10,000 BC (2008)

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

Director:

Roland Emmerich

Writers:

Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser

Stars:

Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
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 (voice)
Kristian Beazley	...	D'Leh's Father
Junior Oliphant	...	Tudu
Louise Tu'u	...	Baku's Mother

Storyline

A prehistoric epic that follows a young mammoth hunter named D'Leh's journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe. When a band of mysterious horse-riding warlords raid the Yaghal camp and kidnaps his heart's desire - the beautiful Evolet along with many others, D'Leh is forced to lead a small group of hunters south to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. Driven by destiny, the unlikely band of warriors must battle saber-toothed cats and terror birds in the Levant.

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Plot Keywords:

hunter | tribe | epic | mammoth | journey | 

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Taglines:

The legend. The battle. The first hero.

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence

Details

Official Sites:

Warner Bros [France] Warner Bros. [United States]

Country:

USA South Africa

Language:

English

Release Date:

7 March 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

10.000 A.C.

Filming Locations:

Namibia

Box Office

Budget:

$105,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£1,932,539 (UK) (14 March 2008)

Gross:

$94,770,548 (USA) (13 June 2008)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures, Centropolis Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

109 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Reference is also made to the Platonic theory that the construction techniques used in Egypt were imported from the ancient lost civilization of Atlantis. The movie makers include a glimpse of a map showing one of the putative locations of Atlantis, off the coast of Spain.

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Goofs

The Mammoths are depicted as galloping in several passages. Mammoths were closely related to modern elephants and could not possibly gallop given their physiology. At best they could move at a fast trot as elephants do.

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Quotes

Tic'Tic: A good man draws a circle around himself and cares for those within. His woman, his children.
Tic'Tic: Other men draw a larger circle and bring within their brothers and sisters.
Tic'Tic: But some men have a great destiny. They must draw around themselves a circle that includes many, many more.
Tic'Tic: Your father was one of those men. You must decide for yourself whether you are, as well.

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Connections

Referenced in Bad Movie Beatdown: Moon 44 (2011)

User Reviews

A Great Old-Fashioned Saturday Matinée

The caveman epic is a neglected film genre. The trailer for this movie led me to expect something like "Walking With Cavemen," that excellent BBC documentary of 2003 (except with more drama & violence) or "Quest for Fire," a still more excellent feature film of 1981 (except with better mammoths).

But despite a title that recalls two previous caveman attempts – the rather laughable "One Million B.C." from 1940, and the still more laughable "One Million Years B.C." from 1966 (that one starred Raquel Welch and her two most marketable assets) – "10,000 B.C." is actually straight-up science fiction. And that's not a bad thing at all.

This movie has plenty of action, plenty of CGI, gorgeous location photography from Africa and New Zealand, a durable quest narrative, and a hunky leading man in the form of Steven Strait, self-doubting mammoth hunter. The producers make some nice gestures toward Ice Age realism with their portrayal of the encampment of the mammoth hunters, who have cool dreadlocks (like most folks in prehistoric movies nowadays), cool face paint, fancy bone weapons & jewelry, and appropriately furry garments.

There's a lot that the producers get wrong, period-wise. Ice Age hunters didn't live in large groups, they didn't live in permanent villages, and they certainly didn't spend the winter up in the mountains (duh). The mammoth-hunting techniques that we see seem highly dubious also. Still worse, the scenario is geographically challenged - there's no way anyone could walk from alpine mountains to East Asian bamboo jungles to sub-Saharan Africa over the course of a few weeks.

Most annoying to Anglophone viewers will probably be the funny accents. I mean, we all know that nobody spoke English ten thousand years ago, and we're all very comfortable with the convention of portraying cinematic Romans and Spartans (not to mention hobbits and elves!) as speaking English instead of their true languages. So what not have Delay & his people just talk like ordinary Americans? Instead they're given this silly Middle Eastern/Middle European accent that sounds like bad Middle-1960s dubbing.

But that's a small quibble. The most important point here is that "10,000 B.C." is really a homage to the pulp adventures published in "Weird Tales" during the 1920s and 1930s. In this film we're very much in the territory of Robert E. Howard (author of the Conan stories) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan, Barsoom, and the lost world of the cavemen "At the Earth's Core"). Because once the story gets rolling, we discover that the mammoth hunters have predatory neighbors whose technology (horseback riding, bows and arrows, sailing ships, woven cloth, monumental architecture in dressed stone) is thousands of years ahead of theirs.

"Some say they came from the stars, or from a land that sank beneath the sea." Aha! What we have here is a lost colony from Atlantis. Exactly the kind that Howard and Burroughs and their many Depression-era imitators loved to write about. Once the Atlantis thing kicks in, you know that evil priests, false gods, ancient prophecies, human sacrifice, and a slave rebellion are all in store. (See "Atlantis, the Lost Continent" (1961) for more of what I'm talking about.) And in this regard "10,000 B.C." does not disappoint.

In the end this film resembles nothing so much as an unauthorized prequel to "Stargate." It's a great Saturday matinée.