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While 10,000 BC was an over-hyped, glamorized, film that simultaneously gave too much credit to primitive humans and, at the same time, not enough, Quest for Fire takes place in 80,000 BC, at a time when there are scattered tribes of humans all at different levels of cultural advancement. These are dirty primitives, they appear parasite-ridden, some are lame, unkempt, and malnourished, as they would appear during such an era.

The film follows the Ulam tribe, which does not yet know how to make fire, and must continually feed their bonfire to keep warm. When another tribe attacks, the Ulam’s fire is extinguished, and three members of the tribe must venture out to find a flame and bring it back. Along the way these cavemen will face sabertooth tigers, mammoths, cannibals, cave bears, and tribes more advanced than their own.

As all dialogue is spoken in fictional languages without subtitles, we rely entirely on the actors’ actions to convey the social dynamics and primitive minds, and they are truly primitive, grunting and lurching on the screen like our primate descendents. The film is like watching a documentary with a dramatic plot, and it is rewarding watching human culture evolve on the screen as the cavemen learn concepts we take for granted.

So add this one to your netflix, it’s what 10,000 BC should have aspired to, a much more historically accurate film.

Roger Ebert also gave QFF a good review.

10,000 B.C. tells the story of a tribe of people living in what is, to my mother’s best guess, the Himalayas. All year long, the tribe looks forward to when the mammoths come migrating through their land, so they can hold their great hunt. This is actually right about the time Mammoths went extinct due to climate change and over-hunting by primitive tribes just like the one in this movie. These are hunter-gatherers, but we don’t see them do much gathering, which would have been their primary source of sustenance. I guess they focused on gathering after they finished eating all the mammoths.

Somehow this is a multi-cultural tribe, some members look Caucasian, others Asian, others North American Indian, but they all speak English with an inconsistent Arab accent in dialogue that is meant to be primitive, but is actually just really really bad. I cringed every time a character referred to a long time as, “Many Moons.”

One day a blue-eyed girl shows up, the local shaman looks into her mind and predicts “four-legged demons” would come one day, meaning men on horseback, 6,000 years before the domestication of horses. And they do come, taking much of the tribe as slaves, including the blue-eyed girl, who our well-waxed hero must go on a quest to save.

This quest takes him through the bamboo jungles of Asia and India, where he is attacked by Phororhacos, a giant predatory bird that not only lived in South America, not the Old World, but was long extinct by this time. He then somehow travels through Africa (before reaching the Middle-East), where he gathers up many African Tribes into an army, including one tribe with bones sticking out of their chins, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever (seriously, somebody please get a photo of it and explain how that works).

Eventually, they arrive at the Pyramids at Giza, which are nearly complete 7,500 years before they were actually finished, and located alone in a vast desert that was actually lush farmland, a fantastic metropolis, and one of the most advanced civilizations of the time. There are also Mammoths being used to build the Pyramids… but whatever.

The Pyramids in 10,000 B.C.

Instead of being run by the Pharaohs, the pyramids are being built by people claiming to be gods whose city has sunk into the ocean. Thanks to my Mom the New Ager, I now know they were referring to Atlantis, a myth probably based on the Minoan civilization, which was wiped out by a volcanic eruption about 3,500 years ago, 8,500 years after this movie takes place.

The slaves revolt, the oppressors are toppled with much slow motion dramatics (Yes, I know this is sort of a plot spoiler (If you’re one of those people who doesn’t know the good guys are gonna win.), but if you still plan on seeing this film after everything I’ve told you, then you deserve to have it spoiled.). The movie accurately depicts the pyramidion, the top of the Pyramid, was covered in gold leaf, but doesn’t bother to explain how the Pyramids were finished after the slaves push the pyramidion off to avalanche down one of the Pyramid’s slopes. I guess the Pharaohs could have come along thousands of years later and said, “Hey look at those half-built Pyramids! I know, let’s get some slaves and finish building them!”

The one thing the film does get right is that blue eyes was a genetic mutation that appeared between six and 10K years ago; however, this film was made before the fact was known. The director got lucky, which does give 10,000 BC one redeeming quality: proving the hypothesis that even a blind squirrel can find an occasional acorn.