Mixed feelings about this movie. Here are my July 9, 2008 thoughts:
As far as historical accuracy, the movie is ludicrous. There are
terror birds (nasty giant predatory birds) that did exit but had died
out sometime around 1 million B.C. Moreover, the terror birds lived
in North and South America and would thus not be found in Egypt.
Likewise, though there were still some Woolly Mammoths, they were not
anywhere near Egypt. The same is true of the Saber-toothed Tiger,
which might still be found in North/South America at the time but not
Egypt. As I mention Egypt, the movie shows several pyramids and a
massive boat house (I mean MASSIVE). The oldest pyramids were built
more than 7000 years after the movie takes place. Of course, the
technology is all wrong. There are horsemen thousands of years
before horses are domesticated, and woolly mammoths were never
domesticated. The movie is clearly set in the Stone Age and yet we
see metal weapons and tools once we arrive at the pyramids.
The geography doesn't make much sense. D'Leh's tribe of Mammoth hunters lives in a frozen land of great mountains. Then, one day, slavers arrive and drag off much of the tribe. It is days out of the mountains and then into, quite suddenly, a tropical jungle. This then brings us to a vast desert that is split by the Nile. So, how would that fit on the map? Very poorly. One also wonders why the slavers travelled SO far to get slaves. When you consider that D'Leh recruits an army on his trek from his distant homeland to the land of the Pyramid God while following in the footsteps of the slavers, it forces you to ask why didn't the slavers take these people instead and save a lot of travel?
Roland Emmerich, the director, is also noted for Stargate. Is it any wonder that he leaves clues that the Pyramid God is from Atlantis? It is also of no surprise that the slave master has that funny quality to his voice like the aliens of Stargate. I think he should have included the Stargate to secure the link between his two films.
The greatest failing of the movie is that it is entitled '10,000 B.C.' thus placing it in the real world with known attributes. If this had been called `Mammoth Hunter' or `Tyranny of the Pyramid God,' all the timeline/realism issues vanish and this becomes just another fantasy world that happens to be more primitive than Tolkien's Middle Earth or Lewis' Narnia.
Despite its faults, I enjoyed the movie. Many have compared it to Apocalypto, which is somewhat right. Apocalypto had the hero enslaved only to escape and be hunted by the slavers. 10,000 B.C. has our hero hunt slavers who took his mate. The movie also has a decidedly Biblical note to it. D'Leh, our hero, is a figure of prophecy (Moses?) who comes to free the slaves from the Pyramid God (Pharaoh). Enjoy the film as mindless popcorn fun but don't mistake anything you see as history.
The geography doesn't make much sense. D'Leh's tribe of Mammoth hunters lives in a frozen land of great mountains. Then, one day, slavers arrive and drag off much of the tribe. It is days out of the mountains and then into, quite suddenly, a tropical jungle. This then brings us to a vast desert that is split by the Nile. So, how would that fit on the map? Very poorly. One also wonders why the slavers travelled SO far to get slaves. When you consider that D'Leh recruits an army on his trek from his distant homeland to the land of the Pyramid God while following in the footsteps of the slavers, it forces you to ask why didn't the slavers take these people instead and save a lot of travel?
Roland Emmerich, the director, is also noted for Stargate. Is it any wonder that he leaves clues that the Pyramid God is from Atlantis? It is also of no surprise that the slave master has that funny quality to his voice like the aliens of Stargate. I think he should have included the Stargate to secure the link between his two films.
The greatest failing of the movie is that it is entitled '10,000 B.C.' thus placing it in the real world with known attributes. If this had been called `Mammoth Hunter' or `Tyranny of the Pyramid God,' all the timeline/realism issues vanish and this becomes just another fantasy world that happens to be more primitive than Tolkien's Middle Earth or Lewis' Narnia.
Despite its faults, I enjoyed the movie. Many have compared it to Apocalypto, which is somewhat right. Apocalypto had the hero enslaved only to escape and be hunted by the slavers. 10,000 B.C. has our hero hunt slavers who took his mate. The movie also has a decidedly Biblical note to it. D'Leh, our hero, is a figure of prophecy (Moses?) who comes to free the slaves from the Pyramid God (Pharaoh). Enjoy the film as mindless popcorn fun but don't mistake anything you see as history.
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