In the past few months, muscle-rippling spunk Vin Diesel ("xXx", "The Fast & The Furious") has often mentioned his desire to develop his pet project - the long in development movie about Hannibal The Conqueror.
The project would have Diesel starring as the young man from the ruling clans of the city of Carthage in North Africa who makes an oath of vengeance against Rome when they kill his father. Dedicating his life to fulfilling that challenge, Hannibal becomes a general by the time he's in his mid-20s, and with an army of 100,000 committed to his goal, he sets out to bring Rome down, first by conquering Spain, and then by setting loose a surprise (and famous) attack on Italy by way of the Alps, with an array of forces that included war-trained elephants.
Now, while talking to DH correspondent Paul Fischer during press for "The Pacifier", Diesel divulged this exclusive tidbit - "I'm going to direct it. The studio thought it couldn't be done for under 200 million so we went into soft pre-production and I found put I could get the budget down to 50 million. The process excited me so now I'm going to direct". More on Vin later in the week.
I can really see this movie sucking. Aside from the fact that Vin Diesel is directing it. Hannibal is one of the most overrated historical figures ever. He was just a whiny piss boy who was mad at Rome, so he did a stupid ass thing and killed more than half his army by taking them through the Alps. Sure, he won at Trebbia, but he got his ass handed to him by Scipius Africanus, even though the Romans were facing tremendous odds.
So, you could say that Hannibal is an anti-hero: his forces were, in fact always were, the aggressors. They were the aggressors in the first Punic War when they tried to conquer the Greek territories in Sicily, and they got assraped in that war. They got all pissy, so Hannibal decides to try and fight them again. He got lucky at Trebbia because the Roman leadership couldn't decide on the best battle strategy. So now, Hannibal has the clear advantage, but blows it huge when Scipio comes into the picture. Idiot.
