Return of the Legend: The Making of 'The Alamo'

This is the longest featurette on the DVD of the 2004 version of The Alamo, with a running time of 18 minutes. It consists of interviews, behind the scenes footage and clips of the film.

While some of the actors get sit-downs, this focuses on the crew, and the love-fest that's typical in special features of this sort, is mercifully ditched in favor of talking about the work done on it, and it is thus, quite informational.

We are told about production design, training(rifles, artillery, marching - they even xeroxed the Mexican manual for soldiers out to all of those extras, so they could really sink their teeth into it) the elaborate costumes, and building no less than 125 acres of 1836 San Antonio, "the largest set in North America". We also see that some shots that you might think were done via FX were actually real! This keeps to a nice pace, and it's well-edited.

It does sort of spoil some of the actual outcome, albeit most viewers will already know the history before watching - and nothing specific to this picture is given away.

I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about the background of creating this movie. 7/10