In nature, there was one simple rule; herbivores ate plants, and carnivores ate the herbivores. It wasn't pretty, but it was necessary to keep an ecosystem healthy and stable. Naturally, hunting down and murdering other animals for a living meant that certain species couldn't be anything else but mortal enemies with each other. Especially predators of different kinds, as oftentimes, there was only so much game to go around.
But if there was one thing everyone in the animal kingdom could agree on, be they plant-eaters or meat-eaters, it's that humans were the worst. They were dangerously efficient killers; too efficient some might say, with unprecedented intellect and advanced technology, enabling them to take down any beast, no matter if they were as big as a mammoth or as lethal as a saber-toothed tiger. It was fortunate then that the human population was small and would unlikely increase in number, given the current cold snap. Otherwise, the world would surely be screwed.
With that in mind, few animals would ever feel inclined to help out a human, even if they were a defenseless infant that never speared or scorched a living thing. They would more likely leave it to its fate or if they were carnivores, have themselves a quick snack while also eliminating a future enemy. But every rule has one exception, or in this case, three exceptions.
One was a disillusioned but stalwart widower, who didn't believe in killing for pleasure or turning a blind eye to someone in need when you could help them. And when you were a multi-ton behemoth, you were quite capable of lending a helping trunk in any given situation.
The other was a soft-hearted simpleton desperately craving affection of any sort, since even his own family wanted nothing to do with him and was more than happy to abandon him when they migrated south. Sure, he could be really annoying, but that was still cold.
As for the last one...well, it was complicated. A mammoth and ground sloth being friends, while a bit odd, wasn't anything too noteworthy. They were both herbivores and as long as green food was abundant, herbivores from all walks of life could get along. But them hanging out with a saber-toothed tiger, that was a whole other level of crazy.
Diego didn't have time to process just how insane these last few days had been for him until he had time to reflect on it after he and his dinner-turned-friends bid farewell to the stinky bundle of joy that brought them together. If you had told him a week ago that he would betray his own pack for the sake of a mammoth, a sloth, and a human infant, he would have pegged you as stark raving mad.
And yet that is exactly what happened to him. It was like an insane fever dream, yet every time he clawed himself, he knew it was all too real. He was someone who willingly broke several laws of nature. But when a beast, regardless of his species, willingly puts his own life on the line to save yours, despite having no obligation to do so, you start rethinking things.
That's what Diego was forced to do between their close shave with the river of lava and the final battle with Soto's pack. Needless to say, the double agent was quite conflicted about what to do, but in the end, he made the right choice, even paying back his debt to Manny by almost sacrificing his own life. But like with Manny, fate seemed to smile on the selfless.
Despite everything, Diego had no regrets over what he did. His pack had never been a chummy one, especially following their feud with a tribe of Cro Magnons, leading to half the tigers getting wiped out in the crossfire. And Soto had never been a kind and just alpha. Under his rule, it had been survival of the strongest, with little tolerance for weakness or incompetence. Diego had been given a stark reminder of that when he was tasked with retrieving the baby he had failed to catch.
While he had always been a prideful hardass, getting humbled by the humans only exacerbated Soto's faults, leading to him taking drastic and downright irrational measures to get his vengeance on the hairless bipeds. He was heading down a dark path and he was dragging his surviving pack mates down with him. He ignored the herds of prey animals heading south and the incoming ice age winter, likely sending his pack to their graves one way or the other.
Diego knew his leader was far too gone to see reason, and considered himself very fortunate to have found someone else who steered him back on the right path, someone who reminded him of what it truly meant to be a unit, be it a herd or a pack. You needed to look out for each other. He owed Manny a far greater debt than merely saving his life once.
He was even more fortunate to be alive after using his own body to shield Manny's throat from Soto's fangs. Both Manny and Sid had been stunned to see that Diego somehow managed to recover from that mortal wound, though the mammoth had (rationally enough) guessed that Diego losing consciousness had more to do with him getting smacked headfirst into a boulder.
The throbbing pain Diego felt in his right side suggested otherwise, but he was happy to agree with Manny on this. Tigers were survivors, they didn't go down easy. He would likely retain some nasty scars on his flank, but as far as he was concerned, they were a testament to both his grit and his dedication to his new pack, a mark of honor in a way. The downside was that he still had trouble keeping pace with the others as they were heading southwards, further and further away from Glacier Pass. There was a solution to this issue, but Diego's pride would have none of that. But his pride would soon be put to the test.
Though Soto was dead, his underlings M.O., and the trio had successfully returned "Pinky" to his tribe (they were mostly sure it was a he), the latter were not out of the danger zone. After all, with the incoming ice age, they had wasted precious time traveling in the opposite direction while the rapid freeze had been ravaging their former home, turning a once lush, fertile, and seasonal valley filled with plains and forests into a frozen hell hole devoid of any plant life beyond mosses and lichens. They had already barreled through two freezing blizzards but they knew the worst was yet to come.
At the current rate, the newly formed glaciers would only increase in size, swallowing up the land in a blanket of ice over a mile tall, rendering it entirely uninhabitable for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. Any species that wished to avoid extinction needed to move south to warmer climes, even those as thick-skinned and poofy as Manny's kind.
Thus they had to keep moving as fast as possible. They were blessed with clear blue skies the day they returned the baby to his father, and it continued into the next day. But it couldn't last for much longer, and Manny was adamant not to squander their current streak of luck. Diego agreed. But snowstorms weren't the only peril they could face out here.
"Manny, buddy? Can't I hitch ride? Just a little while longer?"
Lagging behind a bit, Diego could hear Sid whining to Manny. He could easily imagine the mammoth rolling his eyes, his trademark gesture. The banter between the two offered some much-needed relief from Diego's aching side.
"No." Manny said bluntly. "You have two legs. Try using them."
"But I'm getting blisters all over my feet? See, see?" Sid begged while hopping on one foot and holding up his other.
"Walk it off." Manny retorted wryly. "We're on a glacier. Keeping your feet on solid ice should cool them off."
Sid narrowed his eyes. "Did I ever tell you you have a very cruel sense of humor?"
Smirking a bit, Diego felt compelled to add, "I wouldn't take his advice lightly, slowpoke. Or maybe you would rather risk another leap of faith over a river of molten lava?"
This earned Sid's attention, remembering that horrifying experience. Diego wanted to get a rise out of him, but deep down, he also wished to talk some sense into the scatterbrained sloth. They were traveling on dangerous grounds.
"But...that was a one-time thing, right? Just plain bad luck."
"Nope. What do you think the smoking mountain means?" the tiger gestured with his head, and Sid noticed that the top of Half-Peak was billowing with dark smoke.
He gulped in fear. "I'm g-guessing that's a b-bad sign?"
"Half-Peak's been dormant for hundreds of years." Manny said seriously, remembering what his folks had taught him as a calf. "But it seems it has finally awoken from its slumber."
The trio had wisely walked a wide birth around the gorge in the glacier, recently carved out by the subterranean river of lava that had nearly cut their journey and their lives short. It resulted in them wasting even more time trying to catch up with the other migrating animals, but it was a calculated risk. You could find shelter from snow and frost, but not from the ground collapsing beneath your own feet.
"Um...on second thought, I could use the exercise. Let's go!" Sid changed his tune and quickened his pace, getting ahead of Manny, the latter of which tried not to smile but his smile faltered as he looked back to see Diego stopping and breathing heavily.
"You okay back there, Diego?" Manny asked with visible concern.
Hearing him, Diego tried to put on a strong face. He was conditioned to never show weakness, it's all he's known for years living in Soto's pack, and even now, he had some slither of pride left to protect. Predators were naturals at sucking it up and hiding any pain. It was a necessary skill if you wanted to stay alive, as a good bluff was sometimes enough to scare away enemies trying to make a meal out of you.
"Never felt better..." Diego brushed it off "...I'm...eh...just making sure nothing is following us. To keep you two safe."
Manny clearly didn't buy it. "I'm pretty sure there's nobody but us out here for miles. Which is why we need to pick up the slack. Who knows how long we have til the next blizzard comes."
"Heard ya loud and clear, chief. I just hope you two snowflakes can keep..." Diego couldn't even finish his cocky retort before his legs gave up on him and he crashed his chin into the solid ice.
Sid grimaced while Manny sighed but didn't look remotely surprised as he plodded over to the fallen tiger and wrapped his trunk around him.
"That's it, you're riding shotgun." Manny said sternly as he hoisted him up. Despite his weakened state, Diego was conscious of what was going on and his pride would not let him take it.
"Put me down!" he protested in an almost childlike manner. "I told you, I don't want any help."
"I know." Manny answered as he placed Diego on his back. "So we let you tire yourself out, so you couldn't put up a fuss. Come on, Sid."
Diego was taken aback by the mammoth's boldness and the finality in his tone but he was in no shape to argue. Manny had effectively taken the position of leader in their merry band of misfits and if might makes right (as Soto firmly believed in), then nobody was mightier than a mammoth.
Manny resumed marching onward and Sid followed him, walking parallel to the mammoth and watching Diego, who wore a crabby expression but was too exhausted to try and get off, letting his limbs dangle as sleep threatened to consume him.
"Sorry for the tough love, Diego." Sid said apologetically.
"Won't you...guys let me..." Diego said between pants "...have any dignity?"
"You're hanging out with us now, buddy!" Sid tried to lift his spirit. "Dignity is not a requirement."
Diego let out a low growl. "Fine...I can catnap for a few hours, then I'm back on my feet."
"Fine by me." Manny said with a knowing smile, certain that Diego wouldn't uphold his promise. "You just get some rest, tough guy."
This was certainly embarrassing but at least there were no other tigers to see him in this pathetic state. Though the three tigers that could be within reasonable proxy weren't anyone Diego held in high regard, and he doubted they would give him, Manny, and Sid any trouble, not after what happened to Soto.
They couldn't stand each other either, and for all Diego knew, they disbanded and wouldn't survive for long by their lonesome. Good riddance.
Diego didn't know how long he had been on Manny's back. He vaguely recalled falling in and out of consciousness until he woke up again to see a reddening sky and the sun setting over the distant mountains. Still no trees in sight, the one sure sign that they were reaching milder climes, so they couldn't have made that much progress.
He didn't doze off again though, as he became aware of another dilemma; his growling, aching stomach. Neither Manny nor Sid seemed to notice, so Diego kept it to himself.
"Dammit..." he thought with frustration. He hadn't eaten anything for days, all the craziness had kept him distracted. Being half-starved would do little to speed up his recovery, and that was the lesser of his concerns.
A sense of dread took over him, for he knew there were unlikely to be any prey animals for miles going forward. And even stragglers would likely be buried under thick snow by now, making it hard to sniff them out. Pretty much everyone headed south from the human's old settlement days ago.
Well, except for two. "No, I won't!" Diego yelled inwardly, fighting his own feline nature. He'd rather starve than harm the first two creatures to show him compassion for who knows how long. But what was the alternative? If he went on without substances for any longer, Diego knew he would be increasingly hard-pressed to think rationally, until he fully succumbed to his base instincts.
Before he could contemplate his dilemma any further, however, Diego felt his ride coming to a halt. Strong enough now to prop himself up, he craned his neck and saw Manny looking over a flat expanse of ice, partially covered up by snow and flanked by rocky outcrops on both sides.
The mammoth seemed to be in deep thought when a tired Sid caught up with them, made an exaggerated exhale, and plopped his butt into the soft snow.
"Can't we take another break, Manny?" the sloth whined. "My feet are killing me?"
"Something wrong?" Diego asked Manny, ignoring Sid's yammering.
"I've been here before, it's a frozen river." Manny explained. "We'll have to cross it."
"You think the ice is strong enough for safe crossing?" Diego inquired, trying to keep his tone even. He hated to admit it, but he wasn't the greatest swimmer. In fact, he was kind of terrified of water.
"Should be, I just wish there was a way to test it." Manny said while pondering. A mammoth never forgets, so he tried to remember if there was a narrower channel somewhere nearby, or maybe a series of rocks they could cross over.
Seeing snowflakes wafting down in front of his face made it clear that they couldn't waste more time trying to circumvent a potentially dangerous route.
"I get ya, Manny." Sid got up. "A 10-ton mammoth like you oughta be careful in such situations."
Manny sent him an irate look. "Okay, for the record, I only weigh five tons. A perfectly normal weight for a woolly mammoth."
Diego couldn't help but smirk as he witnessed some of that classic Manny grouchiness resurfacing. But he also saw a chance to get himself out of his predicament.
"He has a point." he rose up on wobbly legs. "Best I don't weigh you down, Manny."
He tried to jump off but felt slightly dizzy and his knees buckled. So reluctantly, he scaled down the mammoth, who closed his eyes and winced as he felt claws dig into his hide until Diego was down.
"Guess we'll just have to cross it and hope for the best." Manny concluded as his gaze shifted to the river again and he picked up the largest rock his trunk could hold and threw it onto the ice. It bounced around, not making a single crack. An encouraging sign.
"Hmmm...I wager it's safe enough for you two."
"So who gets to go first." Diego looked at Sid tauntingly. "Feeling gutsy, sloth?"
"Me?" Sid pointed at himself, clearly having second thoughts.
Suddenly, they heard a growl, and Diego's wincing made it clear that it came from his stomach.
"You don't sound too gutsy either?" Manny noted.
Diego slumped his shoulders. "I didn't want to worry you."
Despite not talking out loud with Diego about it, Manny was well aware that a lack of nourishment for their token carnivore could cause serious trouble for the herd's stability. But even he was at a loss about how to remedy that. The only solution was fresh meat.
Sid, to nobody's surprise, was not so cognizant.
"Hey, you ain't alone, buddy." he threw his arm over the tiger. "If it makes ya feel any better, me and Manny are starving too. You don't see a speck of green out here, do ya?"
"How's that supposed to make anyone feel better, Sid?" Manny rolled his eyes, feeling his own aching stomach, when they suddenly heard what sounded like thunder.
"Oh, no! We weren't fast enough!?" Sid looked around frantically, expecting a fountain of boiling steam to burst out of the ground, and covered his head. "I love you guys!"
But Diego and Manny quickly recognized that this was the sound of stampeding hooves. The former couldn't believe his luck.
Not all mammals were inherently averse to chilly weather and the group turned to their left and saw a reindeer leap out from behind a rocky ledge, followed by another, and another, and another.
A huge herd was now running over the frozen river like it was a highway, and Manny saw Diego's demeanor change like a light switch. His muscles visibly tensed, his pupils dilated and the hair on his neck bristled.
With a fierce roar, the tiger leaped forward and charged at the seemingly never-ending herd, adrenaline pumping through his veins. Manny knew the incoming sight would not be for the faint of heart.
"Don't look!" he hastily covered Sid's eyes with his trunk and closed his own, but that didn't spare them from the blood-curdling scream of one unfortunate reindeer and the sounds of fangs ripping through flesh.
I've recently been rewatching the Ice Age movies, a franchise I cherished as a kid but which unfortunately went completely off the rails as it went on. Now, I still think the second and third movie are overall solid, even if they don't quite feel like continuations of the original (a bit like the fourth season of SpongeBob in relation to the Hillenburg era) but the fourth one was a frustrating mish-mash of good (Captain Gutt, Granny), mediocre (Manny and Peaches's relationship), and objectively horrible elements (mammoth teen sitcom subplot), and the fifth movie... speaks for itself as the obviously passionless and creatively braindead "jump the shark" entry that killed off the franchise, the cinematic equivalent of a guy throwing his arms into the air and saying, "I give up but I'm contractually obligated to continue!".
As someone with a passion for animation, talking animal fiction, and paleontology, it's kind of a bummer that there isn't more fan content of this franchise out there, but I also have to acknowledge that the franchise has been tainted beyond repair after the third movie, and the status quo we are left with after the fifth movie is just very unappealing to me; Manny, Sid, and Diego being middle-aged (at best) washed-up sitcom leads and the latter two having tacked-on, underdeveloped wives. Feels a lot like their story came to a (pretty drab) end, rather than brimming with further possibilities.
Don't get me wrong, I do think a lot of the characters and concepts in the sequels, even up to the fourth one, are good or at least interesting, and I'm not opposed to using them (I certainly would like to see Captain Gutt and his crew used in a better story), but the context would have to be different, as canonically, the franchise devolved from a relatively grounded dramedy about three misfit talking animals surviving nature and becoming unlikely friends to a goofy ass, thinly veiled sitcom starring mammoths, with Sid, Diego and the possums tagging along as the whacky uncles, and where the Fountain of Youth, immortality granting crystals and freaking Santa Claus and flying reindeer exist in this universe. I'm even willing to approve of the giant mudskipper sirens (it's at least a novel idea) but I draw the line at Louis, Ethan, and the mean girl mammoths (cuz teen sitcom stereotypes aren't remotely novel and pretty damn cringy XD).
And with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that the seeds for a lot of the issues in the latter films were planted as far back as The Meltdown. Characters like Ellie and Cretaceous and Maelstrom worked in that one, and others like Crash and Eddie or Fast Tony were... serviceable, but the filmmakers and execs took all the wrong lessons from them going onward (gratuitous love interest, overreliance on Mesozoic reptiles, backsliding towards childish comedy, shameless stunt casting via superfluous characters, etc.). So I ultimately thought that the best course of action was to go back to the beginning, back to the main trio's wild days, and indulge in some good ol' canon divergence.
