10,000 BC (film)
Encyclopedia
10,000 BC is a 2008 American fantasy film from Warner Bros. Pictures set in the prehistoric
Prehistory
Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

 era. It was directed by Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich is a German film director, screenwriter, and producer.His films, most of which are Hollywood productions filmed in English, have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide, more than those of any other European director...

 and stars Steven Strait
Steven Strait
Steven Strait is an American actor, fashion model, and rock singer.-Early life and modeling:Strait was born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York City, New York. He is of Dutch and Italian heritage. He attended Xavier High School and took classes at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting...

 and Camilla Belle
Camilla Belle
Camilla Belle is an American actress. Her works include The Lost World: Jurassic Park, When a Stranger Calls, 10,000 BC, The Quiet, Push and Speedy Singhs.- Early life :...

. The world premiere was held on February 10, 2008 at Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about one kilometre south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag , and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park...

 in Berlin. General release was on March 7, 2008.

Plot

In 10,000 BC, a tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Yagahl live in a remote mountain range in the Urals and survive by killing woolly mammoths. D'Leh, a young hunter, has a companion named Evolet, an orphan who was found by the tribe. D'Leh, while hunting mammoths, manages to kill one and wins the "White Spear". He also wins Evolet in marriage, but feels he deserves neither since he killed the mammoth by accident.

One day, D'Leh and several others are away when horse-raiders called the "Four Legged Demons" attack the Yaghal camp. The horse raiders enslave Evolet; D'Leh, Tic'Tic, Ka'Ren, and Baku pursue them to save her. They enter a rainforest where they are attacked by a large pack of terror birds. In this encounter, Tic'Tic gets wounded and Baku and Ka'Ren are captured. D'Leh rescues Evolet, but she is later re-captured. Continuing on, they meet others whose loved ones were taken by the raiders. D'Leh and Tic'Tic befriend Nakudu, leader of the Naku tribe. He tells D'Leh of a prophecy: whoever talks to a Smilodon
Smilodon
Smilodon , often called a saber-toothed cat or saber-toothed tiger, is an extinct genus of machairodonts. This saber-toothed cat was endemic to North America and South America, living from near the beginning through the very end of the Pleistocene epoch .-Etymology:The nickname "saber-tooth" refers...

that they call the "Spear-Tooth" will help free their people. D'Leh had earlier saved the Spear-Tooth from drowning in a trap and it had spared his life. D'Leh realizes the prophecy was about him. Nakudu explains that his loved ones were taken in the "Great Red Birds", ships with large red sails, to the "Mountains of the Gods", from which no one has ever returned. They then come together with other tribes, who agree to form a coalition
Coalition
A coalition is a pact or treaty among individuals or groups, during which they cooperate in joint action, each in their own self-interest, joining forces together for a common cause. This alliance may be temporary or a matter of convenience. A coalition thus differs from a more formal covenant...

 to pursue the raiders.

They find the ships with red sails holding Evolet and Baku. They have no means to follow the ships, so they journey through a vast desert, discovering an advanced civilization similar to ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

, ruled by an enigmatic figure known as "The Almighty", who is said to be the last survivor of his kind. The Almighty, who is regarded as a living god, possesses many thousands of slaves that he is using to build a huge pyramid complex in his honor. D'Leh finds an escaped servant of the Almighty and notices he is wearing a bracelet worn by D'Leh's father. D'Leh's father left his tribe for food and found the Naku tribe before being stolen by the raiders. In a night attack, the guards of the slaves discover D'Leh behind a pyramid
Khafre's Pyramid
The Pyramid of Khafre, also known as the Pyramid of Chefren, is the second-largest of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids of Giza and the tomb of the fourth-dynasty pharaoh Khafre .-Size:...

. Tic'Tic dies during the attack. Meanwhile, the Almighty's priests discover Evolet bears scars on her hand patterned after the "Mark of the Hunter", the constellation Orion
Orion (constellation)
Orion, often referred to as The Hunter, is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the most conspicuous, and most recognizable constellations in the night sky...

. The priests believe it is part of a prophecy that whoever wears the mark of the Hunter is destined to kill The Almighty. D'Leh starts a full-scale rebellion amongst the slaves. They cause the mammoth herd, used in building the pyramid, to stampede and kill a large number of troops.

The Almighty offers Evolet to D'Leh in exchange for abandoning his rebellion. The Almighty says that if D'Leh takes his wife, his warriors can return, but the rest must be his slaves forever. D'Leh feigns acceptance of the deal which allows him to throw a spear at The Almighty and kill him, proving that he is not a god. During the ensuing battle, a raider kidnaps Evolet on horseback. Evolet grabs an arrow and stabs the warlord in the side, knocking them both off the horse. D'Leh rushes towards her, but the raider shoots her in the back. D'Leh kills him and returns to Evolet, and she dies in his arms. The scene shifts to the tribe's wise woman as she breathes in deeply and then breathes out her last breath. The scene then returns to D'Leh still holding Evolet's body when she suddenly awakens, restored by the wise woman's sacrifice. They depart for home and bid farewell to the other tribes.

In an alternative ending, the scene shifts forward many years into the future, showing Baku's retelling of the story by the camp fire. It ends with a child asking what had happened to the "Mountains of the Gods", and Baku responds "They were taken back by the sands. Lost to time, lost to man."

Cast

  • Steven Strait
    Steven Strait
    Steven Strait is an American actor, fashion model, and rock singer.-Early life and modeling:Strait was born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York City, New York. He is of Dutch and Italian heritage. He attended Xavier High School and took classes at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting...

     as D'Leh (an anagram
    Anagram
    An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...

     for "Held" which is the German, Dutch
    Dutch language
    Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

     and Afrikaans word for "hero
    Hero
    A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...

    "), a mammoth hunter.
  • Camilla Belle
    Camilla Belle
    Camilla Belle is an American actress. Her works include The Lost World: Jurassic Park, When a Stranger Calls, 10,000 BC, The Quiet, Push and Speedy Singhs.- Early life :...

     as Evolet, D'Leh's love interest and the only survivor of a tribe which was killed off by the "Four Legged Demons" (fierce warriors on horseback). She is unique as she has blue eyes.
  • Cliff Curtis
    Cliff Curtis
    Clifford Vivian Devon "Cliff" Curtis is a New Zealand actor who has had major roles in film, including The Piano, Whale Rider, and Blow, and most recently has appeared in NBC's television series Trauma. He is also co-owner of independent film production company Whenua Films...

     as Tic'Tic, D'Leh's mentor.
  • Joel Virgel as Nakudu, leader of the Naku tribe.
  • Affif Ben Badra as Warlord, leader of the "Four Legged Demons"
  • Mo Zinal as Ka'Ren
  • Nathanael Baring as Baku
  • Mona Hammond
    Mona Hammond
    Mona Hammond OBE is a Chinese Jamaican actress and co-founder of the Talawa Theatre Company. Born in Jamaica, Hammond emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1959, where she has remained ever since. Hammond has had a long and distinguished stage career...

     as Old Mother, the Yagahl wise old woman.
  • Marco Khan
    Marco Khan
    Marco Khan , also Marco Kahn or Marco Khanlian, is an American actor of Armenian origin.-Life and career:Khan was born Marco Khanlian in Tehran, Iran; the son of Anna , and Levon Khanlian. His father was born in Lebanon but was raised in Iran where he met Khan's mother, who was born in Georgia....

     as One-Eye, Warlord's main henchman.
  • Reece Ritchie
    Reece Ritchie
    Reece Ritchie is an English actor.-Life and career:Ritchie was educated at Benjamin Britten High School in Lowestoft and later became a member of the National Youth Theatre...

     as Moha
  • Joel Fry as Lu'Kibu
  • Kristian Beazley as D'Leh's father, who had lived with the Naku tribe and learned agriculture
    Agriculture
    Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

     from them.
  • Junior Oliphant as Tudu, Nakudu's son.
  • Boubacar Badaine as Quina, leader of another tribe.
  • Tim Barlow
    Tim Barlow
    Michael John Leigh Barlow , whose stage name is Tim Barlow or sometimes Timothy Barlow, is a British actor who has performed many small roles in a variety of films, television programmes and plays....

     as The Almighty, a tall, blue eyed man who dresses in long white robes and a face-concealing veil. He is the last of three kings, and the last of the Atlanteans.
  • Omar Sharif
    Omar Sharif
    Omar Sharif is an Egyptian actor who has starred in Hollywood films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Funny Girl. He has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won two Golden Globe Awards.-Early life:...

     as the Narrator
    Narrator
    A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...

     / elderly Baku
  • Steven Scott
    Steven Scott
    Steven Scott is a shooter from Battle who won a gold medal in Commonwealth Games held from 3–14 October 2010 in Delhi, India.He won, with Stevan Walton, the men's double trap pairs event on 6 October 2010.-References:...

     as the Raccoon Hunter

Casting process

Emmerich opened casting sessions in late October 2005. In February 2006, Camilla Belle and Steven Strait were announced to star in the film, with Strait as the mammoth hunter and Belle as his love. Emmerich felt that casting well known actors would distract from the realistic feel of the prehistoric setting. "If like, Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jacob Benjamin "Jake" Gyllenhaal is an American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at age ten...

 turned up in a movie like this, everybody would be, 'What's that?' " he explained. The casting of unknown actors also helped keep the film's budget down.

Visual and sound effects

  • The mammoth
    Mammoth
    A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...

    s in the movie were based on elephants and fossils of mammoths, while the sabertooth tiger was based on tigers and ligers -- a lion
    Lion
    The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

    /tiger hybrid.
  • The sounds made by the sabertooth tiger in the movie are based on the vocalization of tigers and lions.

Production

Director Roland Emmerich and composer Harald Kloser originally penned a script for 10,000 BC. When the project received the greenlight from Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...

, screenwriter John Orloff began work on a new draft of the original script. Columbia Pictures, under Sony Pictures Entertainment
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. is the television and film production/distribution unit of Japanese multinational technology and media conglomerate Sony...

, dropped the project due to a busy release calendar, and Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 picked up the project in Sony's vacancy. The script went through a second revision with Matthew Sand and a final revision with Robert Rodat
Robert Rodat
Robert Rodat Robert Rodat Robert Rodat (born Keene, New Hampshire, 1953 is an American screenwriter. Best known for Saving Private Ryan (1998), Rodat also wrote The Comrades of Summer (1992), Tall Tale (1995), Fly Away Home with Vince McKewin (1996), and The Patriot (2000). He recently worked on...

. Emmerich rejected making the film in an ancient language (similar to The Passion of the Christ
The Passion of the Christ
The Passion of the Christ is a 2004 American drama film directed by Mel Gibson and starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus. It depicts the Passion of Jesus largely according to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...

or Apocalypto
Apocalypto
Apocalypto is a 2006 American epic action-adventure film directed by Mel Gibson. Set in Yucatan, Mexico, during the declining period of the Maya civilization, Apocalypto depicts the journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and...

), feeling it would not be as emotionally engaging.

Production began in early 2006 in South Africa and Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

. Location filming also took place in southern
South Island
The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...

 New Zealand and Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

. Before shooting began, the production had spent eighteen months on research and development
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...

 for the computer generated imagery. Two companies recreated prehistoric animals. To cut time (it was taking sixteen hours to render a single frame) 50% of the CGI models' fur was removed, as "it turned out half the fur looked the same" to the director.

Language

Dialect coach Brendan Gunn was hired by Emmerich and Kloser to create "a half dozen" languages for the film. Gunn has stated that he collaborated informally with film lead Steven Strait to improvise what the languages would sound like.

Critical reception

The film received largely negative reviews from critics, stating that the movie is mainly visual and lacks a firm screenplay. Critics noted that the film is archaeologically inaccurate. As of June 13, 2011, the review aggregator at Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 has reported that 9% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 139 reviews. Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

 reported the film had an average score of 34 out of 100, based on 29 reviews.

Influences of other works

Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Daily News
Los Angeles Daily News
The Los Angeles Daily News is the second-largest circulating daily newspaper of Los Angeles, California. It is the flagship of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a branch of Colorado-based MediaNews Group....

draws numerous comparisons between 10,000 BC and other films in the prehistoric and historic film genre, especially One Million Years B.C.
One Million Years B.C.
One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch, set - loosely - in the time of cavemen. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions, and was a remake of the 1940 Hollywood film One Million B.C., and it recreates many of the scenes of that film...

and Apocalypto
Apocalypto
Apocalypto is a 2006 American epic action-adventure film directed by Mel Gibson. Set in Yucatan, Mexico, during the declining period of the Maya civilization, Apocalypto depicts the journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and...

. A. O. Scott
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...

 of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

compared it to John Ford's film The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...

and also the animated film Ice Age
Ice Age (film)
Ice Age is a 2002 American computer-animated film created by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Carlos Saldanha and Chris Wedge from a story by Michael J. Wilson. The story follows three Paleolithical mammals attempting to return a lost human baby to its parents...

.

At the 2008 Wondercon
WonderCon
WonderCon is an annual comic book, science fiction, and motion picture convention, held in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1987.The convention was conceived by retailer John Barrett and originally held in the Oakland Convention Center, where it remained until 2003, when it moved to San...

, Emmerich mentioned the fiction of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

 as a primary influence for the film's setting, as well as his love for Quest for Fire
Quest for Fire
Quest for Fire is a 1911 Belgian novel by "J.-H. Rosny", the pseudonym of two brothers; the author was likely the elder of the two, Joseph Henri Honoré Boex . It was first published in English in 1967....

and the book Fingerprints of the Gods
Fingerprints of the Gods
Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization is a book first published in 1995 by Graham Hancock, in which he echoes nineteenth century writer Ignatius Donnelly, author of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World , in contending that some previously enigmatic ancient but...

.

The story also closely resembles that of the great Indian Epic, Ramayana
Ramayana
The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon , considered to be itihāsa. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India and Nepal, the other being the Mahabharata...


Box office performance

In its opening weekend, the film grossed $35.8 million in 3,410 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #1 at the box office, and grossing over $22 million more than the film in second place, College Road Trip
College Road Trip
College Road Trip is a 2008 American family/comedy directed by Roger Kumble and starring Martin Lawrence, Raven-Symoné, Brenda Song, Margo Harshman, and Donny Osmond. The film centers on college-bound teen Melanie Porter , who goes on a road trip to different colleges with her father...

. As of April 29, 2008, it has grossed approximately $268.6 million worldwide — $94.6 million in the United States and Canada and $174 million in other territories — including $17.2 million in Mexico, $13.1 million in Spain, $11.3 million in the United Kingdom, and $10.8 million in China. This also makes it the first film of 2008 to surpass the $200 million mark.

DVD release

The DVD of the film was released on June 24, 2008 in single disc editions of DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...

 in the United States. Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...

 will release a 2-disc limited edition along with the DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases. It was released on July 21, 2008 in the United Kingdom. The film grossed $31,341,721 in DVD sales, bringing its total film gross to $300,414,491.

See also

  • List of American films of 2008
  • 100 Million BC
    100 Million BC
    100 Million BC is a 2008 direct-to-DVD action film by The Asylum.-Plot:The film centers on a group of Navy SEALs, led by American Dr. Frank Reno , who once worked on the Philadelphia Experiment. The film begins in 2008, when Reno has purportedly perfected time travel technology...

    - A direct-to-DVD film by The Asylum
    The Asylum
    The Asylum is an American film studio and distributor which focuses on producing low-budget, usually direct-to-video productions. The studio has produced titles that capitalize on productions by major studios; these titles have been dubbed "mockbusters" by the press.-History:The Asylum was founded...

  • One Million Years B.C.
    One Million Years B.C.
    One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch, set - loosely - in the time of cavemen. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions, and was a remake of the 1940 Hollywood film One Million B.C., and it recreates many of the scenes of that film...

    - A similar film released in 1966

External links

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