This is a must see animation. It does so many things right. The setup is a sort of Conan the Barbarian world in which two warring nations battle for supremacy. The ice people led by Nekron, which uses as his greatest weapon his mastery of ice, crushing everything under an ever advancing glacier, and the fire people, led by the worst father in the history of film. Anyway, the hero is a blonde proto-He-man guy whose people have being killed by Nekron's forces and who vowed revenge. A beautiful princess, a prehistoric Batman and a Grendel's mother type witch are also there. Complex stuff, but the end result is the typical good vs evil, beautiful vs ugly, kind vs tyrannical.
However, what struck me was the way the story was told and graphically represented. Teegra, the princess, is unabashedly feminine and her scantily clad body would bring "modern audiences" to apoplexy, yet she is almost never a victim. She uses cunning and her femininity to great effect, even if most of the time she is ineffectual in physical conflicts. The blonde hero is a strong courageous man, but he fails often and has to learn and recover from mistakes. The evil Neanderthal looking ice men are savage and brutal and ugly, but they are not stupid, their attacks always terrifying because they use not only their strength and numbers, but also tactics and coordination to defeat their opponents.
The Batmanesque character felt like from a previous story that someone has forgot to tell, as well as the evil queen, who was presented through exposition and has like 3 scenes in total. However the evil prince Nekron was a gem: an immensely strong mage, manic, weirdly disturbing and apparently so beyond humanity that normal behavior was hard to maintain. His reaction to being presented with a gorgeous semi-naked princess is "get this filth away from me", although he finds the hero interesting and doesn't kill him. A homosexual suggestion, perhaps?
Anyway, the animation was very interesting: beautiful matte paintings, very normal looking animation, but with simple lines, emphasizing shape and movement, not detail. The story was a bit fractured, things happening fast one after the other, making the landscape seem a few kilometers wide. One can imagine king Horrible Dad, Juliana and her evil son Nekron having started the war because a common parking lot dispute or something.
My takeaway is that such a film would be impossible to make today. The handcrafted animation would be computer assisted or generated. The self sufficient woman would be fighting in armor and the hero would be a smart talking romantic trying to live up to her expectations. The evil army would be dumb and sadistic and the good army would be heroic and empathetic. And so on. It's not that Fire and Ice is some kind of perfect artistic masterpiece, but that in the past we had the option to have it made. Only by watching things from the past can we expand our vision of the future.
So get it and enjoy it while you can. Recommended for fantasy and Conan the Barbarian fans.
However, what struck me was the way the story was told and graphically represented. Teegra, the princess, is unabashedly feminine and her scantily clad body would bring "modern audiences" to apoplexy, yet she is almost never a victim. She uses cunning and her femininity to great effect, even if most of the time she is ineffectual in physical conflicts. The blonde hero is a strong courageous man, but he fails often and has to learn and recover from mistakes. The evil Neanderthal looking ice men are savage and brutal and ugly, but they are not stupid, their attacks always terrifying because they use not only their strength and numbers, but also tactics and coordination to defeat their opponents.
The Batmanesque character felt like from a previous story that someone has forgot to tell, as well as the evil queen, who was presented through exposition and has like 3 scenes in total. However the evil prince Nekron was a gem: an immensely strong mage, manic, weirdly disturbing and apparently so beyond humanity that normal behavior was hard to maintain. His reaction to being presented with a gorgeous semi-naked princess is "get this filth away from me", although he finds the hero interesting and doesn't kill him. A homosexual suggestion, perhaps?
Anyway, the animation was very interesting: beautiful matte paintings, very normal looking animation, but with simple lines, emphasizing shape and movement, not detail. The story was a bit fractured, things happening fast one after the other, making the landscape seem a few kilometers wide. One can imagine king Horrible Dad, Juliana and her evil son Nekron having started the war because a common parking lot dispute or something.
My takeaway is that such a film would be impossible to make today. The handcrafted animation would be computer assisted or generated. The self sufficient woman would be fighting in armor and the hero would be a smart talking romantic trying to live up to her expectations. The evil army would be dumb and sadistic and the good army would be heroic and empathetic. And so on. It's not that Fire and Ice is some kind of perfect artistic masterpiece, but that in the past we had the option to have it made. Only by watching things from the past can we expand our vision of the future.
So get it and enjoy it while you can. Recommended for fantasy and Conan the Barbarian fans.