The editors saved Alpha

Alpha was a recent movie about the Ice Age domestication of the doggywolf. I saw that when it came to the kinoplex a few years back and when that came available, Santa got me the Blu-Ray. I delayed putting that into my player, for whatever reason, until last night. A Director's Cut was in there. I watched that last night.

The Theatrical Cut had puppies (post-partum); the Director didn't want 'em. Puppies aside, there are other Deleted Scenes in the disc: including an opening crawler, not included in either Cut.

The opening crawler lays out the stakes. It reifies, without irony, that fake trailer which Verizon used to run for their Turn Off Your Darn Phone PSAs. There the Lakota chief tells his people, "In this hunt, WE CANNOT FAIL!". So, you know, turn off your phone, F***ing Jackass. I could barely believe mine own eyes when the (proposed) crawler ran that selfsame meme but not as meme.

But wait. There's more! The Deleted Scene would tell us it's the Solutrean Era. So: the ancestors of those who domesticated the dog, common to Eurasia and to America and to New Guinea alike [I think the dingo got to Australia later], are the Solutreans of Ice Age Gaul. Leaning hard into Across Atlantic Ice, perhaps pinned to a few thousand years after this movie.

Now, the crawl which the Director did get us did state that this was all happening "Europe" and 20 kBC at that. "Eurasia" would at least have hedged the bets. Still: somebody must have told this crew that "Solutrean" was going to induce Skub in the reviews. The movie works as well as it does because, in both its dueling semi-official cuts, it hedges those bets.

I dimly recall that Alpha took over a year between trailer to release. This was a post-production direly needed. Thank you, dear editors, for that.

DOMESTICATED 1/25: 21000 BC Siberia. So we're lookin' at Mal'ta–Buret'. Final Gravettian in Europe is 20000 BC. After that and faaarrr west. They got the movie only a millennium late but, a thousand years here and a thousand there and you're talking about real wampum, as the Delawares say.