There are fan petitions to give Elsa from Frozen a girlfriend and Black Widow from the Avengers films a solo adventure. The minions from the Despicable Me franchise have already been given their own corner of the playground. We haven’t seen any such appeals yet for the acorn addict Scrat, but we declare our wholehearted support in advance for any such proposal.
The saber-toothed squirrel is easily one of the best characters in the Ice Age animated productions, especially since he only squeaks and grunts (the voice work is by Chris Wedge, director of the first Ice Age). Scrat has been faithfully chasing that one acorn all over the place from the original Ice Age in 2002 to Ice Age: Continental Drift in 2012 even as the other protagonists, including Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth and Diego the sabre-toothed tiger, deal with one crisis after another.
In Ice Age: Collision Course, which will be released on July 15, Scrat’s acorn obsession will take him far beyond the ends of the earth to outer space – one small step for Scrat and a giant leap for rodent-kind. The plot revolves around the events that ensue when the nut-cracker accidentally commandeers a space ship. This is, in all probability, the same ship that was spotted in the first film when Manny, Sid and Diego are moving through an ice cavern to return the human baby to his father. The baby is shown waving at it with three fingers – a nod to Spock Vulcan salute from Star Trek.
From finding love to discovering (and losing) Atlantis, Scrat has been there and done that. In the past, he has been responsible for the separation of the continents that divided Pangaea, the singular landmass, into various continents. Scrat also manages to survive the ice age (which he is actually responsible for, as it turns out). At the end of the first movie, in a 20,000 year-leap into the future, Scrat manages to set off another cataclysm by mistake – this time over a coconut. Just give him his own stand-alone movie already.
Until that happens, here are a few short films about Scrat that prove that he can hold his own as long as there is an acorn to keep him focused.
In the Oscar-winning short No Time For Nuts, Scrat sends his beloved nut back in time. The film is by Chris Renaud, who co-directed the Despicable Me and Minions movies and made The Secret Life of Pets.
Here is Scrat in nut heaven.
There was the time when Scrat had to choose between an acorn and a potential love interest.
And Scrat’s idea of Christmas involves…