See, but Braveheart and Gladiator were well acted. You could feel for them. Its didn't come off as one big scheme to make money. To me, it didn't smell of cliche (maybe a little with Gladiator). Same thing with Spartacus.
get someone like......Tim Roth who can act worth a damn, then we'll talk.
Of course, you can't make it 1000% historically accurate, but there is a difference between exagerating reality and making up a new reality. Not ever historic figure has fit neatly into the Hollywood good guy archetype. For a change, lets make a movie about a bad guy. A bad guy who killed countless thousands, raped and pillaged everywhere he went, killed his closest friends, had an ego that would put Tom Cruise to shame and almost certainly was not responsible for all the great strategies with which he is credited.
The connotation of course is, those who conquer have to be made out to be great, good men, because guess what that implies about our current batch of Alexanders and Caesars.
Conquerors are, almost by definition, brutal, murderous people. How about we just say "Alexander had quite an empire" and leave it at that. There's no need to glorify his acts. It very dangerous, here's why
A day or two ago, I read a column by Bill O'Reilly (popular right wing fanatic), who compared "the war on terrorism" to the wars of Genghis Khan. He said "Khan never playd by the rules, he was a tough mofo, and look how far it got him. We have to be ruthless like he was, if we ever hope to win this war". Other times, I've seen Dubya supporters liken him Julius Caesar, who in their view was a great man. Oh yeah, he liberated Gual good and proper, he did.
