Alexander recut

[romanD]

here is an excerpt from a review at www.dvdtimes.co.uk of the DC of ALEXANDER:

As a final note, it is also worth mentioning that the version of Alexander which appears here is Stone’s newly assembled director’s cut. Made as a reaction to film’s poor box office showings in America and, specifically, the “Alexander the Gay” jibes it attracted, this new version excises approximately eight minutes of footage and tones down the bisexuality. We still get furtive glances and Farrell’s big kiss, though the film no longer justifies the “major landmark in mainstream gay cinema” comment it received on its UK cinema release from Sight and Sound.

THAT IS ALL Stone changed??? Is he crazy? He was talking about how great it is to have time to go back and bring the movie into a new form and all he does is to take out scenes which some intolerant fools criticised?
He wanted to depict the history the way it was, so like it or not he had to include that aspect.
Come on... next time somebody writes about QUO VADIS he doesn't like that Christians are shown eaten by lions and then the director goes and takes it out? This is a poor reaction by Stone and he can't tell me he never wanted those scenes in it anyway and this is his approved DC! Normally it would be the other way round wouldn't it?

This is ridiculous and another DC done just for marketing... maybe they put stickers on it "The (gay) sex scene free version the director you all wanted to show!"

has Andy already got a review copy of this?

don't get me wrong, this thread is just about Stone's poor reaction to the reviews.. it's not meant to discuss the movie or these changes much, I just can't beleive how a filmmaker of his caliber can do this, I thought he would do major changes, coz the movie really needed them! It certainly didn't need to tone the gayness down...

[Eric W.]

The movie just isn't that good, when all is said and done.

[romanD]

but a whole re-editing, re-strucuturing could have been a t least interesting and not just a shorter censored verion!

[AndyDursin]

That's a pretty bland review -- sounds very much as if the guy never saw the theatrical cut to begin with, so I wouldn't read too much into what has been changed.

As far as toning down the gay material goes, I have to say -- many historians felt it was irrelevant if not factually unfounded. If Stone is more interested in showing "history the way it was" this time out, maybe that means cutting out Colin Farrell's eye contact exchanges with Jared Leto?

Quite frankly I can't imagine he's facing any pressure to re-cut the movie other than the fact the first version was so terrible....plus this is certainly not the first time he's reworked his films.

If the gay elements were so objectionable, why is the Theatrical Version going to be available everywhere as an option? Surely that's not the reason why they're being trimmed -- I'm guessing it's because they no longer fit with how he's "rethinking" the film.

I still haven't managed to watch all three hours of the theatrical version, so until Warner sends me the Director's Cut (may or may not happen), I may hold off on forcing myself to do so...but I DID put in my request, so we'll soon find out (I hope!).

[romanD]

yeah,m the reviewer could have gone into more detail, but I read another review somewhere else and that reviewer only mentioned the changes in on sentence. so apparently the changes are so minor, thatit is not worth talking about really...

well, we have a very good german site where the guys compare all different version of a movie scene by scene, I hope they do it with ALEXANDER, too...

it's a great site, though only in German, but e.g. the changes on CURSED were interesting to compare. As not only the gore was cut, but the F/X were changed, too.. same scenes but the F/X looked different. Something many people probably missed...

[MikeJ]

I'm probably in the minority but I have to say that I liked this movie, at least the first 3/4 of it. I think Stone made a poor editing decision with the death of Val Kilmer's character and I don't think the film ever recovered from it. My folks, who come from a different generation, of course, hated this movie from the get-go, especially all of the homoerotic allusions. I don't think this got in the way of the film, though. If the filmmakers made a mistake, it's that they didn't spend enough time showing the audience WHY Alexander was GREAT.

[Carlson2005]

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought that Alexander had virtually no 'gay content' to begin with - and what there was was certainly less overt than stuff like Top Gun. It was just a convenient stick to bash the film with for a lot of people who never saw it (remember all those 'Alexander the Gay' headlines?). Can you imagine what those people would have made of Ben-Hur or, God forbid, the "I love you" scene between Kirk and Tony in Spartacus (let alone the snails and oysters)? Outside the US, the gay issue was almost completely ignored (excludng those crazy Greek lawyers, of course), with critics concentrating on the film's other problems instead.

[romanD]

I agree. And Stone just showed the world like it was at that time. I had 10 years of Latin in school and therefor Roman and Greek (and Egypt) history for 10 years. It was just nothing special to be gay or should rather bisal. And Stone just shows that and nothing more, whether it is important to the story doesn't matter as those were the times. To criticise that is not only intolerant, but also shows how little a reviewer knows about history. You don't have to like it, but that's how it was.

Many critics in Europe in fact wanted the movie to be even more gay, which I don't think was necessary. This is already very far out for a hollywood movie.

anyway...

I agree with the Death of Kilmer... I thought in the DC Stone would restructure things like that, but just to cut out things, reviewers didnt like, instead of fixing the many other problems of the movie, is shameful!

[AndyDursin]

Outside the US, the gay issue was almost completely ignored (excludng those crazy Greek lawyers, of course), with critics concentrating on the film's other problems instead.

Yet I don't think anyone in THIS country cared either -- because nobody (relatively speaking) went to see it. I think the "controversy" was nothing but PR buzz Warner was attempting to drum up in order to get people talking about it. There certainly were no boycotts or any discussion over it other than, what, some rural southern cineplex refusing to run it? (likely to get its name in the paper more than anything else). Remember: simply because the media reports on it doesn't mean it's a legitimate topic. I don't know what the international media's take was (I assume it's the old "look at those intolerant, white-trash, Walmart-shopping Americans now" kind of deal), but if you asked anyone about ALEXANDER in this country, most people probably didn't even know it was playing -- or even care, quite frankly.

At any rate, I DO have the Director's Cut in my possession and will post my findings when I can!

[romanD]

but you still got to get thorugh the theatrical version, hu? poor guy, watching such along movie you dont like twice!

[Carlson2005]

I think the "controversy" was nothing but PR buzz Warner was attempting to drum up in order to get people talking about it... I don't know what the international media's take was (I assume it's the old "look at those intolerant, white-trash, Walmart-shopping Americans now" kind of deal)

Not really on either count.

No major studio will ever push the gay angle of any film because it's a guaranteed money loser even for a low budget movie, let alone a $150m one. If anything, WB went out of their way to try to convince people that it wasn't the rump-ridin' boy-on-boy gay porn of internet rumour.

And in Europe the press didn't go for the walmart take (which is frankly more the way Americans like to think they're perceived when they're in victim mode rather than the way they actually are perceived internationally), more the "What gay stuff?" take. If anything, as Roman pointed out, the film was attacked by some elitest critics for raising the issue and softpeddling it so much. But mostly, the European press were divided between those who loved the film (and who probably would only have liked it had they not been primed for a turkey a la Timbo Hines' War of the Worlds) and those who attacked it for its structural problems, bizarre accents and Farrel's performance (or lack of one).

[romanD]

that's right. With the accents and stuff that is soemthing in many european countries doesn't get critizised as many countries dub the movies, so we don't worry about someone from Middle East speaking irish.. so, often the nice aspects of accents gets lost in translation, but on the other hand that sometime can save a movie from such failures...

but I can understand that that may be pretty hilarious...

[AndyDursin]

I'm trying to go through the two versions in 30 minute segments (they didn't send me the theatrical cut, so I'm going through my Korean 3-DVD set).

Among the early alterations:

-Hopkins' first scene is basically cut in half (sort of making for an awkward transition to his appearance), and the initial scene of Alexander's funeral is slightly longer

-I couldn't quite tell but it seemed Christopher Plummer's scene is a bit longer

-Colin Farrell's introductory scene is now the big battle of Gaugamela, which has been moved to the 30-minute mark (I don't know where his first scene in the theatrical cut [with Angelina Jolie] has been moved, or if it's been excised altogether). In his commentary, Stone says this is how the original script was arranged and they made a mistake by moving it around.

So there you have it so far!

[romanD]

I did a whole comparison with ALEXANDER and have to say that the DC is much much better than the theatrical version. Only 2 scenes have been deleted completely, and about 5 new ones added (including the sex scene with Dawson extended very graphically).

The flow is much better, the dialogues are now more to the point and everything concentrates much more on what each scene is actually about.

It is still not a great movie, but a big improvement!

[AndyDursin]

Thanks for the comparison Roman. I skimmed the rest of the theatrical cut since I did my review, and I'm inclined to agree with you. It's like he trimmed some of the fat off the movie, tightened it up a little...

Still not a favorite of mine, but it wasn't a total loss, either.