10,000 B.C.
In all honesty, my uncanny ability to kind of doze off during movies (it’s health-related, honest), plus the fact that I had to fix a problem on the print I screened, but I’m sure once I see Roland Emmerich’s latest mega-budget epic in its’ digital print form (which I intend on doing), it likely won’t change my assessment of it being a pretty lame movie to watch. The story is your basic hero’s quest tale, but unlike something like “Beowulf”- which excelled at both visual marvels and a compelling morality tale- it’s interest lies only in its’ epic splendor. Emmerich- as he did with “The Patriot,” “Independence Day,” and even “Stargate”- transports you convincingly into this world of long ago with an attention to detail that is totally engulfing. The sites of a mammoth hunt, the pyramids being built, and a sabertooth encounter, are staggering in their beauty and epic evocation.
What ultimately fails “10,000 B.C.,” however, is a perpetually lame screenplay (by Emmerich and composer Harald Kloser) that fails almost as much as his dreadful “Godzilla” revamp and “The Day After Tomorrow” at bringing a human element to the spectacle (big, booming orchestral swoons only work when delivered by the likes of Williams and Horner, folks 😉 ). Like his “Patriot” star Mel Gibson attempted in his far-more-visionary “Apocalypto,” Emmerich tries to tell an archetypal story, with no cliche going unturned, as a way of introducing us into a bold, unfamiliar world. And while I felt Gibson was only moderately successful, Emmerich fails almost completely, not helped by performances that are very amateur in their inability to evoke the necessary feelings for the story. Still, there is an audience for a movie such as “10,000 B.C.,” and I do want to see it again in its’ digital print format…if only to see how its’ rich visuals soar in such crisp presentation.
