User:LancedSoul/sandbox/10,000 BC

10,000 BC is a 2008 American action-adventure film directed by Roland Emmerich, starring Steven Strait and Camilla Belle. The film is set in the prehistoric era and depicts the journeys of a prehistoric tribe of mammoth hunters. The world premiere was held on February 10, 2008 at Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.

Plot
Mammoth hunter D'Leh (Steven Strait) has long been in love with a beautiful, blue-eyed tribeswoman named Evolet (Camilla Belle). After horseback-riding raiders kidnap most of his D'Leh's fellow tribesmen as well as Evolet, he sets out on a dangerous trek to rescue her from her captors.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The main problem with the movie is that there are many factual errors in this movie:
 * 2) * The film features Smilodon, a genus of sabre-toothed cat that only existed in the Americas.
 * 3) * One of the features of the Nile river is that it flows to the north while the prevailing winds blow towards the south. This made travel along the Nile quite easy. In the film a boat is shown sailing northward on the Nile with its sails up, which would have fought against the wind. In reality, they would not have used a sail but floated with the current.
 * 4) * Several scenes show mammoths galloping. Mammoths were closely related to modern elephants, and couldn't gallop because of their physiology. At best, they could move at a fast trot, like elephants do. They were also never domesticated as pack animals.
 * 5) * While slaves may have been involved in the peripheral tasks involving the construction of the Pyramids at Giza, there is no evidence that they were the primary laborers on the project. In fact graffiti found in and around the pyramids make it clear that skilled craftsmen and paid laborers were the primary builders of the edifices. A town-like location has been uncovered near the pyramids containing a large number of dressed stone houses which housed the laborers, with contents that showed that they earned wages and had possessions that varied from one house to another.
 * 6) * Sabre-tooth tigers had stubby tails, much like a lynx.
 * 7) Everything has the archaeologically inaccurate and anachronisms:
 * 8) * Chili peppers and corn are from the Americas. They weren't grown in the "Old World" until after 1500.
 * 9) * The scene with the ships shows the confinement cages made of iron, but the Iron Age did not start until approximately 1200 BC, 8800 yrs after 10,000 BC.
 * 10) * The female lead has blue eyes. The genetic mutation for blue eyes occurred 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, outside the film's time frame.
 * 11) * Advanced metalworking is shown throughout the film from jewelry to swords (which were not made from metal until 3,000BC, 7,000 years after the setting of the film) that simply did not exist in 10,000 BC.
 * 12) * During the terror bird attack, we see men riding horses. The earliest evidence of the domestication of horses dates back to 3,500 BC - some 6,500 years after the time setting of the movie.
 * 13) * (at around 50 mins) The leader of the African tribe tells D'Leh how his family was taken away. When he calls out to his tribesman, a silver filling is clearly visible in his mouth.
 * 14) *The earliest Egyptian pyramid was erected circa 2630 BC. The film doesn't show the Giza pyramids as completed, which may be an effort to satisfy both those who believe the Giza pyramids are relatively recent, and those who believe they are substantially older.
 * 15) Really bad dialogue, like "Do not eat me when I save your life!"
 * 16) Much of the acting shocking awful and lackluster, especially for Steven Strait.
 * 17) It started the decline the career of Roland Emmerich, since the failure of Godzilla and later culminating with 2012 and Anonymous.
 * 18) Unimpressive and uninspiring action scene.
 * 19) Hopelessly generic plot, that plays like a lesser version of Apocalypto
 * 20) Terrible and sluggish pacing make it a joyless "historical" epic that offers little in the way of epicness at all.

Reception
10,000 BC was consistently regarded by professional critics as Emmerich's worst film, as well as one of the worst films of the year. Critics noted that the film is archaeologically inaccurate and contains many factual errors and anachronisms. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 9% based on 148 reviews, with an average rating of 3.18/10. The website's critics consensus states: "With attention strictly paid to style instead of substance, or historical accuracy, 10,000 BC is a visually impressive but narratively flimsy epic.". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 34 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.

Box office
Despite the negative reception, 10,000 BC was a box office hit. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $35.8 million in 3,410 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking No. 1 at the box office, and grossing over $22 million more than the film in second place, College Road Trip. As of 29 April 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.

Trivia

 * Director Roland Emmerich and composer Harald Kloser originally penned a script for 10,000 BC. When the project received the greenlight from Columbia Pictures, screenwriter John Orloff began work on a new draft of the original script. Columbia Pictures, under Sony Pictures Entertainment, dropped the project due to a busy release calendar, and Warner Bros. picked up the project in Sony's absence. The script went through a second revision with Matthew Sand and a final revision with Robert Rodat.