…as if anyone cares about the spoilers.
Okay, I KNOW it was a stupid, hopelessly anachronistic movie. I rented it fully knowing and expecting this. I have a soft spot in my head for Bad Movies (I have a Bad Film Festival every year where we show and make fun of them. I’ve been doing this since *years[p/i] before Mystery Science Theater existed.) So I can’t say I wasn’t expecting a Bad Film.
And I wasn’t disappointed. As someone on a review site said, it’s a good thing we didn’t try an inaccuracy drinking game, because we’d all be drunk in the first ten minutes. Seriously, this movie is great as a “How Many Scientific Mistakes Can You Find In The Picture” game. Kids will fill their scorecards in no time. I think this film has more things wrong with it than The Core, and that’s saying a LOT.
But I wasn’t prepared for the massive amount of STUPID. That’s what still bugs me.
I can live with the pregistoric beasts outside their proper location and time and being twice as large (or more) than they ought to be – that’s pretty much par for the course with movies.
I can even tolerate the absurd juxtaposition of geographies and peoples. We go from Northern European frozen glaciers to lowland grasses and swamps to African Deserts in the course of a relatively short journey. And the people fit, too – white Nordic cavemen with perfect teeth to African tribes to middle asiatic people (who don’t look remotely Egyptian). Sure – it’s your world, you make the rules. African people with chili peppers and corn? Fine by me! Just don’t go trying to fit it into Reality if you’re gonna do that.
I can even, in the spirit of Willing Suspension of Disbelief, accept that some tribes are much more technologically advanced than others. Outrageously so. Heck, I’ve read Robert E. Howard’s tales of the Hyborian Age – i can buy anything. Give me Bad Guys with Iron Weapons and Rivets and Boats with Lateen Sails and Horses with Saddles and Bridles and Stirrups (Stirrups! And Latten Sails! Do you know how LATE those came on the scene?) If Conan’s Aquilonia had 'em, there’s no reason this film can’t.
No – what bothers me is that, even with me cutting them this much slack, they STILL manage to abuse my kindness with unforgiveable stupidity.
1.) “This is the last Mannik (Mammoth) hunt!” – Why? There are stuill plenty of mammoth, as far as I can see. Maybe they’ve got a Cease and Desist order from the department of Fish and Game because Mammoths are an endangered species, or something.
2.) If we’re only going to kill one mammoth, lets make it the biggest and strongest bull!
3.) The Great Mother knew that the “four legged demons” would be coming and stealing people at the time of the Last Mannik Hunt. But apparently she didn’t tell anybody about this. Or do anything to prevent it. You know how these vision things are.
4.) The economics of slave-hunting by the Foyr Legged Demons escapes me. Can it actually make sense to travel what looks like a thousand miles, across jungle-swamps filled weith diatrymas and deserts full of hostile tribes and grasslands having 30-foot Smilodons and up into the mountains juast to grab a handful of tough and unwilling savages? And then haul them back? How the hell much are you charging for these slaves? Wouldn’t it be easier to grab a few more of the African tribes – thetre seem to be a lot more of them, and they’re a hell of a lot closer. And you won’t lose as many of your men to the diatrymas.
5.) Forget the slaves, for that matter – they’ve got the pyramids being built my wooly mammoths. They only seem to be in the Far North where they get the slaves. Did they make the same trip for the mammoths? And did they then force them to walk back, through the swamps and the veldt and the desert? They sure as hell didn’t put THEM into any “Great Bird” boats! After walking the first dozen or so along the river, I’d be sorely tempted to invent stellar navigation, which they apparently don’t know.
6.) Whoever ug that pit apparently did a rotten job. It’s the size of an underground garage, and has punji sticks in it, but neither the guy nor the saber-tooth tiger fall on the punji sticks. One tiny gazelle did, though. (For that matter, no matter how fixated you are on hunting gazelles, how the hell do you fail to notice a hole in the ground that big and fall into it?)
7.) Okay, the guy has a soft heart and lets the tiger go. This makes sense in a story wriy=tten by a 12 year old, but I wouldn’t let a 13 year old get away with it. How old were the filmmmakers? Even granting some magical/mystical thing, though, it just seems that when our hero D’leh gets himself out of the hole and back to his injured friend Tic’Tic, he’d finfd a pile of bones and spit-out fur, because I’d expected the tiger to follow his scent trail back to his nearby, too-injured-to-defend himself friend.
8.) “The River Twists and Turns???” This is the one geographical point we can nail down – it’s the Nile River, because it’s got the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Look at it on a map sometime – it’s incredibly straight, aside from one set of not-challenging bends. You don’t need to invent tellar navigation to follow it.
9.) Nobody seems to have an economy. The African people are living in a desert. The Egyptian guys have only a few trees that I can see. Nobody’s growing the gazillion plants you need to support all those people. And mammoths. There should be vast fields of wheet and barley and grass (for the mammoths). But there’s nothing. Someone said that maybe it’s all ten miles away. Okay – YOU haul in all the goods for several thousand slaves from ten miles away. In a week you;'ll be planting wheat next door.
10.) If all this is supposed to tie into Graham Hancock’s Hancock-eyed universe, it STILL doesn’t work. You’ve got the 12,000 year-old Sphinx he lusts after, but if the pyramids get built – gold Benben cap and all – but everybody dies or moves away and forgets about it, then it doesn’t really fit, does it?
