It's really easy to mess up a making-of documentary. I haven't watched one for quite a while but probably the most common mistake that I see in them is when they have a few brief pieces of narration, thoughts on the movie from some of the cast and crew, but the vast majority of it is just clips from the film which, more often than not, you just finished watching. It's like watching a 30 minute theatrical trailer with a voice-over.
But the Making of Dances with Wolves tells some good detail not only about what it was like making it but the whole back story about how the movie was basically born, which is a pretty impressive story, by the way. Kevin Costner also says near the beginning that movies are about dilemma, about not knowing what you would do in a given situation, which is exactly what I had been thinking about throughout the movie when I was watching it.
The documentary ends with him wondering how he accomplished what he accomplished with Dances with Wolves, and wondering if he could ever do anything like that again, or even if he could have done a few more days of what he had been doing at the time he was making the film. Needless to say, he achieved his goals in making the movie, and so much more. Bravo.
