Review of Ice Age (2002) by Ksaweryz — 28 Sep 2022

Okay, let’s get it out of the way, it’s unfair to say that the animation is ugly, even for 2002 standards. The beginning sequence with Scrat has no sense of sunlight or nature to it, even though the weather was clean. After all, it was their first movie ever and even Pixar had the same issue with Toy Story (except the outdoors modelling was better EVEN IN 1995). The wordless story telling is extremely impactful and this one scene where they explain with no words how Manny lost his family to hunters and Manny seeing the baby as someone to protect to make up for his loss was extremely emotional and well written.

The character arcs are also very well developed with Manny’s already being explained, but I’ll add one more thing. He never mentions his family by word but his pain and remorse in the hunter backstory scene is made explicitly clear, again, without words. Diego goes from a villain, trying to lead the herd to a death trap or an ambush, learns to go past his villainy and even saves Manny in the climax.

We get to the plot less than 20 minutes in, which may be slow, but nowhere nearly as bad as the Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which took half an hour to get to the plot point mentioned in the title of the film. Ice Age is one of the greatest classic movies to be made and will remain a strong memory in my heart.