Ice Age (Franchise)

About

Ice Age is an early 2000's CGI film franchise starring prehistoric animals. The IP was started started by Blue Sky Studios under 21st Century Fox. In 2019, Blue Sky Studios and the rights to the Ice Age franchise were acquired by Disney. Over the course of two decades, the franchise has spawned numerous memes and developed a running series over a side character Scrat and his quest to eat an acorn.

History

Ice Age was released on July 15th, 2002.^[1] The film stars Ray Ramano as Manfred "Manny" the Mammoth, Denis Leary as Diego the Saber-tooth "Tiger", John Leguizamo as Sid the sloth, and Chris Wedge as Scrat a fictional "Saber-Toothed Squirrel".

Reception

The original Ice Age film was the highest-grossing animated film of 2002, grossing over $382 million.^[1] The film earned a rating of 77% on Rotten Tomatoes^[3] and a score of 61 on Metacritic.^[4] The finical success of the first film lead to various tie-in TV specials and video games, as well as four full-length sequels produced by Blue Sky Studios. By 2016 the franchise had earned over $6 billion USD in revenue and is among the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.^[2]

Acquisition of Blue Sky Studios by Disney

In 2019, Disney acquired the assets of 21st Century Fox^[5] which included Blue Sky Studios. In February 2021, Disney announced that they would shut down the studio by the following April, citing the costs COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns.^[5]

On January 28, 2022, a sixth film, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild was released on Disney+ without the involvement of Blue Sky Studios and only one voice actor, Simon Pegg (voice of Buck) returning to reprise his role.^[2]

Related Memes

Ice Age Baby

Ice Age Baby refers to the human child from the first film. In early 2020, the baby was used frequently in memes that expressed violent hatred for the character.

"No thanks, I choose life"

"No thanks, I choose life" is quote uttered by Sid the sloth, sometimes used as a reaction image in a somewhat similar way to the online usage of the term nope to express extreme unwillingness towards something out of fear.

In the first film of the franchise, there is a scene where Diego suggests to Manny to take a shortcut through a menacing cave under the pretense it will help them reach the goal faster. When Manny tells this to Sid, Sid looks at the cave and responds while walking away "No thanks, I choose life."

The first instance of this quote being used online was in an image uploaded by a KYM user on August 13th 2013.^[7] The image shows the discovery of the location in Fallout 3 known as "Deathclaw sanctuary," a cave system containing several dangerous in game creatures known as deathclaws^[8].

Were you killed? Sadly yes… but I lived!

"Were you killed? Sadly yes… but I lived!" is conversation held between the possum brothers Crash and Eddie and the adventurous Buck in the third film of the franchise; Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. During one of Buck's stories at a point of high tension, one of the brothers asks Buck if he was killed. Buck responds with "Sadly yes" then following up with "But I lived!"

Scrat's Acorn

A running gag throughout the franchise is an induvial of a fictional saber-toothed squirrel and his obsession with finding, collecting, storing, and protecting acorns, often resulting in personal harm.

On April 13th 2022, a video alleging to be the final animation of Blue Sky Studios before their closure in 2021 was uploaded to YouTube (shown below)^[9]. The video is an animated short showing Scrat finally eating his acorn and wandering offscreen.

Despite being unlisted on YouTube, the short gained over 1.8 Million views within 8 days of being uploaded.^[10] A short burst of memes was created in a response to this short for finally giving the character Scrat closure to his goal throughout the series.

Search Interest

External References