10,000 BC (2008)

Réalisateur:

Roland Emmerich

Writers (WGA):

Roland Emmerich (written by) &
Harald Kloser (written by)

Release Date:

7 mars 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Aventure | Romance

Accroche:

It takes a hero to change the world.

Plot:

A prehistoric epic that follows a young mammoth hunter's journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe.

Plot Keywords:

Mask | Male Female Relationship | Seer | Blindness | Hand To Hand Combat

Avis des utilisateurs:

A Great Old-Fashioned Saturday Matinée

US Showtimes:

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Ensemble

Steven Strait	...	D'Leh
Camilla Belle	...	Evolet
Cliff Curtis	...	Tic'Tic
Joel Virgel	...	Nakudu
Affif Ben Badra	...	Warlord (as Ben Badra)
Mo Zinal	...	Ka'Ren (as Mo Zainal)
Nathanael Baring	...	Baku
Mona Hammond	...	Old Mother
Marco Khan	...	One-Eye
Reece Ritchie	...	Moha
Joel Fry	...	Lu'kibu
Omar Sharif	...	Narrator
Kristian Beazley	...	D'Leh's Father
Junior Oliphant	...	Tudu
Louise Tu'u	...	Baku's Mother

Autre(s) titre(s) :

10 000 (France) [fr]
10,000 av. J.-C. (Canada: French title) [fr]

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence.

Durée:

109 min

Pays:

USA | New Zealand

Langue:

Anglais

Couleur:

Couleur (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Son:

DTS | SDDS | Dolby Digital

Classification:

Portugal:M/12 | Hong Kong:IIA | Canada:G (Québec) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | Norway:11 | Canada:14A (British Columbia) | Sweden:11 | Finland:K-13 | Singapore:PG | UK:12A | South Korea:15 | Czech Republic:12 | Netherlands:12 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #43907) | Argentina:13 | Philippines:G (MTRCB) | Germany:12 | Australia:M | South Africa:13V | New Zealand:M | Canada:PG (Alberta/Manitoba/Ontario) | Malaysia:U | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Ireland:12A

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Namibia

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Anecdotes:

Reference is also made to the Platonic theory that the construction techniques used in Egypt were imported from the ancient lost civilization of Atlantis. The movie makers include a glimpse of a map showing one of the putative locations of Atlantis, off the coast of Spain.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: The earliest known ships were papyrus reed boats built by the Egyptians about 4000 B.C. The Greeks and Phoenicians didn't begin trading by ship until around 1200 B.C.

Guillemet:

D'Leh: He is not a god!

Connexions De Film:

Featured in "Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: (2008-03-15)" (2008)

A Great Old-Fashioned Saturday Matinée

The caveman epic is a neglected film genre. The trailer for this movie led me to expect something like "Walking With Cavemen," that excellent BBC documentary of 2003 (except with more drama & violence) or "Quest for Fire," a still more excellent feature film of 1981 (except with better mammoths).

But despite a title that recalls two previous caveman attempts – the rather laughable "One Million B.C." from 1940, and the still more laughable "One Million Years B.C." from 1966 (that one starred Raquel Welch and her two most marketable assets) – "10,000 B.C." is actually straight-up science fiction. And that's not a bad thing at all.

This movie has plenty of action, plenty of CGI, gorgeous location photography from Africa and New Zealand, a durable quest narrative, and a hunky leading man in the form of Steven Strait, self-doubting mammoth hunter. The producers make some nice gestures toward Ice Age realism with their portrayal of the encampment of the mammoth hunters, who have cool dreadlocks (like most folks in prehistoric movies nowadays), cool face paint, fancy bone weapons & jewelry, and appropriately furry garments.

There's a lot that the producers get wrong, period-wise. Ice Age hunters didn't live in large groups, they didn't live in permanent villages, and they certainly didn't spend the winter up in the mountains (duh). The mammoth-hunting techniques that we see seem highly dubious also. Still worse, the scenario is geographically challenged - there's no way anyone could walk from alpine mountains to East Asian bamboo jungles to sub-Saharan Africa over the course of a few weeks.

Most annoying to Anglophone viewers will probably be the funny accents. I mean, we all know that nobody spoke English ten thousand years ago, and we're all very comfortable with the convention of portraying cinematic Romans and Spartans (not to mention hobbits and elves!) as speaking English instead of their true languages. So what not have Delay & his people just talk like ordinary Americans? Instead they're given this silly Middle Eastern/Middle European accent that sounds like bad Middle-1960s dubbing.

But that's a small quibble. The most important point here is that "10,000 B.C." is really a homage to the pulp adventures published in "Weird Tales" during the 1920s and 1930s. In this film we're very much in the territory of Robert E. Howard (author of the Conan stories) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan, Barsoom, and the lost world of the cavemen "At the Earth's Core"). Because once the story gets rolling, we discover that the mammoth hunters have predatory neighbors whose technology (horseback riding, bows and arrows, sailing ships, woven cloth, monumental architecture in dressed stone) is thousands of years ahead of theirs.

"Some say they came from the stars, or from a land that sank beneath the sea." Aha! What we have here is a lost colony from Atlantis. Exactly the kind that Howard and Burroughs and their many Depression-era imitators loved to write about. Once the Atlantis thing kicks in, you know that evil priests, false gods, ancient prophecies, human sacrifice, and a slave rebellion are all in store. (See "Atlantis, the Lost Continent" (1961) for more of what I'm talking about.) And in this regard "10,000 B.C." does not disappoint.

In the end this film resembles nothing so much as an unauthorized prequel to "Stargate." It's a great Saturday matinée.