Director – Roland Emmerich
Screenplay – Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser
Plot
Somewhere in the year 10, 000 BC, in a tribe somewhere in the mountains of Europe lives a relatively peaceful herd of people who are mostly hunters. Their sole purpose is to hunt mammoths and eat their meat in order to survive. D’Leh( Steven Strait) is a local hero who has just managed to kill a mammoth single handedly and has won the heart of Evolet(Camilla Belle). However the lives of the tribe take a topsy-turvy turn when a group of mysterious strong tribe from nowhere and take lots of people, including Evolet, as slaves. D’leh’s mission is to now find those tribesmen and free Evolt and others from them. In this he has to fight, amongst the warriors are ferocious wild animals and birds.
Critic’s Comments
Although the trailer looked very convincing, the movie is nothing but a rehashed version of Mel Gibson’s 2006 hit, Apocalypto. The story is oft-repeated and the acting is just about ok. The climax is a turn-off for regular English movie viewers and. The special effects are good but some of them don’t depict the actual historical occurrences(Please see the oops section for that). Very sadly, I would give this movie, a 2 star rating and a not recommended watch. The 2 stars are only for some good special effects.
Psst –
1) Movie was made on a budget of$75 million and took nearly 1 and half years to complete.
2) *The movie was shot in several locations in New Zealand, South Africa and Namibia .
3) *When D’leh says that I look more than my age, that is a in-joke reference to his actual age and the director caste him for the lead role despite his young age.
4) *The horses used in the movie were the same ones used in all the countries where the film was shot. The crew had a 2 week rest when the horses had to be shipped from Namibia to New Zealand .
5) This is not a remake or a sequel to the 1966 B grade movie, 1 Million years B.C.
Quotes
1) “This is not God.”
Oops-
1) *There were quite a few. The main one was the construction of the Sphinx. The year in which the movie was set is 10000 BC while the Sphinx was constructed only around 7000 years later around the late 28th Century BC.
2) *Similarly the Earliest Egyptian Pyramid were constructed only in around 2630 BC and not 10000 BC as shown.
3) *We see a lot of metal handcuffs and spears. The spears were always made of Iron and the iron age started in around the 12th Century BC. Even if we assume that the metals used were Bronze, the Bronze age started only around 3500 BC. This is nearly 6000 years after the actual filming was set.
4) *Although the characters speak about mammoths being less in number, the year 10000 BC was not the year when the extinction of Mammoths took place. That 7000 BC
5) The giant Scavenger Bird shown, never existed along with Homo-Sapiens. There were large carnivorous birds that existed with the Dinosaurs but none of them were Scavengers.