From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Todd wrote:   
      
   > It doesn't really show you why the white Texans were upset at Mexico. A   
   couple of black   
   > Texan slaves decide they don't want to get killed for their master's sake,   
   and they were   
   > the ones I think most everyone could identify with.   
   >   
   > Disappointed ...   
      
   Alamo movies are troublesome. You can do it 1950's grade school history   
   style, which is simplistic baloney and earns a snort from anyone who's   
   studies those events. Or you can try to do it straight, which gets you   
   into exactly the difficulties you mention.   
      
   The political situation was muddled. The military situation was chaotic.   
   As an event, it doesn't stand alone well, except in the John Wayne   
   style. It's probably best treated as part of an analytical documentary,   
   which would run quite long if it was to convey "the reasons why" - or as   
   an examination of the evolving state of knowledge about the battle,   
   which is fascinating but not feature film material. The events inside   
   the mission must be heavily fictionalized, there being little known,   
   except that a great deal of what used to be taken for fact was   
   invention, or one must fall back on the traditional trite characterizations.   
      
   It's one of those things that film makers end up having to talk about in   
   terms of character development. But characters, for all that you may   
   say, "Okay. I known this guy.", has to reveal the character's   
   motivations and thinking within the events portrayed. And that gets back   
   to the why's, which is the original difficulty.   
      
   Now, battles are often chaotic, even part of chaotic larger pictures.   
   But the why's are known. Even a film that reveals great suffering   
   because of incompetence can be interesting, but, again, the why is   
   clearly depicted.   
      
   Compare Alamo films to other long-odds fights, such as Roark's Drift in   
   Zulu. Zulu is doable, because the overall situation is clear and because   
   the film focuses on an operation of a regular military unit, unitS,   
   really, the Zulu having been militarily competent. The characters are   
   such that their natures and a quirk of military protocol set up a   
   conflict that makes ideal subplots. All that, and the fact that there   
   were survivors to tell the tale with reasonably consistency.   
      
   And I have to believe that, if we really knew a great deal about what   
   was done and said inside the mission before and during the battle, there   
   would be a good movie in it. That is something we will never know. Not   
   that a good film couldn't be made along those lines, but it would be   
   pure fiction and would draw howls from historians.   
      
   All in all, The Alamo at first glance looks like a good bet for a film   
   maker. But its constraints of lack of knowledge and the risks of almost   
   totally fictionalizing the character conflicts in such an event and the   
   extreme difficulty of putting it in some larger perspective make it an   
   unattractive subject.   
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)