Looking at: Age of Ice

Cold Front

Literally the only picture I could find of this movie, seriously.

I've been drinking. I recently got a tooth pulled and the experience has left me in a lot of pain. Alcohol is a disinfectant, and my dentist didn't prescribe me any antibiotics or painkillers, so I've been using a little Jack Daniels and Alexander Keiths to help me out.

That's neither here nor there, but it did make my experience watching Age of Ice, from "director" Emile Edwin Smith somewhat more tolerable then I think it's supposed to be.

In the Madhouse

Not even remotely close, but a way better movie.

See, Age of Ice is another movie shat out by The Asylum. Anyone who's into bad movies, like yours truly, is quite familiar with The Asylum. They fill a hole once occupied by Troma Entertainment, namely that of low budget straight to DVD movies that confuse people into buying them.

It's been said that The Asylum spends a million dollars on a movie on the hopes that it sells a million dollars worth. If an Asylum movie breaks even they consider it a win. They have had a few minor successes, and the Sharknado franchise has turned out to be a big hit for them, but they're main bread and butter is crappy knock-offs of popular movies (such as a version of Marvel's Thor where the Asgardian wields an Uzi), shitty softcore porn (often about cheerleaders), or terrible disaster films.

It's this later that The Asylum seems to find a particular niche, in that most of their catalog consists of damn-near unwatchable disaster films, often with bizarre or oddly specific disasters. There's the aforementioned Sharknado franchise, a mashup of Shark movies and... well just Twister really. Then there's there seemingly endless supply of 2012 based movies, with at least five different scenarios ranging from meteors to the sun exploding. There's a series of Toho-esque monster films with titles like Mega Shark VS Giant Octopus, Mega Piranha, Mega Python VS Gatoroid.

They make bad movies is the point I'm trying to get across. Anyway, it was this bizarre combination of heavy drinking and unfiltered access to Netflix that lead me to watch Age of Ice, The Asylum's answer to the question: "What if it snowed in Egypt and a bunch of dumbass Americans, and also the prince of Jordan or something had to escape why not?"

Snow Capped Pyramids

Never read it, probably better then this movie.

Our film opens with fighter pilots failing to land, strangely reminiscent of this clip. Then someone mentions seismic activity, then the whole aircraft-carrier sinks. Strong opening.

Then we're in Egypt, where a family are checking out the pyrimads, or at least as close to the pyramids as a bunch of Mexican laborers can assemble from plastic bricks, which are clearly visible. We're introduced to the Father (Barton Bund, no seriously) his dumb-as-fuck son Dylan (Joe Cipriano, fucking idiot) and his daughter Amber (Bailey Spry) who instantly falls for some random Muslim dude (Owais Ahmed?). They head back to Cairo, shit starts getting weird, they meet the Mother (Jules Hartley) and all of a sudden life sucks. A wall breaks and they decide they need to get home.

Then it starts snowing, and Egypt starts looking an awful lot like northern Connecticut, complete with wide open fields with deciduous forests. The gang mysteriously acquires a bunch of towels and blankets, then sets forth across the frozen Egyptian wasteland in search of a mysterious evac point. Along the way they meet some people, form bonds, and perform endless acts of unbelievable stupidity.

There was the time Dylan fell of a train for no good reason, or the time the same stupid little fucker fell down a pyramid for no good reason, or the time the SAME STUPID LITTLE FUCKER fell down a cave for no good reason. It's not just Dylan fucking up though. At one point they use a heavy duty truck's winch to lower people down, which sounds reasonable. Except that somehow this two-ton truck got pulled over the side of a cliff by a ~110lb woman. At one point the group steals camels, rides them for a few moments, then abandons them and suggests (and I quote)

"[cutting] them up for warmth like in The Empire Strikes Back"

Oh the antics of those wacky, fucking stupid Americans and they're brown guide. An oil refinery gets blown up by hail, but at that point you're so far gone that it barely registers.

Brain Freeze

This is from a Newsweek article on Ice Ages, read it here!

"The special effects in this movie were taken from the Sega Mega Drive on-board graphics circuitry."

That's a direct quote from the IMDB page concerning this movie. For reference, the Sega Mega Drive  (also known as the Genesis) was released in 1989 and officially discontinued in 1999. Age of Ice was released in 2014. I didn't grow up with a Genisis, but my research indicates that the best looking game on the system, at least graphically speaking was this:

That's the level of graphical fidelity you can expect from this film. That's the level of graphical fidelity you deserve from this film. 

It's unfortunate, given that The Asylum can, at times, generate... passable graphics. Thanks to Sharknado and some other work they've done for SyFy they've stepped up they game considerably, but not here. No, Age of Ice was spit out, waging a visual war on it's audience, daring you to keep watching. 

Sound design barely fares better. There are enough sound effects, and most of the characters are discernible. There's one person I couldn't understand, but that was due to his heavy accent. The music is The Asylum's standard of royalty free stock music they bought en-masse ten years ago. Nothing special, but it doesn't hurt your ears either. 

The camera work is shoddy at best, but it is stable. I suspect that's because spending money on something like a dolly rig, or even a slider, is decidedly outside The Asylum's budget. It's all bearable, save for one shot where you can clearly see a second camera team in the distance. 

What isn't forgivable is the editing. Shots jump around for no good reason, and the whole film has a sort of mashed-together feel that make some projects I've worked on look magnificent. I'm no editor, and I've never claimed to be, but I think I understand enough about the art to know how bad this movie fucked it up. 

It should be pretty obvious I didn't enjoy Age of Ice. It was an extremely bad movie, even by The Asylum's standards. I know it's not really indicitive of their normal stock, and that they can actually produce movies worth watching every once and a while, but Age of Ice isn't even worth it for the paltry entertainment value it accidentally provides. Leave this one in the back and let it get freezer burn. 

Image Sources:

http://maxcdn.dardarkom.com/files/uploads/14222180481.jpg
http://akmmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Age-of-Ice-2014-screen-1.jpg
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/22600000/Ice-Age-Cd-ice-age-22617740-1502-1127.png
http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369085840l/16130312.jpg
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/22/why-were-definitely-not-headed-another-ice-age-264633.html