The Scope

Dave Newman on the not-nearly-as-awesome-as-it-should-have-been 10,000 B.C.

These days it’s not good enough to make an epic film in Hollywood. You have to out-epic the epics. There are heroes who are more heroic, and journeys that are more perilous than ever. I submit 10,000 BC as evidence that movie heroes have become so heroic, and their journeys have become so perilous, that epic adventure movies have lost their sense of fun.

So 10,000 B.C. is just another dull entry into the genre of the epic adventure.

The film follows a young man by the name of D’leh who is forced to leave his village when a band of “four-legged demons”—men riding horses, duh—attack his people and kidnap his newly-acquired, hot gal-friend. This is all communicated to us by a dire-sounding voice-over voice with a patented faux-British accent dedicated for movies set in the distant past. And hey, it also comes out of the mouths of American actors wearing animal skins. Shut up already! It’s totally weird and more than a little off-putting.

You may be surprised to learn that D’Leh soon sets off with a small, ragtag band of villagers to fight this mysterious new enemy. Eventually he gathers together an army of tribes to fight side by side, using oratory to express the threat this new, terrible force poses to the tribespeoples’ traditional way of life.

Oh yeah, and there’s the recurring character of “Old Mother”. She ‘s the village wise-woman who can communicate with the stars and who we keep cutting back to throughout our adventures because… actually, it’s not clear why.

Anyway, she stares upwards with bulging eyes to indicate she’s aware of something the other characters are not… maybe how ridiculous this movie is.

The action scenes derive mostly from encounters with two great pre-historic beasts, the wooly mammoths and a sabre-tooth tiger. Both of these beasts are rendered using wholly-unconvincing computer-generated imagery. This movie might have been better if they bought some used used cars, glued some fake fur and horns on them, and chased the actors around. If they had only provided some thing for the actors to interact with / run screaming from, they wouldn’t seem as blank and boring as usual. It’s funny, I went to see this movie on opening night and the theatre was packed, but through all the action scenes I didn’t hear so much as a gasp or murmur from anyone. There was a palpable sense of nobody caring.

I wouldn’t be nearly as annoyed with this movie if I didn’t see so much wasted potential. There’s lush cinematography and meticulous work done on the sets and costumes, and we travel to several different locales with landscapes and people who are gorgeous to look at… But, without any kind of narrative depth to the film, there isn’t any reason to care about any of that stuff. I kept wanting the characters to stop blathering on with their unnecessary pseudo-British-accent chatter and let the camera roam around and find something more interesting to focus on. There’s no sense of awe at the surroundings.

On the other hand, the movie is equally unwilling to simply give in and provide us with some trashy fun. I kept thinking back to the old Raquel Welch movie One Million Years B.C., where cavemen battled dinosaurs despite the two never really co-existing on Earth. Hey, it’s only a movie, why not make it as cool as possible? Where’s that 70s’ sense of logical abandonment? Bring on the dinosaurs already!

10,000 B.C. is showing at the Empire Studios 12 in the Avalon Mall. Call 722-5775 or visit their website for times and prices.