10,000 BC
Promotional poster
Directed by	Roland Emmerich
Produced by	Roland Emmerich Mark Gordon Michael Wimer
Written by	Roland Emmerich Harald Kloser John Orloff
Narrated by	Omar Sharif
Starring	Steven Strait Camilla Belle Cliff Curtis
Music by	Harald Kloser Thomas Wander James Seymour Brett (additional score)
Cinematography	Ueli Steiger
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	Australia March 6, 2008 United States wide release March 7, 2008
Running time	109 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$105 million
Gross revenue	Worldwide $269,784,201

10,000 BC is a 2008 American film from Warner Bros. Pictures set in the prehistoric era, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Steven Strait and Camilla Belle. The world premiere of the movie was held on February 10, 2008 at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.^[1][2] General release was on March 7, 2008.^[3]

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 2.1 Casting process 3 Production 4 Critical reception 5 Historical Inaccuracies 6 Influences of other works 7 DVD release 8 Box office performance 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

[edit] Plot

In the year 10,000 BC, a tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Yagahl, who live on a remote mountain range, survive by killing mammoths. D'Leh, a young hunter, has a companion named Evolet, an orphan who was found by the tribe. D'Leh, while hunting mammoths, manages to kill one and wins the "White Spear," which is given to the killer of the mammoth. He also wins Evolet in marriage, but feels he deserves neither since he killed the mammoth by accident.

One day, D'Leh and several others are away when horse-raiders called the "Four Legged Demons" attack the Yaghal camp. The horse raiders enslave Evolet, and D'Leh, Tic'Tic, and Ka'Ren pursue them to save her. Baku, whose mother was killed during the raid, joins them later. They are attacked by terror birds in the jungle. In this encounter, Tic'Tic gets wounded and Baku and Ka'Ren are captured. D'Leh rescues Evolet, but she is later re-captured. Continuing on, they meet others whose loved ones were taken by the raiders. D'Leh and Tic'Tic befriend Nakudu, leader of the Naku tribe. He tells D'Leh of a prophecy: whoever talks to the "Spear-Tooth" will help free their people. D'Leh had earlier saved a saber-toothed cat from drowning in a trap. The saber-tooth then spared his life, and he realizes the prophecy was about him. Nakudu explains that his loved ones were taken in the "Great Red Birds," or ships with large red sails, to the "Mountains of the Gods," from which no one has ever returned. They then come together with other tribes, who agree to form a coalition to pursue the raiders.

They find the ships with red sails holding Evolet and Baku. They have no means to follow the ships, so they journey through a vast desert, where they discover a relatively advanced civilization similar to ancient Egypt, which is ruled by an enigmatic figure known as "The Almighty," who is said to be the last survivor of his kind. The Almighty, who is regarded as a living god, possesses many thousands of slaves that he is using to build a huge pyramid complex in his honor and possibly for his burial. D'Leh finds an escaped slave, and notices he is wearing a bracelet worn by D'Leh's father. D'Leh's father left his tribe for food and found the Naku tribe before being stolen by the raiders. In a night attack, the guards of the slaves discover D'Leh behind a pyramid. Tic'Tic dies during the attack. Meanwhile, the Almighty's priests discover Evolet wears scars on her hand patterned after the "Mark of the Hunter," the brightest star in all of the heavens. The priests believe it is part of a prophecy that whoever wears the mark of the Hunter is destined to kill the Almighty. D'Leh starts a full-scale rebellion amongst the slaves. They cause the mammoth herd to stampede and kill a large number of troops.

The Almighty offers Evolet to D'Leh in exchange for abandoning his rebellion. The Almighty says that if D'Leh takes his wife, his warriors can return, but the rest must be his slaves forever. D'Leh feigns acceptance of the deal which allows him to throw a spear at the Almighty and kill him, proving that he is not a god. During the ensuing battle, a raider kidnaps Evolet on horseback. Evolet grabs an arrow and stabs the warlord in the side, knocking them both off the horse. D'Leh rushes towards her, but Russell shoots her in the back. D'Leh kills Russell and returns to Evolet, and she dies in his arms. The scene shifts to the wise woman as she breathes in deeply and then breathes out her last breath. The scene then returns to D'Leh still holding Evolet's body when she suddenly awakens, restored by the wise woman's sacrifice. They depart for home and bid farewell to the other tribes. They return home and kiss passionately as the screen fades in the sun.

In an alternative ending, the scene shifts forward many years into the future, showing Baku's retelling of the story by the camp fire. It ends with a child asking what had happened to the "Mountains of the Gods," and Baku responds "They were taken back by the sands. Lost to time, lost to man."

[edit] Cast

• Steven Strait as D'Leh (an anagram for "Held" which is the German, Dutch and Afrikaans word for "hero"), a mammoth hunter and the main protagonist.
• Camilla Belle as Evolet, D'Leh's love and the only survivor of a different tribe; one which was killed off by the "Four Legged Demons" (fierce warriors on horseback). While kidnapped, her hands were whipped, leaving a scar in the shape of the "hunter" - a foreshadowing of the one who will defeat the Almighty. She is unique in that she has blue eyes.
• Cliff Curtis as Tic'Tic, D'Leh's mentor.^[4]
• Joel Virgel as Nakudu, leader of the Naku tribe.
• Affif Ben Badra as Warlord, leader of the "Four Legged Demons"
• Mo Zinal as Ka'Ren
• Nathanael Baring as Baku
• Mona Hammond as Old Mother, the Yagahl wise old woman.
• Marco Khan as One-Eye, Warlord's main henchman.
• Reece Ritchie as Moha
• Joel Fry as Lu'Kibu
• Kristian Beazley as D'Leh's father, who had lived with the Naku tribe and learned agriculture from them.
• Junior Oliphant as Tudu, Nakudu's son.
• Boubacar Badaine as Quina, leader of another tribe.
• Tim Barlow as the Almighty. The Almighty is a tall, blue eyed man who dresses in long white robes and a face-concealing veil. He is the last of three kings, and the last of the Atlanteans. He also fears the "Hunter", who is foretold to bring about his downfall.
• Omar Sharif as the Narrator / elderly Baku

[edit] Casting process

Emmerich opened casting sessions in late October 2005.^[5] In February 2006, Camilla Belle and Steven Strait were announced to star in the film, with Strait as the mammoth hunter and Belle as his love.^[6] Emmerich felt that casting well known actors would distract from the realistic feel of the prehistoric setting. "If like, Jake Gyllenhaal turned up in a movie like this, everybody would be, 'What's that?'", he explained. Unknown casting also helped keep the film's budget down.^[7]

[edit] Production

Director Roland Emmerich and composer Harald Kloser originally penned a script for 10,000 BC. When the project received the greenlight from Columbia Pictures, screenwriter John Orloff began work on a new draft of the original script. Columbia Pictures, under Sony Pictures Entertainment, dropped the project due to a busy release calendar, and Warner Bros. picked up the project in Sony's vacancy.^[8] The script went through a second revision with Matthew Sand and a final revision with Robert Rodat.^[6] Emmerich rejected making the film in an ancient language (similar to The Passion of the Christ or Apocalypto), feeling it would not be as emotionally engaging.^[9]

Production began in spring 2006 in South Africa and Namibia.^[6] Location filming also took place in southern New Zealand^[10] and Thailand. Before shooting began, the production had spent eighteen months on research and development for the computer generated imagery. Two companies recreated prehistoric animals. To cut time (it was taking sixteen hours to render a single frame) 50% of the CGI models' fur was removed, as "it turned out half the fur looked the same" to the director.^[7]

[edit] Critical reception

The film received largely negative reviews from critics, stating that the movie is mainly visual and lacks a firm screenplay. Critics went on to say that the film is extremely inaccurate archaeologically. As of December 29, 2008, the review aggregator at Rotten Tomatoes has reported that 9% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 135 reviews.^[11] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 34 out of 100, based on 29 reviews.^[12]

[edit] Historical Inaccuracies

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In the special features of the DVD it is asserted that inaccuracies were deliberately included to show the existence of an advanced civilization as yet undiscovered by modern archaeology as alluded to in the book Fingerprints of the Gods. However, the same confusion about the true fantastical nature of the film led Yahoo! movies to feature 10,000 BC at the top of their list of "The 10 most historically inaccurate movies". Below is a list of identified historical and archeological flaws:

• One of the main blunders of critics of the alleged historical inaccuracy of the movie is to immediately identify the ancient civilization depicted in the film with ancient Egypt, instead of a fictional, older and more advanced one that is hinted to descend from Atlantis. Hence, it is pointed out by Yahoo! movies that the depiction of the use of mammoths in the construction of Egyptian pyramids was strongly out of place. Quoting the website's review, "Woolly mammoths were not, in fact, used to build pyramids. Heck, woolly mammoths weren't even found in the desert. They wouldn't need to be woolly if that were the case..."
• The slaves were forced to work on building a pyramid, as well as a sphinx. Following the same line of thought as before, critics also point out that neither of the two was being built in Egypt until about 2,500 BC.
• Yet again the same confusion leads critics to assert that the path that the main protagonists (the Yagahl) and antagonists (the "Four Legged Demons") take to the Pyramids makes no sense. Based on the Yagahl's appearance and the geography of their homeland it is implied that they come from somewhere in eastern Europe or western Asia. This means that, had the location been indeed in Egypt, they would have to travel south through Anatolia to reach the pyramids. However, the characters are shown journeying all the way to a portion of the Nile river in the middle of the desert (which would have been in southern Egypt), and then sailing north up to the river to the "head of the snake". This means that the characters would have had to bypass the pyramids on their way south to the southern portion of the Nile, only to travel hundreds of miles back north.
• The men have clean facial hair lines. This could not have happened without razors.
• Another misconception is revealed when criticizing a scene in the film where a telescope, which wouldn't be invented until the 17th century AD. The character is clearly looking through a sextant-type of object and not a telescope, as the object has no lens.
• Evolet's legs appeared to have been waxed as they show no growth of hair, but there is no evidence that Cro-Magnon women neither knew nor used the waxing process.
• The Terror birds were indigenous to the Americas and had gone extinct 1.8 million years before.
• The earliest known use of sailing ships was around 3500 B.C.[13]
• The film shows humans riding horses which were not thought to have been domesticated until around 3,500 BC.
• The use of swords and other bladed weapons are also anachronistic as the first known swords date to the late 3rd millennium BC in the Middle East.
• There is no evidence that Cro-Magnon Man ever hunted mammoths with a net.
• The Naku tribe fed D'Leh red peppers and gave him seed corn. Both of these were from the Americas.
• The Woolly Mammoth and the Smilodon are oversized.
• Smilodon did not live in Africa; this means it might have been Dinofelis. If so, it was extremely oversized, given true Saber teeth, and also, Dinofelis became extinct 1.3 million years previously.

The magazine Archaeology gave the movie a bad review owing to its inaccuracies.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Influences of other works

Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Daily News draws numerous comparisons between 10,000 BC and other films in the prehistoric and historic film genre, especially One Million Years B.C.^[13] and Apocalypto.^[14][15] A. O. Scott of The New York Times compared it to John Ford's film The Searchers and also the animated film Ice Age.^[16]

At the 2008 Wondercon, Emmerich mentioned the fiction of Robert E. Howard as a primary influence for the film's setting, as well as his love for Quest for Fire and the book Fingerprints of the Gods.^[17]

The film's plot bears superficial resemblance to the 1994 film Stargate, also written and directed by Roland Emmerich. In both movies, a primitive culture is raided and enslaved by a more advanced civilization, and the enslaved people are forced to build pyramids for a "living god" who is considered to be the last surviving member of a technologically advanced race. Also similarly, a small group of outsiders rally the primitives to attack and overthrow the ruler and his bodyguards. Each film is noted for extreme historical inaccuracy, however in the case of Stargate this is placed within the context of science fiction.

[edit] DVD release

The DVD of the film was released on June 24, 2008 in single disc editions of DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the United States. Best Buy will release a 2-disc limited edition along with the DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases. It was released on July 21, 2008 in the United Kingdom.^[18] The film grossed $31,341,721 in DVD sales, bringing its total film gross to $300,414,491.^[19]

[edit] Box office performance

In its opening weekend, the film grossed $35.8 million in 3,410 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #1 at the box office, and grossing over $22 million more than the film in second place, College Road Trip.^[20][21] As of April 29, 2008, it has grossed approximately $268.6 million worldwide — $94.6 million in the United States and Canada and $174 million in other territories^[22] — including $17.2 million in Mexico, $12.9 million in Spain, $11.4 million in the United Kingdom, and $10.8 million in China. This also makes it the first film of 2008 to surpass the $200 million mark.^[23]

[edit] See also

• List of American films of 2008
• 100 Million BC - A direct-to-DVD film by The Asylum
• One Million Years B.C. - A similar film released in 1966

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• 10,000 BC at the Internet Movie Database
• 10,000 BC at Rotten Tomatoes
• 10,000 BC at Metacritic
• 10,000 BC at Box Office Mojo
• 10,000 BC at Allmovie
• 10,000 BC: SciFi.com on movie's historical inaccuracies

v • d • e Films directed by Roland Emmerich 1980s Das Arche Noah Prinzip (1984) · Joey (1985) · Hollywood-Monster (1987) 1990s Moon 44 (1990) · Universal Soldier (1992) · Stargate (1994) · Independence Day (1996) · Godzilla (1998) 2000s The Patriot (2000) · The Day After Tomorrow (2004) · 10,000 BC (2008) · 2012 (2009)