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Monday, March 10, 2008

The white guys are always the bad guys, duh!

So, last week at work we received the movie 10,000 B.C. a few days before it was supposed to come out (If you don't want the movie spoiled for you, just go ahead and stop reading now.). As projectionists, we have the privilege of pre-screening movies -- the reasoning behind it is that by pre-screening, we can catch any problems with the prints. We even get paid for it. Studios are happy, we're happy.

Everyone was excited about watching this movie. The trailers looked awesome -- action-packed and tense.

Yeah, the movie was horrible. And I mean, horrible on the scale of possibly-the-worst-movie-I-have-ever-seen. Did anyone see Colin Farrell's Alexander? Remember how bad that was? 10,000 B.C. is just as bad. The plot was horrible, and there was shockingly little action in the movie. The "cavemen" all spoke perfect English, wore dreadlocks, and basically smeared some kind unidentifiable shit all over their faces. It never really says where exactly this is all taking place, but due to the deserts, a river through a desert, and building of pyramids, my best guess would be Egypt.

The plot goes like this: there is a tribe of cavemen who live in this frozen wasteland. A little girl with blue eyes shows up out of nowhere, and as everyone in prehistoric times apparently looked exactly the same, it weirds them all out. A prophecy is made that "four-legged demons" will attack their tribe during the "last hunt". The girl, named Evolet, will be given to the warrior who will bring down a woolly mammoth during this last hunt. And of course, this warrior will lead their people after being attacked. This warrior ends up being D'Leh, a boy who is disgraced by the other boys in the tribe because his daddy abandoned them. D'Leh brings down the woolly mammoth, and thus wins Evolet -- who he then gives up because he "doesn't deserve her". Soon afterwards, the four-legged demons show up, killing some but kidnapping most of the members of the tribe. The few men that are left, including D'Leh, set out to regain their captured tribe members and most importantly, Evolet.

So they walk, and they walk, and they come across a bunch of other tribes who have encountered the same fate. D'Leh gets them all to follow him by talking to a sabre-tooth tiger. They wander around the desert for a while until they come across this metropolis on a river, where pyramids are being built. This is where all their captured tribe members are being kept, as slaves. This is all being done at the behest of someone who calls himself a god. D'Leh eventually gets all the slaves and tribes to band together to overthrow their oppressors, and he kills the tyrant. Evolet gets an arrow in the back and dies, but is "magically" brought back to life. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Now, all of us screening this movie noticed something interesting. Everyone in the film is dark-skinned -- either black or just darker complected in general (think Middle-Eastern or Native American coloring). The god-tyrant is completely covered from head to toe by a gigantic veil, which slips off when D'Leh kills him. And whoopsie, we see that Mr. Tyrant Man is -- gasp!! -- white. Whiter than I am. He was a white old guy.

Now, is that really just a coincidence? I don't like to read too much into things like that, but I wasn't the only person who noticed, and it definitely made us all wonder if that was on purpose or just an "accident" of casting. Or is it just another one of those Hollywood white-guilt things? To liberals, white guilt reigns supreme, and it only fits that a white guy would be the one to want to ruin everyone else's perfect little lives for his own benefit.

If you've seen the movie, what do you think?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, maybe they're trying to get back at Lord of the Rings lol. I remember some libtards were saying the Lord of the Rings movies were racist because the only dark-skinned humans in there were villains. (When actually it was just following the book,s which described the Easterlings and Southrons as dark-skinned).

Nah, I wouldn't be surprised if it was on purpose.

Anonymous said...

I think you're overeacting. All the God's servants were dark-skinned. And the cavemen looked like they'd pass the paper bag test.

Anonymous said...

Carl, I actually met somebody who made the same claim regarding Lord of the Rings and I was "Uh, the WHITE wizard in the 1st movie, pretty bad guy there, knocking down all them trees." Selective visual-ness I suppose.

I'll probably still see 10,000 BC just because.

Terri Wagner said...

Gosh, I feel weird. Now I know what it's like to be one of the outcast because I LOVED it. Thought it was great. Enjoyed the fact that is fairly clean, plot was for me riveting and cool. I guess I am color blind because I didn't pick up on any racial overtones. Just thought it was great and highly recommend it.

Anonymous said...

There are three problems with this movie, in my opinion:

1. There were NO advanced civilizations living in elaborate cities and making massive stone monuments in 10,000 BC.

2. The area that is now Egypt was verdant as recently as 3000 years ago. It was most definitely not desert in 10,000 BC.

3. Woolly Mammoths lived in the tundra, i.e., Siberia, not in Africa.

Anonymous said...

If you set a movie in 10,000 BC, you should go out of your way to emphasize that it's set somewhere cool that only existed then, like the salt flats where the Mediteranian is now.

Anonymous said...

Forrest Gump? The white guys are the problem there too, except for those mentally or physically handicapped.