Film Review: 10,000 BC (2008)

Pre-history, unlike history, is not a suitable setting for epics. This is primarily because the changes in that period occurred gradually and, when quick changes did happen, they affected only small groups of people. To make pre-history spectacular, as worthy of historical epics, one must take a substantial amount of creative liberties. In the case of 10,000 BC, the 2008 film directed by Roland Emmerich, those liberties have been taken to an extreme.

The plot of the film begins around 10,000 BC in Eurasia, likely the Ural Mountains, where we are introduced to Yaghal, a tribe of hunter-gatherers who subsist on woolly mammoths, whose numbers are dwindling, threatening the future of Yaghal. The protagonist, D'Leh, played by Steven Strait, is a young hunter whose father ventured south in search of a new life and source of food years ago. He is in love with Evolet (played by Camilla Belle), a beautiful girl adopted into the tribe after her people were massacred by mysterious "four-legged demons." Yaghal learns what those "demons" are when a band of horseback raiders attacks their settlement and captures many people, including Evolet. D'Leh and a group of his fellow Yaghal, including his mentor Tic'Tic (played by Cliff Curtis), decide to track the raiders and attempt to rescue their brethren. Their journey takes them over mountains and through strange lands filled with lush forests and deserts, where they encounter dangerous beasts like terror birds and sabre-toothed tigers. However, the greatest surprise awaits them at their destination, a land by the river where Evolet is brought along with thousands of others to serve as slave labour for building pyramids.

Roland Emmerich, who also produced and co-wrote the film, can be accused of many things, but not a lack of ambition or belief in what he is doing. In the case of 10,000 BC, he made certain that the audience knows this is a grand epic film, thanks to a large budget, impressive cinematography, locations in South Africa, Namibia, and South Africa, good cinematography by Ueli Steiger, and CGI that does a solid job in making a few spectacular scenes and recreating ancient prehistoric beasts.

The main issue with 10,000 BC is conceptual. It is actually two solid films – an exotic period western-like adventure story and a 1950s-style "larger-than-life" historic epic – poorly mixed into one. Emmerich, in an attempt to make D'Leh's story more important, takes inspiration from Graham Hancock, a controversial historian whose ideas would later inspire his later film 2012, namely those of ancient Ice Age civilizations and myths of Atlantis, with some hints of ancient aliens. This makes the second part of the film resemble a remake or possibly even a hidden prequel of Stargate, Emmerich's 1994 spectacle that used the ancient astronauts hypothesis.

The problem with these concepts in 10,000 BC isn't so much the relative lack of evidence and general disdain among mainstream historians for the hypothesis that serves as basis of film’s plot; it's that Emmerich doesn't take it seriously and, in order to make things "spectacular," throws away any hint of historical authenticity. Examples can be found in horseback riding and metalworking appearing millennia before their actual archaeological record, and even problematic are the huge beasts that were either long extinct at the time the film is set, living in different continents, or much smaller than depicted in the film.

Viewers who don't care much about history or pre-history could enjoy 10,000 BC to a certain point, as the film is directed solidly and acted competently, with relatively unknown actors like Steven Strait and Camilla Belle doing a good job in their roles. However, the actual finale, with its rather unconvincing deus ex machina twist, will leave most of the audience disappointed.

In the end, 10,000 BC is a film that can be recommended mainly to viewers interested in seeing how Hollywood can butcher pre-history in the same way it butchers history.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

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