Sam reviews
Aug.21, 2008, filed under Miscellany
Where do I start?
Where do I even start?
I can summarise this film by saying I had to pretend it was on an alien planet to make it bearable. We start somewhere apparently in Siberia — I mean, it’s called 10,000 BC, right? One naturally assumes that they mean Before Christ. Given the state of scientific knowledge these days one would expect a certain amount of, if not realism, then at least lack of preposterousness.
But no. Our hero first of all goes hunting mammoths in the most ridiculous way possible: anyone hunting mammoths is in it at a cost/benefit threshold. They’re not going to go stampeding herds and then running around between their feet. No. Really. Then slave traders arrive. On horses.
Um. WTF? Slave traders? And since when did they have domesticated horses 12000 years ago? In Siberia? They had stirrups and everything! Oh! And what looked like steel weapons! Not to mention intercontinental trade.
That’s right, folks. Because before long our hero is tracking his girl through the foetid swamps of South America (where they had bamboo!) to which he has somehow walked from the ice fields of Northern Russia. Complete with megafauna, some of which died out around 40 million years previously. After that he moves onto the desert, where he meets the Africans. Who have chilli peppers.
Then we broach full Stargate territory with aliens from Atlantis, despite some proto-Masai and a bunch of pygmies and people wearing stupid hats, all of whom looked like they came out of an Ancient Greek’s Rough Guide to the World; as well as a religious set-up that’s halfway between Aztec and Ancient Egyptian. I was waiting for the tribe that had one giant foot they used as a sunshade.
FFS.
If I’m being kind I can assume that we’re talking the end of the Pleistocene during a period in which the Siberian Land Bridge was in existence, but, but, but…
They had aliens from Atlantis living in South America and stealing people AND MAMMOTHS from wherever the fuck they were supposed to be and then FORCE-MARCHING them all the way to the Gulf Of Mexico. Or something. And then they tied the mammoths into harnesses and made them drag big blocks of stone around in the sort of heat and humidity that would have made them drop dead inside 48 hours.
Plot. Oh plot. Chosen one boy meets chosen one girl and together they bring down the big bad and save the world. Rah. Bullet Proof Monk made a better hash of that tired old story.
I can’t even claim that the effects made it worthwhile because I was too busy gawping at how inaccurate they were. HOW BIG DO YOU THINK SMILODON WAS? They’re called megafauna, not gigafauna. Lead boy did an okay job. Lead girl was a washout. The narration made me want to tear my own skin off and stuff it in my ears to block out the sound of horrendous scriptwriting.
Oh, and oh… The Aesop’s Fables Slave and Lion trope? Just fuck right off. This isn’t Beastmaster, yo.
I can’t find anything on which to recommend this film even if you don’t have a passing familiarity with prehistoric climate, flora, fauna, geography or civilisation (or lack thereof). It was even worse than I expected it to be. 10,000 BC = 100 minutes of suck.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
