Dollars and Scenes: The Film Box

Our monthly look at the local and national movie industry

By D.K. Holm

It should have come as no surprise that 10,000 B.C. "won" its opening weekend at the box office. It came with a profitable pedigree - that of a prime hit-making machine in the form of Roland Emmerich, the German writer, producer and director behind previous bombastic sub-Spielberg epics such as The Day After Tomorrow, The Patriot, Godzilla and Independence Day. Though his films have shown diminishing returns with each successive release, he retains the aura of a hit-maker, which is all that's needed in Hollywood to get a project going, especially one that was probably born, like so many recent flops, in the wake of Gladiator's surprise success way back in 2000. And in this case his instinct for what the audience wants proved once again true.

10,000 B.C. made $35.7 million its opening weekend, trouncing its nearest competitor, the Martin Lawrence comedy College Road Trip ($14 mil), and went on to make $139 million (and counting) throughout the world. Though set at the birth of civilization (many viewers may take the film as evidence of the end of civilization), the story elements are as familiar as yesterday's sword and sorcery epics. It's an action pastoral, in which D'Leh (Steven Strait) of the Yagahl tribe sets off to rescue his true love, Evolet (Camilla Belle), who has been kidnapped by a horse-borne group of slave traders. With his pal Tic-Tic (the usually excellent Cliff Curtis), D'Leh encounters giant tigers and mastodons before ending up in a weird religious society that blends Mayan and ancient Egyptian elements.

10,000 B.C. was, of course, roundly condemned by the reviewers and ended up with a nine percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And it is very likely that the audiences that flocked to the film ended up not even liking it either, if the film adheres to what is called the Houxian Principal. The Houxian Principal was first enunciated by internet critic Damon Houx, who once said (originally in reference to the phenomenally and surprisingly profitable The Flintstones), "Just because a movie makes $300 million dollars doesn't mean that anyone liked it."

But let's say that the audience did like it. What was their "takeaway"? The essence of its plot offers a man fighting to get back a (rather striking) woman, and in the process bringing together (in an Obama moment) black and white tribes in a heartwarming and optimistic alliance. In the film's very last moments, D'Leh figures out that harvesting and storing trumps hunting and gathering, and civilization thus commences, in what is a loose visual allusion that is Emmerich's version of the flying bone-weapon in 2001.

The "masses," as the commies used to call them, may not necessarily know what they are getting into with 10,000 B.C. but the film is an uplifting paean to human unity; they were lured by the trailer's visual quotations of monsters and arrows and violence and attractive people. But if a positive, uplifting message is sneaked in, as the Red screenwriters used to do, then maybe the $139 mil was well spent.