🗡️ Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut (2004) - 4K UHD Blu-ray Review
Restored, reworked, and ready for battle in Dolby Vision and Atmos.
🗓️ Release Year: 2004
📀 Format: 4K UHD + Blu-ray (2-Disc Set)
🏷️ Label: Shout Select
📦 Region: Free (4K) / A (BD)
🎨 Video: 2160p UHD, 2.39:1, Dolby Vision / HDR10 / 1080p Blu-ray
🔊 Audio: English Dolby Atmos, English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, LPCM 2.0 Stereo
💬 Subtitles: English SDH
📚 Extras: See special features section below
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🗡️ The Film 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Oliver Stone’s Alexander has always been a lightning rod — not because it lacked ambition, but because it had too much. This isn’t a cautious studio history lesson. It’s a full-throttle, swords-and-sandals epic that refuses to play it safe. Over the past 21 years, Stone has reworked his vision into four distinct versions, each an attempt to wrestle his sprawling tale of conquest, love, and legacy into the form he wanted from the start. Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut isn’t just another pass; it’s the most complete, most confident take yet.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Alexander, it’s a balls-to-the-wall epic, one of the last true magnum opuses from Oliver Stone. The scale is enormous: Colin Farrell’s Macedonian king thunders across continents, Rosario Dawson and Angelina Jolie chew through palace intrigue, and Anthony Hopkins narrates with gravitas. Every actor seems dialed in, fully committed to the excess and grandeur. But like Alexander’s own empire, the film’s destiny was shaped not only by vision but by economics and politics, forces that cut it down and reshaped it over time.
This Final Cut leans into the operatic. The pacing breathes more naturally, the battle sequences are extended and brutal, and the emotional beats hit harder. It’s still messy, in ways that feel human, not careless, and that’s part of its charm. Few modern epics dare to be this big, this strange, and this willing to mix mythmaking with personal tragedy. If the earlier versions were sketches, Alexander Revisited is Stone painting the whole canvas.
🎥 Picture Quality 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Note: Stills shown are promotional and not taken directly from the 4K UHD.
Alexander Revisited has never looked sharper. Shout Select’s 2025 4K restoration — supervised and approved by director/co-writer Oliver Stone — gives the film its most polished home presentation yet. Finished with a Dolby Vision grade, the image gains richer color depth and more natural contrast, bringing sun-baked battlefields, gilded palaces, and intimate candlelit chambers to life.
This restoration represents a minor upgrade over the best previous Blu-ray releases, so expectations should be realistic. Detail is crisper, especially in facial close-ups and ornate costume work, while HDR highlights lend a greater sense of realism to sunlight glare and firelight flicker. The grain structure remains intact, preserving the film’s cinematic texture. It’s not a radical reinvention, but for fans, it’s the definitive way to experience Stone’s vision at home.
🔊 Audio Quality 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Presented in Dolby Atmos, this new mix buries everything that came before it. From the first clash of steel to the last dying echo of an arrow, Alexander Revisited surrounds you in a way previous releases couldn’t touch. The many battles feel like they’re unfolding right in front of you — horses thunder past, swords ring out, and the chaotic roar of thousands fills the soundstage.
The crown jewel is the final invasion in India, a sonic gut-punch that demolishes your senses. Overhead channels rain down arrows, low-end rumble gives the elephant charges weight, and Vangelis’s sweeping score washes over the chaos without ever drowning the detail. Dialogue stays sharp and intelligible, even when the mix is at its most explosive, making this Atmos track a true showcase for the film’s scale.
🎁 Special Features 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Shout Select loads Alexander Revisited with a mix of legacy extras and fresh material, all housed on a dedicated Blu-ray. The big draw this time is a trio of brand-new interviews — one with Oliver Stone himself, another with longtime editor Alex Márquez, and a third with visual effects supervisor John Scheele. These conversations dig into the film’s evolution across four cuts, the challenges of wrangling massive battle scenes, and the visual artistry that went into bringing Alexander’s world to life.
The set also retains key legacy content from the Ultimate Cut and prior editions, including the feature-length documentary Fight Against Time: Oliver Stone’s Alexander, the making-of pieces Resurrecting Alexander and Perfect Is the Enemy of Good, plus Vangelis Scores Alexander. Rounding things out are theatrical trailers and a behind-the-scenes still gallery. It’s a deep, varied collection that will satisfy both first-time viewers and long-time fans looking for a historical record of the film’s journey.
Bonus Content:
2025 4K Restoration
Presented in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos
Audio Commentary with Director and Co-Writer Oliver Stone
Audio Commentary with Film Critic Matt Zoller Seitz
Interview with Director and Co-Writer Oliver Stone
Interview with Editor Alex Marquez
Interview with Visual Effects Supervisor John Scheele
Fight Against Time: Oliver Stone's Alexander - Feature Length Documentary
Resurrecting Alexander
Perfect is the Enemy of Good
Vangelis Scores Alexander
Behind-the-Scenes Still Gallery
Theatrical Trailers
📦 Packaging
A standard keepcase with a matte slipcover houses the 4K feature disc and a Blu-ray of special features. It’s simple, functional, and the separate extras disc makes for easy navigation.
🐘 Final Thoughts 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut remains one of Oliver Stone’s most ambitious and polarizing films, and Shout Select’s 4K UHD release is the best way to experience it at home. The new 2025 restoration, Dolby Vision upgrade, and thunderous Atmos track make this a worthy pickup, even if the visual leap from past Blu-rays is modest. Add in a solid batch of legacy extras plus new interviews, and you’ve got a release that does right by this sprawling epic.
For fans of historical epics, auteur filmmaking, and movies that swing for the fences, Alexander Revisited earns its place on the shelf.
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💬 Let’s talk:
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