Is Alexander Great?

Now that Troy is behind us, this year's most anticipated age of empires film can only be Oliver Stone's Alexander. The de facto winner of the Alexander the Great race (after Baz Luhrmann's project fell at the first hurdle), Stone's epic seeks to encapsulate the heart and soul of possibly the greatest military leader in history within Colin Farrell's Gaelic form. The new trailer is your first chance to gauge the level of Stone's success and initial impressions have us leaning in his favour. The look of the film is sumptuous (as one would expect from the director) with Alexander and his men charging through a dusty desert landscape. The man himself rides before his troops in a suitably regal fashion and the magisterial procession through the city streets looks simply glorious. Subsequent eye-pleasing vistas are paraded before our eyes before Alexander faces off against an Indian war elephant in a scene you can see showcased in the new issue of Empire's Coming Soon preview. So it's all good then? Well, not quite. No, we're not going to whinge that Farrell looks like a girl (he does, but that's beside the point), it's the other thing: the accent. While early reports that the actor sounded more like a 'Dublin bus driver' than a Macedonian general are somewhat exaggerated, we do have to question Stone's decision to let the actor's native brogue run amok. Still, if you spent your time worrying about every dodgy accent you'd never go to the cinema again. The only other quibble is that the battle scene in the trailer looks more like ill-mannered shoving (with spears) than actual warfare and, with the supremely crafted melees seen in Troy and Return of the King, there's really no excuse for that. It is only a trailer though so we'll cling to hope that some truly spectacular skirmishes are being held back for the film itself. Watch the trailer here.