#20 - The True Story of Alexander the Great

This was supposed to come right after Alexander. If I remember correctly, it was the second DVD to go into my queue list. But it got lost in the mail somewhere between point A and B, and for some reason they sent me eighteen DVD's before re-sending this one. And lucky me, Alexander isn't something you forget right away. If you haven't read my review, it's in the archives, figure it out. That big ol' H in the picture means that this was made for the History Channel. Doesn't that sound great? A basic cable documentary that was probably rushed out to be premiered in time with the movie. I smell high quality.

Actually, its not that bad. I'm not saying its that great either, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The crappy thing about it was that it didn't really tell any stories beyond what was told in the movie. A nice long segment on how a young Alexander tamed a wild horse that no one else could. Okaaaaaaaaay.....got that. A nice long segment about the assassination of his father. Alriiiiiiiight.....got that too. The only real thing it did in terms of telling the "truth" was to elaborate in words what was pretty much implied in the movie, and since this was probably made to coincide with the movie, I pulled out my penalty flag and penalized the History Channel ten yards and a loss of down for unnecessary redundancy. I also charged them a time out for losing the challenge. Enough football references? I've got more.

There was an interesting aspect to this little show that I would like to share with you. One of the things they did was that they acted like they did some serious research of some of the original historians in order to get a direct source into the life and times of Alexander. What made this particularly troublesome was that they had actors performing as the historians themselves. Hmmmm. I wonder where they may have gotten the idea to have someone who wrote about Alexander actually play a part. Could it possibly be the fact that Anthony Hopkins plays someone who wrote about Alexander? I think the most research they did was to watch an advance screening of the movie so they knew what to talk about. If I remember correctly, there was a point were the narrator actually threw over to one of the historians as if he was out in the field covering the story as it was happening. Or it was like they were covering a current issue and they were introducing some resident expert on the topic from the Institute of Tweed Jacket Wearer's for Historical Commentary in Documentaries Rushed Out to Coincide With Film Releases. Or the ITJWHCDROCWFR for short. Its a non-profit.

Also, can we not reuse the same footage of soldiers marching into battle over and over and over again? I know you only used five actors for it and zoomed in to give the appearance of a lot of people, but you don't have to show me them EVERY single time you talk about Alexander going into battle.

And hey, there was no mention of his mullet. Sounds like historical inaccuracy to me.