It's a Texas thing. Just like jazz and weapons of mass destruction, if we gotta explain it you're never gonna get it. I could talk all day long about why a true-born Texican gets all teary when Travis gives his speech or how San Jacinto is better than Waterloo but if you're not from Texas it wont' matter a bit.
I love this movie. I love how obsessive it is. I love that the DVD's commentary is done by three historians who spend the whole time passivly arguing with each other while defending the film's minor inaccuracies and trying to promote their own books. I love Billy Bob as Davy Crockett. I love Dennis Quaid as the manic-depressive self-medicating borderline-insane Sam Houston. I love Patrick Wilson as the anal-retentive William Travis. I love that it was filmed in Texas so the wintertime looks like wintertime and the sticky yellow heat of summer is right there on screen. I love that they showed how half the people in Texas spoke Spanish and the other half spoke German. (If you don't believe me just listen to Tejano music. The booming oom-pah of tubas is proof enough.) I love that they showed how pretentiously Napeolionic Santa Ana's army was. I love that they built THE ENTIRE CITY OF SAN ANTIONO exactly as it was. I love that the director and writers and set builders and costumers and every single one of those teeming hordes of extras are from Texas and LOVE this stuff as much as I do. I mean, 300 hysterical re-enactors can't be wrong, right?
Yeah... I'm guessing this is the reason this film tanked at the theater. The Lone Star State may be the second largest and know they're the best but they can't make a movie popular all by themselves. A love poem to the mythological beginnings of Texas may not be everyone else's idea of a good time. I know it's mine, but that's probably 'cause I'm from Texas.
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