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What's With Manfred?

A Character Analysis of Manny the Mammoth

By Doug McCloskeyPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Ok, so I'm pretty sure the vast majority of those reading this saw the 2002 film: Ice Age. It's probably well ingrained in your psyche as a part of your childhood. It's also practically a classic, even with the slew of sequels following it that are average but not terrible.

To me, I figured that it was just another happy moment in my childhood and never really thought much about it. I have a step daughter who's about to be 3 who won't go to bed without the film playing so I had to watch it plenty of times and I started to notice things, that set this film apart from the following sequels. Now I'm not going do a whole film analysis, but I will say that this film was handled with a lot of care and subtlety and ended up creating one of the most complicated characters in an animated film.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Manfred, or better known as Manny has a sad yet well executed story. Now if you look up a wiki article on the character his entire back story is spoiled and ruined and you never get to experience it. Most of what we need to know about his character is not told to us, he doesn't tell us why he is the way he is in the beginning of the film, why he doesn't want to migrate with the other prehistoric animals and want's to be alone. The deal with Manfred is the trauma of losing his family and his sort of fear of humans. I wouldn't say he possesses any animosity or hatred for humans but more of a fear, this is illustrated in his cave painting flashback where we see a father mammoth [Manny] watch helplessly as his mate and baby are killed by humans.

We first notice this when Manny see's the human female mother and the baby hang on to a branch, he freezes up like a dear in head lights, his expression is blank while Sid is more responsive and animated. However he accepts the child being presented to him and share's a moment with the mother until she disappears. This is where his character development starts, it's easily one of the most powerful moments in the film where he seems to have this connection to the mother, that he too was a parent. initially he is cautious about returning the child to the humans, avoiding it even and letting Sid take it back himself. Eventually it's clear he is going to have to face them in order to return the child and for the rest of the film the child is a medium through which Manfred deals with his past trauma. He also has this whole competitive trust issue thing going on with Diego. At first he doesn't really want to be around anyone else, afraid of personal relationships and afraid of losing loved ones again, he tries to push away Sid and claims it would be nicer once all of the other animals had migrated. Manfred finally confront's the humans, this time not frozen but rather more serious, his eyes do more of the talking. We end the film with a Manfred that is able to socialize and have personal relationships again.

The only problems that ever arise with his character is when is in the rest of the films, his past never really comes up again, especially when he starts a family again, there isn't much else done with his character. Another problem I have with the sequels is that we are told more about our characters than shown. We're given an explanation that Ellie in the second film was adopted by Possums, while in the first, we're given subtle hint's about a character that can be easily over looked in the first viewing make a lot more sense when watched again.

Despite a little money driving a franchise towards popcorn entertainment, they still sell the original, and if my step daughter ever gets over needing it to go to bed, I can still watch it at my leisure.

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