Emmerich is nothing if not consistent. The man always thinks big. Most of his previous films including Independence Day, Godzilla, The Patriot, and The Day After Tomorrow are huge spectacles with lots of CGI, impressive effects, big casts and little plot. Emmerich tends to work on such a grand scale, that he lets the overall size of the project overwhelm the plot of the film. With 10,000 BC, Emmerich has fallen into that trap again.
The main character in what story there is, is a fellow named D’Leh (Steven Strait). Old Mother (Mona Hammond), considered by D’Leh’s tribe to be a shaman of sorts, predicts that four-legged demons will come among them and that D’Leh will become their savior. As it turns out, she’s right. Like I said, the plot is pretty thin. If you care about the plot of this film past the first ten minutes or so, you’re a better person than me. I learned that people who roamed the earth some twelve thousand years ago apparently never bathed but somehow managed to have blindingly white teeth and perfectly sculpted physiques.
Anyway, D’Leh falls in love with the gorgeous Evolet (Camilla Belle). The problem is, when the four-legged demons arrive (on horses, hence the four legs), they turn out to be slave traders who wreak havoc in D’Leh’s village and take several villagers as prisoners including the lovely Evolet.
Predictably, D’Leh survives the attack on his village and sets out to rescue Evolet and the other prisoners. Of course, if D’Leh can save his true love and the rest of the prisoners, it could be said he fulfilled his destiny to be his tribe’s savior. However, the things that happen to him on his journey to heroism are so ridiculous that the story becomes positively laughable. D’Leh and his group of traveling companions go from their frozen homeland to the North, over snowy mountains, through tropical rain forests, and desert in what seems to be just a few days. During all of this, D’Leh manages to battle giant birds, free a saber-tooth tiger and gathers troops to fight various enemies along the way. Somehow, he makes it all look like just another day at the office.
After that, D’Leh winds up in Egypt where he supposedly finds an advanced civilization working diligently to construct the pyramids. Huh? If I was even slightly interested in this film up to this point (which is highly debatable), I had completely lost interest by now. History clearly tells us that the Egyptians were nowhere near building the pyramids 12,000 years ago. In fact, they began construction only 5,000 years ago. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the domesticated mammoths Emmerich has in this film–positively ridiculous.
Though I came away from 10,000 BC feeling like the movie was frivolous, I have a strange feeling that Roland Emmerich intended for 10,000 BC to be viewed as a very serious project. It seems like he was trying so hard to be careful and elaborate that he lost his original vision. In the end, 10,000 BC is a bloated nonsensical mix of bad costumes and cheesy effects that might just become a camp classic for the sheer badness of it all.
Warner Bros. offers the film in both full and widescreen on opposite sides of the same disc. The audio is in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The disc offers English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
There are only two special features on this DVD. The first is an alternate ending and the second is ten additional scenes.
