ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

I was ready to love this one. I had my own ideas about a story set in the Ice Age, with all those cool critters that the primitive people had to deal with to keep fresh meat on the dinner table, way back before refrigerators were invented because there just wasn't any demand for them yet.

In fact, a couple chapters in an unpublished book I wrote for elementary school kids (called The Fabulous Adventures of Me!) had two time-traveling 5th graders visit a tribe of Ice Age Indians. I was a teacher at the time, and I made copies for my students, just to test it out.

They loved it.

Call me vain, but I think I did a little better than Roland Emmerich, who produced, wrote, and directed this yarn about what we used to call "cave men", back when we put them with dinosaurs without blinking an eye.

This movie puts them with sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoths and pretty much the same shenanigans as the old cavemen-with-dinosaurs movies . . . until a wandering group of them discover an Egyptian-like civilization ruled by a survivor from Atlantis who has everybody convinced he's a god.

You know, that old gambit . . .

I didn't enjoy it much the first (and only) time I saw it, but I should probably give it another chance.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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The trailer makes the movie look like the cinematic adventure of a lifetime . . . but sadly, it just didn't work for me. And I really wanted to love this movie.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Robert (Butch) Day]

The problem was that it started out as an adaptation of Brothers of the Spear; a back-up story in the Tarzan comics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_of_the_Spear



After many re-writes it had mutated into the disaster that escaped. (It certainly wasn't released; who in their right mind would do that!)
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Bud Brewster]

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Based on this clip, I'm tempted to watch this one again! Great scene.
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______ 10,000 BC - Movie CLIP - Mammoth Stampede


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 10 trivia items for this movie, but I found a few interesting one, shown in in the blue text.
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~ (at around 1h 10 mins) The film includes a glimpse of a map showing Atlantis off the coast of Spain. It's a reference to Plato's theory that the construction techniques used in Egypt were imported from the ancient lost civilization of Atlantis.

Note from me: That's a nice tie-in with the Atlantis legend!

~ This film features some alleged historical controversies, including construction of the great pyramids 12,000 years ago (almost 7,500 years earlier), the existence of the Ben-Ben stone (the pyramidion stone missing from the top of the Khafre pyramid), the correlation between the position of the pyramids and the stars from the Orion constellation (associated by the Egyptians with the god Osiris), the Sphinx with a head of a lion allegedly correlated with the Leo constellation rising to the east (at the same time that Orion is in conjunction with the Giza pyramid complex), and the possible nonhuman origins of the first kings of Egypt.

Note from me: This definitely tempts me to watch this movie again. I'll put it on my Netflix list. And by gum, I just discovered I can steam it anytime I want!

~ D'Leh refers to one star as "the one that never moves." That would be the North Star, which appears stationary in the northern night sky. In 10,000 BC the North Star was Vega, the fifth brightest star in the sky. It would've been very obvious in the dark sky.

Note from me: Hey, I didn't know the North Star was Vega, 10,000 years ago. But perhaps sharp-eyed stargazers could have spotted it 10,000 years ago because there were was not "light pollution".

~ D'Leh is "Held", the German word for "hero", backwards. Roland Emmerich chose the name as an Easter egg.

Note from me: Clever guy, that Roland.

~ (at around 40 mins) The computer-generated wet saber-tooth tiger was created by Double Negative. Creating it required combining several of the most challenging elements of visual effects: fur, wet fur, water, and creature animation.

Note from me: Who said that making CGI FX was easy? I sure didn't!

~ The constellation called the 'sign of the warrior' is actually Orion. It also played a key role in deciphering ancient signs in Stargate (1994).

Note from me: Orion is the easiest constellation to spot in the winter sky. It leaps right out at you!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)