Product Description
The filmmaker who launched a UFO invasion in Independence Day and unleashed the forces of global warming in The Day After Tomorrow now unveils a new day of adventure a time when mammoths shake the earth and mystical spirits shape human fates. Roland Emmerich directs 10000 BC the eye-filling tale of the first hero. That hero is young hunter D Leh (Steven Strait) set out on a bold trek to rescue his kidnapped beloved (Camilla Belle) and fulfill his prophetic destiny. He ll face an awesome saber-toothed tiger. Cross uncharted realms. Form an army. And uncover an advanced but corrupt Lost Civilization. There he will lead a fight for liberation and become the champion of the time when legend began.Format: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/HEROES Rating: PG-13Product Details
- Brand: Warner Brothers
- Released on: 2008-06-24
- Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
- Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
- Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Original language: English
- Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
- Dubbed in: French, Spanish
- Number of discs: 1
- Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
- Running time: 109 minutes
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
To anyone who has ever yearned to see woolly mammoths in full stampede across the Alps, 10,000 BC can be heartily recommended. There's also a flock of "terror birds"--lethal ostriches on steroids--in a steaming jungle only a splice away from the heroes' snow-dusted alpine habitat. And lo, somewhere in the vastness of the North African desert lies a city whose slave inhabitants alternately teem like the crowds in Quo Vadis during the burning of Rome and trudge in hieratically menacing formations like the workers in Metropolis. That's pretty much it for the cool stuff. Setting movies in prehistoric times is dicey. Apart from the "Dawn of Man" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only Quest for Fire makes the grade, and its creators had the good sense to limit the dialogue to grunts and moans. 10,000 BC boasts a quasi-biblical narrator (Omar Sharif) and characters who speak in formed, albeit uninteresting, sentences--including a New Age-y "I understand your pain." But let no one say the storytelling isn't primitive. The narrator speaks of "the legend of the child with the blue eyes" and bingo, here's the kid now. When, grown up to be Camilla Belle, she's carried off by "four-legged demons"--guys on horseback to you--the neighbor boy (Steven Strait) who hankers to make myth with her leads a rescue mission into the great unknown world beyond their mountaintop. His name is D'Leh, which is Held, the German for "knight," spelled backward. So yes, there is some hidden meaning after all.
10,000 BC is the latest triumph of the ersatz from writer-director Roland Emmerich. Like Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) before it, it's shamelessly cobbled together out of every movie Emmerich can remember to pilfer from (though to be fair, the section in pre-ancient Egypt harks back to his own Stargate). Emmerich's saving grace is that his films' cheesiness is so flagrant, his narratives so geared for instant gratification, he can seem like a kid simultaneously improvising and acting out a story in his backyard: "P'tend there's this alien ... p'tend maybe he came from Atlantis or something...." Just don't p'tend it has anything to do with real moviemaking. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
Pure Historical Fiction Entertainment
Let me first address all the reviews that compare this film to Apocalypto...there is ONE major difference, this movie is actually GOOD. Pure fun from start to finish. Is it totally fast paced...NO, but the film is trying to tell a historical/fiction STORY. That is where Gibson's dull flop missed the boat. Now, the special effects are nothing to write home about, but the pure beauty of the costumes and landscape more than makes up for it. BC packs twice as much STORY into its 90 minutes than most of the 2+ hour schlock that comes out of Hollywood these days. An interesting perspective on historical possibilities makes the film even more interesting. Acurate in every detail, probably not, but possible/plausible all the same, sure. Give it a chance, once it gets rolling, this is pure popcorn-munching madness. Personally, I can't wait for 9999 BC. Recommended for pure summer/storm DVD fun!
Extremely entertaining
10,000 BC
First of all, to all the negative Nancies out there who trashed this film, yeah, it's not realistic. The dialogue is bad, the situations unrealistic, etc. But I watch a movie to be entertained and this movie, if nothing else, is very entertaining. Second, there are very likeable characters in this film and you find yourself wanting to see them get even with the monsters who keep destroying their villages, killing their people, and stealing their children (and often young people).
We were expecting CGI like in Beowulf (which we absolutely hated), but it's actually pretty realistic and since the moments with CGI are in the middle of action, you barely notice that it's CGI. You have to seriously suspend your disbelief to enjoy the film. Or have an amazing lack of knowledge about this time period. But if you can do that, it's got romance, action, an antagonist (actually three), and a protagonist (four if you count the chick, the chief, and the kid).
So here's the story and I apologize for not knowing the names, but they're not normal names and difficult to understand. A young girl wanders into a village, the only survivor of marauders who destroy her village. And the old woman seer of this new village "sees" a prophecy involving this girl and a young boy in their village, the son of the chief. Sure enough, that boy grows to be a young man, their leader, and marries the girl. But then the marauders come to their village and destroy it, taking the girl, who is now a young woman. So the young man, whom prophecy has said would destroy the great marauders, sets out after the them with the old chief (his father's best friend). In the midst of all this, he falls into a trap with a sabretooth tiger. Rather than killing it, he saves it, and creates a lifelong friend. They find another village, that's just been attacked, and this village has a prophecy about the young man too. In fact, every village they come across has some kind of prophecy about either the woman or the man.
The marauders take off in ships and sail up the river across the sand. The young hero, who now has hundreds of villagers following him from various tribes, follows the stars at night to track the marauders and they arrive in what looks like Egypt. Since the marauders, who collect slaves like seashells, are building pyramids using mammoths, it looks like it's impenetrable, but they slip right in among the slaves. Seriously, this film is extremely entertaining. The last half hour alone is worth the price of admission, one of those scenes that's so filled with action that you feel like jumping and cheering on the good guys (and the mammoths who finally get free).
If I had to compare this film to another, it would definitely be The Thirteenth Warrior, and not just because Omar Sharif narrates it. The whole saga thing, I think.
Not great, but imaginative
Coming off some rather poor reviews, I expected failure from this movie, and the first ten minutes delivered all the fail I anticipated. After that, it drastically improved, and while it didn't succeed as an epic, it was very lively and highly imaginative.
Starting with the bad, most of the dialogue just plain sucks. It's great that they tried to make the people sound simple, being this is 10,000 BC, but the kids (D'leh and Evolet) had these really painfully Arab-esque accents and awkward dialogue reminiscent of Attack of the Clones Padme and Anakin. The dumb little kid who follows the hunters also is an embarrassing addition, but thankfully his dialogue is limited.
The minor characters, such as the English-speaking African chief, are the only characters who really shine with their simplistic dialogue, and even D'leh sometimes narrowly misses having his lines crumble to sheer stupidity.
Also a major detractment is the narrator, who is mostly completely un-needed save to further some events. Other times, we really don't need to hear him, such as the very end when the Old Mother supposedly 'breathes life' into Evolet. The images showed this clearly enough without needless narration.
In the beginning, the special effects are rather poor, as you can very clearly see that a character doesn't fit in the background environment, as if they were filmed in front of a green screen, and then attempts at digitally removing the green glare only smeared the picture.
Also, it was clearly not necessary to have the ice people of D'leh speak English, as they are the only English-speaking tribe in the movie, and it would have far better served the atmosphere to have them speaking a more primitive language, with more hand and facial gestures than verbosity.
The action sequences, costumes, cinematography, and sets were spectacular, and managed to tell the greater story (oppressed tribes banding together to overthrow a tyrant) in a way that far supersedes the main individual story of D'leh trying to save Evolet, though from the prophetic viewpoint, it was interesting how they twisted the two together, having it be that only D'leh's desire to save Evolet could make him lead the tribes to freedom. To sum, the movie succeeds in macro-storytelling, but fails in micro-storytelling.
As for the historical accuracy... it's very imaginative. And it requires you to use your imagination to explain certain things.
For one, the pyramids in what is clearly Egypt. I thought it was a great explanation to show them using Mammoths to pull their limestone (since even today historians are marveled at how they could have pulled such stones with manpower alone), and though the first pyramids were built some 7,000 years after this movie takes place, the movie makes sure that it is left open to interpretation.
What? The pyramids are barely half-way completed in the movie, and the slaves and tribes revolt against their ruler (a tall, godlike figure who must maintain his illusion of divinity to a point of never being seen; his personal slaves are all blind), leaving the pyramids incomplete. You could easily imagine that the pyramids could left incomplete for thousands of years, before a civilization known to us as the Egyptians of hieroglyphs and mummies worked to complete them. Sands could have eroded the pyramids, covering them up completely, or who knows? The movie doesn't definitively say the pyramids were built in 10,000 BC: only that they were begun, and presumably not completed by the original builders.
In all, it's a beautifully done movie, which suffers from poor micro-storytelling. If the total story were in the forefront, and the love story reduced to a subplot, I think it would have been a far better movie.
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