February – the snow is melting, the sun and daylight are starting to return again, and that also coincidentally means another edition of Unikum and a review that hopefully fits the season. Ice Age, the series. A movie series now old enough to legally drink in Norway. This year it’s 23 years since the very first Ice Age movie came out—I wasn’t even born then. And now,even 23 years later, they’re still making movies about a mammoth, a sloth, a saber–tooth tiger,their family, and a lovable squirrel named Scrat. Let’s jump into an icy cold movie franchise review.
It all started long ago, way back in our past, with Sid the sloth—recently abandoned by his family and now all alone in the world. That was at least until he met Manny the mammoth.Though the two didn’t get along well at first, Sid eventually grew on him. The duo, traveling through the wild, eventually find a human and her child, whom they save. The parenting duo then begin their quest to return the infant to its tribe. Along the way they meet up with Diego and his own tribe, who seek revenge for their fallen tigers—many of whom had been killed by the child’s father and his tribe of hunters. Though neither Sid nor Manny trusts Diego, they let him join their pack for now, as he promised them to lead torwards the child’s tribe. However, it turns into a trap. Diego, having found a friendship and bond with the good-natured duo,betrays his tribe and they safely manage to save the child and return it to its father.
The first movie, having been a box office success and a well–rated movie, was only the first taste of what the Ice Age series would bring with them. And four years later came Ice Age: The Meltdown, the sequel to the 2002 classic.
The Meltdown sees the trio living life together in a valley surrounded by ice caps and neighboring animals. Thanks to Sid’s uncanny ability to find himself in dangerous situations,they soon find out their valley is melting, and in a few short days, it will all be underwater. After a friendly warning from a hungry vulture, the trio—along with the rest of the valley’s inhabitants turn their eyes toward a supposed ark that can save them all. Along the way the the trio meets Ellie, a mammoth who thinks she is a possum, and Crash and Eddie, her possum brothers. The two groups manage to escape the peril behind them and board the ark to safety, becoming the family that will last through the next three movies, a show, and a spinoff movie.
Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs sees Manny and Ellie happily married and expecting the birth of their child. Diego, the fearless tiger, is starting to feel some anxiety about the changing times. And after his previous family left him at the start of Ice Age 1, even Sid is starting to wish for a family of his own. Driven by the longing of said feeling Sid sets out on a journey off his own, stealing a set of eggs he finds nearby in a cave. Though they may not be his, Sid takes care of the eggs as his own. Their mother, however, disagrees and kidnaps the sloth, taking him and the eggs down to a vast underground paradise filled with dinosaurs. With Sid missing and once again in peril, the herd must venture down to the depths and rescue him. In the underground world, they find a guide who helps them through their troubles—Buck, a one-eyed weasel who we will see again in later movies. He leads the group through treacherous Lava falls, past hungry dinosaurs. The journey towards Sid isn’t without its perils. However, while going in to labor, with some help from Diego, Ellie gives birth do a baby mammoth named Peaches, and they manage to reunite with Sid again. With the herd’sand Buck’s adventures together coming to an end, Buck decides to stay where he feels he belongs—among the dinosaurs. All the while this is happening, Scrat has managed to find a fellow squirrel who he quickly falls in love with. However, the relationship sadly doesn’t last for long, as he and his newfound love fight, ending with Scrat loosing both his love and his precious acorn down in the luscious underground city.
Though what is often considered the best of the Ice Age franchise is over, the herd’s adventures aren’t quite there, and so we move on to:
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift. Six years has passed since the ending of the last movie, and Ellie and Manny’s daughter has grown into a rebellious child with an overprotective father. The father–daughter duo gets in to an argument, causing a rift between them. Meanwhile, Scrat,hellbent on pursuing his love of acorns, causes world chancing events on Earth. Those events leave the herd split up. Together Manny, Diego, Sid, and Sid’s grandma Granny, must traverse the newly changed world all the while fighting and defending themselves from a nearby band of pirates. After a perilous fight which sees the herd victorious, the group heads home, and Manny and his daughter reunite and accepts the fact that his little Ellie isn’t so little anymore.
Ice Age 5: Collison Course—the last of the mainline movies and the last movie to feature the whole heard together. Five years after Continental Drift, Manny and Ellie are planning the wedding of their daughter Peaches and Julian. Though Manny may still be overprotective of his daughter, he gives Julian his blessing. Far away from the heard, Scrat, having survived the catastrophic events which he caused in the previous movie, finds him on a UFO. In true Scratfashion, he sets of yet another series of events, leading the herd to traverse a mountain side while trying to roll their only hope of survival upwards and into a volcano. Thanks to some lucky help from Buck, Julian, and the rest of their herd, they manage what they set out to do, saving their home and the Earth. THE END.
Not quite.
In 2022, saw the release of The Adventures of Buck Wild, a movie centered around Buck, the one-eyed weasel. Though most of the main characters from the previous movies return, most of them are voiced by new actors. The Adventures of Buck Wild was the last piece of Ice Agemedia released until Ice Age: Scrat Tales, released just a short few months later. This series consisted of shorts centered around Scrat finding Baby Scrat —a cute, adorable young Squriell whom Scrat becomes a father to. The shorts follow Scrat and his son together, showing the bond that grows between them.
Sadly, Blue Sky Studios, who were behind the Ice Age franchise, were shut down shortly after, but not before an employee would upload one final short to YouTube, titled The End. A 30–second clip featuring Scrat as he finally gets a happy ending—ending with Scrat and his acorn, together at last—serving as a final send of to Scrat and the Ice Age franchise.
Though it may have had its ups and downs, Ice Age as a franchise has been a staple for generations of kids and adults over the years. It’s a perfect series (at least the first three movies) to watch during snowy winter and autumn seasons before the grass turns green and we all have to go outside again.
I give the Ice Age franchise in its entirety 6/10 (and an 8/10 at least, for the first three movies).
Hope you enjoyed this not–quite–short review and the rest of this edition of Unikum.
