Western Animation / Ice Age

The Ice Age is coming.

"I don't know about you guys, but we are the weirdest herd I've ever seen."

— Sid

Ice Age is a 2002 computer-animated movie made by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios. It was the first film in the Ice Age franchise, which would soon become Blue Sky's signature film series.

In the Ice Age, a clumsy sloth named Sid, a grumpy woolly mammoth named Manny, a sneaky saber-toothed cat named Diego and an acorn-obsessed saber-toothed squirrel named Scrat are forced to become unlikely heroes. The first three reluctantly come together and brave the deadly elements of the impending big freeze. Scrat has his own parallel Story Arc. He tries to bury his beloved acorn, but he only manages to create mayhem around him.

In the first Ice Age film, a migrating herd is traveling south—except Manfred (Ray Romano), a reclusive wooly mammoth traveling north. Meanwhile, a ground sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo) is left behind sleeping when the rest of his family and all the other prehistoric mammals begin the journey to the south and decides to follow him. When a human camp is attacked by a pack of vengeful sabers, a woman takes her baby and jumps in a river. Before she dies from her trauma, Manny and Sid rescue the baby. The two animals decide to search for the father and return the baby to him. Diego (Denis Leary), one of the saber-tooths that attacked the humans, comes also claiming the baby. Diego starts to work as a double agent, but along the journey he is befriended by Manny and Sid and finally joins them.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer 1, Trailer 2

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The film provides examples of:

• Aardvark Trunks: There is a creature which is identified as an aardvark, but though it has the ears of an aardvark, it has the bushy tail of a giant anteater, and its snout is weirdly elongated to be reminiscent of an anteater (not an aardvark), but that animal would have a tiny mouth at the tip of its snout, whereas the cartoon critter has its mouth at the base.
• Accidental Athlete: Sid makes a touchdown during a game of football against dodos, ice-skates better than his other traveling companions, and is successfully able to create the first skiing and snowboarding events in history!
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: The cave paintings scene, where we learn Manny's backstory.
• Allegiance Affirmation: During the climactic scene near Glacier Pass, Soto has Manny cornered. Soto orders Diego to flank their target, but Diego instead interposes himself in Manny's defense. Soto is stunned that Diego has sided with a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, but remains undeterred, being driven by a lust for vengeance. The confrontation results in Diego's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version has a surprisingly melancholy theme song for a family comedy. It's called "Hitoshizuku" by ZONE, which translates to "A Single Drop of Tears". This could reflect the first movie's Darker and Edgier tone compared to the sequels.
• Arc Words:
  • Diego asks to Manny why he saved his life, when he almost die doing so. Manny responds: "That's what you do in a herd. You look out for each other". This line comes later in the climax, after his Heroic Sacrifice.
  • "Where's the baby?" comes up numerous times over the course of the movie: when Soto interrogates Diego over losing Roshan over the waterfall, when Diego tries to make Roshan stop crying by playing peekaboo, when Manny finds Roshan missing and initially believes Diego took him, when Diego finds Sid in the tar pits, and finally by the end of the movie when Sid and Diego play peekaboo with Roshan one last time.
• Artistic License – Biology: While escaping from the lava, Manny at one point makes a jump to get over a chasm. Elephants, and by extension mammoths, are of the few mammals that can't jump.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • The Dodos are in fact extinct, but they didn't die out during the Ice Age. They were wiped out by man very quickly after discovering the remote island of Mauritius where they used to live. Not mainly for food (they tasted awful), but simply as some sort of sport. They were in no way Too Dumb to Live as portrayed in the movie, but just evolutionary unfit for the challenge by naked monkeys who, after a long sea travel, would see clubbing fat flightless birds as appropriate entertainment.
  • Combined with Science Marches On, the Macrauchenia are shown as possessing trunks. However, a study in 2018 concluded they most likely didn't have it, probably possessing moose-like noses instead. They are also far bigger than they were in real life, apparently being around the size of a giraffe than the one of a horse like they were.
• Art Shift: During the sequence where the "herd" happens upon the cave paintings, which fade into traditional animation to reveal Manny's tragic loss and explain the reason why he is so moody — he's still grieving.
• The Atoner: Diego becomes this as the film progresses, even after revealing that he was setting them up for an ambush.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Diego delivers one near the end of the movie when Sid is saying goodbye to the humans (who have no clue what he's saying): "Save your breath, Sid. You know humans can't talk."
• Batman Gambit: Diego kicks off the climax by exploiting Zeke's wish to maul something by goading him into chasing Sid, giving away the pack's position and Manny time to find a weapon.
• Big Damn Reunion: After Roshan and his father spend almost the whole movie apart with Roshan's father having no idea if his son is even still alive, at the end, they are finally reunited, safe and sound.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio:
  • Manny (big), Diego (thin) and Sid (short).
  • The supporting saber-toothed cats: Lenny (big), Oscar (thin) and Zeke (short).
• Bilingual Bonus: Anyone who's been in Tae Kwon Do would find the "multi-language" feature on the first film's DVD amusing, as the selected scene (the trio poop checking) ends with Manny shouting "ENOUGH!" in Korean. The word is Romanized as "ku mahn", and is a common phrase used in TKD class when the instructor wants you to finish an exercise.
• Blade Brake: Diego tries to use his claws to stop his momentum during the ice slide scene. It doesn't work.
• Book Ends: Shortly after meeting Sid and saving him from the rhinos, Manny cracks wise about letting Sid ride on his back before bluntly declining when Sid misses his sarcasm and assumes he's actually offering. Near the end of the movie, after returning Roshan to his tribe, a much happier Manny finally lets Sid ride on his back.
• Braving the Blizzard: The protagonists decide to take the human infant to his tribe at Glacier Pass, which includes some mountainous terrain where a fierce blizzard rages. Everyone squints, and plods resolutely through the driving snow, including the Plucky Comic Relief character Sid.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: A small one, but it's there. Right after Diego makes a threat to eat Sid, he walks off... and Sid stares at the audience and begs, "Help me..."
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The ominous vibrating icicles in the final battle.
  • Diego's game of Where's the Baby with Roshan during the first half. Watch closely to see how it shows up again later.
• Chirping Crickets: "We're gonna miss the mi... the mi... gration..."
• Chromosome Casting: Roshan's mother is the only significant female character, and she doesn't last very long.
• Convection, Schmonvection: You'd think the ice would melt a hell of a lot faster with all that lava underneath it.
• A Crack in the Ice: The herd is walking on an ice field when a lava flow opens up beneath them, leaving only a thin bridge getting thinner by the minute.
• Cynicism Catalyst: For Manny, it was the death of his wife and child.
• Dawn Attack: The tigers pull this on the human tribe to avenge those who've been killed for clothing.
• Disney Death: Diego. (The commentary by the directors confirms that he originally actually did die in that scene.)
• Disproportionate Retribution: Carl and Frank are out to kill Sid because he... ruined their salad, accidentally flicked scat on them, and said they had tiny brains.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: The Tae-Kwan-Dodos: "Doom on you! Doom on you! Doom on you!"
• Dramedy: The first film is this, balancing comedic moments with trauma like The Reveal that Manny's family was killed, the mentions of death, and Runar losing his wife and child (although the latter wasn't permanent).
• Driven to Suicide: It isn't explicitly stated but it's likely this was the reason Manny was heading north rather than south like everyone else. He's just lost his family, and subsequently, the will to live.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: This film is much Darker and Edgier than the ones that would follow. It easily has the highest confirmed body count, with human beings slaughtering mammoths, saber-tooths slaughtering human beings, multiple characters with dead family members, parents trying and failing to protect their children, and somebody's mom practically dying on screen. It also attempts to be at least somewhat scientifically accurate by basing all the characters on real species, having them walk on all fours instead of having humanlike anatomy, and including human characters. After this film, no human characters have appeared or ever been referenced^note Excluding the questionably canon Mammoth Christmas Special.
• Facial Dialogue: Other than telling Sid to shut up, Diego doesn't say anything during Manny's flashback in the cave, but his expression speaks volumes. Likewise, Sid takes Diego's advice and doesn't say a word, but the look on HIS face says it all, too.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: Soto's death, via icicles.
• Family of Choice: The "herd" by the end of the movie, largely thanks to the involvement of Roshan bringing them all together.
• Fantastic Racism: Even if they did so for good reason, Manny and Sid were wary of Diego at first mostly because he was a saber-tooth.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: During the lava scene, the ice Diego is struggling on breaks, but Manny is able to grab him. The fallen ice hits the lava and almost instantly shoots back up. The same thing happens moments later when the ice can no holder hold Manny’s weight after he rescues Diego.
• Fooled by the Sound: Manny, Sid, and Diego hear a volcano rumbling, and Manny asks Sid if that was his stomach.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Sid tells Manny how his family abandoned him, he asks Manny about his family. Manny doesn't answer, and then tells Sid the following morning he should be loyal (in Sid's case, grateful) to a mate if and when he gets one. We find out what happened to his family in the cave drawings scene. Manny had a wife and child who were killed by humans, and he's still grieving for them, so he knows full well about being loyal to a mate. This is likely a reason why he denies his feelings for Ellie in the second film at first too.
  • Each of the frozen beings Sid sees in the ice is connected to an installment in the franchise: a carnivorous fish, a dinosaur, a set of sloths, and a flying saucer.
• Frozen Body Fluids: During the travelling montage when the four are travelling through a blizzard, Sid's nose becomes runny from the cold and his snot freezes.
• Gilligan Cut: Sid announces that with his "half a stick" (as Manny puts it), he shall create fire. "We'll see if brain triumphs over brawn tonight!" he announces. Then we immediately cut to Sid sitting in the rain, pathetically attempting to make a fire.
  Manny: Hey, think I saw a spark.
• The Glomp: Sid does this to Diego when the latter returns from their Disney Death. Diego doesn't really appreciate being Glomped though.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Soto being impaled by the falling icicles.
  • Also, Manny's family being killed by hunters.
• Grossout Fakeout: When Sid takes off baby Roshan's cloth diaper (thinking that he went to the bathroom), he holds it as if it was full of excrement. He waves it around like he's losing his balance, and then flings it into the air as if he tripped. The diaper unfolds and lands on Manny, only to be revealed that it's completely clean.
• Heel Realization: Diego after seeing Manny taking care of the baby even after remembering that he lost his family to human hunters.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Nadia, the baby's mother and Manny and Diego, done for each other, and both times they nearly die.
  • Tragically averted in Manny's backstory, where he stayed behind to hold off the human hunting party, but his mate and child were cornered and eventually killed by humans regardless.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Played with: humans kill mammoths and have caused real heartbreak for Manny, but at this stage of human development they aren't really worse than other predatory species like saber-tooths.
• Human Popsicle: Or squirrel popsicle, in this case. The Stinger shows that Scrat and his acorn got frozen in a block of ice at some point after the events of the movie and only defrosted around 20,000 years later.
• Ignorant About Fire: Sid manages to make fire using flint and tinder, and proudly declares himself as the "Lord of the Flame", then almost immediately sets his own tail on fire, making him run around in panic.
• I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: Manny and Sid receive baby Roshan from his mother Nadia in this way, seconds before she succumbs to her injuries.
• Impact Silhouette: At the end of the scene where Manny, Sid and Diego are sliding after Roshan through the ice tunnels, first Sid, then Diego and finally Manny crash through a wall of ice and snow and one of these is formed each time.
• Improvised Weapon: During the final fight, Manny finds a large stone pole which he uses to whack Oscar, Lenny, and Zeke, sending them flying.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: After Sid has tricked Carl and Frank into thinking Diego has killed him, but Diego won't release him, Manny appears and tells Diego to "Spit that [Sid] out. You don't know where it's been." Diego promptly does.
• It Will Never Catch On: In the traveling scene, Manny, Sid, Diego and Roshan pass Stonehenge. Manny remarks "Modern architecture. It'll never last."
• I Want Them Alive!: Soto wants Roshan alive when he eats him. "If I'm gonna enjoy my revenge, I want it to be fresh."
• Killed Offscreen: Roshan's mother is clinging to the edge of the river, and hands him to Manny and Sid. When they look down at her again, she's gone.
• Language Barrier: Exaggerated. Humans and animals not only can't understand each other, but are unaware of each other's capacity for speech.
• Literal Ass-Kicking: While running from Carl and Frank, Sid kicks Diego in the rear to make him put Sid in his mouth and pretend Sid is dead so Carl and Frank will stop hunting him.
• Low Clearance: Sid gets separated from the rest of the herd in the ice caves when he walks headfirst into an ice shelf conveniently at the same level as his head.
• Manipulative Bastard: Sid has a moment of this. When he's trying to get rid of Carl and Frank, Diego tells Sid to get away from him after Sid asks Diego to bite him. Desperate, Sid kicks Diego in the backside to anger him. Diego promptly gets Sid in his mouth.
• Manly Tears: All of the three main (animal) male characters cry at some parts of the movie. When Diego cries, it shows his heart beginning to soften and him starting to question his motives; Sid is in general very emotionally prone to outbursts such as crying, whilst Manny's tears give way to truly forgiving the humans for the wrong and loss they've caused him.
• Meaningful Echo: A very big one: "That's what you do in a herd." Manny says this to Diego after saving his life in the lava field. And it's one of the big things that contribute to Diego's Heel–Face Turn. In the final battle, Diego saves Manny's life when Soto goes for the kill, but is severely wounded instead. Manny tells Diego he didn't have to do it. Diego repeats what Manny told him the previous day, which at the time, seemed to be his Last Words.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Sid and Scrat's names have no intended deeper meaning, most likely because they're the comic reliefs of the film.
  • Manfred means "Man of Peace" and his character arc has him show he stands for justice and forgiveness and like a man of peace, he brokers reconciliation between himself and his human enemies.
  • Diego is the Spanish form of the name Jacob, which means "Deceiver, or, He Deceives" and within the plot of the film Diego is a Double Agent, glibly lying to Manny and Sid and setting them up. However, like the original Jacob of the Bible, Diego gets redemption as well, though from an unlikely source: the baby — and Manny.
  • Roshan, the name of the baby, is Hindi and means "Light" or "Light at Dawn" and he is the peace child who brings light into the midst of three lonely souls (Sid's family abandoned him, Diego's pack doesn't care about him, and Manny's family was taken away from him) and makes them a family.
• Mistaken for Gay: Diego makes a crack about this when Manny and Sid tell him to leave the baby alone, because it belongs to them.
  Diego: I see. Can't have one of your own, so you want to adopt.
• Monster in the Ice: While crossing a network of tunnels through a glacier, the characters come across a variety of bizarre creatures frozen in the ice, including a series of sloth ancestors leading up to Sid's species, a giant fish, a carnivorous dinosaur caught mid-charge, and an alien flying saucer.
• Mood Whiplash: The second half of the film whips you through hilarity, and then sorrow, and then funniness again, and then back to close-to-tears-ness with the showdown with the sabres and Diego's Disney Death (though the filmmakers confirm in the commentary that it originally was a real death, which, depending on your affection for Diego, might make that moment worse).
• Naturally Husklesscoconuts: Scrat, near the end of a movie, bangs his head against a coconut tree, causing a huskless coconut fall from the tree.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The teaser trailer shows Manny saying to Scrat "You're an embarrassment to nature, you know that?". In the movie, he's actually talking to Sid. Also, it shows Scrat being crushed by a foot, implying it to be Manny's, when in the movie Manny doesn't know Scrat at that point.
  • Early trailers, commercials, and ads for the first film depict Scrat as a member of the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, when in reality he doesn't actually travel or interact with the group, save for one brief moment in the middle of the film when they ask him for directions.
• Not What It Looks Like: When Manny and Sid tell Diego that Roshan is their baby, he takes a different interpretation of their baby.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The ending has Manfred, Sid and Diego amble away from the camera, content at having returned the human infant to his father.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Sid has one when he bumps into Carl and Frank a second time, remembering they want to kill him.
    Sid: So, ladies, where were we?
    Frank: Carl?
    Carl: Easy, Frank. [growls]
    Sid: AAAAAAAAAAAH!
  • Two in quick succession at the start of the lava scene. Manny gets one after the first big rumble as Sid catches up to him and Diego. Then they all get one as the lava shoots up behind them moments later.
• "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Scrat (possibly) sports on at the end when he realizes he accidentally caused a Volcano eruption, doubled with a nervous chuckle.
• Old Faithful: At one point, Sid sits on a geyser as Manny and Diego count down to when the geyser erupts and sends Sid flying, with Manny commenting "Sure is faithful".
• Parental Bonus:
  • Manny's line:
    Manny: If my trunk was that small, I wouldn't draw attention to myself, pal.
  • Diego's smart-aleck remark about Manny and Sid "wanting to adopt."
  • In a cut scene, Sid asks the female sloths in the mud pool if they want to "jump in the gene pool".
• Parody of Evolution: Seen in the ice caves with Sid and a bunch of frozen creatures.
• Pick Up Babes With Babes: Sid the Sloth tries to use this... and it actually does seem to be working, until Manny the Mammoth steps in. A cut-out scene shows Sid attempting to complete the 'score' after Manny's taken away their youthful charge, and predictably it ends badly.
• Playing Possum: Sid does this to get rid of Carl and Frank, making them think Diego has already killed him. It works, and the two are never seen again.
• Predation Is Natural: The pack of sabretooth cats are the villains because they hunt humans not for food but out of revenge. Diego befriends two herbivores and goes through a Heel–Face Turn while keeping his carnivorous diet (he's seen hunting in the sequels). Also, Manny the mammoth berates the two brontotheres for trying to kill Sid the sloth despite being herbivores.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • When one Macrauchenia asks another "How do we know it's an Ice Age?", the other replies, "Because. Of all. The Ice!"
  • When Manny wants nothing to do with Sid accompanying him, he says to him, "Stop. Following. Me.
  • Manny after Sid tells him to help him returning the baby to its herd. He even mimics the "lip movements" with his trunk: "I'm. Not. Going."
  • This statement from Diego at the end: "Leave. The. Mammoth. Alone." He directs it at Soto.
  • Sid has his moment, too, during the same scene: "Survival! Of the! Fittest! I don't think so."
• Race Against the Clock: The herd have to return baby Roshan to his tribe at Glacier Pass before the entrance closes up with snow.
• Recycled In Space: 3 Godfathers...with prehistoric animals!
• Rewatch Bonus: Soto's hostility towards Diego and his subtlety in threatening him are often lost on some viewers of the film. However, if you go back and watch it again and notice every single Implied Death Threat and Soto's constant allusions that put Diego out of the picture with the pack, it gives one a very different view of Soto and how he really feels about Diego.
• Road Apples:
  • Inverted shortly in one scene. With Sid still guarding a human baby, Manny tells Sid that the baby is wearing some kind of diaper, hinting to him what happens next.
    Sid: Humans are disgusting!
  • There's also a scene where Sid steps in another animal's "leavings" and shouting at them to curb it next time.
• Say My Name:
  • Manny and Diego both shout "SID!" after realizing the baby is missing, thanks to Sid trying to Pick Up Babes With Babes.
  • When Manny is attempting to save Diego and the ice Manny is standing on breaks, Sid screams Manny's name as Manny plummets down. He survives.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Sid does this multiple times.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Scrat doesn't appear in the climatic fight with Soto and his pack, and earlier, Diego tells Sid to "Shut up" just before the Art Shift flashback with Manny's backstory and family.
• Silence Is Golden: Manny's backstory is told through an entirely silent flashback.
• Silence of Sadness: When Manny has a flashback of the time he lost his family to hunters, he, Sid, Diego, and Roshan are all silent during this scene. Once he gets over his wistfulness, this reaffirms Manny's determination to take Roshan back to his family, and Sid also appears to brighten after that. However, Diego looks back at the cave paintings that triggered this flashback with a dismal expression, having a Heel Realization.
• Stab the Salad: When Manny and Sid finally catch up with the humans, Manny rips the human leader's spear out of his hands when he tries to threaten him with it, then raises up his trunk as if to strike the guy, and the other humans certainly seem to interpret it as a threat. Turns out he was just lifting Roshan up off his back, at which point the human gets the message.
• Taking the Bullet: How Diego saves Manny from Soto during the climactic battle at the end after Soto's discovered their infiltration gambit.
• This Is My Human: Manny, Sid, and Diego have this attitude toward Roshan.
• Threatening Mediator: One brief scene with the traveling "herd" is suggestive of a family on a long and boring car trip, with Sid and Roshan as the kids starting a fight in the backseat and Manny as the annoyed father with the classic retort of "I don't care who started it, I'll finish it!"
• Title Drop:
  Animal 1: How do we know it's an Ice Age?
  Animal 2: Because. Of all. The Ice!
• Time Skip: The final scene of the movie skips ahead 20,000 years to feature Scrat and his acorn being defrosted in a new tropical world, long after the ice age has passed.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: Well, on an icy ground to be exact — it happens to Sid while they travel through an icy cave.
• Trampled Underfoot: At the beginning, Scrat gets trampled by several animals in a row.
• Travel Montage: Accompanied by Rusted Root's "Send Me on My Way" as the characters experience Old Faithful, brave a blizzard, and attempt to walk on ice.
• Troubled Backstory Flashback: How Manny lost his family to hunters.
• Unexplained Recovery: Diego's Disney Death. It's explained in the DVD Commentary that it was originally planned for him to die, but the filmmakers ultimately went against it.
  Diego: Nine lives, baby!
• Villain Protagonist: Diego very much wants to bring the baby to Soto so the latter can get his revenge on the tribe who killed several members of his pack, and has no qualms about threatening Manny and Sid to get what he wants. He eventually mellows out and turns good by the end.
• Wasn't That Fun?: After Manny, Sid and Diego careen down an immense slide in an ice cave, Diego jumps up, elated.
  Diego: Whoa! Woo! Yeah! Who's up for round two?!
• We Need a Distraction:
  • The saber-toothed pack attacks the human camp so Diego can sneak in and kidnap Roshan.
  • For the climax, Manny and Diego send Sid out with a snow-made version of Roshan pretending to make a run for it so Manny can ambush the pack in turn.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • In Manny's Troubled Backstory Flashback, his child was stoned to death, along with his wife.
  • So how exactly does Soto plan to get his revenge against Baby Roshan's father and tribe? By devouring poor Roshan alive.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Sid gets a moment of this when his plan to Pick Up Babes With Babes seems to be working, right up until Manny shows up and takes the baby back.

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