The most inaccurate movie in cinema history, according to historians
Historical accuracy is a term that can either be adhered to rigidly or completely thrown out of the window, depending on which movie is being made by what director. Some strive to be as authentic as possible, while others couldn’t care less about getting almost everything wrong.
Some of the greatest period pieces in cinema have been exhaustively researched, painstakingly recreated, and meticulously staged to push immersion to the forefront. On the other side of the coin, there are films that don’t pay a single shred of attention to things that actually happened, with the end result leaving scientists and historians somewhere between flustered and enraged.
Not to state the obvious, but the filmography of Roland Emmerich has hardly been one of staunch adherence to such trivialities as logic and common sense. After all, this is the guy who blew up the White House in Independence Day, mutated the neutrinos in 2012, claimed William Shakespeare was a fraud in Anonymous, had a giant lizard wreak havoc in Godzilla, and hinged Moonfall on the idea the Moon was really a construct left behind by an advanced civilisation.
In short, then, bullshit has been the order of the day across his filmography, but 10,000 BC took the cake. Emmerich appears to have been aiming for a prehistoric Titanic of sorts, with Steven Strait’s mammoth hunter falling in love with Camilla Belle and then embarking on an adventure to rescue her from danger so that they can realise their star-crossed affections, but the results were dire.
Not just historically either, but cinematically. Emmerich is hardly an acclaimed auteur, but 10,000 BC is by far the worst, most tedious, and head-scratchingly stupid thing he’s ever made, which is really saying something. If anyone wants to discover the easiest way to torture a historian, simply deploy the Ludovico method from A Clockwork Orange and force them to watch this sack of crap.
Dr Dennis Stanford, the curator of archaeology at the esteemed Smithsonian Institution, admitted to Entertainment Weekly, “There wasn’t a scene that I saw that was anywhere near accurate.” In his estimation, “most educated people will just laugh,” but it doesn’t take a historian to figure out the film is absolute nonsense from start to finish.
The film posits that not only did early humans hunt woolly mammoths for sport and sustenance, but they were integral to the creation of the pyramids. The only problem – besides mammoths being largely extinct during that time period – is that the pyramids wouldn’t be constructed for another 8,000 years in real life. The characters within also use metal tools as part of their everyday life, roughly 6,000 years before mankind gained that understanding.
In the actual 10,000 BC, roughly 30% of the entire planet was still sheeted with ice. While there are some chilly landscapes on-screen, Strait’s character De’Leh sets off on foot from the frozen wastelands and in a matter of days finds himself in the baking, sandy environs of what seems to be Egypt. Historically inaccurate, geographically maddening, and singing from its own bespoke playbook, Emmerich outdoes himself with a 109-minute exercise in flagrantly disregarding the very timeline of human history.
