This comes with a heavy heart as we announce The Montclarion Opinion section will be parting ways with film majors.
As two of The Montclarion’s most heinous, menacing and mischievous film majors, this wasn’t an easy decision. But as each new opinion article about “Everything Everywhere All at Once” rolled in, we realized, despite our own love of that film, we simply could not bring ourselves to care.
And don’t get us started on superhero movies. Good lord, there are few things that anyone wants to hear less than your opinion on superhero movies. Every time we read someone’s newest take on the Marvel Cinematic Universe it makes us regret accepting Emma Caughlan’s email in making us a part of The Montclarion editors.
To all of our loyal film majors and film connoisseurs, we hope you take this article as not an attack, but like an intervention. Colin does want this to be an attack, but I am against it. Either way, the remainder of this article will be made up of a movie opinion so heinous that no film fan of any sort will want to touch The Montclarion with a 10-foot pole.
Before we get into that, I, Avery Veronica Rose Nixon, would like to state that Ben Affleck is a great director and actor. “Argo” -amazing, and I will be watching it again during my Easter break. That’s not a bad movie opinion, I just wanted to say that.
Now, the reason why we’re all here, the “Ice Age” franchise is not just one of the best animated film series of all time, it is also a better religious allegory than anything “VeggieTales” could ever achieve.
Included with the DVD and Blu-ray releases of “Ice Age: The Meltdown” is a short film entitled “No Time For Nuts” where the lovable Scrat discovers the skeleton of a, clearly human, scientist buried under the snow. In the palm of the scientist’s hand? A time machine.
So, Scrat does as Scrat does and gets into a variety of hijinks that eventually culminates in him being thrown into some strange alternate dimension with a lot of clocks and acorns.
Clearly, this is some sort of rip in the space-time continuum, which angers God. But would a just God be angry at Scrat, a simple creature that knows only how to fend for himself and try his best to survive, or would God be angry at those who enabled the poor saber-toothed squirrel to cause such damage? The clear answer is the latter, but God is not one who acts with a scalpel.
His decision is to bring the hammer down on all of humanity, for they have attempted to play God. But luckily for Him, He was able to catch humanity’s affront long before it truly happened, catching it in 20,000 B.C. rather than whatever year humanity actually invented time travel.
Unfortunately, the effects of the time rip are still felt throughout the greater “Ice Age” world, causing anachronistic details like diegetic music that would not exist for thousands of years appearing in four of the films.
In “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” there is not a single mention of humanity, but several details in the herd’s sophomore outing hint at humanity’s demise.
For starters, let’s take a look at the premise. A great flood has surrounded the valley where the film is set, and the animals have to travel to the opposite end of the valley to reach a large boat that will save them from the flood. Straight off the bat, the plot is oddly biblical, evoking the story of Noah in the crowd sequences where the animals are mostly seen marching two by two.
There’s also a throwaway line that could easily be interpreted in a religious sense. When the Lone Gunslinger Vulture tells the animals about the boat, one of the animals in the crowd says “I don’t see anything.” This line is strange and out of place until you consider that perhaps this is a musing on having faith in God and His love. There’s an awkward sequence where Sid is kidnapped by a tribe of mini-sloths, who try to sacrifice him to avert the coming flood, proving that the idea of religion exists within the animal population of the “Ice Age” universe, which makes the assumption of God’s existence more logical.
One huge moment for this theory comes in the climax, where Scrat inadvertently saves the herd from certain doom after Ellie gets trapped in a cave and the rest of the herd forgoes getting on the boat to save her. The moment was practically an act of God.
Am I implying that Scrat is God?
No. Immediately after committing this unwitting deus ex machina, Scrat plummets to his apparent death and awakens in heaven.
He roams through the clouds, past angelic dodos and reaches the pearly gates, emblazoned with an acorn design. When they swung open to let him in, he was greeted by a holy grail of acorns, before coming across a massive, shining acorn in the sky.
Let’s take a moment to remember the unifying detail behind almost every major natural event in the Ice Age franchise.
Scrat attempts to bury his acorn in the opening sequence of the very first film, which leads to a massive glacier splitting apart. The shattering of the dam holding back the flood in the second film is started by Scrat pulling his acorn from its buried hiding spot.
Scrat learns from these events by the time “Ice Age: Continental Drift” rolls around and does his best to be careful when burying his acorn once more, and yet the mountain he is scurrying across splits down the middle and he is launched to the center of the Earth, splitting apart the Pangea supercontinent.
The fact that Pangea still exists at the time of the fourth film may be one of the leftover effects directly tied to humanity’s meddling with the flow of time, as the 2002 short film “Gone Nutty: Scrat’s Missing Adventure” already depicted the continental drift, caused by Scrat’s acorn falling from the sky with such incredible speed that it splits the ground beneath him.
The glaciers, the flood, the draining of the flood and both splits of Pangea were all caused by Scrat, or more specifically, Scrat’s coveted acorn.
God is an acorn.
That’s why the rip in time and space was filled to the brim with clocks, which represented time, and acorns, which we now know represented space. It’s why the inhabitants of Scratlantis in “Ice Age: Continental Drift” and the aliens in “Ice Age: Collision Course” have such a heavily acorn-based culture; in their great scientific exploits, they have discovered the existence of God and worship His oaken form.
In the short film “Scrat: Spaced Out,” included on the Blu-ray release of “Ice Age: Collision Course,” it is revealed that the alien race, known as the Scratazons, were trying to get their hands on the holy acorn, which explains why the UFO was buried on Earth and was only awakened by the placement of the acorn in the steering console.
The empathy of His Nuttiness is not only limited to Manny and the gang. It is the most obvious explanation for the survival of the dinosaurs well past the strike of the asteroid: He saw a group of dinosaurs that he felt were worthy of His love and protected them from harm, deep under the ice.
Now, it should be mentioned: with His Oakenness wiping out humanity, not to mention the dinosaurs, what species will become the dominant species on Earth?
That answer is simple: None.
He has learned his lesson and will no longer put all of his eggs in one basket. As such, he has decided to rapidly evolve. A concept noted in the “Ice Age” franchise, four minutes and 24 seconds into the first film, as well as 11 minutes and 46 seconds into “Ice Age: The Meltdown.”
We see that by the time of “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” the animals have grown in intelligence, having developed the concept of villages, at 27 minutes and 53 seconds, Manny tells Ellie, Crash, and Eddie to head back to the village, and in the 18-year time jump between the third and fourth films, mammoths no longer do the anatomically accurate speed walk that real elephants can do as depicted in the second and third films.
Instead, their physicality and anatomy have shifted to allow them to gallop at great speed like horses. In addition to the physiological growth, animals now form societies with massive statues, bridges and pirates who use tools like swords, spoons and whips, and several years later in “Ice Age: Collision Course,” they throw parties with decorations and music and play sports such as hockey.
Also, “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild” is not included in this theory, as it contradicts both the greater canon of the “Ice Age” films and the existence of God, because no just God would allow that film to exist.
With that being said, we say goodbye to our movie opinion pieces that we have all read and loved unless it said the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still good.
Thank you for everything and please start pitching articles about literally anything else.
