Ice Age (2002 film)

Ice Age was originally pitched to 20th Century Fox in 1997 by producer Lori Forte.[4] The film, originally envisioned as a traditionally animated movie with an action-oriented comedy-drama tone, was intended to be developed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's Fox Animation Studios.[4] Around the same time, Blue Sky Studios, a small visual effects studio in White Plains, New York, was bought out by Fox and reshaped into a full-fledged CG animation film studio.[5] In light of this, Fox Animation head Chris Meledandri and executive producer Steve Bannerman approached Forte with the proposition of developing the film as a computer-animated movie, which Forte realized was "basically a no-brainer", according to her.[4]

Michael J. Wilson, who had written and developed the film's original story treatments in conjunction with Forte, wrote the first draft for the script, and Chris Wedge, a co-founder of Blue Sky, was brought on to the project as the director in late 1998.[4] Fox also opted for the movie to take a more comedy-oriented direction, and brought writer Michael Berg to help emphasize a more comedic tone. After being hired, Berg reportedly told the studio that he couldn't write a film made for children, to which the studio responded, "Great! Just write a good story."[4]

Story development began in spring 1999,[6] and official production on the film began in June 2000, one week after the closure of Fox Animation Studios.[7] 150 employees were hired to work on the film,[7][8] and a budget of $58 million was granted by Fox.[4] Peter Ackerman was hired as a third writer for the film, and collaborated extensively with Berg for three years before the two eventually moved on from the project. Jon Vitti and Mike Reiss, both former writers for The Simpsons, were added later on after Berg and Ackerman left to further polish the script.[4]

For research, the film's development team took several trips to the Museum of Natural History early on in production in order to make sure that the film authentically felt like the Ice Age.[9] Ultimately, the team translated the information that they had compiled in their research by stylizing it in order to fit with the film's story.[10] A team of 32 animators went out and did research to figure out the movements of different animals; for instance, for the movement of Scrat, animators visited a park and observed local squirrels, taking note of their "twitchy" way of moving.[6]

Michael J. Wilson stated on his blog that his daughter Flora came up with the idea for an animal that was a mixture of both squirrel and rat, naming it Scrat, and that the animal was obsessed with pursuing his acorn.[11] The plan to have Scrat talk was quickly dropped, as he worked better as a silent character for comedic effect. The name 'Scrat' is a combination of the words 'squirrel' and 'rat', as Scrat has characteristics of both species. Wedge has also called him "saber-toothed squirrel".

Scrat's opening adventure was inserted because, without it, the first real snow and ice sequence wouldn't take place until about 37 minutes into the film. This was the only role intended for Scrat, but he proved to be such a popular character with test audiences that he was given more scenes. The filmmakers made it so that many of the scenes with Scrat appear directly after dramatic moments in the film.

In a 2012 interview with Jay Leno, Denis Leary revealed that his character, Diego, originally died near the end of the film. However, it was reported that kids in the test audience burst into tears when his death was shown. Leary warned the producers that something like this would happen. When it was proven true, the scene was re-written to ensure Diego survived.

Originally, Sid was supposed to be a con-artist and a hustler, and there was a finished scene of the character conning some aardvark kids. His character was later changed to a talkative-clumsy sloth because the team felt the audience would have disliked him. There was an alternate scene of Sid in the hottub with the ladies which shows him saying to them "Let's jump in the gene pool and see what happens." One of the female sloths then kicks him in the groin. This was cut because it was not suitable for children and may have gotten the film a PG-13 rating. Other innuendos with Sid were cut from the film. Sid was supposed to have a female sloth named Sylvia, voiced by Kristen Johnston, chasing after him, whom he despised and kept ditching. All the removed scenes can be seen on the DVD.

The characters and environments in Ice Age were modeled and animated using WaveFront's Maya animation software. Rendering was completed using CGI Studio, an in-house ray tracing program being developed since Blue Sky's formation in 1987 and previously used for Wedge's 1998 short film, Bunny. While Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, released three months before Ice Age, became the first computer-animated film to make use of ray tracing technology, Ice Age would have received the distinction had it been released at the time Blue Sky began work on the movie.[6]

In order to keep the film at a more exciting pace, the development team took certain liberties with Sid in terms of realism. Although real-life ground sloths were slow-moving and rigid, Sid was given a fast movement speed in certain scenes, as well as a more flexible range of motions. Conversely, the character's arm movements were more restricted in order to retain a sense of laziness true to the nature of sloths. Manny was a particularly difficult character to animate due to his unique attributes as a mammoth, such as his long fur and massive trunks that covered up his face.[12]

Dealing with a creature which had seldom appeared in animation at the time, the team needed to figure out how Manny would realistically move with character designer Pete DeSeve explaining that "a wooly mammoth isn't simply an elephant with long fur". According to co-director Carlos Saldanha, Diego was one of the most complexly animated characters in the movie, with some scenes showing off his high movement speed as a sabre-toothed tiger while others kept his movement more contained and focused on his facial expressions to carry the moment.[13]

The voice cast of Ice Age was encouraged to make up their own dialogue during recording. Several lines in the film were improvised by the actors.[14]

For Manny, the studio was initially looking at people with big voices.[15] James Earl Jones and Ving Rhames were considered, but they sounded too obvious and Wedge wanted more comedy.[16][17] Instead, the role was given to Ray Romano because they thought his voice sounded very elephant-like. Wedge described Romano's voice as deep and slow in delivery, but also with a "sarcastic wit behind it."[17]

John Leguizamo, who provided the voice for Sid, experimented with over 40 voices for the character, including a slower-sounding voice to fit with the lazy nature of a giant sloth. Leguizamo came up with the final voice and trademark lateral lisp for the character after watching footage of sloths and learning that they store food in the pockets of their mouths which ferments over time.[18] Leguizamo remarked in an interview with BBC that he had wanted to contribute to an animated project for a while, claiming that cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc was "one of my comedy Gods" and a large source of inspiration for him as a child.[19]

The official soundtrack to Ice Age was released on May 14, 2002 by Varèse Sarabande. The soundtrack consists of the original musical score composed for the film by David Newman and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony. The song "Send Me on My Way" by Rusted Root is also featured in the film but is absent from the album.[20]

Ice Age was released on March 15, 2002, and had a $46.3 million opening weekend, a large number not usually seen until the summer season, and way ahead of Fox's most optimistic projection of about $30 million. It ranked number one at the box office during its first weekend, beating out Resident Evil, Showtime and The Time Machine.[21] Ice Age broke Liar Liar's record for a March opening (later surpassed in 2006 by its sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown) and at the time was the third-best opening ever for an animated feature—after Monsters, Inc. ($62.6 million) and Toy Story 2 ($57.4 million).[22]

Ice Age finished its domestic box office run with $176,387,405 and grossed $383,257,136 worldwide, being the 9th highest gross of 2002 in North America and the 8th best worldwide at the time.[1] It was one of the two animated films of that year to make over $100 million, with the other one being Lilo & Stitch.[23]

Ice Age holds a 77% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 168 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's consensus reads: "Even though Ice Age is treading over the same grounds as Monsters, Inc. and Shrek, it has enough wit and laughs to stand on its own."[24] Similar site Metacritic had a score of 60% out of 31 reviews, meaning "mixed or average reviews".[25] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote "I came to scoff and stayed to smile".[26] Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times called the film a "blandly likeable computer-animation extravaganza", comparing the film's plot to the Western film 3 Godfathers.[27]

According to CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave Ice Age an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[28]

Ice Age was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003, losing to Spirited Away.[29][30]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:
  • Nominated Animation Film[31]