Welcome to the prehistoric world of ICE AGE, a smart, character-based comedy and all-digital animated feature film from Twentieth Century Fox Animation and Academy Award®-winning director Chris Wedge. Wedge won the Oscar® for directing the animated short "Bunny," whose realistic lighting effects gave the film a unique look, feel and organic realism. "‘Bunny’ demonstrated Chris and Blue Sky’s ability to create a character with great personality, expressed through acting, that is distinctly subtle," says executive producer Christopher Meledandri. "While watching Blue Sky’s anthropomorphic giant Bunny, you are absolutely convinced it is living and breathing."
Wedge, one of the founders of Blue Sky Studios, where both "Bunny" and ICE AGE were produced, played a key role in developing the company’s proprietary lighting software. Now, he and his team of animators, technicians and scientists use state-of-the-art tools to render three-dimensional environments that take us into the heretofore unexplored world of an ice age – and introduce us to four sub-zero heroes: Manny, "The Heavy," voiced by Ray Romano; Sid, "The Smooth Operator," voiced by John Leguizamo; Diego, "The Double Agent," voiced by Denis Leary … and Scrat, "The Squeak Attack."
According to Wedge, ICE AGE has everything, including action, humor, adventure and heart. Perhaps that explains why, when asked to offer a thumbnail description of the film, Wedge and his colleagues at Blue Sky have more than a few at the ready. "It’s a comedy of peril," says the director, who at times was known to also refer to ICE AGE as "three prehistoric mammals and a baby." Producer Lori Forte, who developed the story idea with Twentieth Century Fox Animation executives, calls ICE AGE "a story about the first dysfunctional family." Others on the production team would refer to it as a buddy picture or even a road movie (without the car, of course).
But more than anything else, Wedge insists, ICE AGE is about four characters, three of which unexpectedly come together to form a family, while the fourth helps bring on an ice age that descends upon these characters like a curtain coming down. "Each character is on a journey for his own personal reasons, each having his own agenda. Coming together was not a situation that any of them expected, or thought they needed."
These figures and the relationships that develop between them form the heart and soul of ICE AGE. When we first meet Manny, the massive woolly mammoth is walking against the tide of creatures migrating south, fleeing the onslaught of the ice age. "Manny’s a lonely, aloof high plains drifter," says Wedge. "He’s heading north just because everyone else is heading south." Adds Ray Romano: "Manny is a bit of a misanthrope, he doesn’t really like or have the time for anyone. But his gruff exterior hides a good heart. And he has principles, so when he meets Sid, the human baby and Diego, he has to help."
Movie Database
In Theaters
