Well, obviously all this is based on individual perception and preferences - likes/dislikes - and so.... we won't agree on this one. I'm sorry. It must be irritating to like a film so much and have everyone else going on about how bad it was.
(I've seen it twice - one time on TV, to convince myself it was better than I remembered from the cinema. But it wasn't.)
A couple of comments anyhow, because it's an interesting topic IMO!
I remember reading this as a criticism as well. The movie was nearly 3 hours long. How many battle scenes were there?
2. Only 2.
As for incomprehensible, well, Oliver Stone has seen and experienced real combat. You're not going to get a clear, clean-cut, easy to figure out, Game-boy battle scene out of him.
Yes, there were only 2, but boy - did they feel never-ending! Especially the first one. I felt the movie beat me over the head with the milling confusion of battle and after I had gotten that, just continued doing it. It was
boring. Whatever battles are, I doubt they are boring, so I'd say Stone failed to get his points across to me.
Battles may be confusing as hell, but filmmakers have an obligation to make the confusion - and the battle as such - serve a point in the narrative. To make it relevant to Alexander's particular story. This IMO did a poor job of that. I just think they went overboard in special effects, and decided once they'd gone to all the trouble (and cost!!) that the battle scenes were staying in, whether or not they really had much of a structure and point to them.
Which were necessary to explain the massive jumps in time. Like you said in your post, the story of Alexander is too big.
Yes it surely is. I remember thinking at the time through that they used voice-overs where there should have been real scenes, and scenes where there could have used voice-overs. But it's too long since I saw the film and I can't give you examples now.
Who is going to stop and explain them? You already don't like the voice-over.
I don't claim to be a film-maker, I only say what worked and din't work for me. They used titles such as "Satrap", and place names such as "Sogdia, Baktria", and didn't explain what and where that is. Maybe I should have remembered that, but I didn't. And IMO it detracted from the tale. I watched the film with subtitles - I sat there wishing the translator would have taken the time to check where Sogdia was and included in in an aside in the subtitles. But nope.
The homosexuality was vaguely hinted at to be sure, a major failing IMO as well.
I bet Colin Farrell and Jared Leto would have found it more realistic and just as easy to deal with if their characters had actually made out or gone to bed at least once, rather than those deep meaningful kohl-rimmed loooong looks.
I thought the sex scene was funny as well, but it was meant to show Alexander's subconscious Oedipus complex. Roxanne resembles his mother.
OK. I didn't get that. But it makes sense. The mating scene was embarrassing, IMO. But I admit I got distracted by the presence of Angelina Jolie, and that may have obscured the similarities between her and Roxane.
From other readings about Alexander I got the impression that everyone was nagging him so much to marry and produce an heir, he finally married Roxane as a kind of warning as much as anything -
"back off me, or you may get what you wished for but you'll regret you did wish for it." That may have coloured my impression of the scene. Roxane is an interesting character BTW.
Really? I thought it was clear. So clear he was all but hitting the audience over the head with it. He thought Alexander had such an abusive childhood, torn between two ambitious competing vicious cut-throat parents (his mother telling him as a young boy that if you trust someone, they will turn on you, his father threatening him with death then turning around in the next sentence and cheerfully saying how much he missed him) that he basically went out and conquered to get away from it.
That doesn't make sense to me. Maybe that's why I didn't get it. I thought it was about him trying to conquer the world to prove to himself and others that he was better than those dreadful parents had made him feel, but that he really always was just "running from himself" and his demons (courtesy of his parents, sure enough), and there was never far enough places to conquer to get away from that and to prove himself - to himself. That he conquered land to the ends of the known world and beyond and still could not reach a place of confidence and inner calm. But I thought it was poorly and haphazardly communicated. Though there were some scenes at the end, when Alexander starts looking driven and almost haunted, that almost broke through to me and made me "feel" him.
Bagoas, IMO, was a sheltered fucktoy.
And this makes him disqualified as a film subject why?
IMO he wouldn't have had the brains to know what was going on. For example, in The Persian Boy at the end of the book, Alexander is parading his new generation of youthful soldiers in the main stadia of Babylon for games. They are a racial mixture of Eastern troops trained in Western fashion, but dedicated in the Eastern fashion only to Alexander. This is a huge socio-political act by Alexander with far-reaching and possibly deadly ramifications. How does Bagoas react? He thinks the boys look very pretty. 
Hmmm.... I seem to recall that Bagoas in TPB is quite aware of the ramifications of Alexander's mixing customs and promoting people from various cultures and places, trying to create one bigger whole. But at the same time, MR would have had to remember who he was, and what nationality he was and have him act accordingly - and to not present him as all-knowing, all-understanding or non-biased.
What TPB brings to the table is a human touch, someone looking at Alexander and loving him, not necessarily seeing the military strategies and conquering plans and all that, but just the extremely charismatic person and the mesmerizing and inspiring personality. And when all is said and done, that has to be important aspects of who Alexander was and how he achieved what he did. So I don't think that's a bad angle, though of course not the only possible one.
BUT I fully agree that a film portraying any one person on the fringes of Alexander's retinue would have to not look
only through that one person's eye, but cast the net a little wider. That would be the same no matter which person we're talking about, I think. Generals, or Hephaistion included.
I would choose someone more like one of Alexander's generals or one of Alexander's youthful lieutenants. Someone a little bit more on the ball.
I agree that would work very well, too.
But then you're not really showing who the moviemaker thinks Alexander is. You're getting it more like 3rd hand knowledge.
Yes - but the moviemaker could still use that to get across much about how Alexander and his conquests impacted persons and peoples, and glimpses of Alexander though his words, deeds, etc. And that can convey much. But it is a stopgap measure. The full story would fill a whole ocean and there's only a pool available!
