10,000BC

Wow, this film was bad.

I think I've mentioned that I read Empire magazine. My memory of their review for 10,000BC was that it was a bit daft but entertaining enough.

While I'd agree with it being daft I really didn't find it very entertaining at all.

There's actually a line about two-thirds of the way through that kinda summarises the main thing that annoyed me about the film. One of the good guys is explaining about the bad guys and says something to the effect that nobody knows where they came from.

He says something along the lines of "some think they came from the sky, others that they came from across the ocean from a land that sunk." Basically what this is referring to is the 'theory' that Egyptians were really aliens (see Stargate) and the theory of Atlantis (see, well, if you've not heard of Atlantis then start with wikipedia I guess :/).

But I think that it's also referring to Erich Von Daniken and his fellow "Real history is kinda confusing and a little dull and takes far to much painstaking research to work out, so here's a collection of bonkers ideas with half-baked and very loose evidence to back them up" writers.

Again, wikipedia's a good place to get the skinny on the whacky theories these people come up with.

Now part of me kinda likes these writers because they come up with some interesting ideas. What I don't like about them is that they genuinely seem to think their ideas hold merit and so do their readers.

But anyway, it's daft ideas like these that seem to have formed the basis for 10,000BC.

So as I say, the bad guys are possibly alien or from Atlantis or maybe just foreigners. Which I guess is okay, but you also get the utterly bizarre proposition that wholly mammoths were used to build the pyramids.

I mean seriously - whut?

Setting aside all problems of getting the timing wrong (mammoths are extinct by the time we build the pyramids), are we seriously supposed to believe that wholly mammoths with their huge mass and great big furry bodies that evolved to cope with the extreme cold of the northern latitudes during the last ice age would survive for any period of time in the Egyptian desert?

I mean come on - fantasy is one thing; utterly retarded is another.

And that's just one of many utterly ridiculous things.

My personal favourite is to do with the journey that the heroes go on.

If you look at the locations in an analytical way it seemed to be that the cavemen start somewhere in central Europe. They then move south, travelling through what appears to be a tropical jungle, arriving in a desert country that very much appears to be Northern Africa.

Okay, so if we ignore the whole jungle bit (especially since it's filled with terror birds - large, carnivorous, flightless birds... that were native to South America and extinct 2 million years ago :/) that seems like a basically sensible journey. However, it starts to unravel when you get to the point where all these tribes are apparently unfamiliar with boats and sailing.

That means they somehow made the journey without ever crossing or travelling down a large river, which is fair enough until you think about the time taken to trek around such rivers. But it also means they couldn't have gone from Europe to Africa by crossing the Mediterranean. That in turn means they must have passed through Egypt to get there... and yet Egypt is their final destination.

Eh?

And those are just the tip of the iceberg.

But the real kicker is that you could have ignored all of these blatant time buggerations and logical problems if the personal story had been any good. But it really wasn't.

The general jist was a quest for the hero to save his true love and I guess rescue humanity. Which is pretty tried and true ground you'd think, but I dunno, they totally bungled it. Not least of all because I didn't really care about the romance and the hero was actually a bit of an idiot and also rather bland.

Avoid.