]

for one alexander the great wasn't greek .

Snobby Athenians turned their noses up at Macedonians, but history accounts them as Greeks. More or less.

The movie has potential - it certainly doesn't need to make stuff up what with the scheming, assassinations, alleged divine liaisons, seducing, suffering, drunken murders, near mutiny, reckless personal risk, and more epic battles than is healthy for a movie (and they moved and fought in formations, not the flipping mobs that Hollywood loves).

Of course, then he dies and the really good stuff begins, which alas, presumably will only be hinted at.

[Formendacil]

for one alexander the great wasn't greek .

No, he was Macedonian, but for what its worth, his culture was Greek, his teachers were Greek, and the Greeks were his subjects, and Greek soldiers fought with the Macedonians under his command, and it was Greek culture he spread with his conquests, and it was Hellenistic (Greek) kingdoms that were founded in his wake.

I think Greek is an okay term to use, if not a perfectly correct one.

[Robin Hood]

Sounds like an interesting movie. I will have to see about watching it.

[doctorsparkles]

I'm going to have to retract my last statement about the box office performance for the movie Troy. Looking at the box office gross, I can see that it actually fared better than Gladiator did.
Still, I wonder how well Alexander will do, because of the simple fact that I haven't seen any previews for it. It seems that they would do their best to market to 18-25 males (the category that I fit in) and it doesn't seem like they are doing a great job of that (I'm usually pretty well aware of what's happening in the media).
I also wonder if people are going to want to see another historical epic this year. The average viewer won't be able to differentiate a Macedonian from a Spartan, so Alexander might be too similar to Troy for some people.
Who knows. I guess we'll just wait and see.[/i]

[JPinoy]

Males? Come on! I went with a cute red haired, blue eyed Dutch girl to see TROY. She was into those kinds of movies too. Its a revelation about as stunning as.... umm.... female Lego Castle fans.

Also considering the cast members of Alexander.... don't underestimate the drawing power of guys like Collin Farell, cause you *know* he'll be drawing in the female fans of his to see this movie. Infact several of my female friends said that they're gonna watch it just (because) of him. Though a couple of em are into the romanticism of movies about the old days like Braveheart, though they weren't into the bloody battles.

----------

Some people might notice the whole Greek theme in the media this year. Troy, Olympics in Athens GREECE, and now Alexander.

[LEGOFREAK]

So - I finally read the synopsis of this movie, and if they even do a halfway decent job - it should be alright. I still havent seen Troy yet, gladiator was "meh", Arthur was alright, so I guess I will just have to see.
(of course keep in mind I just finished a post about my horrible taste in movies... I love 'Excalibur' f'rinstance. AND Fire and Ice....)
I just think if you are going to do a historical movie... on a real historical figure... keep it freakin historically accurate.
hire a team of fact checkers.
(and yes I know gladiator wasnt about a real person, but still...)

[doctorsparkles]

Males? Come on! I went with a cute red haired, blue eyed Dutch girl to see TROY.

Movies in the action/adventure genre are usually marketed mainly to males. Obviously Colin Farrell will appeal to the ladies (as did Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and to a lesser extent, Eric Bana) though, and a smaller percentage of women will go because they want to see the movie itself. Regardless, I'm not saying that it will do poorly (in fact, it'll probably hit #1 the first week or so, unless another heavy-hitter is released the same day... the question is how well will it do after that?), but I wouldn't be surprised.

[JPinoy]

Actually, Gladiator was *somewhat* of a "remake" of an older movie called "The Fall of the Roman Empire".

As for accuracies....
Don't forget about Braveheart. The first big battle in the movie actually took place in a bridge over a river, and not in an open field. But thats more like nit-picking rather than "keeping things historical". I just wanna see cool battlescenes.

[LEGOFREAK]

As for accuracies....
Don't forget about Braveheart. The first big battle in the movie actually took place in a bridge over a river, and not in an open field. But thats more like nit-picking rather than "keeping things historical". I just wanna see cool battlescenes.

Right - Braveheart was WAAAAAAY off as far as historical accuracy.
well, there was a guy named william wallace...

But seriously - I love a good action flick, and cool fight scenes - blow some stuff up, let the blood fly, and I am pretty much a happy camper. I am just saying don't go around touting it as a historically accurate film.
just call it an interpretation and leave it at that. then the nit-pickers (myself included) dont have any nits to pick.

[Jordan]

ive heard about this movie all summer looks great. Movies that are awesome- braveheart, Troy, The alamo, The patriot, 300 spartons, gladiator, king arthur was ok. The gladiator was accurate, the gladiators name "maximus" was a real person.