Theatrical Cut

Rating: 6/10 (6 February 2020)

Much better than I remembered, although the first version of this movie I watched was the Final Cut, so perhaps watching the bulging 3 hour version with no context might have been a mistake.
First the good: I was struck by how much I enjoyed Ptolemy's protracted exposition, wishing for more interludes, Val Kilmer's strong performance and accent, and the soft, human performance of Colin Farrell, enjoying (if it must be a non-Greek cast) the Irish accents throughout. I also liked how the film paces boldly by taking a while to bring adult Alexander in, building his relationships first, no matter how choppy and scene-y they felt.
The bad: It looks horrific, the cinematography by legend Rodrigo Prieto is somehow simultaneously too plain, too saturated, too discordant and visually cacophonous, the sets are flat and cheap, and Oliver Stone's directing showed me how much I missed even the worst works of Ridley Scott in this genre. Jared Leto is conspicuously absent from much of the character development and he looks and sounds like a Pirate extra from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.
There's some nice oddball editing and some mixed bag music by Vangelis and some competent (although confusing) battles that don't appear too second unit-y by actually feeling quite modern and even heroic, as opposed to horrific, the way Ptolemy might have retold them.
On the retelling of stories, it doesn't care much to delve into Alexander's queerness or the more sordid and arguably more vibrant elements of his conquests and rule.
It's decent, but none of it is clear enough, or has any cohesion; The theatrical cut of Alexander has got shape but the content is cloudy; motivations, history, culture, geography, all a little muddy, secondary to a fusion of some nice lyrical mock-historical dialogue and sort of realistic tone where lots is said, but rarely in very pungent or obvious movie lines, which makes it hard to track what's going on with any efficacy.