I could never get a handle on the Alexander portrayed on screen. I could never warm up to him. There was something missing, and I believe it was because Oliver Stone doesn't believe in the dignity of his subject.
Oliver Stone's philosophy on Alexander is betrayed in a line delivered by Anthony Hopkins at the end of the movie, forty years after Alexander died. "We didn't believe in his dream, none of us." (This was Ptolemy his general, who later took over Egypt.) So obviously Oliver Stone was knocking the basic mission of Alexander (white Western imperialist).
Hopkins goes on to complain about being one step ahead of the dreamers (Alexander) who was trying to get them killed. Stone's message is obviously anti-war, there's no reason for fighting for war. Scratch fighting for empire and glory. Of course, this attitude would have been inconsistent with the thinking of those times. PC correctness gone amuck.
Nobody cheered at the end...contrast this to "Gladiator" where the audience applauded at the end. In Gladiator, the director never apologized for the violence of the times, and the viewer could identify with Maximus' plight and root for him.
I never found myself rooting for Alexander in this Oliver Stone film.
You might be interested to know that it isn't only leftists like Stone who take a dim view of Alexander's imperial mission. Victor Davis Hanson says that the most controversial article he ever wrote was one entitled, IIRC, "Alexander the Killer" where he condemned Alexander as a butcher who slaughtered his enemies without mercy and who conquered for the sake of conquest. The whole bit about spreading Greek civilization was an ex post facto rationalization, so he says. An interesting counterpoint to the conventional wisdom from a man who is certainly no knee-jerk liberal.