Ice Age: Continental Drift | |
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Directed by | |
Screenplay by | |
Story by |
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Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Renato Falcão |
Edited by |
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Music by | John Powell |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 88 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $95 million [2] [1] |
Box office | $877 million [1] |
Ice Age: Continental Drift is a 2012 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) and the fourth installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier from a screenplay written by Michael Berg and Jason Fuchs, based on a story conceived by Berg and co-producer Lori Forte. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Queen Latifah, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from previous films, with Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Lopez, Drake, and Nicki Minaj voicing new characters. The plot focuses on Scrat mistakenly sending Manny, Sid, and Diego adrift on an iceberg with Sid's Granny and causing them to face a gang of pirates led by Captain Gutt.
The film was released in the United States on July 13, 2012. The film received mixed reviews, with praise for its performances, animation, score, heart and humor, but criticism for its plot and unoriginality. It grossed $877 million worldwide, marking it the fifth highest-grossing film of 2012 and the highest-grossing animated film of 2012. [3] A sequel, Ice Age: Collision Course , was released on July 22, 2016.
Manny and Ellie are living happily with their now teenage daughter Peaches. However, while Ellie supports and accepts her daughter’s desire to explore and meet new people, Manny is overprotective, irritating Peaches and driving a wedge between the two. Meanwhile, Sid's family returns, but only to drop off the elderly Granny before promptly abandoning them both. Manny then catches Peaches hanging out with a group of teenage mammoths he does not approve of, causing a heated argument between him and Peaches.
Shortly after, a sudden continental break-up caused by Scrat trying to bury his acorn traps Manny, Sid, Diego, and Granny on moving chunks of ice, giving them no choice but to ride the current and separating them from Ellie, Peaches, and the rest of the animals, who remain on land, causing Peaches to feel guilty over her fight with her father. At the same time, a giant land shift encroaches on those remaining on land, forcing them to make their way towards a land bridge to get to safety under Ellie's lead. Meanwhile, Scrat finds another acorn at the bottom of the ocean, but a broken one that, inside, shows a map to "The Lost City of Scratlantis" which Scrat sets off for.
After encountering a violent hurricane which pushes them further away from land, Manny's group is captured by a band of pirates sailing on a floating iceberg pirate ship led by a Gigantopithecus , Captain Gutt, who attempts to pressure them into joining his crew. When Manny refuses, Gutt tries to execute them; this leads to their escape, which inadvertently causes the ship and food supplies to sink. Gutt's first mate, a sabretooth named Shira is forced to join them after she is rescued after being left for dead by her crew mates.
The herd washes ashore on Switchback Cove, which gives a current back to their home. After learning that Gutt has enslaved a group of hyraxes and is using them to build a new iceberg ship, Manny coordinates a plan with some more hyraxes to free their comrades and steal the ship, and they can create a diversion. Just before they manage to escape aboard the ship, Diego, having fallen in love with Shira, tries to convince her to leave the pirates and join the herd for a better life, but Shira, starting to reciprocate Diego's feelings, while initially accepting, instead stays behind and slows Gutt down so the herd can escape. Gutt forms yet another ship and plots revenge on Manny.
Meanwhile, during the animals' trek to the land bridge back on the mainland, Peaches joins the group of mammoths from before, only to find out that they do not care about the ongoing danger, and they look down on her for being friends with a mole hog named Louis. When Louis overhears Peaches telling the other mammoths that they are not friends, Peaches realizes who her true friends are and berates the others for their cocky attitudes.
After narrowly escaping a pack of sirens, large predatory mudskipper-like fishes who cast images of potential mates to attract their prey, Manny, Sid, Diego, and Granny return home and find that not only has the land bridge been destroyed, but Gutt has arrived there before them and taken Ellie, Peaches, and the rest of the herd hostage. Louis faces Gutt to save Peaches, ensuing a fight, as Granny's pet whale, a Livyatan named Precious, arrives and fends off Gutt's crew. Peaches saves Ellie, while Manny defeats Gutt in a final duel on an ice floe before he is saved by Precious from falling into the ocean.
Gutt encounters a siren that assumes the shape of a female Gigantopithecus, who eats him alive by trapping him in a giant clam. In the aftermath, Peaches reconciles with both Louis and Manny, who is finally reunited with his family and friends, while Shira joins the herd and starts a romance with Diego. With their home destroyed by the land shift, Precious takes the herd to a lush island, where the hyraxes have started rebuilding their civilization.
Scrat reaches Scratlantis, where there are acorns everywhere, causing him to become eagerly hyperactive. When he is warned not to take anymore, Scrat unsuccessfully attempts resistance but then pulls a giant acorn plug where water comes in and flushes the entire city down, taking its residents with it in the process. Scrat survives, but when trying to dig where the city is now, the ground cracks as Scrat is now in the middle of a desert known as the Death Valley, where his eyes start burning.
The first details of the sequel were announced on January 10, 2010, when The New York Times reported that Blue Sky was working on a fourth film and was in negotiations with the voice cast. [14] Fox confirmed in May 2010, that Ice Age: Continental Drift would be released on July 13, 2012. [15]
For Continental Drift, one of the biggest achievements from Blue Sky's animation pipeline was the CG water used for the ocean and the clouds throughout the film. Unlike how it was handled from Ice Age: The Meltdown , the water effects from the ocean were achieved by using a combination of software, some developed in-house, and some off-the-shelf. While water, splashes and cloud rendering was done in Blue Sky's proprietary renderer, Houdini was used to generate data for simulations, and RealFlow for some splash effects. The biggest sequence for the CG water was mostly during the storm sequence, being the perfect scale to tackle in the film. For the clouds, the team built settings in a real space so they could be lit and rotated with dynamic camera movement through and around them. [16]
A soundtrack album of music by John Powell, who previously composed the second and third installments, and was released on July 10, 2012 by Varèse Sarabande. [17] [18] In addition to Powell's original score, the film features Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Powell explained his decision: "At the beginning of the film, the creation of the geographical world as we know it seemed just such an immense idea to musically convey, that I gave up entirely and used Beethoven's Ninth Symphony instead. With a bit of obscenely crass re-orchestration and blatantly cheap arranging tricks normally associated with strippers, we got it to fit the action perfectly. But the cost that I must now bear is having to live forever in hiding, since the "Beethoven Society" issued a "fatwa" on me." [19]
Featured in the film was "Chasing the Sun", performed by The Wanted [20] the film's first theme song, and the second theme song "We are (Family)" written by Ester Dean, performed by Keke Palmer. [21] Both songs play during the credits and are not available on the soundtrack. "Chasing The Sun" can be found on The Wanted's 2012 American debut extended play, The Wanted EP , while an alternate version of "We Are (Family)" sung only by Keke Palmer is available for download.
Captain Gutt’s pirates also perform a sea shanty during the film.
Ice Age: Continental Drift had its premiere on June 20, 2012, at the CineEurope film distributors' trade fair in Barcelona. [22] It publicly premiered on June 27, 2012, in Belgium, Egypt, France, Switzerland, and Trinidad, and was released on July 13, 2012, in the USA. [23] The film was accompanied by the short animated film The Longest Daycare , featuring Maggie Simpson from the animated sitcom The Simpsons . [24] [25]
As a promotion for Ice Age: Continental Drift, Fox released two 3-minute short segments from the film, [26] titled Scrat's Continental Crack-up and Scrat's Continental Crack-up: Part 2. The first part premiered as a theatrical release attached to Gulliver's Travels in 2010, [27] and later with Rio . It was also released online in January 2011, on iTunes Movie Trailers. [27] The second part was released in November 2011, on iTunes, [28] and debuted in theatres with Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked . [29] The first part shows how Scrat's actions lead to split of the continents, while in the second part, Scrat's underwater pursuit of acorns leads him to a pirate ship.
The film was featured on Tommy Baldwin Racing's No. 10 car driven by Tomy Drissi for the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Toyota/Save Mart 350 held in June 2012. [30]
Ice Age: Continental Drift was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D in December 2012. [31]
Ice Age: Continental Drift earned $161.3 million in North America and $715.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $877.2 million. [1] Its worldwide opening weekend totaled $126.9 million. [32] As of 2019 [update] , worldwide it is the 66th-highest-grossing film of all time, [32] the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2012 (also, the highest-grossing animated film of that year), [33] and the second-highest-grossing film in the Ice Age series. [34] Overall, it is the eighteenth-highest-grossing animated film of all time.
In North America, the film earned $16.7 million on its opening day and $46.6 million on its opening weekend, which was the second highest debut in the Ice Age series, only behind The Meltdown ($68 million). [35] The film closed from theaters on February 7, 2013 with $210 million, thus standing as the second-highest-grossing film in the series. [36]
Outside North America, it is the twelfth-highest-grossing film, the third-highest-grossing 2012 film and the second-highest-grossing film distributed by Fox. It set an all-time record among animated films, until Disney's Frozen surpassed it. [37] Ice Age: Continental Drift had a two-day (Wednesday–Thursday) opening of $11 million from 12 markets. [38] On its opening weekend (through Sunday), it earned first place with $80.3 million from 34 markets, opening No. 1 in all of them. [39] [40] The film set an opening-day record in Nicaragua and a Thursday-opening record in Guatemala. In Peru, it earned the second-highest-grossing opening day and the highest for an animated film.
It set opening-day records for an animated film in Russia [41] and in Sweden [42] and achieved the second-highest-grossing opening day for an animated film in France ($4.5 million), Colombia, Argentina, and Chile. [38] The film set opening-weekend records for any film in Argentina (first surpassed by Iron Man 3 ), [43] Colombia, Peru, Central America, and Chile, and opening-weekend records for an animated film in Norway, Sweden (surpassed by Frozen ), [44] Ecuador, and Bolivia. [45] Its largest opening weekends were recorded in Russia and the CIS ($16.9 million), China ($15.7 million), [46] and France and the Maghreb region ($12.8 million). [47] It is the second-highest-grossing film in Latin America with at least $181 million, only behind Marvel's The Avengers . [48]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 37% based on 135 reviews and an average rating of 5.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Ice Age: Continental Drift 3D has moments of charm and witty slapstick, but it often seems content to recycle ideas from the previous films." [49] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 49 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [50] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. [51]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four and stated, "Watching this film was a cheerless exercise for me. The characters are manic and idiotic, the dialogue is rat-a-tat chatter, the action is entirely at the service of the 3D, and the movie depends on bright colors, lots of noise and a few songs in between the whiplash moments." [52] Megan Lehmann of The Hollywood Reporter said, "It's familiar, drawn-out shtick, and the humor lacks the subtlety of the first and best Ice Age, but there are some visually inventive high points." [53]
Simon Brew, writing for Den of Geek , gave a very positive four-star review, saying that "not only is Ice Age 4 arguably the best in the franchise yet, it's also, a little surprisingly perhaps (given that it's a fourth movie in a franchise, turned around on a strict cycle), turned out to be thoroughly, thoroughly entertaining family blockbuster." [54] Olly Richards of Empire , gave the film three out of five stars and wrote, "Old friends and new voice talent will delight kids with a never-ending love for the most undemanding animation out there. A megabucks franchise drifts on." [55]
Ice Age: Continental Drift – Arctic Games, a tie-in video game based on the film developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by Activision, was released in July 2012 [56] for Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. [57]
A sequel, titled Ice Age: Collision Course, was released on July 22, 2016. [3] [58]
Ice Age: The Meltdown is a 2006 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age and the second installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay written by Peter Gaulke, Gerry Swallow, and Jim Hecht, and a story by Gaulke and Swallow. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from the first Ice Age film, with newcomers Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, and Queen Latifah joining the cast. In the film, Manny, Sid, and Diego attempt to escape an impending flood, during which Manny finds love.
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown is a 2006 video game published by Vivendi Universal Games. It is based on the film of the same name. Unlike its Game Boy Advance-exclusive predecessor, Ice Age, Meltdown was a multiplatform release, available on Microsoft Windows, all major sixth-generation platforms and both seventh-generation Nintendo platforms, with the Wii port being a launch title in Europe.
Scrat is a fictional rodent in the Ice Age franchise and the mascot of the now-defunct animation company Blue Sky Studios. In the 2002 film Ice Age plus its follow-up shorts and theatrical sequels, he is a saber-toothed, long-snouted rat-like squirrel with no dialogue who is obsessed with trying to collect and bury his acorn(s), putting himself in danger and usually losing his food in the process to his frustration. He additionally is a catalyst for major natural disasters that drastically alter the world around him and at times sets the stage for the main conflicts of the films. Scrat's storylines are mostly independent of those of other characters of "the Herd," though the two do intersect at times. While Scrat is a side character for the theatrical films that he appears in, he is the protagonist of other media such as certain shorts and his own miniseries Ice Age: Scrat Tales. In all of his appearances, he was voiced by the studio co-founder Chris Wedge, who also directed the first film.
No Time for Nuts is a 2006 American animated short film from Blue Sky Studios, starring Scrat from Ice Age. Directed by Chris Renaud and Mike Thurmeier, it was debuted on November 21, 2006, on the DVD and Blu-ray release of Ice Age: The Meltdown. It follows Scrat on a pursuit after his acorn, which accidentally sends forward in time by a frozen time machine. No Time for Nuts was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, and also won an Annie Award.
Michael Thurmeier is a Canadian film director and animator. He is best known for directing the Blue Sky Studios animated films Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and Ice Age: Collision Course (2016), which are the fourth and fifth installments in the Ice Age franchise. Along with Chris Renaud, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for the Ice Age short film No Time for Nuts (2006).
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a 2009 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and the third installment in the Ice Age film series. It was directed by Carlos Saldanha and co-directed by Mike Thurmeier, from a screenplay written by Michael Berg, Peter Ackerman, Mike Reiss, and Yoni Brenner, based on a story conceived by Jason Carter Eaton. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from the first two films and Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, and Queen Latifah reprise their roles from The Meltdown, with Simon Pegg joining them in the role of a weasel named Buck. In the film, while Manny and Ellie are preparing for their baby, Sid the Sloth is kidnapped by a female Tyrannosaurus after stealing her eggs, leading the rest of the herd to rescue him in a tropical lost world inhabited by dinosaurs underneath the ice.
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted is a 2012 American animated comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and PDI/DreamWorks and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The third installment in the Madagascar franchise, it is the sequel to Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), and was the first film in the series to be released in 3D. It was directed by Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon and Tom McGrath from a screenplay written by Darnell and Noah Baumbach. The film stars Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, McGrath, Chris Miller, Christopher Knights, John DiMaggio and Vernon reprising their voice acting roles from the previous installments, alongside new cast members Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston, Martin Short and Frances McDormand. In the film, the main characters—a party of animals from the Central Park Zoo whose adventures have already taken them to Madagascar and Africa—attempt to return to New York City and find themselves traveling across Europe with a circus while being pursued by the villainous head of Monaco's animal control service.
Ice Age is an American media franchise created by Michael J. Wilson, centering on a group of mammals surviving the Pleistocene ice age. It consists of computer-animated films, short films, TV specials and a series of video games. The first five films were produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by its then parent company 20th Century Fox. The series features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, and Chris Wedge. The film series centers mainly on "the Herd," which since the first film consists of at least Manny, Sid, and Diego. The franchise also features mostly independent plotlines involving a dialogue-free saber-toothed squirrel named Scrat, who ends up in misadventures from trying to retrieve and bury his acorns.
Jason Isaac Fuchs is an American actor and screenwriter, best known for writing Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), Pan (2015) and Wonder Woman (2017). He is also known for his role as Lawrence Grey on the Fox dramatic thriller The Passage. In January 2015, Fuchs was included on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Ice Age is a 2002 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Chris Wedge and co-directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay by Michael Berg, Michael J. Wilson, and Peter Ackerman, based on a story by Wilson. It features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Goran Višnjić, and Jack Black. Set during the days of the Pleistocene ice age, the film centers around three main characters—Manny (Romano), a no-nonsense woolly mammoth; Sid (Leguizamo), a loudmouthed ground sloth; and Diego (Leary), a sardonic smilodon—who come across a human baby and work together to return it to its tribe. Additionally, the film occasionally follows Scrat, a speechless "saber-toothed squirrel" (Wedge), who is perpetually searching for a place in the ground to bury his acorn.
Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas is a 2011 animated television special and part of the Ice Age franchise, produced by Blue Sky Studios and directed by Karen Disher. It premiered on November 24, 2011 on Fox in the United States and in the United Kingdom at Christmas on Channel 4 and E4 and it was released 2 days later to DVD and Blu-ray. This Christmas special takes place between Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Ice Age: Continental Drift.
Stephen Michael Martino is an American designer and film director. He is best known for directing the Blue Sky Studios films Horton Hears a Who! (2008), Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), and The Peanuts Movie (2015).
Ice Age: Collision Course is a 2016 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and the fifth installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Michael Thurmeier and co-directed by Galen T. Chu, from a screenplay written by Michael Wilson, Michael Berg, and Yoni Brenner, based on a story conceived by Aubrey Solomon. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Keke Palmer, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg, Seann William Scott, Jennifer Lopez and Queen Latifah reprise their roles from previous films, with Adam DeVine, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Max Greenfield, Jessie J and Nick Offerman voicing new characters. In the film, after Scrat is propelled into outer space in an abandoned spaceship during an attempt to bury his acorn and accidentally sends a giant asteroid towards Earth, Manny, the Herd and Buck must go on a life-or-death mission to find a way to fend it off.
Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade is a 2016 animated television special, produced by Blue Sky Studios and directed by Ricardo Curtis. It premiered on Fox during the Easter season. Most of the actors reprise their roles from the previous installments except Aziz Ansari, whose role as Squint was replaced by Seth Green. It takes place between Ice Age: Continental Drift and Ice Age: Collision Course.
Ice Age: Continental Drift – Arctic Games is a tie-in video game based on the film Ice Age: Continental Drift. It was developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by Activision and was released on 10 July 2012 for Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is a 2022 animated adventure comedy film directed by John C. Donkin, in his feature directorial debut, with a screenplay by Jim Hecht, Ray DeLaurentis, and William Schifrin. It is a spin-off film of the Ice Age franchise, and the sixth overall installment. It takes place between Ice Age: Collision Course and Ice Age 6. The film stars the voices of Simon Pegg, Vincent Tong, Aaron Harris, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Justina Machado also starring in the film. It follows the two opossum brothers Crash and Eddie and their adventure to becoming independent possums alongside the titular character Buck Wild.
Ice Age Adventure was a dark boat ride at the amusement park Movie Park Germany at in Bottrop, Germany. The ride opened on 15 March 2005 as a replacement for the defunct Looney Tunes Adventure ride, and closed for good on 1 November 2016 before being replaced by Movie Park Studio Tour in 2021.