This section is about two supporting characters from the Ice Age franchise that were both hilarious and awesome when they first appeared, but then got ran into the ground due to being used over and over again. The saddest part is that they were the most popular characters in their debut appearances.
So here they both are, in order of series debut. Oh, the good times we had with these characters before their downfalls...Scrat The Squirrel
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| One of the few moments he'll get with that precious acorn. He'll lose it ten seconds later. |
Scrat is essentially the mascot for the Ice Age franchise as a whole. Actually, scrat-ch that (oh god, the pun, it burns), he was the mascot for Blue Sky Studios as a whole. He is a hapless rat-like sabre-tooth squirrel - believe it or not, similar creatures existed, albeit not in the Ice Age itself - who only wants to bury his beloved acorn for the winter, and yet that little menace seems intent on giving him as much grief as possible.
Originally, Scrat was only going to appear in the opening film sequence as a device. He would have been there to demonstrate the vast and impressive nature of the Ice Age itself, and the scene ended with him simply being squashed by the other animals as they migrated south for the winter. Chris Wedge, director of the first film and voice actor for Scrat, says in The Art of Ice Age that:
"The whole story was going to be that at the end of all this effort, Scrat gets stepped on. That's it. [...] We were going to just step on him and walk away and start the movie. I thought that was pretty funny. Then Fox's marketing department grabbed onto the sequence. They decided it was going to be the teaser trailer for the movie. I said 'You are going to give all of it away and deny the audience the fun of this!' But they said 'No, this is the movie.' They were so right. The preview audiences loved the sequence so much that they were disappointed that they didn't see the character again." (p.11)
In response to positive test audience feedback for the little guy, the creators added several more sequences involving him. The opening was still kept in, but seeing Scrat getting squashed was not the last time that we would see him.
In a sense, Fox were right. Scrat is easily the most popular Ice Age character of all time, even more popular than the main characters themselves. It's gotten to the point in which most of the trailers focus on him instead, despite the fact that he only appears for a few minutes each time. He even becomes the focus of the spin-off short films, with comedy classics like Gone Nutty and No Time For Nuts. With these two in particular, they were both nominated for Oscars for Best Animated Short and the latter short even won the Annie Award for the same category.
He was just that though. An extra character. He had his own sub-plots but he was mostly there for comic relief, rather than actually having a major role in the story. And that was fine. We all know what happens if you try to shill a character who works best in small doses - just look at the tanking reputation of the Minions from Despicable Me and Shadow the Hedgehog from the Sonic games for proof. The shorts are especially good for allowing him to have the spotlight without it coming at the expense of everyone else.
Here's a major problem though - the later films were starting to lack in plot. Obviously they do have plots, but they need something to get them moving and are often filled with padding. The Scrat sub-plots are entertaining, but they can sometimes just be their own story and be separated from the main plot. Which, in a way, is kind of a problem since it not only cuts down the storyline, but also exposes its weaker points in the process.
The "solution" to this apparently was to essentially make Scrat cause some world-wide disaster that would end up affecting everyone else as a result. All because of his acorn fetish. Continental Drift focuses on him causing the titular event, despite the fact that this was already explored in the short film Gone Nutty, and then wiping out Scratlantis. The fifth film ends up with him going into space and nearly causing the apocalypse back on Earth, and then wiping out all life on Mars at the end.
The "solution" to this apparently was to essentially make Scrat cause some world-wide disaster that would end up affecting everyone else as a result. All because of his acorn fetish. Continental Drift focuses on him causing the titular event, despite the fact that this was already explored in the short film Gone Nutty, and then wiping out Scratlantis. The fifth film ends up with him going into space and nearly causing the apocalypse back on Earth, and then wiping out all life on Mars at the end.
This doesn't solve anything at all. If anything, it's the point where you stop laughing at Scrat's antics and start screaming "Leave the acorn! You don't need it!". The plots are still weak, but now we have extra Scrat since that's what the audiences want to really see. Heck, you could just easily remove the "main" plots and just make them Scrat-centred movies without the main characters, since they're clearly putting more effort into the sub-plot than the main plot on occasion. It's worst in Ice Age 5 though, since the hijinks overlap so much with the main plot that you cannot separate them from each other and have to pay attention to the poorer main story as a result. In fact, the recent Scrat shorts start to just serve as promotions for the movies, rather than be stories in their own rights.
Scrat causing an avalanche and volcano eruption in the first film was fine, since they're just gag scenes. Him causing the flood in the second film was also acceptable, despite it making up the film's plot, especially since he actually saved the day in the end. The disasters he causes in the fourth and fifth movies however are just too much. By trying to make him move the plot along, he comes across as more irritating than endearing, and the fact that his life is now made to revolve around the acorn makes us wish that he can just be put out of his misery already, as Ice Age 2 tried to do. Instead, the fifth film just leaves him in space, with no proper resolution to his subplot at all.
The spin-off film has no signs of Scrat at all, which just adds to its detriment. It only goes to show that they were simply relying on the character to hold the films together, rather than portray him as a character in his own right. Yes, I know that he's no longer appearing because Ivy Silberstein claimed on Twitter that the Scrat design was stolen from her, but my point still stands.
The whole business with his creation is also sketchy. Silberstein claims that she first designed "Sqrat" on the 19th May 1999, but writer Michael J. Wilson claims that his three year old daughter Flora helped come up with the idea of Scrat being a cross between a squirrel and a rat and being obsessed with acorns. Meanwhile. the Art of... book claims that character designer Pete de Seve received inspiration for the character from research he did at New York City's American Museum of Natural History and that story artist Bill Frake developed the character's personality from a local squirrel that kept on disrupting him whilst he was working at home. It's hard to pinpoint which of these is the most accurate story - even Silberstein's "Sqrat" name seems more like a corruption of the "Scrat" name rather than the other way round. But if she was in the right, it just provides a cautionary tale of relying too much on a character who you may or may not have the rights to.
This case isn't as bad as the Scrat situation, but it's still notable in my opinion. Buck is an insane yet awesome survivalist who bears an uncanny resemblance to his voice actor Simon Pegg and is brilliantly voiced by him at the same time. When we first meet Buck in the third film, he's intent on hunting down Rudy, the dinosaur that took out his eye. The whole thing is just one big reference to Moby Dick and Captain Ahab, only this time Ahab finally gets a happy ending.
Buck serves as a guide to the herd as they go searching for Sid, who has gone missing in the land of the dinosaurs. Along the way, he provides some of the funniest lines in that film, with the case of the "ugly pineapple" being the most notable. He can't stay with them forever though, and after his mission is fulfilled, he goes on his way with a warm farewell. It's a surprisingly touching scene and one with an important message - some people will just choose to be loners and that's okay. It helps that he only really has a small cameo in the fourth film and nothing else.
And then the fifth film has to go and spoil all that. Whilst we do get a cool oner shot in order to re-introduce him, he gets awkwardly integrated into the plot in such a way that it has to revolve around him. The antagonists of the film are a family of dinosaurs that try to sabotage the herd's attempts to divert the asteroids, just because they have a bone to pick with Buck. A character with similarities to him is introduced, who pissed me off so much that I will be discussing him in a later chapter. And at the end of it all, he joins the herd anyway because the creators are just so desperate to emphasise the importance of "family".
Honestly, it was better when Buck went on his way in the third film. Sometimes, we can't keep in contact forever and we have to go about and do our own things. With Buck in particular, I felt that it matched his crazy survivor attitude perfectly. No wonder that the spin-off movie has him go back to staying in the dinosaur world.
Buck The Weasel
This case isn't as bad as the Scrat situation, but it's still notable in my opinion. Buck is an insane yet awesome survivalist who bears an uncanny resemblance to his voice actor Simon Pegg and is brilliantly voiced by him at the same time. When we first meet Buck in the third film, he's intent on hunting down Rudy, the dinosaur that took out his eye. The whole thing is just one big reference to Moby Dick and Captain Ahab, only this time Ahab finally gets a happy ending.
Buck serves as a guide to the herd as they go searching for Sid, who has gone missing in the land of the dinosaurs. Along the way, he provides some of the funniest lines in that film, with the case of the "ugly pineapple" being the most notable. He can't stay with them forever though, and after his mission is fulfilled, he goes on his way with a warm farewell. It's a surprisingly touching scene and one with an important message - some people will just choose to be loners and that's okay. It helps that he only really has a small cameo in the fourth film and nothing else.
And then the fifth film has to go and spoil all that. Whilst we do get a cool oner shot in order to re-introduce him, he gets awkwardly integrated into the plot in such a way that it has to revolve around him. The antagonists of the film are a family of dinosaurs that try to sabotage the herd's attempts to divert the asteroids, just because they have a bone to pick with Buck. A character with similarities to him is introduced, who pissed me off so much that I will be discussing him in a later chapter. And at the end of it all, he joins the herd anyway because the creators are just so desperate to emphasise the importance of "family".
Honestly, it was better when Buck went on his way in the third film. Sometimes, we can't keep in contact forever and we have to go about and do our own things. With Buck in particular, I felt that it matched his crazy survivor attitude perfectly. No wonder that the spin-off movie has him go back to staying in the dinosaur world.
Not that the spin-off film fixed things much. The film focuses entirely on him, being called The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild and what not, with the main herd themselves being relegated to minor roles at best. And weirdly enough, his voice actor is the only person to reprise their role. Everyone else gets replaced by a different voice actor. Even John Leguizamo, who previously voiced Sid in even the video game adaptations, doesn't return. It certainly brings up some interesting implications. Oh well, at least he got to star in the much better Encanto in the meantime.
Plus, they bring back Buck's link with Crash and Eddie from the third film, and then butcher that. He's now just there to bring them on an adventure and make them have an epiphany about whether they need to stay with the herd or not. The way he's handled just doesn't make him work as a main character. He might as well not be billed as the protagonist - rather just a supporting leader type.
They even bring in a new character who was apparently on a previous team of his, just so he has a female character to interact with. That doesn't work either. Buck was better as a lone wolf (or rather lone weasel) type as depicted in Ice Age 3. Adding a new teammate for him just doesn't work - and I feel that Zee was added just so they could add a new female character to what wasn't necessarily a female-heavy cast.
So yeah. Two characters who started out as amazing and now aren't so good as they previously were, all because they kept being overused. As I mentioned before, it's similar to cases like Shadow the Hedgehog, the Minions and even the Koopalings from Super Mario Bros., in which well-liked side characters have their roles expanded and become more irritating as a result. Word of advice - some side characters work best as side characters. They can't all take centre stage.
