Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) is the ultimate spectacular-over-substance filmmaker. He actually makes Michael Bay look like Stanley Kubrick by comparison. If Emmerich and his screenwriters had paid even a smidgen as much attention to their story on the new 10,000 B.C. as they did the visual effects, they might have produced a passable film. Instead, Emmerich has delivered what is sure to be one of the most colossal wastes of time to hit theater screens this year.

Emmerich sets his story ten millennia before the birth of Christ, a time period in which he must feel immune from scholars telling him he’s run afoul of the historical record. After all, there’s a reason they call it pre-history. The time frame also allows him to invent absolutely everything, from clothes to languages to architecture, and populate his world with mainly pan-Asian actors (except for the distinctly American leads) speaking with pseudo-European accents.

The action takes place in a remote mountain village where the beautiful, blue-eyed girl Evolet (Camilla Belle) and her betrothed, the hunter D’Leh (Steven Strait), are separated when a band of warlords raid their village and drag her and many others away to be slaves. Determined to get Evolet back, D’Leh and a small group of men track the war party over the mountains, through dense jungles and across burning deserts. Venturing far beyond the limits of his own civilization, D’Leh gathers warriors from other tribes who have also succumbed to the slave raiders’ attacks.

D’Leh and his small army ultimately make their stand beneath the shadow of mighty ziggurats, symbols of an empire ruled over by a tyrannical god-king and built on the backs of slaves. Little does D’Leh know that he and Evolet are driven by destiny, foretold by prophets. to save their people and bring peace to all the land. Everything builds to a conclusion that is nothing short of…preposterous.

For a film so utterly bereft of substance, Emmerich sure does rip off a lot of films. From Apocalypto to Jurassic Park, Conan the Barbarian to Braveheart, 10,000 B.C. is strictly a paint-by-numbers exercise. You’ve got young lovers torn apart, a hot-headed hero and a mentor desperate to rein him in, overwhelming enemies, and the inevitable St. Crispin’s Day speech. Which isn’t to say that Emmerich ever gives his characters much of anything to say. He leaves most of the talking to Omar Sharif and his omnipresent, overbearing narration.

There are no big actors in 10,000 B.C., just big effects. And while the story certainly disappoints, the effects are, by and large, terrific. Immense, shaggy mammoths shake the earth, fearsome dinosaur-like ostriches hunt their prey and powerful saber-toothed tigers stalk their domain. The sweeping nature of the cinematography is beautiful, but Emmerich soars over the mountain peaks and the slave yards so many times that awe is quickly replaced by monotony. Oddly enough, it is not the big effects sequences that stumble, but intimate scenes of simple conversations so obviously set against a green screen that the actors come off looking more like they are performing within a Natural History museum exhibit than a multi-million dollar movie.

Relics from 10,000 B.C. generally show up these days as fossilized remains. And that is exactly where this movie should remain — dead and buried.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.