18 November 2004

Alexander - Oliver Stone Defends

Well, it probably comes as no surprise that the latest Oliver Stone film has created controversy already. Just for the record, I despise most of Oliver Stone's movies. The pseudo-historical ones are revisionist liberal crap, and others like "Natural Born Killers" are just self-indulgent crap. Having said that, I'd like to see "Alexander." He's one of my favorite historical figures, because he really did change the world, mostly for the better. The controversy revolves around his, um, Greek tendencies. Most historians agree that Alexander and Hephaistion were a couple. Whatever. He conquered the world, intermingled cultures, opened trade routes, created a lingua franca for that trade, and generally laid the groundwork for Greek culture and language to be widespread throughout the then-known world. This enabled the spread of education, philosophy and literature, and provided a foundation for the spread of the soon-to-be Christian religion.

What will be interesting to see is if Oliver Stone can screw that up.

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