"Favorite Prehistoric-ish movie for a game setting?" Topic

It does not need to be a caveman only setting, if you have a favorite that includes lizardmen or dinosaurs then list those too.

A few of the top of my head:

Fire and Ice YouTube link link

From their stronghold in Icepeak, the evil Queen Juliana and her son Nekron send forth a wave of glaciers, forcing humanity to retreat south towards the equator. Nekron sends a delegation to King Jarol in Firekeep to request his surrender, but this is a ruse orchestrated by Queen Juliana for Nekron's sub-humans to kidnap Jarol's daughter, the barefoot, microkini-wearing Princess Teegra (Queen Juliana feels that Nekron should take a bride to produce an heir). But Teegra makes an escape and comes upon Larn, the only survivor of a village razed by glaciers, who offers to escort her back to Firekeep. As Teegra is recaptured, Larn teams with the mysterious Darkwolf to save Teegra and then travel to Icepeak to stop Juliana. Darkwolf faces Nekron and kills him as Icepeak succumbs to lava released by King Jarol and is destroyed. The film finishes with Larn about to kill a beaten sub-human until Teegra stops him saying that "it's over" and embraces him. Darkwolf is seen atop a cliff; he watches the kissing pair, smiles and then disappears. Teegra and Larn kiss as the credits roll.

Quest for Fire YouTube link link

The film begins with an raid of the ape-like Wagabu tribe on the Neanderthal Ulam tribe, who possess fire in the form of a carefully guarded small flame which they use to start larger bonfires. Likely obtained from a natural source, it must be fed constantly to keep it alive, for the Ulam do not know how to make their own fire. Driven out of their home after a bloody battle with the Wagabu, the surviving Ulam escape but are chased into a marsh by a pack of wolves. The Ulam fire tender escapes with the tribe's remaining fire, however after crossing a marsh, the moisture and wind douse the embers, leaving the tribe doomed to die from exposure and starvation. The Ulams refuse to resort to cannibalism and the elder decides to send three men, Naoh (Everett McGill), Amoukar (Ron Perlman) and Gaw (Nameer El-Kadi), out on a dangerous quest for fire.

and

Clan of the Cave Bear YouTube link picture link

Because the film cost US $15 USD million to produce and brought in only US $1.9 USD million domestically, it is considered a box office flop. There was supposedly a sequel planned which never came to fruition. (yikes!)

Any others you all might have liked, with potential?

I always liked Caveman with Ringo. We played some fun silly caveman vs caveman games based on this film. One side had a few tough hunter/warrior types. The other side had lots of "less then heroic" characters.
Oh and can't forget to mention the random appearing dinosaurs and bigfoot who would grab characters and leave the board with them.

Planet of the prehistoric women!

How about People that Time forgot and Land that Time forgot. Pretty cool ERB backgrounds.

Thanks,

John

You could have a character accidentally find a lost world and save a tribe from an evil beast or bad clan using modern thinking like this one YouTube link
I recall KingKong having a great Prehistoric lost world that could be played by capturing creatures for scientific reasons of course.

Any thoughts on this one:

10000 BC link picture picture

In the year 10,000 BC, a tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Yagahl, who live on a remote mountain range in the Urals, survive by killing mammoths. D'Leh, a young hunter, has a companion named Evolet, an orphan who was found by the tribe. D'Leh, while hunting mammoths, manages to kill one and wins the "White Spear", which is given to the killer of the mammoth. He also wins Evolet in marriage, but feels he deserves neither since he killed the mammoth by accident.

One day, D'Leh and several others are away when horse-raiders called the "Four Legged Demons" attack the Yaghal camp. The horse raiders enslave Evolet, and D'Leh, Tic'Tic, and Ka'Ren pursue them to save her. Baku, whose mother was killed during the raid, joins them later. They are attacked by terror birds in the jungle which is similar to the Amazon Rainforest. In this encounter, Tic'Tic gets wounded and Baku and Ka'Ren are captured. D'Leh rescues Evolet, but she is later re-captured. Continuing on, they meet others whose loved ones were taken by the raiders. D'Leh and Tic'Tic befriend Nakudu, leader of the Naku tribe. He tells D'Leh of a prophecy: whoever talks to the "Spear-Tooth" will help free their people. D'Leh had earlier saved a saber-toothed cat from drowning in a trap. The saber-tooth then spared his life, and he realizes the prophecy was about him. Nakudu explains that his loved ones were taken in the "Great Red Birds", or ships with large red sails, to the "Mountains of the Gods", from which no one has ever returned. They then come together with other tribes, who agree to form a coalition to pursue the raiders.

They find the ships with red sails holding Evolet and Baku. They have no means to follow the ships, so they journey through a vast desert, where they discover a relatively advanced civilization similar to ancient Egypt, which is ruled by an enigmatic figure known as "The Almighty", who is said to be the last survivor of his kind. The Almighty, who is regarded as a living god, possesses many thousands of slaves that he is using to build a huge pyramid complex in his honor and possibly for his burial. D'Leh finds an escaped slave, and notices he is wearing a bracelet worn by D'Leh's father. D'Leh's father left his tribe for food and found the Naku tribe before being stolen by the raiders. In a night attack, the guards of the slaves discover D'Leh behind a pyramid. Tic'Tic dies during the attack. Meanwhile, the Almighty's priests discover Evolet wears scars on her hand patterned after the "Mark of the Hunter", the constellation now known as Orion. The priests believe it is part of a prophecy that whoever wears the mark of the Hunter is destined to kill The Almighty. D'Leh starts a full-scale rebellion amongst the slaves. They cause the mammoth herd, used in building the pyramid, to stampede and kill a large number of troops.

The Almighty offers Evolet to D'Leh in exchange for abandoning his rebellion. The Almighty says that if D'Leh takes his wife, his warriors can return, but the rest must be his slaves forever. D'Leh feigns acceptance of the deal which allows him to throw a spear at The Almighty and kill him, proving that he is not a god. During the ensuing battle, a raider kidnaps Evolet on horseback. Evolet grabs an arrow and stabs the warlord in the side, knocking them both off the horse. D'Leh rushes towards her, but the raider shoots her in the back. D'Leh kills him and returns to Evolet, and she dies in his arms. The scene shifts to the wise woman as she breathes in deeply and then breathes out her last breath. The scene then returns to D'Leh still holding Evolet's body when she suddenly awakens, restored by the wise woman's sacrifice. They depart for home and bid farewell to the other tribes. They return home and kiss passionately as the screen cuts suddenly to black from a sunset.

In an alternative ending, the scene shifts forward many years into the future, showing Baku's retelling of the story by the camp fire. It ends with a child asking what had happened to the "Mountains of the Gods", and Baku responds "They were taken back by the sands. Lost to time, lost to man."

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Certainly a fantasy piece but I had fun watching it. I like the mix of cultures and the use of mammoths to drag the stones was interesting.

While not prehistoric, I do like this one to represent a more primitive look at what an Atlantis may have been like…rather than a bright clean Rome it could have been a sacrificing bloody Maya…

Apocalypto en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto picture picture picture

The film begins with an epigraph from Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within".

While hunting tapir in the Mesoamerican jungle in the early 16th century, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and their fellow tribesmen encounter a procession of traumatized and fearful refugees. Speaking in Yucatec Maya, the procession's leader explains that their lands have been ravaged, and asks for Flint Sky's permission to pass through the jungle. When Jaguar Paw and his tribesmen return to their village, Flint Sky tells his son not to let the procession's state of fear seep into him. At night, the tribe's elder tells the village a fable of man forever unable to fill his want, despite having been given the capabilities of all of the animals. The villagers follow the story with music and dance, leaving Jaguar Paw to ponder.

The next morning, Jaguar Paw wakes from a nightmare to see strangers enter the village and set the huts ablaze. The raiders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), attack and subdue the villagers. Jaguar Paw slips out with his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernández) and his little son Turtles Run, lowering them on a vine into a small cave (a chultun, shaped something like a well) to hide them. Jaguar Paw returns to the village to fight the raiders but is subdued with the rest of the tribe. A raider whom Jaguar Paw attacks and almost kills, the vicious Middle Eye (Gerardo Taracena), slits Flint Sky's throat while Jaguar Paw helplessly watches. Flint Sky's last words are to not be afraid. Middle Eye mocks Jaguar Paw by calling him "Oulak" ("Almost"), for failing to kill him. Before the raiders leave the village with their prisoners, one raider notices Jaguar Paw staring toward the ground cave. Suspicious of Jaguar Paw's attention to the cave, the raider severs the vine leading into it, trapping Seven and Turtles Run.

The raiders and their captives trek toward the Maya city, encountering razed forests, falling trees, failed maize crops, slaves producing plaster and the sick and dying. A small diseased girl prophesies that a man bringing the jaguar will bring the raiders to those who will scratch out the earth and end their world. In the city's outskirts, the female captives are sold as slaves and the males are escorted to the top of a step pyramid. The high priest sacrifices several captives by decapitating them after pulling out their beating hearts. When Jaguar Paw is about to be sacrificed, a solar eclipse (also prophesied by the girl) stays the priest's hand. He looks at the king, sitting nearby, and the two share a smile while the people below panic at the phenomenon. The priest declares the sun god Kukulkan is satisfied with the sacrifices. He asks Kukulkan to let light return to the world and the eclipse passes. The crowd cheers in amazement and the priest orders that the remaining captives be led away and disposed of.

Zero Wolf takes the villagers to a ball court. The captives are released in pairs and forced to run the length of the open space within the ball court, offering Zero Wolf's men some target practice, with a cynical promise of freedom should they reach the end of the field alive. However, Zero Wolf's son, Cut Rock, is sent to the end of the field to "finish" any survivors. The raiders target them with javelins, arrows, and slingstones as they run. Jaguar Paw is struck by an arrow through the abdomen but reaches the end of the field and breaks off the arrowhead. As Cut Rock approaches to finish him off with an obsidian blade, Jaguar Paw shoves the broken arrow into Cut Rock's throat and escapes. As Cut Rock bleeds out with Zero Wolf easing him into the next life, Jaguar Paw runs through a withered maize field and an open mass grave. The enraged Zero Wolf and his raiders pursue Jaguar Paw into the jungle and back toward Jaguar Paw's home. Along the way, one of the raiders is killed by a black jaguar that has been disturbed by Jaguar Paw. As he flees, Jaguar Paw jumps over a high waterfall and survives, declaring from the riverbank below that the raiders are now in his homelands.

Zero Wolf's raiders jump the waterfall as well, then fall to both the forest's elements and Jaguar Paw's traps. A heavy rain sets in, which begins to flood the ground cave in which Jaguar Paw's wife and son are still trapped. Jaguar Paw kills one raider with poisoned darts, bludgeons Middle Eye in hand-to-hand combat and kills Zero Wolf by leading him into a trap meant for hunting tapir. He is chased by two remaining raiders out to a beach where they encounter what are assumed to be Spanish ships anchored off the coast, with soldiers and a priest making their way ashore in boats. The amazement of the raiders allows Jaguar Paw to flee. He returns into the forest to pull his wife and son out of the flooded pit where they are hiding, and where Seven has just given birth to a healthy second child. As the family walks near the coastline, Seven asks what the strange objects near the shore are. Jaguar Paw responds only that "they bring men". The family moves deeper into the forest, "to seek a new beginning", leaving behind the European ships off the beach.

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The extension from paleolithic to the late Maya period shown in the movie is not so far removed IMO. Rather fun to consider the Maya profile as the Atlantis prototype. Atlantis would be mighty and feared rather than a island of grace and beauty ah tra la la. Science and advanced thinking marred with the fevered zealots pushing the blood sacrifice to control the people with fear and mass hysteria.

No need to add any magic or such, but some measure of non wizbang illusion or shamanistic level magic might be interesting…calling animals, cause berserking, living zombies(slow amblers…just servants not brain eaters), call down rain, induce fear, etc..

The land that time forgot.

Dan

The spring/river of life from The Land That Time Forgot is perfect for the various stages of man that I like to consider…allows for potential of just about anything to have various stages of pre and post development…flora and fauna. Go with a mining effort in some remote location and it strikes a deep deep secluded spring source…this spills into the water table and causes a whole area to change and revert into a prehistoric jungle…the closer to central contact the more primitive the end result.

This would be a neat way to "ruin" the Earth and create a post apocalyptic setting…bring the fall of man through his water…it would be nearly impossible to filter it out…not magic but that ce petit quelque chose et Ce je ne sais quoi…that unknown quality that takes too long to find it…before the filter can be made the majority of the warm flowing rivers, lakes, and aquifers are permanently connected to the source…a continent completely converted into a prehistoric world…say all of South and Central America with a creeping affect that is making its way into North America…also the seas surrounding the altered waters are changing due to the modified run off and river spill ways.

Now that is a fun world.

Estimates show the entire Western Hemisphere affected in less than twenty years.

Eco terrorists with insider information use every resource possible to find more contact points with the deep source waters…perhaps on other continents or all continents…leaving only the coldest points or remote locations like Australia fairly untouched.

Oh my, but 10,000BC was an abomination in the eyes of both god and man! I couldn't even force myself to enjoy that one…

Was it that bad?

It had its moments and no less unbelievable than most other fantasy movies…it did not set any bars for excellence but IMO did not set any road spikes either :)

(from review)
"With attention strictly paid to style instead of substance, or historical accuracy, 10,000 B.C. is a visually impressive but narrative flimsy epic"

Yeah, that is about right.

But we had lots to look at…kinda like the fast food version of what it could have been. You know it is bad (for you) but you still think it looks good…temptation.

Woolies, ax beaked terror birds, mixed cultures, and other "fun" details…seems like it would work for gamers.

I think that is what gets me the most. When I bring up a questionable movie like this one in mixed company (mundanes and John Q Public) it is a hit or miss affair…but among the gaming community…you know the ones who play games with little metal toys and pretend to be long dead generals or elves/orcs or a space commander with dozens of humanoid aliens on his ship…that these gamers would at least say "hey that would make a fun RPG or skirmish game".

But to each his own :)

Not pushing this one…the movie was a bit of a stinker, but it had enough going for it to be interesting and a bit of fun…entertainment in the end is the goal of watching movies right?

No worries…movies are like mistakes, they will make more :)