Want to see Alexander? Don’t.

It had all the makings of a great epic: the costumes, the scenery, the extras, the animals… even the excessive length (about 3 hours).

But, for all that, Alexander just didn’t make a great epic movie.

I saw a lot wrong with the film, but perhaps my biggest gripe is that the subject himself just doesn’t fit in with Hollywood’s “epic hero” archetype.

Let’s take William Wallace of Braveheart (which in my mind was a successful Hollywood epic). Wallace was a likeable character. He fought for a just cause (actually several). He was an underdog. All of these things together made Wallace a character audiences rooted for.

Now back to Alexander. He’s a complicated character. He’s full of pride. He’s master of his domain, but that’s not enough for him. He has inner demons he can’t deal with. And, after trekking east for years and years, his once-loyal army starts to dislike him and question his leadership.

Now, you could say that Alexander’s complicated life in fact makes him a more rounded and interesting character, and this might be true. But complicated characters don’t make great epic heroes.

You could also say that that, while the Braveheart script actually mangles a lot of historical fact, the Alexander script (because the story it tells is so well known) was a challenge to sculpt into an epic. But there are ways around this (for instance, just tell part of the story so you can frame it more appealingly but still stay true to history).

Basically, as fascinating as Alexander is historically, he just doesn’t come across well on the big screen.