CON: 10,000 BC

Camilla Belle, Steven Strait, and director Roland Emmerich came down for Saturday’s 10,000 BC WonderCon panel to discuss the movie and offer up an extended trailer for the film.

Extended Trailer – This extension of the regular trailer shows a little more of the story and what other type of action set pieces audiences can expect. It starts with a voiceover narration talking about how the cavemen hunted mammoths, the mightiest of beasts. Cut to a few scenes later, bad guys invade and take a dirtied up version of Camilla Belle with dreadlocks, while the protagonist (Steven Strait) watches and later goes to save her. Then there’s a quick-cut collection of scenes featuring saber-toothed tigers, giant birds, and wholly mammoths. Looks pretty stupid, but maybe it can work in a B-movie sort of way.

• Roland Emmerich’s movie is definitely 2012, but he refused to say anything about the actual film.
• The characters speak a mix of English and Arabic.
• Emmerich said he cares foremost about story, which I got a chuckle out of.
• Emmerich got inspiration for the film through a Discovery Channel about mammoth hunting.
• Emmerich was influenced by CONAN THE BARBARIAN because they created an entire world. “Nobody knows what really happened, so your imagination can go wild.”
• When asked if the movie had any connection to STARGATE, Emmerich said there’s nothing direct, but that they share the Lost Civilization Theory, regarding the Egyptians not building the pyramids.
• Somebody asked what the actor’s and director’s favorite superhero was, and Camilla Belle was at a loss for words, so she just stole Emmerich’s answer of Batman, making an awful analogy about him being like the actors for 10,000 BC for not having any superpowers, and how they had to work against all the green screens and nonexistent CGI themselves. I cringed.

10,000 BC looks dumb, no doubt, but as with any Roland Emmerich production, what matters most is how fun it is. From what I’ve seen though, there seems to be way too much fake-looking CGI balancing against the aggressive stupidity of the story, so my hopes remain low for now.