It seems Holywood is out of ideas for their pseudo-historical action movie genre, after such disaters as Gladiator, Troy, and Alexander (and the actually good 300), it's time to roll back the clock even farther to the point where they can just start making shit up and no one will notice.
10,000 BC follows a group of mammoth hunters who live in, by my best guess, Siberia. One day a young girl with blue eyes arrives and says that four legged demons will arrive the day of the last hunt. The mystic old woman of the tribe belives her because it was prophesied a girl with blue eyes would show up one day. Well, time for some action I thought. Wrong! For some damn reason the "last hunt" takes place about 10 years later. So cut to everyone way older (except for the mystic old woman, if she got any older she'd be about 130) and now its time for some mammoth hunting! But wait, what the heck were they eating for the last 10 years? They're in surrounded by snow, theres nothing to be grown, and they sure don't seem to be hunting mammoths very often. But whatever, movies don't need to make any sense right!
Ok now its really time for some mammoth hunting. This scene is so unintentionally hilarious, you've got about 20 cavemen guys in warpaint and loincloths, trying to be really stealthy and crawl through the grass up to a herd of mammoth, but as soon as they get close, one of them stands up and starts screaming, sending the mammoth running in a panic. Uhh, great plan guys. So all the hunters run after than, and do manage to bring one down, only after seperating it from the others with a net and stabbing it with a few wooden spears.
That night, sure enough, according to THE PROPHECY, a bunch of guys on horses show up and kidnap about 15 people, burn the huts, and leave. They make special care to kidnap the girl with blue eyes, who's damn hot now that she's grown up. She stands out like a sore thumb compared to everyone else in the movie, who are either warpainted cavemen or barbaric badguys with big noses. Actually come to think of it, she's the ONLY female in the movie, besides the mystic old woman whos about 120 years old. So anyways the remaining cavemen, with their settlement destroyed, decide to send the three hunters left to go and get everyone back.
They head south through the mountains, and walk. And walk, and walk, and walk. After finally crossing the mountains, suddenly they're in the middle of the jungle, somewhere in asia since there are bamboo thickets. They see the camp of the invaders, wait until night, then run in and free everyone. But suddenly giant fucking ostriches show up outta nowhere and start attacking everyone! There is a very blatent "homage" to the tall grass scene in Jurasic Park 2, as in this you'll have a bunch of guys running through tall grass, then out of nowhere one of them falls down and gets eaten. Sadly, this is probably the best scene in the movie. A few minutes later the cavemen guys are hiding in trees and hitting the birds in the head with rocks, but somehow after everything is said and done, the invaders magically recaptured everyone except for the guys sent to save them.
They continue to move on, and while the others rest, the main guy decides to go out to look for food. He gets close to a herd then suddenly falls into a giant trap pit. In the middle of the plains. Then it starts pouring rain instantly. Also for some reason there is a sabertooth tiger trapped beneath some rubble in this pit. How did it get there? Why was the opening covered? Anyways the main guy has to escape before this entire pit floods, but there is a tiger in his way. What does he decide to do? He decides to save it from drowning first. The actual line is "If I save you, you better not eat me!" All of the dialogue in this movie is equally dumb, but that one just stood out to me. So he save the tiger, it roars at him in a scene really reminding me of alien, then runs away. The guy escapes the pit after him, and it stops raining.
The heroes continue moving on, and come across a village that looks like it was recently attacked. They meet a tribe of African dudes who are aphrehesive at first, but thanks to a lol plot device, one of them speaks the same language as the heroes, and tells everyone its cool. Until the sabertooth tiger shows back up, everyones ready to fight again, but then it sees the guy who saved it earlier, and leaves. Now I find it very funny that the poster for this movie was changed from its original picture of a mammoth, to the one with the tiger seen above. Why? Because I've already described the 5 minutes of movie, if that, that the tiger actually appears in. After running away this time, he's never seen again. Theres no fight scene, he's completely irrelevant to the plot, but he gets to be on the poster, brilliant!
But right now, is where the movie really turns into shit. Yes, just now. Up until this point, I had hope for this movie. I saw it as a being a sort of monster movie, with cavemen battling various prehistoric animals. I mean, they fought mammoths, then giant freaky birds, and well I
thought he was going to fight that sabertooth tiger! But it turns out, not only are there no more animals for the rest of the movie, there are pretty much no more action scenes! And I don't even think the movie is halfway over at this point, but as far as the plot goes, it's about 90% over.
Anyways, the African tribe sees this guy chase the tiger away by looking at it, and are all excited. Why? Because he is the CHOSEN ONE, the one who SPEAKS TO LONGTOOTH. First we've got prophecies about blue eyed girls, now about people talking to tigers, great. The two tribes band together, and head off to save their kidnapped friends.
For the next hour of the movie, nothing happens.
It's what feels like an eternity of the blind leading the blind through the desert, always constantly one step behind the invaders, and as soon as they finally catch up, the invaders hop on their boats and head up the river, leaving our heroes to walk after them for another 20 minutes. I haven't wanted to walk out of a movie in a long time, and this movie finally did it for me. I'd had enough. I cant stress enough how painfully boring this point of the movie is. Nothing happens at all. I just wanted it to be over.
Finally after another several days in movie time of walking, they finally arrive in Egypt, where all these slaves that are being collected are being used to build pyramids. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there weren't pyramids in 10,000 BC. I've seen movies be historically inaccuate, but damn this movie is pushing it like crazy. And another thing why the fuck would you send 50 men to Siberia, all the way from Egypt in order to kidnap 15 slaves? That's some seriously poor workforce management.
We're then introduced to the king of egypt, who can be best described as an even creepier version of the emporer from Star Wars. He's got super long finger nails, wears a veil at all times, and sounds exactly the same. He finds out that the blue eyed girl, has a scar on her hand that resembles a constalation, and that means she's gunna kill him or something. Because that's the prophecy. Seriously give me a fucking break what is with all the phophecies in this movie, this one makes the least sense of all of them!
Anyways the heroes FINALLY arrive, and rally the slaves, who all gather outside the kings palace. The main hero picks up his spear, shouts, "You are not a god!" at the king, then throws his spear at him. Didn't I see this exact same scene in 300? So after this shit goes down, there's a short fight that is entirely in slow motion, because slow motion is dramatic, then it goes into even slower motion when the blue eyed girl gets stabbed in the back with a spear. But just as she dies, the mystic old woman back in Siberia, who apparently has been watching everything, dies too, thus giving her life back to old blue eyes, who then wakes up fine despite the giant hole in her back.
So all the slaves are now freed, as a gift the heroes are given... a handful of seeds. Yeah, thanks guys, these will be real helpful in fuckin Siberia. So everyone travels home and is happy, they plant the seeds then suddenly there is no snow anymore... ugh, seriously, this movie sucked. There's my review.
