A new teaser and poster for the upcoming Ice Age sequel came out today so…just a little vent about the Ice Age films lmao
So of course the first film was a comedy film just like the sequels that followed it and it had plenty of silly moments and goofy character designs (just look at Sid and Scrat lol) but compared to the sequels it just felt way more grounded in reality.
The fact that humans were in this film helped a lot with that. One thing every Ice Age fan has criticized (even those that like the sequels) is that we’ve never seen them reunite with Roshan the baby as an adult. And yeah, after Manny, Sid and Diego return him to his village at the end of the movie they part ways to go migrate but prehistoric humans didn’t just live in one specific village back then. It’s unrealistic that they never encountered more humans in any future films.
The scene where we learn Manny’d backstory is what I always immediately think of when I think about why the first film is the best one:
None of the sequels had the emotional weight that the first film had, they just became another comedic cash-grab franchise that felt less like films about animals living in the ice age era and more like generic goofy talking animal movies where said animals just happen to be ice age animals (does that make sense???)
The characters felt more grounded in the original film too. First off there’s Manny, who is a grouchy aloof mammoth who just wants to be left alone. Well as we learn in the scene I posted above, the reason for that was because his mate and child were killed by hunters, which left him grieving and bitter. And something that never really sunk in for me until I got older is that his first scene shows that he probably doesn’t really have much of a will to live either…you remember how the film started with animals migrating to warmer climates but Manny’s going the wrong way? Heading north during migration time would be a death sentence for any animal due to the harsh changing climate and lack of food, he was basically suicidal at the start of the film. Damn…
Even before we learn his backstory, we still get moments that show he’s a good guy at heart despite how bitter he appears; firstly there’s the scene where he first meets Sid and protects him from the rhinos. Manny doesn’t even know this sloth and finds him annoying, but he still fights the rhinos off to protect him, saying “you know? I don’t like animals that kill for pleasure”.
Then there’s the scene where he Manny and Sid find Roshan and his mother; the mother, who is clearly weak and close to death, tries pushing her baby onto dry land, but when he starts to roll back towards her, Manny catches him with his trunk, letting the mother die happy that her son is safe. Even though he was still reluctant to return the baby to his village after that, he still wanted the mother to die happy since he knows what losing a child is like.
There’s more but I just wanted to highlight those two.
Anyway, long story short, Manny’s whole arc was about moving on from his grief and opening up to being part of a herd again. It’s a storyline that a lot of people who’ve dealt with grief can relate to.
Then there’s Diego, who starts out as one of the villains but goes through a redemption arc the longer he stays with Manny, Sid and the baby. Like Manny, he has a dark past involving humans (they slaughtered a majority of his smilodon pack for their fur), but unlike Manny, who basically lost his will to live and just wanted to be left alone, the smilodons become vengeful. Diego himself starts out as a cold and remorseless predator, albeit one with a snarky sense of humor (another thing he shares with Manny lol).
Diego does warm up and start bonding with Manny and Sid the more the journey goes on, but the moment that truly changes him is when Manny, who still doesn’t fully trust Diego, saves him from lava because “that’s what you do in a herd, you look out for each other”, in Manny’s own words. From what we’ve seen of Diego’s pack, they treat him pretty coldly and in general just have an “everyone looks out for themselves”, the leader of the pack Soto even threatens to kill Diego if he fails to bring him the baby, so love, kindness and looking out for others wasn’t something he’d experienced before. Another key moment is the scene after that when Roshan learns how to walk, and despite Sid being the one who tries to get Roshan to walk to him, he chooses to walk to Diego instead and hugs his leg(🥺).
I should end Diego’s analysis by adding that originally he was supposed to die at the end but this was changed to have him survive. I’m glad they changed their minds, especially because if they hadn’t then we wouldn’t have that sweet moment at the end where Roshan plays “where’s the baby” with the herd as he’s being taken back to the village and Diego catches up just in time to return the gesture and say goodbye (🥺🥺).
Finally there’s Sid, the comic relief of the group. Unlike Manny and Diego, Sid is friendly and outgoing from the start. He’s also clumsy, cowardly and dimwitted, all things that other animals consider him an annoyance, even his own family who straight up abandoned him. While Sid may not have turned cold and bitter due to his family abandoning him more than once, he’s still left with abandonment issues as a result. Initially his sole reason for hanging around Manny was for protection against predators after Manny saved him from the rhinos, but as the journey goes on Sid gains a sense of belonging with Manny and Diego, becoming the loyal family he never had.
So onto the sequels, the second one at least had a premise that was still grounded in reality (the ice age being affected by global warming), but after that they just became more and more ridiculous. Dinosaurs still living in an underground world? Animal pirates?? Scrat in space???
I will say that one thing I like is that they chose to expand on Manny’s character arc by having him find love and becoming a father again. I also like Ellie a lot, and I do think her backstory of being raised by possums and actually thinking she is one as a result is adorable. The idea of her having two possum brothers is cute too, but unfortunately Crash and Eddie are the types of characters that you think are funny when you’re a kid but consider annoying once you become an adult (at least that’s how I feel).
While I’m happy with Ellie, her brothers and eventually Peaches becoming part of the herd, they should’ve stopped there in terms of adding characters to the herd. They gave Diego a love interest (Shira, who has no personality other than “Tough Girl ™”) and gave Sid a love interest as well (who has long human hair and fur that looks like a dress because these films stopped caring about feeling grounded in reality and they need to remind you she’s a Girl ™). There’s also Buck (I do love him but yeah), Peaches’s friend Louis, her crush Ethan, her husband Julian and GOD STOP, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE.
I already mentioned how I love that Manny found love and became a father again, I hate that they did the whole Overprotective Dad and Rebellious Daughter thing with them. I admit that it does make sense for Manny to be overprotective of Peaches considering what happened to his previous family, and I would’ve been fine with that if it had been done with more emotional weight but from the way it was executed, it felt more like a generic family sitcom dynamic and that Manny’s trauma had nothing to do with it.
There’s lots more to criticize and analyze about this series but I’m getting tired so my brain’s getting foggy and this post is long enough already. So yeah, that’s my ramble lol
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