Manny, Sid, and Diego live in a valley that is surrounded by a high ice wall on all sides and is inhabited by many other creatures. The trio discovers that the ice wall is actually a dam that is barely holding areservoir that couldflood the valley if it fails. A vulture tells them that there is a boat at the other end of the valley that may save them, but they must reach it in three days. A chunk of ice breaks off from the top of the dam, initiating their immediate evacuation. Manny is also struggling with the thought of possibly being thelast mammoth alive.
Meanwhile, Cretaceous, aMetriorhynchus, and Maelstrom, aGlobidens—both frozen since theMesozoic era—escape due to melting ice and seek to eat all the mammals they can during the flood. On their journey to the boat, the trio meet Ellie, a mammoth who believes she is anopossum, and Crash and Eddie, two mischievous opossums whom Ellie believes to be her brothers. Sid invites them to join their journey to the boat, and Ellie accepts. After a dangerous encounter with Cretaceous and Maelstrom while crossing a pond, Ellie realizes that she is a mammoth. Manny begins to fall in love with her, but denies his feelings at first because he feels like he is replacing his deceased wife and child. Despite this bonding moment with Manny, she distances herself from him when he suggests "saving their species". Ellie and Manny later reconcile.
The herd takes a break for the night. The next day, the group finds the boat behind a field of hot geysers. Manny, Sid, and Diego separate from Ellie, Crash, and Eddie when the two mammoths argue about which route is safest.
Just as Manny, Sid, and Diego bypass the geysers, the ice dam fails, unleashing a flood upon the valley. Ellie, Crash, and Eddie, who took the safer yet longer way, are trapped inside a cave due to falling rocks. Crash and Eddie escape through a small hole and warn Manny, who rushes back to save Ellie. Cretaceous and Maelstorm ambush Manny underwater, but he tricks them into dislodging a boulder, thus freeing Ellie. Manny and Ellie reunite with the others atop a boulder, but the water is still rising. Meanwhile,Scrat, after a series of misadventures to get back his acorn, climbs the adjacent glacial wall beside them and inadvertently creates a long crack when he punctures the ice. The crack widens into a giganticfissure which splits open the wall and drains the floodwaters, saving everyone; in the process, Scrat falls within the fissure and is washed away.
A group of mammoths later appear from the fissure, proving to everyone that mammoths are not really extinct. Manny initially lets Ellie go with the mammoth herd, but after some encouragement from Sid and Diego to move on from his past, he catches up to her, expressing his desire to stay with her. Manny, Sid, Diego, Ellie, Crash, and Eddie then venture out of the valley.
After falling into the fissure and nearly drowning, Scrat has anear death experience, entering aheaven full of acorns. Suddenly, he finds himself being "sucked back" just as he is about to reach a gigantic acorn. Scrat then discovers that he has been resuscitated by Sid. Scrat is enraged, believing that Sid stole his acorn, and proceeds to viciously attack him.
After the release ofIce Age in March 2002, executive producerChris Meledandri commented on the potentialIce Age sequel: "The success ofIce Age is something that gives us additional momentum. It's too early to say, but it's certainly something we'll explore."[3] By June 2002, Blue Sky Studios was already working on the sequel.[4] In 2003, Lori Forte, the producer of the first film, signed a multi-year deal with Fox Feature Films to develop and produce animated films, including a potentialIce Age sequel.[5] During an interview withDenis Leary in July 2003, he said that he had expressed hope to reprise his role as Diego in the sequel: "I think there's a story – the people at Fox are working on one right now. I think they're talking about going back into the studios something around late Fall."[6] In that same year, 2006 was reported as the planned release year,[7] and by August 2004, its final release date, March 31, 2006, had been set.[8]
Initially developed under the working title ofIce Age 2,[8] it was renamed by June 2005 toIce Age 2: The Meltdown,[9] but for the film's final release in March 2006, the creators decided to remove the number2, calling itIce Age: The Meltdown. However, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico, and Australia, its title is promoted asIce Age 2: The Meltdown. Also, most of the sponsors of the film had the2 in their packaging after the name change (they however did edit the2 out of their TV ads).
Carlos Saldanha, the director of the film, strove to make the characters' eyes appear alive and not mechanical. “You want the facial expressions to work. I wanted it to be so that if you looked into their eyes, you would know what they were thinking.” in his own words. The characters, despite being from the last movie, were remodeled for the sequel.[10]
Soundtrack
The score is byJohn Powell; the soundtrack also features the song "Food Glorious Food" from the musical and filmOliver!. Powell composed brand new music for the film that replaced the theme songs from the previous film.Aram Khachaturian'sAdagio from Spartacus is featured during Scrat's Heavenly vision. The track was released as a record, titledIce Age: The Meltdown on March 28, 2006, byVarèse Sarabande Records.[11] For the Flemish version of the film, the song ''The Other Side'' byX!NK is featured.[12] The UK version hasReal Love byLee Ryan.[13] The Japanese version has "ICE AGE ~Hyougaki no Kodomo-tachi~" byKaori Kishitani.[14][15]
As an additional marketing ploy a special "anti-cell" spot was created with Sid complaining to the audience about a ringing cellular phone. The same was done forBrother Bear,I, Robot,Kung Fu Panda, andRobots.
OnFamily Guy's episode "Sibling Rivalry", Scrat is shown trying to take three nuts out of the side of a glacier;Peter shows up and tries to stop him, admonishing the squirrel for stealing, which drives Scrat to subsequently attack Peter. The scene was rendered in 3D (Family Guy is normally drawn in 2D), and Scrat was voiced byChris Wedge who voices him in the films.[22]Fox aired promotions for the film throughout the evening. During the same evening of this cameo, Sid was hosting the entireFox line-up, showing up in intermittent times between commercials.
Re-edited scenes ofIce Age: The Meltdown were shown inAirhead candy commercials on several kids' channels and programs, such as theDisney Channel,Nickelodeon,ABC Kids onABC, and more. It shows, in part, that after Scrat defeats a school ofpiranhas, he proudly displays an Airhead packet (replaced by an acorn in the actual film), when suddenly an eagle comes over and swipes it from him.
One of the posters for the film was a parody of aniPod advertisement, with "iAge" replacing "iPod" and an acorn replacing an iPod.
Home media
Ice Age: The Meltdown was released onBlu-ray Disc andDVD in North America on November 21, 2006, according to the official web store.[23] They were released in the UK on October 23, 2006, and both include a new Scrat short,No Time for Nuts.
Reception
Box office
The film exceeded expectations by opening with $68,033,544 in its first weekend. This was the second biggest opening for a non-summer, non-holiday release, after the $83,848,082 ofThe Passion of the Christ. The film set a record for the highest-grossing opening weekend in March, which lasted a year till it was surpassed by the $70,885,301 weekend of300. The film grossed a total of $195,330,621 atUnited States and Canadian box offices, making it the first film in 2006 to pass the $100 million mark. The film has grossed $667,094,506 worldwide and it isthe 66th highest-grossing film of all time.[1]Ice Age: The Meltdown was the highest grossing animated film worldwide of 2006, but lost toCars for being the highest grossing animated film in North America.
Chris Meledandri, then president of20th Century Fox Animation, credited the film's successful performance to the studio's strength in global marketing and distribution, the diversity of the crew, and Saldanha's method of using images rather than words to solve creative problems. Meledandri cited the success of Saldanha's model as a main factor in his decision to leave 20th Century Fox and foundIllumination Entertainment the following year.[24]
Critical reception
Ice Age: The Meltdown received mixed reviews, withRotten Tomatoes giving the film a "rotten" rating, with 56% of reviews positive. The consensus statement reads: "Despite its impressive animation and the hilarious antics of the saber-toothed squirrel Scrat,Ice Age 2: The Meltdown comes up short on the storytelling front."[25] Another review aggregator,Metacritic, calculated a score of 58, placing it at the high end of the site's "mixed or average" reviews category.[26]
Neil Smith, writing for theBBC, gave the film four stars out of five, declaring it as "an improvement on the original", and praising the film's greater focus on Scrat and itsenvironmentalist themes.[27] Caroline Westbrook, writing inEmpire magazine, gave the film three stars out of five, declaring that it had "plenty of laughs", but critiquing its plot as badly put together.[28]Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, stating "the firstIce Age movie more or less exhausted these characters and their world, and the meltdown doesn't add much."[29] Kimberly Jones of theAustin Chronicle gave the film two stars out of five, calling it a "watered-down likeness" of the first film that lacked its "geniality", and critiquing its third act as "too scary".[30]
Film critics generally agreed that the scenes focusing on the character of Scrat were the most entertaining parts of the movie, with Smith andPhilip French ofThe Guardian both expressing this view.[31][27]
CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gaveThe Meltdown an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[32]
Analysis
In an analysis of environmentalist themes in the film, Ellen E. Moore, a lecturer at theUniversity of Washington Tacoma, found that while the film presentsclimate change as a serious issue that threatens the main characters, the film's vagueness around what is causing this undermines the scientific consensus thathumans are causing climate change.[33] Moore also found that the story contains numerous references to the biblical narrative ofNoah's Ark, citing as evidence for this connection the fact that the animals largely travel either as pairs or as couples with children to the boat that is to save them. Moore ties these religious themes into what she perceives as the film's refusal to fully backanthropogenic climate change.[34]
^Hettrick, Scott (June 25, 2002)."Fox thaws 'Ice' vid plan".Variety.Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. RetrievedMay 9, 2015.Blue Sky is working on its next CGI movie for Fox called "Robots," due out in 2004, with a sequel to "Ice Age" to follow.
^Graser, Marc (June 1, 2003)."'Tooning up or 'tooning out?".Variety.Archived from the original on October 16, 2015. RetrievedMay 9, 2015.Blue Sky Studios, which created last year's CGI hit "Ice Age" for Fox and is now prepping a sequel for 2006,...
^ab"Ice Age 2". Box Office Mojo. Archived fromthe original on August 13, 2004. RetrievedMay 8, 2015.
