10,000 BC (2008) Reviews

• It is what it is.

  dan-ragan-12008-07-01

  I'm quite surprised at how many people are slamming this movie for historical inaccuracies, use of English, its similarity to several other films and a happy ending. I had no problem understanding this was not a historical documentary nor did any signs point to this film being the most original sensation of the year. When I went into the film, I expected a fictional Hollywood story with a bit of action and some entertaining special effects. Guess what I got? Yes, I got a fictional Hollywood story with a bit of action and some entertaining special effects. That's all it aspired to be, it works for the film and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone thinking of sitting through it. On a side note, I hope the same people slamming this film for its historical inaccuracies, use of English and similarity to other works go slam Shakespeare next because these terms describe his most famous plays. As far as I am aware, they weren't speaking Shakespearean English in 13th century Verona, Italy. Anyone hear of, The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke? Published before Shakespeare was even alive, I wonder if he based "Romeo and Juliet" off it? Point is, 10,000 BC should be taken for what it is. It is two hours of Hollywood entertainment. No surprises.

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• I spy with my little eye....Swiss, Eskimos, Arabs, Egyptians, Indians, Native Americans, Celts, Zulus, Masai, Ethiopians....

  garaidh_20002008-03-19

  The film starts by introducing us to a Multi-culti tribe in Switzerland (?) led by a shaman eskimo woman. They seemed to have forgotten that prehistoric hunter gatherers generally wandered around and fill instead their days by waiting all year in their village for mammoths to meander by and kill one for food which luckily lasts all year. Their 'noble' existence is shattered by some Arab horsemen looking for slaves. They leave the Alps into the jungles (!) of Italy(?) where they are attacked by birds which once lived in South America. The scenery changes to Utah as they track the slavers into Africa. They meet some Zulu tribes who happened to have bumped into the Swiss hunter's father and who somehow managed to teach the Zulu tribe the one language that seems to exist in Europe. The Arab desert slavers have attacked the zulus too so the Swiss and the zulus combine forces to attack the slavers. Rather than follow the river (the Nile?) to the slave town, they decide to cross the Sahara (after all there's no food or water by a river so this would seem a sensible option!). After wandering around for weeks they look to the stars and decide to follow the North Star (the slave city, in common with Santa's hideaway is under it apparently). Hey ho, after a few days they find slave city and it turns out to be a pyramid construction site led by an alien. Luckily, the crafty alien god has lots of slaves and a ready source of desert living woolly mammoths to help build his pyramid. Swiss hunter cries 'operation desert freedom' and the slaves rebel. The alien god's Indian eunuchs (fresh out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)and some albino africans flee to a giant ship stored in a pyramid but the rebelling slaves catch them up and kill the giant alien who turns out to be 'Lurch' from the Adams family. Eskimo woman then dies back in the Alps to bring Swiss hunters girlfriend back to life in the Sahara (she's prophetic as shes got blue eyes - apparently rare we're led to believe in Switzerland). The film ends with the desert dwelling Zulus giving the Swiss crops which somehow grew in the Sahara. The Swiss then set off home surely cursing that they set Lurch's giant boat alight as it surely would have speeded up their journey across the Mediterranean. They have a group hug back in the Alps when their desert crops begin to grow at the foot of a glacier... Needless to say I won't be buying the DVD

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• Like cafeteria lasagna....

  walt-482008-03-09

  You know how when you go to a cafeteria style restaurant and you see something you usually enjoy like lasagna. You get the lasagna and take a bite with the fond memories of the last time you ate it in a real restaurant. When the first taste hits your tongue and all hopes of future meal enjoyment are flushed down the toilet. 10,000BC is the cafeteria lasagna. It looks goods, has the potential to be great, you have fond memories of other movies in the same genre that were good, and then you watch it. It's edible but just barely. The movie had pretty good special effects and wasn't boring which is why I gave it a five. The dialog and acting were for the most part sub-par. The story didn't even make an attempt to suspend your disbelief. Forget historically inaccurate, it was ridiculous. If I were you I would catch the matinée or wait for someone else to pay for the cafeteria lasagna

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• A visual spectacle with an unfortunate rating....another big disagreement on my part to the critics of the world

  Robert_duder2008-03-16

  I must be easily impressed. I am convinced of it or maybe I just love movies too much although there are plenty that I hate. This movie is getting skewered by professional critics and IMDb critics alike and it really does make me second guess my judgment but I've never let the crowd tell me which way to go and I'm not going to start now. I had meager expectations of 10'000 BC, not really sure what to expect and I'm also a HUGE History buff and studied Sumerian religion and culture a lot in High School (yes Sumerian NOT Egyptians like everyone is calling them on here.) More than anything else 10'000 BC is a stunning, jaw dropping spectacle from the hunting of the Mammoths to the incredible pyramid building and battles. If there was ONE thing wrong with this film it was it's rating. I am all for a family film, and I'm not some nasty dude who wants blood, guts and gore in everything I see but this film needed adult content. You needed to see the battle, the ruggedness of their lives and the violence, much like Apocalypto but I do understand wanting to keep options open to make more money. I do believe that 10'000 BC was made not as a historical grand epic that would take home awards but to make money period and it will do that I believe. There is also some common place plot holes and weird little things that could be picked apart but just sit back and watch this spectacle and just enjoy it because I think it's a masterpiece in it's own right. The cast is adequate, I don't think anyone person really stuns or amazes but they are good in their respective roles. Relative newcomer Steven Strait plays the lead hero. A man who grew up believing his father abandoned his people but discovers he is destined to lead his own. He's good and watchable but doesn't light up the screen or anything and doesn't really command and huge presence on screen. Camilla Belle plays his love interest and she is stunning, she really is beautiful especially with those eyes (which are fake) but she really is nothing more than eye candy and a damsel in distress and I think she is or could be better than that. Character actor Cliff Curtis is the elder who longs to teach Strait's character and befriends him. His character could be a lot more important and in the forefront but he's kind of quiet and foreboding and loses a lot because of it. Same goes for Affif Ben Badra who plays a villain that is taken by the lovely Belle. I almost expected some sort of redemption for his character but it never happens, quite the opposite in fact. Oscar nominated veteran actor Omar Sharif is the narrator and they don't use him very much which is unfortunate. It seems like when it comes to the cast they underused a lot of potential exchanging it for visual effects but that works because the CGI is incredible. The saber-tooth tiger, the stunning Mammoths, the pyramids, the main villain or god at the Pyramids was as disturbing as ever. As for historical inaccuracy...I really don't think the film was trying for that BUT it's not as inaccurate as everyone is crying about. The villains in the film are NOT Egyptians, they are Sumerians which a lot of history is mostly legend and lore and I think they do an incredible job at covering that. They even make mention of the possibility of them being from Atlantis, and give a whole actual visual on them putting together the pyramids and the original face of the Sphinx (which looked awful and cartoony but still...) The film is about as PG as you can get, never showing any skin, using foul language or any brutal violence. The battle scenes are still very cool but you'll never see a close up of anyone dying so you can bring your tweens and up to see it which is good. A different spin on historical epic for everyone. Director Roland Emmerich who has done some really incredible stuff (Independence Day) and some very disappointing average stuff (Godzilla) has a real desire to do monstrous things with a budget and sometimes it will work and sometimes it won't. Don't chastise him for wanting to entertain us. He's a good director and you can see it in his style and desire to entertain. I say fight against the harsh critics because if this is the beginning of a summer blockbuster it's pretty incredible!! I loved it!! 9/10

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• Not fun, not even in a cheesy sense

  keiichi732008-03-07

  Some critics have moaned that as film technology grows, the storytelling ability of the movies shrinks. I have never quite agreed with this assessment, as I believe there is a place for spectacle of any variety, even the mindless kind. However, to those who share the view of those critics, 10,000 B.C. will most likely be the most convincing piece of evidence to their argument. Here is a movie that looks like it cost millions to make, but is saddled with a screenplay that looks like it came from the Dollar Store. Director and co-writer, Roland Emmerich is no stranger to brainless spectacles. This is the guy who brought us Independence Day and 1998's Hollywood take on Godzilla, after all. There's a very fine line between brainless and just plain brain dead, unfortunately. 10,000 B.C. is short on spectacle, short on plot, and short on just about anything that people go to the movies for. There are characters and a love story to drive the bare bones plot, but this seems to be added in as an afterthought. I got the impression that Emmerich and fellow screenwriter, Harald Kloser (a film score composer making his first screenplay credit), had the idea for a couple cool scenes, then tried to add a bunch of filler material between them. They threw in some sketchy characters that hardly reach two dimensions to inhabit this filler, and called it a screenplay. In order for spectacle to work, even the cheese-filled variety such as this, there has to be something for the audience to get excited about. This movie is just one big tease. The plot, if it can even be called that, is set in the days of early man. The heroes are an unnamed tribal people who speak perfect English, all have the bodies of supermodels, and hunt mammoths for food. The two characters we're supposed to be focused on are a pair of young lovers named D'Leh (Steven Strait) and Evolet (Camilla Belle). Why they are in love, and why we should care about them, the movie never goes out of its way to explain. The rest of the villagers do not really matter. They exist simply to be captured when a group of foreign invaders come riding into their peaceful tribe, and kidnap most of them to work as slaves back in their own home colony. Evolet is one of the captured, so D'Leh and a small handful of others set out to find where they've been taken to, and to seek the aid of other tribes that have also been invaded by this enemy. There's a mammoth herd here, a saber tooth tiger there, but they have nothing to do with anything. They're just computer generated special effects who are there simply because the filmmakers felt the current scene needed a special effect shot. I'd be more impressed if the effects didn't look so out of place with the actors most of the time. 10,000 B.C. probably would have worked better as a silent movie, or a subtitled one, as most of the dialogue that comes out of the mouths of these people are as wooden as the spears they carry. The good tribes are the only people in this movie who have mastered the Queen's English, naturally. The evil invading tribe speak in subtitles, and sometimes have their voices mechanically altered and lowered, so that they sound more threatening and demonic. No one in this movie is allowed to have a personality, or act differently from one another. Everybody in each tribe talks, thinks, and behaves exactly the same, with facial hair and differing body types being the main way to tell them apart. This would make it hard to get involved in the story, but the movie dodges this tricky issue by not even having a story in the first place. Once the film's main tribe is attacked, the movie turns into an endless string of filler material and padding to drag the whole thing out to feature length. Aside from a brief encounter with some bird-like prehistoric creatures, there are no moments of action or danger until D'Leh and his followers reach the land of the invading army. The movie throws a saber tooth tiger encounter to fool us into thinking something's gonna happen, but the tiger winds up being just as boring as the human characters inhabiting the movie, and is just millions in special effects budget wasted on something that didn't need to be there in the first place, other than to move the shaky plot along. There is a key ingredient missing in 10,000 B.C., and that is fun. This movie is not fun to watch at all. I kept on waiting for something, anything, to happen. When something eventually did happen, it was usually underwhelming. I know of people who are interested in seeing this movie, because of the special effects, or because they think it looks enjoyably cheesy. To those people, I say please do not be drawn in by curiosity. This isn't even enjoyable in a bad sense. Your precious time is worth more than what any theater may be charging to see this movie. For anyone wondering, yes, that includes the budget cinema and the price of a rental.

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