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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 there’s 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 don’t know this yet, though, and the first time we catch a hint that there’s something deeper going on here, it’s when manny firmly, sharply insists to sid that partners should be loyal to each other. it’s not an obnoxiously blatant “hey i have trauma” flag, since it could be interpreted as the writers playing with the monogamy of mammoths and promiscuity of sloths, which i’m 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 (”I don’t like animals that kill for pleasure”). 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 didn’t realize it at first, but that’s 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 “oh, well that explains it.” but then he tells manny all about how they regularly do their best to ditch him and it’s so clear that he’s just too pure and innocent to hold any malice towards them. under it all, though, it’s clear that he’s 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 don’t have anyone except each other.

3. DIEGO! we stan. i think it’s 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 (sid’s family), were toxic and needed to be ditched (diego’s pack), or were loving but torn away by circumstance (manny’s family). i dunno, it just adds a really interesting layer of depth here. but anyway, diego’s arc was just really well done. he’s 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 diego’s 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. that’s so important! he tells them!!! there’s no stupid, “liar revealed” plotline where they figure out that he’s been tricking them because he comes clean himself, without provocation or pressure, and they do eventually forgive him and that’s SO important. diego wasn’t 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. i’m so emotionally attached to these early-2000′s CGI creatures okay.

4. speaking of which, this movie is surprisingly good-looking. like it came out in 2002. that is IMPRESSIVE. manny’s 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 it’s 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 pack’s 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 doesn’t 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 humans—these humans, specifically, since they seem to be the only community in the area—but where soto swears revenge, manny doesn’t 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 doesn’t make it any less worth it. manny isn’t doing this to try and make a statement or change the humans’ behavior, he just wants to prevent them from going through what he did. calling this story one of “breaking the cycle of violence” 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. it’s nothing personal—they’re predators. but still, manny seeks them out to return their baby to them. and when the baby’s father is raising his spear at manny when he’s trying to return it, you can just see that look in manny’s eyes, that he’s begging this human to understand, but he’s 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 isn’t 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 pack—a group who wants you for what you can do for them—and a herd—a 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 they’ve 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. manny’s choice to return this kid to its parents, even though he lost his own kid to those very parents, diego’s choice to come clean about his betrayal and his choice to join a herd even though he’s 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.

‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”

- Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8: Farewell to Lorien

This is how I think of Jackson’s movies. Yes, there are serious flaws - Gandalf’s de-powering, Gimli as comic relief, and Faramir, namely - but come on.

Remember when the guys making their chain mail invented a new method for quickly producing large amounts of it by hand? Remember Miranda Otto walking down the street, practicing sword positions? The guys who forged all of the swords - for leads and for extras? The men and women riders who volunteered to be riders of Rohan? The costume designers who designed the inside of Theoden’s armor (which no one would ever see) so beautifully that Bernard Hill said he felt like a king? The friendships between the cast, and their size doubles, and the stuntmen?

“The film’s art director and Kaynemaile’s founder Kayne Horsham worked with his team to construct each garment from plastic plumbing tubes, coating them in pure silver. Once filming wrapped, Horsham dedicated himself to creating a change to the liquid state assembly process to mass produce the polycarbonate chainmail for architectural applications — products that were light, but strong enough to protect the interior or exterior of a building. Now an industry-leading manufacturer, Kaynemaile produces mesh for everything from small interior screens to large scale exterior façades. Their mesh is easy to install and can be custom created for specialized applications.”

https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/kaynemaile-mesh-facade-systems/

every scene you see in the 11+ hours of glory that is the LOTR masterpiece is most like ridiculously elaborate or expensive–from model towers to the all-new motion capture technology used for gollum to the costumes and sets to the aerial on location shots of mother-fracking new zealand and the big impressive battle scenes and horse charges.

but then the story and the screenplay too–there is just SO much lore that is there in the background lurking if you want to look for it, yet it still remains simplified for the average viewer. Crazy impressive feat.

And the acting is heartfelt and real and makes you love the characters.

Superman: Red & Blue #5 - “De-Escalation” (2021)

but someone else could.

that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.

(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)

but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.

it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.

and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.

(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)

but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.

someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.

like

where are my stories about the decay of the world from the glory of days gone by?

where’s the motif of limb loss?

where’s the longing for the return of something worth following?

where are the bloodthirsty oaths that tear sanity to shreds?

where are the evil spirits who try and destroy the gods with steampunk V-1 buzz bombs (looking at you, The Lost Road)?

Superman: Man of Tomorrow #12 - “Superman’s Day Off” (2020)