Still As Life

I went and saw 10000 BC last night, what can I say? It was average.

The CGI in it was great, but that was probably the only redeeming quality of the movie.

10-15 minutes into the movie and there were already things that I can only call silly mistakes.

For example, when they decide to hunt the mammoth and the mammoth appear over a hill and that is when they are first seen and heard. That’s all well and good, but the amount of noise they were making, it would have been impossible to not hear them sooner. Then when they are actually hunting them, they are creeping towards them from upwind. It is established earlier on that they have hunted mammoth before, every time the mammoth pass. So naturally, wouldn’t the mammoth associate their scent with a threat and panic before the tribe got anywhere near close enough to them? Seeing as how they are upwind from the mammoth and all. It is particularly obvious that they are upwind because the grass can be seen blowing in the direction of the mammoth. Now, I know it’s just a movie, but that’s a pretty simple thing that could have been avoided.

Another thing I had a particularly big problem with is that there were ships, ships more advanced then the Egyptian ships of later times, yet Egypt had the first real ships.

Then of course there was the final section of the movie where it was quite evident they were meant to be in Egypt, with the Nile river and the pyramids being built, along with a cartoonish Sphinx.

Aside from all these things, there is the language question. D’Leh, the hero of the story, in his travels meets up with around 6 other tribes, the first of which is many days travel from his own tribe. Now, the leader of this tribe, Nakudu, is explained as being able to speak his words because D’Leh’s father, the previous leader of his tribe, had come to find new lands and had taught the leader of the other tribe his words. That’s all well and good. Then there are the other tribes, including ones that are days away from the first, where Nakudu is able to translate for. He is even able to translate the words of what I can only assume are the Egyptians, a people he is established as having never met and never gotten anywhere near where they are from. Maybe he is just a linguistic whiz, but I doubt it.

Of course there were then plenty more anachronisms, but to go through all of them would take a long time, and even then I would still undoubtedly miss some.

The acting was fairly reasonable. There were occasional spots where it was bad, but most of the movie retained the same average level of acting. I would not put any of it in the outstanding, or even above average categories, but in general it was reasonable.

The average user rating on IMDB at the time of writing this is 5.0/10, and I agree with that rating entirely.

If you haven’t yet seen it yet, here’s the trailer:

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