Geography and timescale don't make sense
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Quest for Fire
Roosterbooster — 18 years ago(September 24, 2007 01:48 PM)
I assume this film is set in Europe. Our Neanderthals are in a cool, damp climate when they are attacked and it seems they will die of cold without fire. So our three heroes leave the tribe on a little island in the swamp and wander off to look for fire. Next thing we see they're walking through a hot arid desert canyon. Then they're in a lush green forest. WTF? How far are they travelling? Seems like they've gone a thousand miles already. Then, suddenly, we're back in northern Euro climes with sabre-toothed cats and wooly mammoths. After their many adventures, which include being accepted into another freakin tribe and learning their culture, they make their way back to their tribe to find them all hanging around on the same little island in the swamp as if they've been gone half an hour or something. No food, no fire so they can't have been that desparate for it. Yet the trio's adventures and travels must have taken weeks at least. Just doesn't make sense to me.
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Disfnord — 18 years ago(October 18, 2007 06:27 PM)
Ya, that and many other things bothered me, especially after watching the "making of" feature, where the "painstaking attention to accuracy" was repeatedly touted. Also, according to the making-of, the tribe were homo sapiens, and the attacking ape-like creatures were supposed to be the Neanderthals. I guess 25 years ago they thought there was a wide variation in the physiology of different homo sapien groups 80,000 years ago?
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lachrymologist — 16 years ago(March 07, 2010 10:30 PM)
This movie is quite inaccurate, but anatomically modern humans (homo sapiens) and neanderthals, which were quite different physiologically, coexisted just miles apart in the south of Spain, and most likely throughout Europe and parts of Africa. The fossil record is but a small record of what actually transpired. Don't get me wrong, the way they are portrayed in this movie is incorrect, but the morphological differences were easily as disparate as portrayed in this movie.
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themanamp — 15 years ago(May 09, 2010 12:35 PM)
The film got a lot of things wrong but because it was clever and fairly mysterious, it can be interpreted in a much more accurate way.
I considered the main tribe to be Neanderthals and the blue/grey tribe to be homo sapians.
The killer apes near the start are like some form of intelligent gorilla/australopithecine.
Ok, so it's unlikely such things existed only 80,000 years ago. But c'mon, they were pretty scary weren't they? Something in that scene clicked with me, like an old primal memory of us hominids going up against a stronger and more monkey-like ancestor/neighbour. -
choatelodge — 15 years ago(May 12, 2010 03:38 PM)
Jeez guys, every now and then a piece of evidence still shows up that requires re-evaluating previously held beliefs about the timelines of the various species. The story is still being assembled, so people howling in outrage that some timeline of populations depicted in 'Quest For Fire' is unrealistic, is not only presumptive and premature, but petty in the extreme. Watch it. Have fun and enjoy it.
Insisting that you know better than the film makers just serves to help you spoil the show for yourself. -
Siats — 11 years ago(December 18, 2014 12:02 AM)
like an old primal memory of us hominids going up against a stronger and more monkey-like ancestor/neighbour.
This is a modern invention, our furry, more apelike ancestors were smaller than us and definitely physically weaker than later Homo. -
Starcraft_rules — 11 years ago(July 31, 2014 05:26 PM)
It was a bit jarring, however the film is set 80000 years back so a little artistic license is ok. There were a bunch of ice ages back then and climate is often change the way landscape look. For example in 5000 BC there was a large sea in Sahara, now it's gone. So you can't be sure what Europe looked like back then. Also they never really say it's Europe.
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Siats — 11 years ago(December 18, 2014 12:03 AM)
For example in 5000 BC there was a large sea in Sahara, now it's gone. So you can't be sure what Europe looked like back then. Also they never really say it's Europe.
That's a contradiction isn't it? we do have a good idea of Europe's climate 80,000 years ago.