Ice Age (film)
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| Ice Age | |
|---|---|
| Image:IceAge.png DVD cover for Ice Age | |
| Directed by | Chris Wedge Carlos Saldanha |
| Produced by | John C. Donkin Lori Forte Christopher Meledandri |
| Written by | Michael J. Wilson Michael Berg |
| Starring | Ray Romano John Leguizamo Denis Leary |
| Music by | David Newman |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | March 15, 2002 (U.S.) DVD: November 26, 2002 |
| Running time | 81 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $59 million |
| Followed by | Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) |
| IMDb profile | |
Ice Age is a feature-length computer-animated film created by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox in 2002. It was directed by Carlos Saldanha and Chris Wedge from a story by Michael J. Wilson. Its sequels are called Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and Ice Age 3 (2009).
Ice Age was rated PG by the MPAA.
Contents |
[edit] Characters
The characters are all prehistoric animals with the exception of some early humans (who bear some Neanderthal-like facial features, yet are not shown conversing, only grunting or yelling, and possess technology that is much more sophisticated). The animals can talk to and understand each other and are voiced by a variety of famous actors. What can also be noted is that, like many films of prehistoric life, the rules of time periods apply very loosely, as many of the species shown in the film never actually lived in the same areas, let alone the same time periods.
- Manfred (Mammoth) — Ray Romano
- Sid (ground sloth) — John Leguizamo
- Diego (Smilodon) — Denis Leary
- Soto (Smilodon) — Goran Visnjic
- Zeke (Smilodon) — Jack Black
- Oscar (Smilodon) — Diedrich Bader
- Lenny (Smilodon) — Alan Tudyk
- Scrat (Saber-toothed squirrel) — Chris Wedge
- Carl (Brontops) — Cedric the Entertainer
- Frank (Brontops) — Stephen Root
- Rachel (Female ground sloth) — Jane Krakowski
- Jennifer (Female ground sloth) — Lorri Bagley
See also List of characters in the Ice Age films
[edit] Plot details
[edit] Synopsis
The film begins with a squirrel known as Scrat, who is trying to find a location to store his prized acorn. Eventually, as he tries to hide it, he causes an avalanche.
In the beginning, most animals are trying to avoid the ice age by migrating south. Sid, a clumsy ground sloth left behind by his family, is attacked by two Brontops whom he angered. Sid is soon saved by Manfred ("Manny"), an agitated mammoth who fights off the two Brontops. Not wanting to be alone and unprotected, Sid follows Manny.
Meanwhile, Soto, the leader of the Smilodon pride wants revenge on a group of humans by eating the chief's son, Roshan, because the humans had wiped out half of his pack. During the attack by the Smilodon pack on the humans, the baby's mother evades the cats who are pursuing her by jumping into a waterfall. With that, Soto orders Diego to find the baby and bring it to him alive.
Sid and Manny spot Nadia near the lake having survived her fall, having only enough strength to trust her baby to Manny before she disappears. After much persuasion by the sloth, they decide to return the baby but when they get to the human camp, the humans are gone. Diego convinces the pair to let him help by tracking the humans. The four travel on, with Diego secretly leading them to an ambush. Soon they reach a cave where Sid and Diego learn about Manny's past and his previous interactions with the humans.
At the end of the film, Diego, Manny and Sid battle Soto's pack and a short fight ensues. Diego fights against Soto, and Soto knocks Diego out. As Soto closes in for the kill on Manny, Diego leaps and stops Soto, who wounds Diego in the process. Manny, in vengeance, knocks Soto into a wall of rocks, where icicles fall and kill Soto. Manny and Sid manage to return the baby to his tribe, and Diego rejoins them, as the group begin heading off to warmer climates.
Years later, the Scrat is shown on a tropical island, with a coconut to replace his lost acorn, but as he proceeds to pack the coconut, it causes a volcanic eruption.
Alert viewers will notice the plot has some similarity to Disney's animated version of The Jungle Book (1967), though it also has a lot of themes and jokes from Three Men and a Baby. During a speech given at the Tokyo Film Festival in 2006, producer Bill Mechanic stated, "I had been at Disney, we had success with Three Men and I thought we had picked the ice age as a good milieu, and then what story could we tell in there? And I thought the way to do it was Three Men and a Baby."[citation needed]
[edit] Deleted Portion
Originally, Sid was trying to avoid another sloth named Sylvia. He manages to lose her by putting her in the path of some migrating glyptodons, who unknowingly carry her off when she got caught on their backs. Later he makes it look like Diego had killed him, but she saw he was faking, so she deserted him in anger. This segment was still used in the movie, but was used for Sid to avoid the two brontotheres who were still after him, as they fell for the trick. It was kept in the storybook version, however. The deleted scenes can be viewed separately, or in Nutty Movie Mode, both of which are included on Disc 1 of the two-disc Special Edition DVD.
[edit] Scrat
There is also a subplot where an animal named Scrat makes many comical attempts to bury his beloved acorn. His misfortunes include getting chased by an enormous glacier, being struck by lightning, attempting to thaw out the acorn by a fire too long so that it accidentally took the form of a kernel of popcorn, and finally getting cryonically frozen in an ice cube along with his much sought after nut. 20,000 years into the future, the ice cube washes up on the shore of an island. The sun slowly melts the cube, thawing Scrat and the ice surrounding his acorn, which is barely out of reach, and ends up being removed from the ice cube by the tide. Scrat then explodes out of the ice cube in anger and hits his head repetitively on a tree, which drops a coconut. Scrat's anger immediately turns to glee at this new find. He tries to pack it into the ground as he did previously with his acorns, but in the process causes a volcanic eruption.
Scrat is known to be similar to the prehistoric animal Leptictidium.
Scrat also got his own short film entitled Gone Nutty, where he loses his meticulously-organized collection of acorns in a catastrophic chain of events occurring after ramming his acorn into the hole in the exact middle of the collection. He remains with one which is reduced to an ashen crisp after it went crashing down on him with an impact like a missile.
[edit] Inaccuracies
- Although Diego is constantly referred to as a tiger, he is actually a sabre-tooth cat, or Smilodon. The Smilodon is, however, often referred to as the "sabre-tooth tiger."
- Glyptodonts did not have armour on their undercarriages.
[edit] Sequels
- Ice Age: The Meltdown was released on March 31, 2006. The movie focuses on the melting of a dam (due to, as Sid puts it at the end of the first movie, Global Warming) and the impeding flood.
- Ice Age 3 is set to be released on July 1, 2009
[edit] Animals Featured
[edit] Living Creatures
- Aardvark (huge long-nosed creatures seen in the migration scene)
- Alaskan husky (dogs owned by the humans)
- Brontops (Carl and Frank, and many others in the migration) *
- Dodo (an army of dodos were trying to escape from extinction by stock-piling watermelons)
- Glyptodont (large armadillo-like creatures that were seen in the migration scene)
- ground sloth(these sloths were actually short) (Sid as well as three female sloths)
- Macrauchenia (yellow long-trunked creatures that were seen in the migration scene)
- Mammoth (Manfred)
- Neanderthal (Roshan and his tribe)
- Palaeotherium (gray short-legged trunked creatures that were seen in the migration scene) *
- Saber-toothed squirrel (Scrat)
- Smilodon (Diego, Soto and other sabers)
Animals with an asterisk were extinct by the time the movie was set.
[edit] Dead or Frozen Creatures
- Perch (flung at Manny's face at human camp site)
- Tyrannosaurus Rex (shown in ice cave)
- Piranha (shown in ice cave)
- Amoeba (shown in ice cave as Sid's ancestor)
- Conodont (shown in ice cave as Sid's ancestor)
- Eryops (shown in ice cave as Sid's ancestor)
- Hapalops (shown in cave as Sid's ancestor)
[edit] See also
- List of characters in the Ice Age films
- List of animated feature-length films
- List of computer-animated films
[edit] External links
- Official web site
- Ice Age at the Internet Movie Database
- Ice Age at Rotten Tomatoes
- Ice Age at Metacritic
- Ice Age at the Open Directory Project
- Ice Age at Box Office Mojo
- Ice Age Fan Club on Bebo
| Blue Sky Studios |
|---|
| Feature-length animations |
|
Ice Age (2002) • Robots (2005) • Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) • Horton Hears a Who! (2008) • Ice Age 3 (2009) |
| Short films |
|
Bunny (1998) • Gone Nutty (2003) • No Time for Nuts (2006) |
| Contributions in other films |
|
Joe's Apartment (1996) • A Simple Wish (1997) • Alien: Resurrection (1997) • Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) • Jesus' Son (1999) • Fight Club (1999) • Titan A.E. (2000) |
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Categories: Articles lacking sources from September 2007 | All articles lacking sources | English-language films | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since September 2007 | 2002 films | 20th Century Fox films | American films | Films featuring anthropomorphic characters | Children's fantasy films | Computer-animated films | Prehistoric fantasy films | Films about animals | Ice Age films

