Screen Rant » 10000 bc

Review: 10,000 BC

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:36:42 +0000

Short version: While there’s an attempt to make this a personal story, it’s really about what we thought it would be: Incredible vistas populated with a combination of ancient temples, pyramids, woolly mammoths and a cast of (CGI) thousands.

Two weeks ago I posted my thoughts about 10,000 B.C. based on what I’d seen so far and at the panel for the film at WonderCon, and one of the words that came to mind regarding what director Roland Emmerich had in mind for this film was “spectacle.”

Oh, and it tries oh so very hard to live up to that word.

The best I can say about 10,000 BC is that it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be.

The film opens with our hero as a young boy in a village that depends upon the annual hunt for woolly mammoths for food. It seems that every year there are fewer and fewer and that the way of life of the small village is coming to an end. A young girl whose village was pillaged is brought to this one as the sole survivor. Her defining characteristic is that she has amazing blue eyes.

And old woman who functions as the shaman of these people predicts that their time of hunting mammoths is close to an end and the boy who ends up taking the girl as a mate when they’re older will be the catalyst for moving from one era to the next. For some reason, the boy’s father decides that he must head out and leave the village in order to insure its survival before the last mammoth is hunted. What he hopes to accomplish exactly, is not clear.

He leaves his comrade in hunting who seems to be the #2 head honcho in charge of the village and his son. The boy is teased by others who think that his father was a coward for leaving. After being alienated from the group, there is a brief bonding moment between him and the girl where he picks out what I assume to be the North Star and tells her just as that star never moves neither will he ever stop loving her (or something to that effect).

Cut to them at about 20 years old: She’s far and away the babe of the village, if not of the entire planet, and while he’s all buff and everything, he seems to be kind of a schmoe: A wanna-be big hunter, but not really up to par. Anyway, he gets credit for bringing down a big woolly mammoth and gets the big fancy white spear. He wasn’t quite honest about it and gives it back to his dad’s pal, although it was difficult for him because winning the spear meant he would also win the babe.

Shortly thereafter the predicted bad guys show up and kidnaps most of the town for whatever nefarious purposes, and they take her with them. The leader of these guys is quite taken by her (ok, her name is Evolet, played by Camilla Belle).

The young man (named D’Leh and played by Steven Strait) resolves to save her. So he, his father’s friend and another young guy left behind set out to track down the bad guys and rescue everyone.

Now, I’ve already said this wasn’t as bad as I thought, but on the other hand I really didn’t care much about even the two main characters. Emmerich didn’t do much of a job (although it was obvious he tried) to make us feel all that connected to these two and they felt kind of like a couple of animated mannequins to me. To give the movie due credit towards the end they did feel a bit more fleshed out but overall I was just kind of bored by the whole thing.

One thing I found kind of funny were a couple of very long shot sweeping, circling scenes of vistas that looked like they were taken directly from the Lord of the Rings movie making manual. Beyond that, the CGI mammoths looked ok, but that gigantic sabre-toothed tiger looked quite fake to me.

And yes, in one scene they were attacked by giant birds.

I’ve heard them referred to as “giant chickens” but to me they look more like giant ostriches. I really would have preferred some lizardy thing, but hey, that’s just me.

This small group ends up meeting with another and the word goes out that they’re going to war with the folks in the big pyramid city. In one scene that gave me a chuckle, this big fearsome warrior who leads the toughest gang of warriors in the area goes up to D’Leh and says to the translator:

“He looks young.”

To which D’Leh replies:

“I’m older than I look.”

So while the fierce warrior was mighty, he must also have been easily convinced since that was good enough for him.

When they finally get to the giant city, I was distracted by the fact that I knew I was watching one long shot after another of nothing but total CGI. It didn’t look awful, mind you, but I kind of checked out a bit during those scenes.

Another thing that stood out was that I don’t believe I’ve seen a movie with so much violence and mayhem including people thrown off buildings to drop 20 stories to their deaths, big mallets used as deadly weapons, knives, spears and other sharp pointy things as implements of death… all pretty much used without a drop of blood to be seen.

Ah, the joys of a PG-13 movie.

And while I won’t give away the ending, just as I was about to give 10,000 BC the slightest amount of respect due to the way the movie seemed to be ending, it vanished in a puff of smoke in such a manner as to make me laugh out loud in the theater.

Was it awful? No. Was it entertaining? Mildly. You may even like it, but I thought it was pretty weak.

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New 10,000 B.C. Details Revealed

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:04:36 +0000

I think it’s inevitable that the new Roland Emmerich film 10,000 B.C. will have a killer opening weekend so I guess I’ll talk about it a bit more.

At the WonderCon panel they debuted a brand new trailer, which built upon the previous one in terms of impressive visuals. If I had to come up with one word to describe what’s been shown so far it would have to be: Spectacle.

The movie seems to be all about incredible vistas populated with a combination of ancient temples, pyramids, woolly mammoths and a cast of (CGI) thousands. Even though it looks to me like this will be the worst sort of fluff, you never know. Perhaps with the proper attitude adjustment before entering the theater, it could turn out to be good fluff.

Emmerich freely admitted that this movie is a combination of history and fantasy and that it’s not meant to be taken as his take on historical fact. It turns out he based the idea on a book called “Fingerprints of the Gods” which is about the theory that very advanced civilizations have preceded ours, but of which there is no evidence (how convenient, says I).

He was also inspired to make a movie that contained woolly mammoths after seeing a program about them on the Discovery Channel.

Although in the first trailer I did not detect any hint of accents coming from the actors, in this new trailer they did have them. They said that they tried to create an accent that was a combination of English and Arabic for the film.

Interestingly, Roland stated that he is a big fan of what I consider to be the best and most realistic caveman movie out there, Quest for Fire. I found that funny considering the plucked eyebrows and shaved chests that run rampant in this movie.

He also stated that the world of this film could be compared to that of Conan the Barbarian: An ancient fantasy world similar to Cimmeria.

Finally, when asked “What can you tell us about your upcoming movie 2012?” (About the upcoming end of the world according to the Mayan calendar) he replied simply:

“Nothing.”

And of course now we know for sure that the new Dark Knight AND Iron Man trailers will be attached to this movie. But of course that’s not enough to sway anyone to go see it.

10,000 B.C. opens on March 7th.

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10,000 B.C.: They REALLY Want You To Go See It

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:07:51 +0000

[UPDATE: It's been announced that the new Iron Man trailer will be attached to 10,000 B.C. as well.]

I’m already prepared for the haters, the “hey man, can’t you just enjoy a #$#$%ing movie” commenters, and the “movie reviewers don’t know $#$#” crowd on this one. I think that 10,000 B.C. will be lame at best and laughable at worst.

Director Roland Emmerich has been wildly hit or miss with the movies he’s made. On the good side, he brought us the original Stargate movie, the fun popcorn flick Independence Day and the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot. On the other hand he’s also brought us Universal Soldier, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow.

Now call me crazy, but I think the latest news on this one supports my opinion of it. It’s being reported by various sources that not one but two trailers to movies that are very buzzworthy will be attached to 10,000 B.C. when it opens. The kind of trailers that are almost enough to drag people to see a movie just for the trailer itself.

Which trailers am I talking about?

A new trailer for The Dark Knight and the first trailer for the Ed Norton-starring The Incredible Hulk.

Everyone is already excited beyond belief for The Dark Knight, and people are super-curious about The Incredible Hulk since there’s been almost no marketing of it so far. I think that the opportunity to see new trailers for both of these is a big draw.

I may be misreading this, but in my opinion this says that the studio feels it needs some extra “oomph” to get people to show up to see this movie. (I wonder what my buddy Chris over at Movie Marketing Madness would have to say about this).

To me, based on the movie trailer, it looks like a perfect contender for Mystery Science Theater 3000 if it was still around. The actors are too attractive, especially the babe in the film, the spoken English is too common (I don’t know what I’d expect… some sort of accent or something), and it just looks like an uber-CGI-fest.

Feel free to bookmark this post and come back after the movie opens to agree or tell me I was completely wrong.

10,000 B.C. opens on March 7, 2008.

Source: JoBlo.com

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10,000 BC: First Full Trailer

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:17:59 +0000

Of all the odd places for the new trailer for 10,000 BC to premiere… CHUD.com.

According to CHUD, the trailer premiered on G4’s Attack of the Show, a painfully hip daily program covering movies, videogames, viral videos and the like. Why Warner Bros. didn’t then put it on Apple.com or Yahoo! Movies is beyond me, but anyway… It’s in Quicktime over there and if you want a more browser-friendly version you can watch the trailer in Flash below.

10,000 BC is being brought to us by the Emmerich brothers, the same folks who started off strong with the original Stargate and the fun Independence Day but then spiraled into lousiness with an American version of Godzilla and the (no doubt) Al Gore favorite The Day After Tomorrow.

Here it is, brand new and in all it’s glory:

So what do you think?

If you want my opinion (and I know you do), I do believe I’m getting a bit burnt out on the ancient/fantasy CGI-generated massive vista thing. Thousands of people, huge sets that don’t exist and all kinds of ginormous critters running about.

I’m not terribly sure what the point of this movie is. Is 10,000 BC Apocalypto for the kids with big furry animals? Is it just an adventure movie / love story set in a period where they can have huge and not-yet-ancient buildings and big furry animals? Is it Quest for Fire, but with people who seem to have access to modern day grooming techniques?

Dunno. Maybe you can tell me.

Official Site: www.10000BCMovie.com

10,000 BC opens on March 7, 2008.

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Ugh. You Want See 10,000 BC Poster?

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:55:17 +0000

There’s a new poster out for the upcoming prehistoric flick 10,000 BC. “From the director of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.” Are you excited yet?

Poster appears after the jump…

The “AD” thing is cute in the opening date, although I find that spear to be awfully fancy for a caveman… aliens, perhaps?

Kidding…

10,000 BC opens on March 7, 2008.

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First Trailer For 10,000 BC

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:40:13 +0000

I’d heard about the Roland/Emmerich movie 10,000 BC a while back but didn’t think much of it since it seems the films they’ve made since their no-brainer (but totally fun) popcorn flick Independence Day have been pretty weak. But today the first trailer has been release for their latest opus and as usual for their films it’s filled with great visuals.

But will there be anything more to it than that?

10,000 BC is an adventure story that takes place back when man lived side by side with those big honkin’ and really cool woolly mammoths.

I’ll reserve judgement on this one until I hear more about it.

For more and larger versions go to Yahoo! Movies.

10,000 BC opens on March 7, 2008.

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