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Ice Age: Continental Drift

2012 American animated film From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ice Age: Continental Drift

Ice Age: Continental Drift is a 2012 American animated adventure comedy film. The sequel to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) and the fourth in the Ice Age film series, it was directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier from a screenplay by Michael Berg and Jason Fuchs. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Queen Latifah reprise their roles from the previous films, with Jennifer Lopez, Drake, and Nicki Minaj voicing new characters. The plot involves 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.

Quick Facts Directed by, Screenplay by ...
Ice Age: Continental Drift
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Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Screenplay by
Story by
  • Michael Berg
  • Lori Forte
Produced by
  • Lori Forte
  • John C. Donkin
Starring
CinematographyRenato Falcão
Edited by
Music byJohn Powell
Production
companies
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
  • June 20, 2012 (2012-06-20) (CineEurope)
  • July 13, 2012 (2012-07-13) (United States)
Running time
88 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$95 million[2][1]
Box office$877 million[1]
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The film was released in the United States on July 13, 2012. The film received mixed reviews, with praise for its voice performances, animation, score, and humor, but criticism for its plot and unoriginality. It grossed $877 million worldwide, making 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.

Plot

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Manny and Ellie are living happily with their now teenage daughter Peaches. While Ellie tries supporting her daughter, Manny becomes exceedingly overprotective. 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 mammoths he does not approve of, causing a fight between him and Peaches. Shortly after, a sudden continental break-up (caused by Scrat trying to bury his acorn again) separates Manny from The Herd. Trapped on a moving chunk of ice with Sid, Granny, and Diego, Manny has no choice but to ride out the current. At the same time, a giant land shift encroaches on Ellie, Peaches, and those remaining on land, forcing them to make their way towards a land bridge in order to get to safety.

After extremely violent weather pushes them further away from land, Manny's group is captured by a band of pirates sailing on a floating iceberg led by a Gigantopithecus, Captain Gutt, who attempts to press them into his crew. When they refuse, 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 female sabretooth named Shira, joins them after she is rescued after being left for dead by her 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 hyrax and is using them to build a new iceberg ship, Manny coordinates a plan with some more hyrax to free their comrades and steal the ship, and they are able to create a diversion. Just before they manage to escape aboard the ship, Diego tries to convince Shira to leave the pirates and join The Herd so she can live a better life, but Shira, while initially accepting, instead stays behind and slows Gutt down so The Herd can escape. Gutt forms yet another ship and plans to seek 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 molehog named Louis. When Louis overhears Peaches telling the other mammoths that they are not actually friends, Peaches has a change of heart about her new friends, berates them for their attitudes, and leaves them.

After narrowly escaping a pack of sirens, Manny, Sid, Diego, and Granny return home and find that not only has the land bridge been destroyed, but Gutt has beaten them and taken Ellie, Peaches, and the rest of The Herd hostage. A fight ensues, as Granny's pet whale, Precious, arrives and fends off Gutt's crew. Manny defeats Gutt in a final duel on an ice floe and reunites with his family and friends. Gutt subsequently encounters a siren that assumes the shape of a female Gigantopithecus, who tries to eat him alive by trapping him in a giant clam. In the aftermath, Peaches happily reconciles with both Manny and Louis, and Shira joins The Herd and becomes a couple with Diego. With their home destroyed by the land shift, Precious takes the entire Herd to a lush island, where the hyraxes from earlier have already started rebuilding their civilization.

Voice cast

See also: List of Ice Age characters
Top row: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, and Seann William Scott voices Manny, Sid, Diego, Captain Gutt, Louis, and Crash.
Bottom row: Josh Peck, Aziz Ansari, Wanda Sykes, Keke Palmer, Jennifer Lopez, and Queen Latifah voices Eddie, Squint, Granny, Peaches, Shira and Ellie.

Production

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 release on July 13, 2012.[15]

Animation

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]

Music

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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.

Release

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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 United States.[23] The film was accompanied by the short animated film The Longest Daycare, featuring Maggie Simpson from the animated sitcom The Simpsons.[24][25]

Marketing

As a promotion for Ice Age: Continental Drift, Fox released two 3-minute short segments from the film serving as teasers for it,[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]

Home media

Ice Age: Continental Drift was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D on December 11, 2012.[31]

Reception

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Box office

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, 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.

North America

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]

Other territories

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]

Critical response

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]

Video game

Main article: Ice Age: Continental Drift – Arctic Games

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]

Sequels

Main article: Ice Age: Collision Course

A sequel, titled Ice Age: Collision Course, was released on July 22, 2016, while a sixth film is in development and set to be released on December 18, 2026.[3][58]

See also

Notes

  1. as depicted in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

References

External links

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