Okay, so if you haven't seen the movie 10,000 B.C., you must, you must, you must check out this movie. Well, you must check it out if you are the kind of person who finds great hilarity in the Brad-Pitt-Plays-Achilles-Ha-Ha-Are-You-Effing-Kidding gift to cinema and all it stands for, Troy. Trust me, if you own Troy just so you can get all chill and laugh your face off, you would most likely dig 10,000 B.C.
Okay, so let's start with the title. Most people probably know enough to know that Jesus and the mammoths did not live very near to each other in time (there's a '60s bad-boys-but-not-really band name, "Jesus and the Mammoths"), but I think once you get past, say, 300 B.C., you could probably tell most people anything and they would buy it. So, calling the movie 10,000 B.C. basically knocks most people out of the running for thinking things like, "do you think that it's accurate that this tribe looks like it's made up of two people from each of the people groups of the world?" or, "Why on earth would there be woolie mammoths being used to build the friggin' pyramids?" Why? Because I don't think most of us would know what was going on at that point in time anyway.
Moving on. There's a scene fairly close to the beginning of the movie in which the hunter tribe from whom we draw our protagonist chases a mammoth herd. A herd of mammoths stampeding over rough and treacherous terrain until one of them becomes ensnared in the nets. Seriously. You get to see this. So try to wrap your head around just how insane it would have been to actually witness a stampede of mammoths. It would be like Mr. Snuffleupagus meets I, Robot or Attack of the Clones. Imagine the wind that would have come off of that. Intense.
I have this real obsession with the concept of historical speculation. For instance, ever since we were fortunate enough to receive the great movie that is Braveheart, every movie involving ancient survival is filled with rugged yet beautiful people with weird hairdos that seem to be a mixture of Ren-faire and rasta.* Much of the speculation comes down to ceremonial devices and clothing choices, such as in the HBO series Rome—killer show—in which there features regularly a town-crier type, whom I think is called the "Newsreader", who accompanies his reading of the news with these outrageous hand movements which we are to take, unquestioningly, as an early version of Italian sign language, the vulgar-Latin precursor of Bronx gesticulations. But don't get me wrong—Rome is a very cool show. More 'bout that later.
All that to say that 10,000 B.C. loves indulging in this type of speculation. The hunters carry these absurd spears crafted from what looks like mammoth vertebrae and tusks or something. I wonder what they used to spear the animals they got those bones from. Maybe they found a mammoth graveyard, but their primitive nature-god superstitious religion prevent them from disturbing it (speculation!). They have varying styles of hair with one thing in common: mud and dreads. The dread is brilliant, because it shows itself to be the ancestor to the graceful braid, and it makes the dim-witted viewer feel smart when he can blurt out to his drunk frat bros, "It makes perfect sense! Without access to water and modern toiletries, the hair of the caveman would totally dread up! They were totally the first rastamon! I bet they had some kind herb just growing in all the cracks of the caves and shit! Of course, this was unrelevant before the invention of fire." Yeah, I said "unrelevant" and "invention". Bro.
Then there are the battle scenes. Don't even get me going on the battle scenes. All war movies ended up using the same battle shots after Braveheart. Similar battle scenes are just one thing that made Mel Gibson's Patriot a new Braveheart for the Founding Fathers set. Every battle has a speech (well, at least either the climactic battle in a movie or the catalyst battle) that usually involves some sort of discourse on what "they" can and cannot take away from you (i.e. land/freedom, women/glory), and the choreography is usually pretty similar. There's always chaos, and super slo-mo, and there's ALWAYS some crazy warrior chopping off someone's head with TWO swords or cleavers or whatever (okay, geeks, Claymores and battle axes, you happy?) One recent movie (five years?) that includes many of these devices but is pretty groovy enough to still end up being cool is Oliver Stone's Alexander, but I would like to write a whole spiel on that. So later on that. Or in the words of Keenen Ivory Wayans, "Yo, later to you, Bathead. Your show sucks anyway!" Name that movie.
I'm realizing that I don't remember as much about Ten Grand Bee to the Cee as I thought, yo, so I'm gonna watch some of it right now. Happy hunting. Of woolie effing mammoths. Anyone know how to actually spell "wooly"? I keep getting redlined here. But here's the hilariously meatheaded kind of philosophy that finds itself as the first line of the movie:
"Only time can teach us what is truth and what is legend." Hahaha!
* If you ever get the chance to go to the Commonwealth of Dominica, I highly suggest it. It is one of the smaller islands in the Caribbean, but it has, per capita, the largest Rastafarian population in the world. Bitchin' place. It's hard to believe that the scenery is real. And I ate dolphin there. Not dolphin fish, but Flipper dolphin. It was okay, though, because it was tuna-safe.
