The Pristine Tomb

I caught the middle of a rather cheesy B-Movie the other night while looking for something to watch. I've no idea what the film was called, and I didn't hang around long enough to grasp the plot (if there was any). One of the reasons I swept past this film so quickly was the scene I watched. An adventuring archaeologist - a rip off of a popular Harrison Ford character - was entering a tomb he said had been sealed over 3000 years before.

Before I proceed let me say that I enjoy films and can ignore some level of disconnect from reality. I'm happy to allow willing suspension of disbelief (or "Willy Suspension" as Baldric put it in Blackadder Goes Forth) if it means enjoying a good story. But this movie took things to a whole new level.

First off there was no Dust. A tomb unopened for 3000 years and not a speck of dust has fallen. The ancient artefact's looked like they had come straight from the props department (which of course they had). Second there was the ubiquitous trap sprung by three millennium old rope that was as elastic as it was the day it was bought from the hardware store. Finally the walls of this underground stone chamber wobbled... dear lord... I thought the age of wobbly walls ended with the William Hartnell era Doctor Who.

I guess the thing that irked me most was that it looked just how a tomb would look in some D&D games. No debris, no dust or sand blocking doorways, every item found is in pristine condition and every trap works perfectly. When I think back to my very early days of dungeon crawls such a scene would never have bothered me. It's not that I've lost my Suspension of Disbelief, but I guess I've learned to like a little realism in my fantasy.