credit: Ice Age: The Meltdown
Ice Age: The Meltdown is the second installment to the Ice Age franchise, succeeding the 2002 movie bearing the franchise’s name. It was released in 2006 and produced by Blue Sky Studios. In the movie charts, it fared better than its predecessor as it ranked third in terms of the highest-grossing film in its year of release, as opposed to the eighth position Ice Age (2002) received during its year.
The premise of the show followed what was established in the first film. The trio, Manny, Sid, and Diego, had established their own herd. Manny was still sunken in the idea that he needed to find a mate because he was (allegedly) the last male of his kind. As the things rolled out, Manny realized that this was not the case, and he realized there were still a lot of mammoths out there, letting the female that they found beforehand go because there was “no use for her to keep him,” knowing that their species would continue to survive either way.
1. Trauma can make a well-intentioned communication sound ill-intentioned
Manny, thriving on the knowledge that his wife and son were dead, had still not healed his past wounds. His friends would later on try to convince Manny to forget his past so that he could start a better future for, at least, himself.
They met Ellie, a female mammoth who used to think she was an opossum because a pack of them raised her. Manny had feelings towards Ellie and fell in love, but deep inside, he was reluctant because the memory of his dead wife and child still lingered in him, and he could not easily replace them. Due to this, he could not voice out his true feelings towards Ellie and just used the motif of saving their kind to make Ellie think that making out with him was necessary.
As expected, this upset Ellie, thinking she was only loved because they had to. The movie wanted to tell, through Manny and Ellie, that the wounds of the past should be allowed to heal so that they wouldn’t hamper us from starting over again. Who knows? Our future would be better than our past!
Manny learned to deal with her past trauma and proclaimed to Ellie that he wanted her because he wanted to, not that he had to. This was a lesson that everyone needed to know.
credit: Ice Age: The Meltdown
2. Frozen objects can be reanimated if thawed
Have you ever thought, “Why do we have to put our food in the freezer?” Well, the simple answer to that is to preserve the food. If we preserve the food, it was sort of frozen in time, which freezes or immensely slows down the spoiling process.
The same goes for living things; it was not just a Star Wars thing. Reports showed that it was possible that old viruses, frozen in the glaciers in the polar regions, could come back to life if released from the ice because it was “preserved.”
So when the villains of this episode were thawed from the ice and were still alive, it was not a fictional idea. The only inaccuracy in it was that their eyes were still moving while frozen.
credit: Ice Age: The Meltdown
3. The direst of moments can make you set aside everything, even your worst fears
Diego was known to be afraid of water because he could not swim. Although his friends tried to teach him how to swim at some point, there was no greater teacher than the situation.
During the scene in the flood, while Manny was trying to rescue Ellie, and Sid, the opossums, Sid knocked his head on an ice block, knocking him unconscious and the little creatures in danger. Manny was underwater for Ellie. Not wanting to put someone’s life in danger because of his inaction, he conquered his fear of the water and jumped into the flood to save the opossums.
This showed that if no one could make you conquer your fear, your circumstances would.
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