10,000 BC (2008)

Director:

Roland Emmerich

Writers (WGA):

Roland Emmerich (written by) &
Harald Kloser (written by)

Release Date:

7 March 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Fantasy | Romance

Tagline:

It takes a hero to change the world.

Plot:

A prehistoric epic that follows a young mammoth hunter's journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe.

Plot Keywords:

Hunter | Epic | Tribe | Mammoth | Destiny

Cast

Steven Strait	...	D'Leh
Camilla Belle	...	Evolet
Cliff Curtis	...	Tic'Tic
Joel Virgel	...	Nakudu
Affif Ben Badra	...	Warlord (as Ben Badra)
Mo Zinal	...	Ka'Ren (as Mo Zainal)
Nathanael Baring	...	Baku
Mona Hammond	...	Old Mother
Marco Khan	...	One-Eye
Reece Ritchie	...	Moha
Joel Fry	...	Lu'kibu
Omar Sharif	...	Narrator
Kristian Beazley	...	D'Leh's Father
Junior Oliphant	...	Tudu
Louise Tu'u	...	Baku's Mother

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence.

Runtime:

109 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

SDDS | Dolby Digital | DTS

Certification:

Ireland:12A | Finland:K-13 | Australia:M | Singapore:PG | South Korea:15 | Malaysia:U | Germany:12 | UK:12A | Canada:14A (British Columbia) | Philippines:G (MTRCB) | Canada:G (Québec) | New Zealand:M | Canada:PG (Alberta/Manitoba/Ontario) | Argentina:13 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #43907) | Sweden:11 | Norway:11 | Czech Republic:12 | South Africa:13V | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Hong Kong:IIA | Portugal:M/12 | Netherlands:12 | Japan:U | Iceland:12

Filming Locations:

Namibia

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

This film features some of the alleged controversies in history - the construction of the great pyramids 12,000 years ago, almost 7,500 years earlier, the existence of the Ben-Ben stone (the pyramidion stone that is now missing from the top of the Khafre pyramid), the correlation between the position of the pyramids and the stars from the Orion constellation (associated by the Egyptians with the god Osiris), the Sphinx with a head of a lion allegedly correlated with the Leo constellation rising to the east (at the same time when Orion is in conjunction with the Giza pyramid complex) and the possible nonhuman origin of the first kings of Egypt.

Goofs:

Factual errors: During the Last Hunt, the hunters drive the mammoths toward a net trap, and in that drive and D'Leh's fight with the lone mammoth at the end of the drive, the mammoths move in a gait that is most similar to a gallop. Galloping is a unique four-beat, rear-to-front leg gait, like that of horses. But mammoths didn't gallop. They had a knee/leg structure similar to elephants, and like elephants, they would have charged in a stiff-legged run.

Quotes:

D'Leh: He is not a god!

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Disaster Movie (2008)

For historical accuracy, consult Captain Caveman instead

Although well shot in front of gorgeous vistas, on location in New Zealand, Namibia, and South Africa, 10,000 BC is just another loud, dumb, and eminently pointless CGI adventure from the tactless, talentless, hacky direction of Roland Emmerich.There’s a plot, believe it or not, something about the true love between some tribesman and a hot chick, set in the very distant past, and these rampaging marauders attack their peaceful prehistoric-era tribe and carry off the womenfolk, so our hero spends the next two hours of movie time trying to get her back.

But who cares, right? No one in his right mind would watch a Roland Emmerich movie for the plot. The man brought us Godzilla, Independence Day, and The Day after Tomorrow, after all. No, your focus here is supposed to be on the prehistoric-ness of the thing, like the wild, carnivorous birds, or the mastodons, or the sabre-tooth tigers. Oh, and the smoldering hotness of lurve that Our Hero and His Love can barely contain.

Your first clue that this won’t be much more than a silly bore is the simple fact that our noble hunters speak perfect, inflectionless English. No idea why. I’m not the biggest fan of subtitles, granted, but I think here they at least would have made sense. Instead, we have these perfectly coiffed young people with gleaming white teeth - as any prehistoric hunter would have - speaking the Queen’s English to each other. It’s bizarre and off-putting. These cool kids look like they fell out of a Gap commercial; they’d be dead in minutes if they actually had to fend for themselves on a tundra or in the jungle. They’re as believable as Ed Begley, Jr. at a biker rally. Which is not very believable.

And it’s not as if they get clever, intelligent dialog to mouth. D’Leh (heh, sounds like Delay) tells a vicious, trapped sabre-tooth tiger, “Do not eat me when I set you free!” See, because he doesn’t want to be eaten, and he figures that reasoning with the beast will do the trick. D’Leh, played by newcomer Steven Strait, is sort of a poor man’s Colin Farrell, complete with otherworldly eyebrows. He wants you to think he’s earnest and sincere, but instead you think he’s vapid and vain. Crazy! (”Do not eat me when I set you free!” That’s hilarious right there. Why, it’s right up there with “Throw me the whip, and I’ll throw you the idol!”) Besides, this whole pursuing-the-savages-who-stole-our-people thing was done much better only a few years ago in Mel Gibson’s Apocalpyto. Now, you might not buy into the notion of using an ancient Mayan dialect in a movie, but at least it made some sense. Using that dialect, with subtitles, there was a real sense of adventure and tragedy; here, the fluid English feels woefully inept and completely anachronistic.

Unlike Apocalypto, there’s scant fighting and mayhem here. The tribe (like that in Apocalypto) is a hunting tribe, so that explains why for much of the movie they run and hide and duck and cover. I will find you! What’s his name cries. And then he finds her and then loses her again, and he says, I’ll come back! And then he spends the next hour or so trying to find her. His One True Love is like a set of pretty car keys.

Back to that tiger, which makes a couple of appearances. Now, I like CGI as much as the next guy. It can very easily enhance a scene, make the unrealistic seem obvious and believable. But this tiger reminded me of the cyclops and other fantastical creatures you’d see in those old fifties Greek-epic movies, the ones featuring the work of the great Ray Harryhausen - basically, essentially, stop-motion animation. And that looks crappy here in good ol’ 2008.

10,000 BC isn’t meant to be a historical epic - the year 10,000 BC is used here merely to connote a Long Time Ago - which is fine in and of itself, but really isn’t anything compelling about it other than its setting. It’s predictable pap without much of a heart, instilling no compassion or feeling from its audience.