On April 7, 2021, co-founder Chris Wedge announced on social media that Blue Sky Studios was shutting down permanently, thanking fans of the films and creators behind the studio.Ī letter from Blue Sky Co-Founder, Chris Wedge. “Scrat Tales” seized an opportunity to redeem the franchise and went out on a high note.Many fans of the Ice Age films fondly remember the adventures of Manny the woolly mammoth, Sid the sloth, Diego the saber-toothed tiger, and the running gag of sidekick Scrat never being able to eat his acorn in peace.īlue Sky Studios was a computer animation company active from 1987 to 2021, most widely known for their animated feature films in the early 2000s to 2010s including Rio, Robots, Horton Hears a Who! and The Peanuts Movie.įollowing the Disney and 20th Century Fox merger in 2019, Blue Sky Studios remained under Disney Animation until the pandemic impacted their business negatively. And with how the “Ice Age” franchise seemed to run itself into the ground toward the end, this is for the best. It’s often hard to let go of a seemingly never-ending story like Scrat’s, but something this heartfelt and witty eases the blow a little bit. “Ice Age: Scrat Tales” is remarkably tight, side-splittingly funny and brilliantly animated.
Although this short is the final project of Blue Sky Studios, it’s not the end for all of the immensely talented artists who have poured their souls into the company.īut if this truly is the last we’ll see of Scrat, it’s the perfect sendoff for such an iconic character. The title itself, a play on “not the end,” seems like an act of bittersweet defiance. It explores a what-if scenario that at first is endearing, then quickly falls in line with all that came before. “Teeter Toddler” shows the first hints of Scrat and Baby Scrat truly warming up to one another, culminating in “Nut the End,” which simply needs to be seen to be believed. Scrat (Chris Wedge) and Baby Scrat (Kari Wahlgren) draw in the snow.
#Squirrel from ice age series
Then, in February 2022, a year after the announcement of Blue Sky’s closure, their final completed project was revealed: “Ice Age: Scrat Tales,” a series of six shorts for Disney+ showcasing Scrat raising a son, Baby Scrat, while also continuing his Sisyphean pursuit of the beloved acorn. To add insult to injury, Disney announced a sixth film in the franchise, produced by an entirely different animation studio on a shoestring budget with none of the original voice cast, save for Simon Pegg as Buck Wild, and inexplicably, no Scrat, despite him being the series’ de facto mascot. In February 2021, two years after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, Disney announced they would be shutting down Blue Sky Studios, the production company behind “Ice Age,” which was a heartbreaking announcement for a wide variety of reasons. But I’ve always admired “Ice Age,” in ways that have garnered me a reputation (yes, I am the Jesus Scrat guy). The series’ first four films were box-office hits, but by the release of the fifth film, the bizarre, slapdash sequel “Ice Age: Collision Course” in 2016, in which the series officially jumped the shark and sent Scrat to space, it seemed the world had moved on from the herd’s exploits. In recent years, the “Ice Age” series has mostly been forgotten or maligned.
0 kommentar(er)
