Oliver Stone recut his flop Alexander three times over a decade
Oliver Stone's Alexander cost $155 million, earned a D-plus from audiences and six Razzie nominations, and lost as much as $71 million. Stone refused to let it go. Over the next decade he released three more versions, one running nearly four hours, and some critics now call it fascinating.
The 2004 epic starred Colin Farrell as the Macedonian king, with Angelina Jolie as his mother Olympias and Anthony Hopkins as an aged Ptolemy narrating from Egypt around 285 BC. Part of the screenplay drew on the Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox's 1973 biography. Its story runs from Alexander's childhood under Aristotle, through Gaugamela and years of Asian campaigning, to the Battle of Hydaspes and his death in Babylon. In a closing twist, Ptolemy privately admits the officers poisoned their king, while ordering the official record to blame illness.
Released across 2,445 venues on 24 November 2004, it opened with $13.7 million and finished at $167.3 million worldwide, mostly from overseas; Europe received it far better than the United States. Critics called it talky and distant. Roger Ebert said the battle scenes were welcome chiefly as relief from Ptolemy's narration, while Variety's Todd McCarthy judged it an honourable failure, dry and academic where that year's Troy was vulgar.
Its portrayal of Alexander's closeness to Hephaestion, framed as Achilles and Patroclus, stirred controversy. A group of 25 Greek lawyers threatened to sue over historical accuracy, then dropped the idea after an advance screening. Stone, at the London premiere, blamed raging fundamentalism in morality for the American reception.
Then came the recuts. The 2005 Director's Cut removed seventeen minutes and added nine. The 2007 Final Unrated Cut split the film into two acts with an intermission, and Stone called it his complete and final version. At Warner's request he nonetheless trimmed it again into the Ultimate Cut, premiered at Karlovy Vary in 2013. Home video justified the effort: the first two DVDs sold over 3.5 million copies in the US, and the Ultimate Cut made an A.V. Club critic's top ten of 2014.
Source: Alexander (2004 film)
