Cinefantastique Online

Just call me Sucker. I knew there had to be a reason my editor asked me to be the one to go see 10,000 B.C., the latest film entry by Roland Emmerich (THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, 1998’s GODZILLA). And now I know what it was. Yep, that means it was a thankless job, but somebody had to do it. Can you say “pee-ewww!”? All I can tell you is that when the title card “A Roland Emmerich Film” faded up on the screen at the end of the thing, I thought, ‘he can keep it.’ What had I just watched anyway? I wasn’t positive, but one thing was for sure: it was certainly an incomprehensibly meaningless 108 minutes of film, to say the least. Not even the beloved Uncle Forry (a one-time widely used term of endearment by Sci-Fi & Fantasy fans relating to Forrest J. Ackerman, the creator & publisher of Famous Monsters Magazine) could honestly lay claim to enjoying such a muddled mess. Where’s Ray Harryhausen when you need him? There’s a guy who knew how to instill a sense of fantasy and fun into his work.

Let me just say that it’s okay to borrow from previously treaded material, as this film has been slammed for doing. Heck, even great works like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and STAR WARS did so, and proudly. But the key is how you combine your elements. What can you do to properly tie the pieces together and bring fresh creativity to tried and true formulas and ideas? Emmerich & team have just created a mucky poor man’s stew. Believe me, I’ve eaten quite a bit of the stuff so I can taste it when it’s fed to me.

The script by Emmerich and Harald Kloser (who usually works as a composer—go figure) is such a jumbled concoction of borrowed & twisted material that…well, let me put it this way – did you know that the mastodons were used to build the great pyramids of Egypt by some goofy cultish group that some (according to the narrator) say may have come from outer space or a sunken lost city (i.e. Atlantis)? The whole thing feels as though its makers were trying to recapture the mysticism from their glory days of STARGATE, which honestly weren’t all that glorious; STARGATE made a better TV series than a film.

Okay, just for duty’s sake, here’s the plot in a nutshell: There’s this hunky young hunter named D’Leh, played by Steven Strait (THE COVENENT, SKY HIGH), from the Yagahl tribe during the Middle Stone Age, or Mesolithic period. And of course, there’s also a babe (blue-eyed, nonetheless) named Evolet, played by Camilla Belle (THE TRAP, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS). D’Leh claims an undying love for Evolet and together they are prophesied to lead their tribe into a new and fruitful era, if it isn’t wiped out first.

Oh come on, don’t make me keep going with this. Let’s just cut to the chase: Babe gets taken by attacking tribe seeking slaves for its pyrimid construction, Hunk tracks down Babe, eventually rescues her, and frees another tribe from enslavement in the process. Babe gets killed by jealous captor, but is given gift of life by the mystical prophet (known as Old Mother) from the Yagahl tribe, who gives up her spirit for girl and tribe. Hunk and Babe return to tribe with farming seeds gifted from newly-freed friends and a new lease on life ensues for the Yagahl.

You really don’t want me to go into the goofy subplots about giant phantom-like turkey birds (Phorusrhacidae), silly Sabertooth Tigers, giant Woolly Mammoths, the pyramid construction (think giant Mammoth usage here), love, friendship, bravery, fatherly redemption and all the rest of it. Trust me, you just wouldn’t care.

With all that stuff going on though, you’d think there’d be enough to hold your attention for the duration, but I kept wondering, when is this thing gonna end? And why on earth is this tale worthy of being relayed to us by an elegant narrator, especially one the likes of Omar Sharif (who’s had a life-long career in works like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and more recently HIDALGO)?

Granted, there were some interesting visuals, but at the same time some seemed lacking in their sense of realism. The cinematography by Ueli Steiger (THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, BOWFINGER) wasn’t overly inspiring either. In fact, some of the night shots were very grainy, suggesting that the film had to be stopped up a bit too much during processing in order to brighten the scenes to a more viewer-friendly level. And Kloser & Thomas Wanker’s (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE TV series) score took itself way too seriously. But then, so did Roland Emmerich’s direction, so at least they were keeping things uniform in that sense. Still, I was missing Jerry Goldsmith and the experimentation he’d have most likely engaged in with a piece like this. Oh, and by the way, the actors played their parts with the near intensity and grand diction of a Shakesperean play. I kept forgetting about the period I was supposed to be in. And frankly, I was wishing that I was watching Raquel Welch in ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. again instead of this mish-mash. Aside from the obvious positive there, that film at least knew what it was and also had some visual effects work by the grand wizard himself, that Ray Harryhausen fellow I mentioned earlier.

Now, I can have as much fun with a thing as the next person. But my prerequisite is that it actually be kinda fun. I’m also no history fundementalist; I’m more than happy to suspend disbelief for the sake of imagination when properly asked to do so. And to be perfectly fair to Mr. Emmerich’s assumed knowledge base on history, I would like to point out that he was well aware of the fact that he wasn’t bringing any type of historical accuracy to the screen with his…um, epic. He himself has stated, “Historically, it’s a fantasy. It’s like LORD OF THE RINGS.”

Mr. Emmerich, I know the LORD OF THE RINGS films. And your film, sir, is no LORD OF THE RINGS.

10,000 B.C. (Warner Bros., March 7, 2008). Producers: Michael Wimer, Roland Emmerich, and Mark Gordon. Directed by Roland Emmerich. Written by Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser. Director of Photography: Ueli Steiger. Production Designer: Jean-Vincent Puzos. Editor: Alexander Berner. 108 minutes. Rated PG-13. Cast: D’LEH – Steven Strait, EVOLET – Camilla Belle, TIC TIC – Cliff Curti.

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