OKAY FOR REAL i rewatched the original ice age a little while ago for nostalgia and this movie is GOOD you guysāi literally rewatched it all over again the next day. there are a couple of key things i noticed:
1. they know how to shut up. the animals know how and when to shut up. yes, even the comic relief one. do you have any idea how important this is? yes, they play it for laughs when diego first confronts manny and they fight and then diego stops, clears his throat, and asks manny politely for the child (which was brilliant, by the way, i laughed aloud), but aside from that, when thereās a serious moment, they let it be serious. when manny accepts the baby from the mother, when he sees the paintings of the mammoths on the cave wall, when he returns the baby to its father, these are moments where everyone is dead silent, even sid, and the music is soft and heartwrenching and the next line is rarely, if ever, a joke that undercuts the prior moment. they let these scenes linger and it really makes this feel like an emotional, somber, serious movie with fun character interactions rather than a comedy that makes cheap appeals to emotion.
2. the way they characterize manny at the beginning is SUPER interesting to me. by the end of this movie, we know manny is a big softie who was deeply wounded by the loss of his family. we as the audience donāt know this yet, though, and the first time we catch a hint that thereās something deeper going on here, itās when manny firmly, sharply insists to sid that partners should be loyal to each other. itās not an obnoxiously blatant āhey i have traumaā flag, since it could be interpreted as the writers playing with the monogamy of mammoths and promiscuity of sloths, which iām fairly certain they bring up in this movie, if not one of the others. still, though, it strikes that perfect balance of not making the Oh Frick Manny Had A Family reveal later on completely blindside us while also not telegraphing it too obviously. at the beginning, manny is clearly a loner who wants nothing to do with sid, but to avoid making him come off as a straight-up jerk, they make it abundantly clear in the introductory sequence that he has a strong moral code that he holds himself to (āI donāt like animals that kill for pleasureā). i just thought this was really well done, opening the movie with a scene that demonstrates both that manny is a complex character who comes off as cold but cares deeply (which sid basically sees straight through and i love it) and that sid is incredibly unlikable and as such nobody likes him. i didnāt realize it at first, but thatās such an interesting move. we open the movie with sid getting abandoned by his family, but then we find out how annoying he is and go āoh, well that explains it.ā but then he tells manny all about how they regularly do their best to ditch him and itās so clear that heās just too pure and innocent to hold any malice towards them. under it all, though, itās clear that heās lonely, too, and has been for a while. these characters have depth, and feel like people, and every quiet moment just drives it home even more that they really donāt have anyone except each other.
3. DIEGO! we stan. i think itās really interesting how instead of just throwing these characters into the world together, the writers make it clear that they had other people, before, but those people either were toxic and ditched them (sidās family), were toxic and needed to be ditched (diegoās pack), or were loving but torn away by circumstance (mannyās family). i dunno, it just adds a really interesting layer of depth here. but anyway, diegoās arc was just really well done. heās only there to get the kid, and though he does start to enjoy himself, he still has his mission. but when manny risks his life to save diegoās and sid makes that comment pointing it out, you can SEE how he starts to linger, starts to dread, the guilt builds up until he TELLS THEM. thatās so important! he tells them!!! thereās no stupid, āliar revealedā plotline where they figure out that heās been tricking them because he comes clean himself, without provocation or pressure, and they do eventually forgive him and thatās SO important. diego wasnāt being honest with them, was living a lie and planning to betray them, and he made the incredibly difficult decision to stop in his tracks and come clean on his own terms because he knew it was the right thing to do. there were So Many Ways the writers could have handled that reveal, but to have diego just stop, think, change his mind, and confess was SO GOOD. also the dynamic between the three of them was just really, really great. iām so emotionally attached to these early-2000ā²s CGI creatures okay.
4. speaking of which, this movie is surprisingly good-looking. like it came out in 2002. that is IMPRESSIVE. mannyās fur holds up shockingly well and my suspension of disbelief was never fricked up by poorly rendered CGI graphics. props to blue sky, man.
5. okay point five is lowkey the whole reason for this rant because itās a really really cool point i only noticed on my second watch through: the parallelism. why does diego have to kidnap this baby? because his packās leader (soto, apparently) wants to eat it alive as revenge for the humans killing half of his own. why does manny want to rescue this baby? because he, too, is a parent who lost a child and doesnāt want the humans to go through that. but, wait, hang on a minute, how did he lose his child? oh, yeah, the humans killed it and his wife right in front of him. both soto and manny lost most of the people they care about to the humansāthese humans, specifically, since they seem to be the only community in the areaābut where soto swears revenge, manny doesnāt want them to go through what he went through, even though this very act could be what perpetuates that. and they acknowledge it in the movie. diego mentions how this baby is gonna grow up to hunt them and sid counters that maybe the fact that they saved it means it will remember their kindness and things will change. but the whole movie carries the somber atmosphere of a tragedy because, as someone else mentioned above, the humans are steadily encroaching and all of these creatures are going to go extinct, and this one act of kindness may not have the intended effect and may soon be lost to the uncaring tides of history, but that doesnāt make it any less worth it. manny isnāt doing this to try and make a statement or change the humansā behavior, he just wants to prevent them from going through what he did. calling this story one of ābreaking the cycle of violenceā cheapens it, i feel, because the humans are hunting the mammoths, not out of malice, but out of necessity for furs and meat and bone and tusk. itās nothing personalātheyāre predators. but still, manny seeks them out to return their baby to them. and when the babyās father is raising his spear at manny when heās trying to return it, you can just see that look in mannyās eyes, that heās begging this human to understand, but heās prepared to get speared if it means this kid gets to be with his father and MY HEART, YOU GUYS.
6. FOUND FAMILY FOUND FAMILY like i know found family isnāt really all that hard to come by, but this movie is REALLY explicit about it in a good way! they make the distinction between a packāa group who wants you for what you can do for themāand a herdāa group who regularly looks out to see what they can do for you. and a saber-tooth tiger leaves his PACK to join this HERD! and they joke that this is the weirdest herd theyāve ever seen, but a carnivore has just joined a herd and that makes me feel SO MANY FEELINGS
ultimately, ice age is a movie about choices. mannyās choice to return this kid to its parents, even though he lost his own kid to those very parents, diegoās choice to come clean about his betrayal and his choice to join a herd even though heās a carnivore, manny making the choice to risk his life to save diego, diego making the choice to return the favor, and all three of them making the choice to not give up hope that they can find a new family again after losing what they had before. this is a movie in which characters are more than the way they were born, are more than the circumstances of their lives, are more than what happens to them. they make choices and their choices matter and they choose to be kind, even when they have absolutely nothing to gain from it and everything to lose from it.
i guess you could say this movie aged nicely.
dailybridgerton
stormborns
jacobvanloon
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
