It is interesting that the premiere of the movie coincides with the State Department's recognition of "Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia" as "Macedonia". This is an exaple how media hype can be used as Force multiplier to shape public perception.
Macedonia is historical Hellenic province,rooted in history for more then two millennia. "Macedonia" State Department recogized is communist forgery created after WWII. Yet, State Department inked communist fraud, not historical fact.
Under tainted logic "Alexander The Great was Macedonian, State Department recognized Macedonia" the sizable majority of Americans will conclude that present day "Macedonia" is the country of Alexander The Great.
The whole mess was started by Communist dictator Tito who afer WWII chopped off part of Serbia to create new state under fraudulent name Macedonia. He stole the land from Serbia, the name from Greece and then forge new "Macedonian" nation. Inhabitants of "Macedonia" were Serbs, Bulgrars, Greeks, Tzintzars, Gypsies and Turks.
Communists first invented Macedonian langage (butchered dialect of Bulgarian). Once the nation without historical root was invented, Communists in charge started with falsifying history. As a result, many "Macedonians" today sincerely believe that they are descendants of Alexander The Great and consider Churches and Monasteries built by Serbian kings are their own. To top the achievement, communists invented Macedonian Orthodox Church (not recogized by any Orthodox Church).
This is one of the larger scale forgeries of the 20th century, delusion of the masses as if Americans started to believe to be descendant of Mayan Empire.
"Alexander" is entertainment one may choose wether to patron or not.
"Macedonia" is State Department endorsed fraud and Americans have no say wether to be a part of it or not.
This decision has to be REVOKED.
Saying "Macedonian" and "Greek" is like saying Austrians and Germans. Both are Germans but there is a distinction of geography and dialect.
The Macedonians of Alexander's time considered themselves Greeks. The Athenian Greeks looked down on the Macedonians and called them "barbarians" because the Macedonians retained a kingship and never developed city states like those on the Greek peninsula.
These Macedonians - like their southern Greek cousins came to what we now call Greece in waves of conquest settlements. These Indo-European peoples intermixed with the original inhabitants (proto-Greeks) to produce the classical Greek stock.
Scholars are not sure but the theory is: The Macedonians arriving late in the conquest as part of the Greek Dorian dialect tribes were stuck in the north and never intermixed with the original populations because they did not have the melting pot of the city-state. Farm communities tend to stay unchanged because of isolation.
The aristocracy was the Greek Dorain speaking Macedonians - this can be seen clearly from the names of the rulers and who they married - Greek names - Greek Olympian religion - and marriage to other Greeks - like Phiip's wife and Alexander's mother Olympias.
Now because the Macedonians never developed city-states intermixing tended to be less and the peasants may not have been pure Greek. But the intermixing may have varied from region to region - some more Greek some less.
In any case - what did the Macedonians think of themselves? Clearly they wished to be accepted as fellow Greeks.
By the Roman times the "conversion" process of Macedonians mixing in with the aboriginal tribes was complete - a process the Southern Greeks completed a few hundred years earlier.
Lastly, all the above does NOT apply to those Slavic people that currently call themselves Macedonian. They have ZERO relationship with the Macedonians of antiquity - arriving as Slavo-Bulgar tribes into the geographic region of Macedonia in the Middle Ages.
Can you claim that these Slavics intermixed with the local Greeks in the Middle Ages? Yes you can. But by the Middle Ages - the Greek tribal identification ceased to exist (yes the Greeks had tribes and the Macedons was one of them) because of the "blending effect" of the Roman and Hellenistic empires after Alexander. Blending effect being the creating of cities like Thessalonika and Alexandria and Constantinople were people from all over moved to and intermixed and the Pax Romana that allowed peaceful movement and resettlement within the empire.