Gone Nutty

Like many of it's animated colleagues, Ice Age starts off with a wonderful short film, this time one which was even better known than the rest of the film before it was released. You may remember seeing previews for Ice Age that were made up entirely of footage from Scrat's Missing Adventure, which is probably the most entertaining and amusing short animated film I've ever seen. There is something to be said when a movie like Drop Zone or even a James Bond film like Moonraker can so badly screw up the concept of skydiving, and then a short children's film like this makes the effort to portray it so accurately (with the obvious exception of all that nut gathering business, of course).

I have heard that Scrat was originally meant to play a much larger role in the film, which was to be centered around him as the main character, but other characters were brought in under the demand for a more large scale motion picture. Thankfully, Scrat makes several much-welcome appearances throughout the film, but this opening sequence still stands as probably the best four minutes of the entire film.