10,000 B.C.

It must have been tough for early man. Not only was he becoming aware of his sense of self, but he was also faced with daily trials. Though he was clever, he hadn’t reached our level of technology, putting him on a precarious level of the food chain. All he had was his reasoning, ingenuity and community—three things that turned out to be useful tools to aid him in the struggle of life and death.

    Looking back at our primitive past, given the supposed heights our species has reached in our short time on the planet, it certainly has its romantic appeal. Thousands of years ago before there were theories and formulas concocted to explain everything, homo sapiens still had a genuine sense of wonder; one would imagine, anyway. Maybe they were too busy mating like rabbits and trying not to get their asses eaten. Stories about our long gone ancestors past certainly have their appeal, and with so much still cloudy about the formative years of our civilization, it seems like there’s endless storytelling possibilities. Leave it to Roland Emmerich to fuck it up.



    Emmerich, the man who was able to take all the fun out of cataclysmic alien invasions and giant Japanese sea monsters, has now laid what is essentially a giant turd in the furtive imaginative ground of prehistoric man. The story follows a tribe of mammoth hunters who inhabit a mountainous terrain. It’s a pretty rough life, especially considering that their primary food source is roughly the size of a modern duplex. One day, a blue-eyed girl, Evolet (adult version played by Camilla Belle), shows up, and proves to be a mixed blessing for the tribe. Her arrival means the end of life as the tribe knows it, but also signals a glorious new beginning. When she’s captured by a band of “four-legged” demons (men on horseback who are part of a more advanced civilization), a small group of tribesmen, led by the man who loves her (played by Steven Strait), embark on a long journey to get her back. They encounter many interesting things along the way and so on and so forth.

    Much like many of Emmerich’s films, there are lapses in reasoning that seem less like creative license and more like laziness. The terrain the two parties march through switches from snowy highland steppes to tropical jungle to arid desert without much transition. That would probably go unnoticed if the story didn’t plod on in a similarly choppy manner. 10,000 B.C. jumps between the opposing tribes and back to an old seer woman at the mammoth hunter village, whose powers keep her in tune with her tribesmen’s journey, in a clumsy manner. The film is also riddled with prophecy. Everything seems to have been foretold by something. There are signs and portents at every step of the way, and some of them, such as “the mark” on Evolet’s hand, have no impact whatsoever on the film’s conclusion.

    Even the effects leave a lot to be desired. The majestic wooly mammoths look as if they’re made of taffy, and the fearsome saber tooth tiger seems almost cuddly. In one scene—a trek through a dense bamboo jungle—the characters are attacked by giant ravenous birds that appear as intimidating as rabid lawn flamingos. If 10,000 B.C. were any indication of how far we’ve come as a species, it would seem that all of early man’s struggles were for naught.

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