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I'm good friends with Wim Wenders, but it doesn't mean I have to like his movies. —Roland Emmerich in a March 7 Guardian interview
So are we still friends, Roland, or is 10,000 B.C. the deal breaker? Not that it's any worse than the rest of the schlock he's cranked out: a little of this, a little of that, a whole lotta going through the motions—to get the job done, get the damn thing marketed, brute commercial savvy being the first item of business. Which is pretty much what's expected in any case—plus: what can be more delightful than toting up anachronisms, playing the village literalist to 10,000 B.C.'s stupid historical uncle. Whoa, mammoths in the desert! Like, who the hell cares?
Anyway, a bunch of my favorite B.C. howlers—not an exhaustive list, so y'all feel free to add on more:
Saber-toothed cats Still lurking in the Neolithic biome, the fearsome smilodon, for one or two more millennia, in fact—but only in North and South America, not Eurasia/Africa, which is where the movie's supposed to be taking place (though actually it's hard to tell—see below).
Woolly mammoths A brave new theory of why they became extinct, as imported slave labor on "Egyptian" proto-pyramids. Only the logistics of transport, from arctic tundra to subtropical desert, don't make any sense. Where's the food coming from? Who's sweeping away the dung? Aren't body thermostats prone to failure in the desert sun, under all that maladaptive fur? Plus costs of provisioning and upkeep presumably outweigh the benefits of production. But maybe they can feast on their fallen comrades—pachyderm cannibalism, no wonder the species died off.
Horses Probably not domesticated before 5,000 B.C. And those thoroughbred stallions are out; ditto bridles, reins, all the horse-riding paraphernalia ...
Where are we? From tundra to rain forest to desert, everything's smooshed together in one visitor-friendly package, like a trip through a Disney theme park or Gondwana before the continents drifted apart. (But Gondwana's 150 million years in the rearview—so what about Apocalypto World II?) As for that speculative ur-Sahara: mostly arid grassland around the 10,000 mark, with desertification setting in only after the monsoon patterns changed—another 6,000 years in the future ...
Sailing down the Nile Or whatever the river's called—sand to the water's edge, not a hint of riparian fertility, what the Nile's historically been known for. Some pretty impressive craft though, like modern dhows and feluccas—except sails weren't invented till the fourth millennium BC. And forget about the double rigging.
Pyramids Which require organized infrastructure—cities, towns, government, etc—which requires an agriculture-based economy ... which won't be happening anytime soon, or at least for a couple thousand years.
Dinosaur chickens Not since that runaway asteroid hit the earth at the end of the Mesozoic. Sqwaaarrrrkkk!
As for anachronisms, you're forgetting Camilla Belle; clearly homo sapiens would have required another 12,000 years of breeding to produce a face like hers. Does anyone remember anymore that she once shared the screen with Daniel Day-Lewis, in The Ballad of Jack and Rose? Does SHE remember?
and no, it wasn't an assignment--just my curiosity is all, plus a fatal attraction to schlock
why 10,000 BC? Well in part it's the Neolithic Revolution. From reading the synopsis of the film I noticed that it ended with the main characters planting some seeds and watching them sprout. But as I suggested earlier it also seems to be the influence of Graham Hancock and, as Guo Shao-hua points out, the influence of his frequent collaborator, Robert Bauval, co-author of The Orion Mystery. These guys are a couple of psuedoanthropologists whose books and theories are ridiculously popular and appear to have been main sources of inspiration for several of Emmerich's films. It would seem that those pyramid builders in the story are none other than displaced Atlanteans who managed to escape before the poles shifted and their continent was encased in ice to become what we now know of as Antarctica. Hancock and Bauval give the date of this polar shift as being roughly 10,500 BC. Of course none of their nonsense could explain Emmerich's childish understanding of geography and ecology or his miraculous resurrection of long extinct species.
also re APOCALYPTO: my own mea culpa for that "reasonably nearby time frame" nonsense, as howlingly anachronistic as any of the gaffes i mentioned in the post--simply forgot the last scene in the film, which leaves any claim to historical veracity in tatters * but whichever way you slice it, it's closer to our OWN century/millennium than emmerich's
I can't say whether or not you were hallucinating, not having seen the film, though I suspect some substance with hallucinatory properties might help in the digestion of hancock, Bauval and Emmerich's strange brew. I can say that some old maps do figure as key pieces of 'evidence' in Hancock's claims, so I wouldn't be suprised to see one passed around in 10,000 BC. By the way, it seems Emmerich's next project will deal with the Maya prophecy of the earth's destruction in 2012. The title is said to be 2012 AD. A pattern seems to be emerging. So it appears we all have something big to look forward to.
As for M. Gibson and His Maya Epic, legitimate Mayanists have pretty thoroughly dismantled that entertainment machine and I don't think we need to redo their work here. My big problem with this film is how it functions as apology and justification for the horrors of the Spanish Conquest, which far too many Mayas are willing to accept as faithful Christians. The sad thing is that several of my Maya friends thought the film was an acurate reflection of their cultural history. Pretty scary, much scarier than all of the contrived thrills in the film. Their major gripe with Apocalypto was Gibson casting non-Mayas in most of the speaking parts: though they are speaking Yucatec Mayan it's obvious they learned their lines phonetically and have no idea what they're saying.
Any way, thanks for the chance to vent.
I'll do my best to answer your questions, though I can't speak for other psuedo-intellectuals, I'm not a film critic, I'm an artist, a painter and a writer, with a serious interest in films, both good and bad. I think much can be learned from examining certain bad fims. As my last comment was meant to suggest such anti-historical films in historical garb as the two we were discussing can lead to a great deal of confusion regarding basic matters like history and geography in the diverse quarters of the film-going public. I was trying to get at the roots of the misunderstanding and it was intended as a friendly discussion. It strikes me that your third question shows considerable contempt for orgasm and pleasure in general, but let me assure you that for me it goes far beyond the simple thrill of shooting ducks in a barrel. People come to films with many different expectations and I try to take those other perspectives into account, such as those of my house-mate and his friends from the Yucatan.
As a side note, I have to say your last sentence really took me back. Parlor Game was the name of the first play I wrote some thirty-five years ago, back in high school. It ended with a young lady dropping a bookcase full of heavy old volumes on her sharp-tongued lover.
Thanks for your cutting remarks, as an impoverished old artist, I no doubt needed the check.
plus, as with the fitfully engaging michael bay, at very least the baz luhrmann of CGI action genre, i like keeping career tabs on emmerich, or at least have till now--e.g., a "friend" of wim wenders: mightn't something come of that, if only as "creative" antithesis, a commercial "anti-wenders" at work? * plus, per J.R. JONES, the opening quote indeed is "priceless"--aren't we all the richer for its being shared?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_bird
Not saying they aren't anachronistic temporally and geographically. Just saying they are real birds that lived after the dinosaurs went extinct.