The latter unfortunately lead to rather ugly designed humans. With this film Blue Sky/20th Century Fox posed serious competition to Dreamworks and Pixar with a different, yet equally interesting style of computer animation, which was more based on caricature, exaggerated animation and angular designs. It was made for 20th Century Fox, who had just dumped Don Bluth’s Phoenix Studio. ‘Ice Age’ was Blue Sky’s first feature film. Fortunately, the makers didn’t fall for the trap of making dinosaurs co-exist with early humans (although we see one trapped in the ice, in a scene that is nonsensical anyhow). The only mishaps are the two Brontotheres, mistakenly referred to as “rhinos”, a group of species that had died out 34 million years earlier. We watch various North-American ice age mammals, like mammoths, ground sloths, saber-toothed tigers, Glyptodonts, and even the South American species Macrauchenia (which looks like a llama with a trunk). The Ice Age itself is depicted well, with lots of crispy ice and snow, and fauna that matches the period. 20,000 years ago), a mammoth and a ground sloth try to return a human baby to its tribe, helped by a saber-toothed tiger with a hidden agenda. Watch the trailer for ‘Robots’ yourself and tell me what you think: Unfortunately, 2006 would be hardly better, with Blue Sky’s weak ‘Ice Age 2: The Meltdown’, and the entertaining, but a little too routine films ‘ Over The Hedge‘, ‘Flushed Away’ (Dreamworks) and ‘ Open Season‘ (Sony’s debut in the field). Even Pixar would release its then weakest picture with ‘Cars’… This scene, although unimportant to the story, is the highlight of this otherwise very disappointing film. And it remains unclear why he has retreated in the first place.Īll these flaws are such a pity, for one can feel the great joy in the making of ‘Robots’, especially in the transport sequence, where Rodney and Fender are travelling in a giant Rube Goldberg machine. Even Rodney’s hero Bigwald is unappealing in his first scene. Robin Williams’s character Fender is as tiresome as his genie was delightful in ‘Aladdin’ (1992). Most of them are wise-crackers, who place their one-liners in a nasty, unpleasant way. Then there are way too many side characters, none of which is well-developed. Worse, Rodney has no less than two love interests, one of which is suddenly dropped, while the love between him and Cappy, the other, is hardly shown. For example, the big finale never pays off and his topped by a very cloying ending. Also, main protagonist Rodney’s arrival in Robot City is very reminiscent of a similar scene in ‘A Bug’s Life’ (1998), and the all too obligatory ‘follow your dream’ story line had already become stale by 2005, too. In all, the film’s story is much more standard than its exotic setting would suggest.īlue Sky’s storytelling is also very inconsistent and has many flaws in its timing. This setting is similar to that of ‘ Monsters, Inc.‘ (2001): a totally different world, this time inhabited with robots, which at the same time is an exact copy of our own modern urban world.
First the animation: the robots are a good excuse for rather jerky motions, and its colorful setting never feels real. ‘Robots’ is unfortunately typical for the regression in the computer animated field. This age-old technique defeated the modernity of computer animation, as both films topped the computer animated features in originality and consistency of story and design. Surprisingly, the two most interesting features of 2005 were stop motion films: Aardman’s ‘ Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit‘ and Warner Brothers’ ‘ Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride‘. In fact, both Blue Sky’s ‘Robots’ and Dreamworks’s ‘Madagascar’ are mediocre in the whole catalog of computer animation. This was a year in which no films were made that felt as if they were better than the last ones. 2005 was to be the first weak year in the history of computer animated features.
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