Movie: 10,000 BC (2008)

10,000 BC is a 2008 American action-adventure film co-written, co-produced and directed by Roland Emmerich, co-written, co-scored, and executive produced by Harald Kloser, and starring Steven Strait and Camilla Belle. The film depicts the journeys of a prehistoric tribe of mammoth hunters.

In 10,000 BC, a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Yagahl lived in the Ural Mountains and survived by hunting woolly mammoths, but the woolly mammoths have become more scarce due to the rapidly dwindling population. A hunter who has killed a manak single-handedly and earned the White Spear venerates Old Mother, an elderly Neanderthal with shamanistic powers. The village chief finds a young girl named Evolet, who had survived a massacre of her village perpetrated by what Old Mother calls “four-legged demons,” who will come when “the Yagahl go on their last hunt.”

The tribe believes the demons are the mammoths and sets out to hunt the herd leader; however, the current chief does not trust the prophecy and leaves to find another way to save his people faster. He entrusts the White Spear, his young son D’Leh, and the true purpose of his quest to his friend Tic’Tic. The tribe’s children ridicule D’Leh for his father’s cowardice, and he seeks comfort from Evolet. The two begin to fall in love.

Years later, when the mammoths finally return, the adult D’Leh hunts them with his tribe’s men under Tic’Tic’s leadership and kills one by accident, inadvertently winning the White Spear and Evolet. The next day, horse-mounted riders attack the camp. The warlord, taken by Evolet’s beauty, kidnaps her, enslaves the able-bodied, and kills those who fight back, leaving very few survivors. D’Leh, Tic’Tic, Ka’Ren, and a young boy, Baku, set out to rescue their fellow Yagahl as Old Mother follows their journey in spirit. During an attack on the slavers by terror birds, Evolet is recaptured along with Ka’Ren and Baku, and Tic’Tic is wounded. While hunting, D’Leh falls into a pit, where he helps free a trapped saber-tooth tiger, asking it not to eat him before escaping. Tic’Tic recovers and finds their way to a sedentary Naku village, also attacked by the riders. The surviving villagers nearly attack them until the saber-tooth tiger comes to save D’Leh from the initially hostile Naku. They also learn that D’Leh’s father was a guest of the Naku before the riders captured him.

Several tribes arrive to form a coalition to defeat the slavers, with D’Leh as their leader. They find the ships holding Evolet and their loved ones but fail to reach them before they cast off. They set out to follow on foot, and D’Leh learns to use the North Star to navigate the journey. D’Leh and the tribes discover an advanced Egyptian civilization ruled by the “Almighty”, an untouchable god-king, who is using the kidnapped tribesmen along with some mammoths to build pyramids. D’Leh and Tic’Tic sneak into the slave cages, and D’Leh learns that his father was killed trying to defend a slave. The party is spotted by the guards, who Tic’Tic kills before he succumbs to his wound. D’Leh and the tribesman infiltrate the civilization, and D’Leh starts a rebellion among the slaves, killing many of the Almighty’s forces. However, Ka’Ren sacrifices himself as D’Leh eventually starts a stampede.