Ice Age

Ice Age is a 2002 American computer-animated comedy film directed by Chris Wedge and co-directed by Carlos Saldanha. Produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. With the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, and Denis Leary. The film was released on March 15, 2002. It started a franchise with four sequels: Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), mh:awfulmovies:Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), and mh:awfulmovies:Ice Age: Collision Course (2016). A sixth installment, mh:awfulmovies:The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, was produced by Walt Disney Pictures without the involvement of Blue Sky Studios and released as a direct-to-streaming film on Disney+ in 2022.

Plot
Set during the days of the ice age, the film centers around three main characters—Manny, a no-nonsense woolly mammoth; Sid, a loudmouthed ground sloth; and Diego, a sardonic saber-tooth tiger—who come across a human baby and work together to return it to its tribe. Additionally, the film occasionally follows Scrat, a speechless "saber-toothed squirrel", who is perpetually searching for a place in the ground to bury his acorn.

Why It Came Prepared For The Ice Age

 * 1) Great animation for 2000s standards (despite looking rather dated by today's standards), considering how CGI animation was a new style at the time and not as developed as it is today. Not to mention much harder it was to animate than it is nowadays.
 * 2) The voice acting is pretty good.
 * 3) Very likable and memorable characters:
 * 4) Manny is introduced as an anti-social and uncaring woolly mammoth to those around him, but he's not a total killjoy and gets better, eventually becoming quite friendly and kind. And even before that, he still knew and meant well in spite of his sometimes short-tempered and careless nature.
 * 5) Sid is a clumsy, fast-talking and unpopular, but very optimistic and friendly ground sloth, even though most of the characters misjudge him for being a screw-up most of the time. And his acts of clumsiness and silliness provide tons of comic relief in a charming way. His goofiness is also less annoying here than in the sequels, despite him still being a likable character in those films (excluding the last two).
 * 6) Diego is introduced as a wild, vengeful, aggressive, and ruthless saber-toothed cat who was blindly loyal to his pack and their leader Soto who both shared a mutual respect for one another and was tasked with retrieving the baby from a human tribe as revenge for them killing nearly half of their pack. However, when he failed, Diego would either find the human baby or die. After meeting Manny and Sid who were protecting the child he was supposed to deliver to Soto, Diego tricked them into going to Half Peak where he says the baby's parents are waiting but his pack is and will kill the three of them, showing that he was quite uncaring. At first Diego and Manny's relationship had an incredibly rocky start, the two didn't trust one another nor value either as friends. However, as they continue their journey, Diego discovers Manny's tragic backstory and when the mammoth risks his own life to save Diego's, the two became extremely close friends. His relationship with Sid, on the other hand, was an instant dislike and constant annoyance. On more than one occasion, he came close to killing him with his teeth. However, the two have a very strong bond and are close friends possibly more than Manny even if the two might not trust each other. Throughout the entire film, Diego was seen as having conflicted loyalty between his Pack and his herd. Eventually, his loyalty between Manny and Sid was strong enough to defy Soto and defend his friends from the pack even on his apparent deathbed. He proved to be loyal enough to give Manny and Sid the true directions to the human tribe so they can return the baby. However, it turns out that Diego survived his wounds and has decided to join the herd with his friends.
 * 7) Scrat is a non-speaking comic relief and shockingly unlucky saber-toothed squirrel who is trying to find a place to store acorns for winter and he often steals the spotlight which would later happen again in its other four sequels. He doesn't really connect with Manny, Sid and Diego's storyline because he serves more as break from the main plot for laughs with his Looney Tunes-style slapstick humor, while the other characters in the main plot are meant to be more realistic. Even though he does not speak, his sounds and screams, along with his Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner-like antics makes up for hilarious comic relief that does not take away the serious side of the movie, just like the Minions with their Rabbids-like antics in the Despicable Me franchise.
 * 8) A great story about a trio of misfits setting out to reunite a baby with his family after his mother entrusted her son's safety to Manny before she died (following her plunge down a waterfall in order to save her and her son from Soto and his tribe) as they learn more about each other and Manny comes to terms with traumatic events from his past.
 * 9) Speaking of Manny's past, in the middle of the film, we find out why Manny was so cynical and grouchy in the first place. Since he was once a devoted father and husband, Manny loved his wife and child dearly, protecting them well until a band of humans on the hunt came between them. Manny attempted to fend them off but was unsuccessful as his wife and child were killed, causing him to also develop a hatred for them. This also left Manny embittered with the world at large, being cold and indifferent towards other creatures. But even after what the humans did to him, he was still able to forgive them enough to return Roshan to them near the end.
 * 10) *You can also clearly see the pain in Diego's eyes in that scene as well, as he realizes how much Manny has been through, and Diego is leading him right to his doom. He feels guilty, as he realize how noble Manny is, as he never held a grudge against the humans for taking his family from him. He was hurt and yet still found it in him to help the one race that harmed him the most. This is what makes Diego realize that Soto's plans for revenge are wrong, as the humans were just trying to provide for themselves, and revenge won't bring the dead sabers back to life despite satisfaction.
 * 11) While the franchise' villains aren't really known for being particularly memorable, this movie featured the best ones: Soto and the rest of Diego's old pack. As they're the most developed, interesting, and memorable villains in the franchise. As Soto actually has an established motive for his actions (his desire for revenge on a human tribe for killing half of his pack by eating the chief's infant son, Roshan, alive). They also serve as a legitimate threat towards the main trio and their quest, which is what a good villain should do.
 * 12) The meaning of the word "herd" also changes in a meaningful way over the course of the story. The first use of "herd" is in reference to the human tribe the main trio must return Roshan to, suggesting that "herd" simply means of your own kind. However, the next time the movie mentions a "herd" is when Manny dramatically saves Diego from falling into a river of lava. When Diego is confused as to why Manny would do this, his response is affecting, "That's what you do in a herd. You look after each other." Here, the meaning of the word "herd" is changing with Manny and makes the viewers think about what it means to be part of a family regardless of individual differences, which is a wonderful message.
 * 13) Funny moments like Sid collapsing from exhaustion on top of a geyser that goes off after Manny and Diego count down "3, 2, 1.", the gang's encounter with the dodo birds, and just about any of the cutaway scenes involving Scrat.
 * 14) The soundtrack is incredible, consisting of music like Send Me On My Way, Checking Out the Cave (the latter of which happened to play over what was, without a doubt, the saddest scene in the entire franchise). The background music itself is also very good.
 * 15) Fantastic ending: Diego, now full of respect for Manny for saving his life, changes his mind about handing Roshan over to Soto and confesses to Manny and Sid about the ambush. As the pair turn hostile towards him, Diego pleads for their trust and tries to foil the attack. The herd battles Soto's pack, but despite their efforts, Soto and his associates manage to corner Manny. As Soto closes in for the kill on Manny, Diego jumps in the way and is injured as a result. Manny then knocks a distracted Soto into a rock wall, causing several sharp icicles to fall onto Soto, killing him. Horrified, the rest of the pack retreat. Manny and Sid mourn for Diego's injury, which they believe is fatal, and continue their journey without him. The two manage to successfully return Roshan to his tribe, and to their surprise, Diego manages to rejoin them in time to see Roshan leave. The group then begin to head off to warmer climates.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) As stated in GQ#1, the animation, while impressive for the time and certainly ambitious, hasn't aged very well. The humans in particular are pretty off-looking and somewhat uncanny. Though this is justified by the fact that CGI wasn't fully developed as a form of animation at the time this film was made.
 * 2) *The design of Roshan, while cute, became a popular internet meme "Ice Age Baby" due to the horrid design, where people started expressing hate towards the character by sending hate images, accusing him of murdering people, creating racism, blaming him for the fall of the Soviet Union, and even killing him using all sorts of weapons.
 * 3) The third act was easy to predict.

Reception
Ice Age was largely well-received by critics and audiences. It currently holds a 77% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 167 reviews, with an average rating of 6.84/10. The site's consensus reads: "Even though Ice Age is treading over the same grounds as Monsters, Inc. and Shrek, it has enough wit and laughs to stand on its own." Similar site Metacritic had a score of 60% out of 31 reviews, meaning "mixed or average reviews". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote "''I came to scoff and stayed to smile". Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times called the film a "blandly likeable computer-animation extravaganza", comparing the film's plot to the Western film 3 Godfathers''.

Box Office
Ice Age was released on March 15, 2002, and had a $46.3 million opening weekend, a large number not usually seen until the summer season, and way ahead of Fox's most optimistic projection of about $30 million. Ice Age broke the record for a March opening (later surpassed in 2006 by its sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown) and at the time was the third-best opening ever for an animated feature—after Monsters, Inc. ($62.6 million) and Toy Story 2 ($57.4 million). Ice Age finished its domestic box office run with $176,387,405 and grossed $383,257,136 worldwide, being the 9th highest gross of 2002 in North America and the 8th best worldwide at the time.

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Trivia

 * This is Blue Sky Studios' debut film.
 * This is the only Blue Sky Studios film not to have their production logo. Their next film Robots would be the first to use it instead.
 * This is the first Blue Sky Studios film to be released on both VHS and DVD. All subsequent films were released on the latter format as well.
 * According to Denis Leary in a 2012 interview with Jay Leno, his character Diego was originally supposed to die near the end of the film. However, due to negative reception from the kids in the test audience bursting into tears during Diego's death scene just like how Leary himself predicted when he warned the producers, the scene was re-written so that Diego survived.