Cinema Misfits

Unwilling to pause even for opening credits, 10,000 BC gets right down to what it does best and just keeps on doing it.

AERIAL SHOT of men wearing animal furs, walking, making their way across rocky, snow-covered mountain tops.  VOICE OVER, a narrator tells of a legend that involves a girl with blue eyes.  He follows this up with the observation that the details of a legend can become hazy and lost over time.

On this point, I tend to agree with him, since what he has to say is already becoming a little hazy for me.  He did say blue eyes, right?  Is the narrator really still talking?

The first few minutes of 10,000 BC boldly establishes two main themes: people walking — and really stupid dialogue.  Old Mother, the wise woman of a caveman tribe,  picks up where the narrator leaves off, padding out the legend/prophecy with some mumbo-jumbo of her own.

Old Mother: Four-legged demons will arrive one day and put an end to our world.  But a hero, a warrior will arise and lead us into a new land.

Eventually, marauders on horses (the four-legged demons foretold in prophecy) do turn up, burn the village to the ground and take the young and healthy captive, force-marching them to the marauders’ homeland where they will become slaves.

Possibly in an effort to give a little reality to the standard issue bad guy dialogue, the filmmakers have decided that the marauders don’t speak early caveman  (which sounds a lot like belabored, broken English).  Instead, the marauders have their own language, which unfortunately means it has to be read in subtitles.

The following is a close approximation of  marauder-speak and it’s translation:

Marauder: Kash-nook noodock nic tay!

Subtitles: Blah blah blah blah.

Not a word for word translation, admittedly, but it captures the spirit of what’s being said.

Leaving the frigid land of unconvincing CGI mammoths far behind, the hero and three others take off on foot after the marauders.  The filmmakers, meanwhile, believing they’ve discovered the secret to a gripping, action-packed adventure story, relentlessly pound away with their cinematic one-two punch of walking and stupid dialogue.

Hero’s Young Friend: Why do you not carry the white spear?

Walking.

Hero: Because I lied.  I can not take the white spear.

More walking.

Hero’s Wise Adviser: We must save your girlfriend with the blue eyes.

Even more walking.

A Companion Who Is Not In The Film But It Would Be Nice If He Was:  Man, my dogs are killing me.  Can we take a break?  All this freakin’ walking sucks.

After run-ins with some giant flightless birds and a lame looking sabertooth tiger, the hero arrives on the outskirts of a desert where a tribe of prehistoric black warriors have patiently been awaiting the arrival of a Pasty White Guy from The North.  The prophecy of the black warriors predicts that the Pasty White Guy will  help free their fellow tribe members who have been captured by the marauders.

Admittedly, the hero does seem to fit the bill, and all that stands in the way of the prophecy’s fulfillment is a slight communication problem.  The tribe of black warriors do not speak early caveman or even subtitled bad guy.  Instead, they speak prehistoric black warrior lingo.  By a happy coincidence (and some really lazy screenwriting by the filmmakers), it turns out that one of the black warriors does indeed speak early caveman.  (Take it from me — you really don’t want to know.  It’s a long story involving the hero’s dad who left the caveman tribe and was thought to be a coward, but wasn’t, and blah blah blah blah.)

At this point, the film grinds to a halt as the black warrior translates back and forth between the hero and the tribe’s wise man.  For the first time, you get the sense that maybe the filmmakers are questioning just how much stupid dialogue and walking can be crammed into one movie.  Maybe rewrites were considered.  Possibly someone floated the idea of a film with flesh and blood characters who do interesting and surprising things, instead of a film where the fulfillment of portents passes for character development.

Ultimately, the filmmakers make the disastrous decision to continue with the walking and really stupid dialogue.  In their defense, it has to be admitted that an attempt is made to up the ante a bit and  put a slight twist on a couple of old ideas.  If four white guys walking is unbeatable cinema, then a white guy with fifty or sixty black warriors following him, lost in a desert, walking and walking and walking, can’t miss.  If endless stupid dialogue about one prophecy is great, then endless stupid dialogue about three prophecies (caveman, black warrior, marauder) is a sure thing.

The  filmmakers even interrupt the final climactic battle for a sort of blah, blah, blah throw down between the good guys and the bad guys, and what follows is an orgy of stupid dialogue.  You get caveman translated into bad guy, and bad guy into subtitles, which is then translated back into prehistoric black warrior lingo, before it is translated once more into caveman and…

And it goes on and on and on.

Appropriately enough, after the marauders have been defeated and the slaves set free, the hero and his liberated tribesmen begin the long trek back to their icy homeland.  On foot.  One step at a time.  Walking.  Walking.  Walking.

The Narrator has some final comments, but by this time, even he’s blah blah blahed out.