| Ice Age: Continental Drift | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| 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 dates |
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Running time | 88 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $95 million[2][1] |
| Box office | $877.2 million[1] |
Ice Age: Continental Drift is a 2012 American animatedadventurecomedy film produced byBlue Sky Studios. The fourth intheIce Age film series, it was directed bySteve Martino andMichael Thurmeier and written byMichael Berg andJason Fuchs.Ray Romano,John Leguizamo,Denis Leary andQueen Latifah reprise their roles from the previous films, withJennifer Lopez,Drake, andNicki Minaj joining the cast. The film involvesScrat mistakenly sending Manny, Sid, and Diego adrift on an iceberg with Sid's Granny, leading them to face a gang of pirates.
The film premiered at CineEurope on June 20, 2012, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 13 by20th Century Fox. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $877.2 million worldwide, making it thefifth highest-grossing film and the highest-grossing animated film of 2012. Asequel,Ice Age: Collision Course, was released in 2016.
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 byScrat trying to bury his acorn again) separates Manny from Ellie, Peaches, Crash, and Eddie, simultaneously trapping him 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 aland 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 ofpirates sailing on a floatingiceberg led by aGigantopithecus, 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'sfirst mate, a femalesabretooth named Shira, reluctantly joins them when they rescue her after she was left to drown 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 ofhyrax 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 cocky attitudes, and leaves them.
After narrowly escaping a pack ofsirens, 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 anice floe and reunites with his family and friends. Gutt subsequently encounters a siren that assumes the shape of a femaleGigantopithecus, who eats 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.
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Middle row:Josh Gad,Seann William Scott,Josh Peck andAziz Ansari voiceLouis,Crash,Eddie and Squint.
Bottom row:Wanda Sykes,Keke Palmer,Jennifer Lopez, andQueen Latifah voice Granny,Peaches, Shira andEllie.The first details of the sequel were announced on January 10, 2010, whenThe New York Times reported that Blue Sky was working on a fourth film and was in negotiations with the voice cast.[13] Fox confirmed in May 2010, thatIce Age: Continental Drift would release on July 13, 2012.[14]
ForContinental 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 fromIce 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, andRealFlow 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.[15]
Asoundtrack album of music byJohn Powell, who previously composed thesecond andthird installments, and was released on July 10, 2012, byVarèse Sarabande.[16][17] In addition to Powell's original score, the film featuresBeethoven's9th Symphony.[18]
During the film'send credits, two songs played. "Chasing the Sun" bythe Wanted,[19] and "We Are (Family)" written byEster Dean, performed byKeke Palmer and other cast members includingDrake andNicki Minaj.[20] Both songs are not available on the soundtrack but the former was released previously on the band's 2012 debutEP,The Wanted; a solo version of "We Are (Family)" by Palmer is available for download.
Captain Gutt's pirates also perform asea shanty during the film featuring vocals fromPeter Dinklage amongst other cast members, called "Master of the Seas", written and produced byAdam Schlesinger. This song is not featured on the soundtrack.
Ice Age: Continental Drift had its premiere on June 20, 2012, at theCineEurope film distributors' trade fair in Barcelona.[21] 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 by20th Century Fox.[22] The film was accompanied by the short animated filmThe Longest Daycare, featuringMaggie Simpson from the animated sitcomThe Simpsons.[23][24]
As a promotion forIce Age: Continental Drift, Fox released two 3-minute short segments from the film serving as teasers for it,[25] titledScrat's Continental Crack-up andScrat's Continental Crack-up: Part 2. The first part premiered as a theatrical release attached toGulliver's Travels in 2010,[26] and later withRio. It was also released online in January 2011, oniTunes Movie Trailers.[26] The second part was released in November 2011, on iTunes,[27] and debuted in theatres withAlvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.[28] 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 onTommy Baldwin Racing's No. 10 car driven byTomy Drissi for the2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup SeriesToyota/Save Mart 350 held in June 2012.[29]
Ice Age: Continental Drift was released onDVD,Blu-ray, andBlu-ray 3D on December 11, 2012.[30]
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.[31] As of 2019[update], worldwide it is the 66th-highest-grossing film of all time,[31] the fifth-highest-grossing film of2012 (also, the highest-grossing animated film of that year),[32] and the second-highest-grossing film in theIce Age series.[33] Overall, it is theeighteenth-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 theIce Age series, only behindThe Meltdown ($68 million).[34] The film closed from theaters on February 7, 2013, with $161.3 million, thus standing as the second-highest-grossing film in the series.[35]
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, untilDisney'sFrozen surpassed it.[36]Ice Age: Continental Drift had a two-day (Wednesday–Thursday) opening of $11 million from 12 markets.[37] On its opening weekend (through Sunday), it earned first place with $80.3 million from 34 markets, opening No. 1 in all of them.[38][39] 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[40] and in Sweden[41] and achieved the second-highest-grossing opening day for an animated film in France ($4.5 million), Colombia, Argentina, and Chile.[37] The film set opening-weekend records for any film in Argentina (first surpassed byIron Man 3),[42] Colombia, Peru, Central America, and Chile, and opening-weekend records for an animated film in Norway, Sweden (surpassed byFrozen),[43] Ecuador, and Bolivia.[44] Its largest opening weekends were recorded in Russia and the CIS ($16.9 million), China ($15.7 million),[45] and France and the Maghreb region ($12.8 million).[46] It is the second-highest-grossing film in Latin America with at least $181 million, only behindMarvel's The Avengers.[47]
OnRotten 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."[48] OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 49 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[49] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[50]
Roger Ebert of theChicago 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."[51] Megan Lehmann ofThe Hollywood Reporter said, "It's familiar, drawn-out shtick, and the humor lacks the subtlety of the first and bestIce Age, but there are some visually inventive high points."[52]
Simon Brew, writing forDen of Geek, gave a very positive four-star review, saying that "not only isIce 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."[53] Olly Richards ofEmpire, 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."[54]
Ice Age: Continental Drift – Arctic Games, atie-invideo game based on the film developed byBehaviour Interactive and published byActivision, was released in July 2012[55] forWii,Nintendo 3DS,Nintendo DS,PlayStation 3, andXbox 360.[56]
A sequel, titledIce Age: Collision Course, was released on July 22, 2016, while asixth film is in development and set to be released on February 5, 2027.[57][58]
The film briefly gained a resurgence when it was used as a major plot point in theFX onHulu TV seriesAlien: Earth. The show's protagonists Joe Hermit (Alex Lawther) and Wendy, formally Marcy Hermit, (Sydney Chandler), both fondly remember watching the movie and quote the exchange between Captain Gutt and Sid ("Surrender your ship or face my fury!" / "Or face your furry what?"). Some online commentators noted that those who hadn't watched the series and were only learning about it through social media tended to respond negatively, unaware of the emotional weight that it holds with the lead characters. Shannon Connellan ofMashable referred to the moment in the series as "the most human thing you can do in the reality that is Alien: Earth."[59] Eric Francisco ofEsquire took it further by noting that bothContinental Drift andAlien: Earth share similar themes in adapting to a changing and evolving world.[60]
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