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Do you want ice with that?

A penguin from animated film Happy Feet
  • Posted at 3:46pm
  • 21 December 2007
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

It may be that images of the mighty polar bear balancing on the last piece of receding Arctic ice as if it were a Fox's Glacier Mint, will be enough to spur the human race into climate change action. Never underestimate the power of a cute animal. But does global warming explain cinema's current obsession with snow and ice?

I detect a definite planet-wide appreciation of the poles in the proliferation of animated features like the musical penguin extravaganza Happy Feet and its inferior, beach-set cousin Surf's Up.

Since the stirring, Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary March of the Penguins, the plump, waddling seabird – and particularly the emperor penguin – has become an iconic cinema character. It even spawned a cheap spoof, Farce of the Penguins.

Ecological messages have long been a staple of animal-based family films, but the sheer beauty of the computer-generated icescapes makes unspoiled nature a natural backdrop. The appealing Ice Age makes great comedic capital from cracking ice shelves and avalanches, while the melting glaciers plot of Ice Age: the Meltdown are all-too-topical. Eight Below, a live-action husky rescue adventure, also has the Antarctic setting/nice animal combo.

With white Christmases increasingly rare, we look to the movies for our fix of snowflakes, and in cinemas now is The Golden Compass, whose Arctic scenes and battling polar bears make it a natural successor to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Mind you, snow in Narnia wasn't a chance for penguin song-and-dance, but a chilly plague on a verdant land, with no Christmas in sight. It's all right, it's only a movie.

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