Ice Age 4: Continental Drift is a 2012 American 3D computer-animated comedy adventure film directed by Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier. It was written by Jason Fuchs and Michael Berg, and features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Jennifer Lopez and Queen Latifah. It is the third sequel to the movie, Ice Age, and was produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the first sequel in the series not directed by Carlos Saldanha, and the second Ice Age installment that utilises Digital 3D, after Ice Age 3: Dawn of The Dinosaurs. It was released in the US on July 13th 2012, ten years after the release of the original Ice Age movie. This was the first Ice Age film to be presented in the 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film became a box office success, with a worldwide gross of over $877 million, marking it the highest grossing animated film of 2012. A fifth film, as of now titled Ice Age 5 is scheduled for release July 15th 2016.
Plot[]
Set years after the events of Ice Age 3: Dawn of The Dinosaurs, Scrat (Chris Wedge) pounds his new acorn into the ground, falls to the center of the earth and inadvertently causes the break up of Pangaea. He thens shots out of the ground loses his acorn. Meanwhile Manny (Ray Ramano) and Ellie (Queen Latifan) are forced to deal with the trials and tribulations of their teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer), who has trouble fitting in with her peers. Ellie tries to support her daughter, but Manny becomes exceedingly over-protective. Peaches' friend Louis (Josh Gad), a molehog, tries to warn her as she tries to approach a mammoth named Ethan (Drake) on whom she has a crush on. Meanwhile, Sid's (John Leguizamo) family returns, but only long enough to drop off the elderly Granny (Wanda Sykes) before abandoning them both. Manny catches Peaches sneaking off to meet Ethan, and the two of them have an argument and their estrangement. Shortly after, the continental break-up separates Manny from the herd. Trapped on a moving chunk of ice with Sid and Diego (Denis Leary), Manny has no choice but to ride out the current. Meanwhile, a giant land shift encroaches on Ellie, Peaches, and those remaining on land, causing them to make their way toward the land bridge. Meanwhile, Scrat finds an acorn that has a acorn treasure map on it that directs him towards an island of acorns. After violent weather and a fight against a giant crab pushes them further away from land Manny, Sid, and Diego find Granny, who was sleeping inside a hollow tree stump on the ice raft. Shortly afterwards they are captured by a band of pirates who have already captured Scrat and are sailing on a floating iceberg. They are led by a Gigantopithecus, Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), who attempts to press them into his crew. When they refuse, Gutt tries to execute them, leading to their escape, which inadvertently cause the ship to sink. Gutt's first mate, a female sabretooth named Shira (Jennifer Lopez), joins them out of no will of her own after she was left for dead. After finding Switchback Cove, the herd learns that it has a current that can take them back home, but after washing ashore, Shira, still loyal to Gutt, warns him and the rest of the pirate crew, who are also on the island, of their presence, but also gets punished for not attacking the herd. Gutt, wanting revenge on Manny for sinking his ship, plans an attack. In response, Manny coordinates a plan to steal Gutt's new ship to return home, and enlists the aid of the hyrax inhabitants of the island with the help of Sid. Shira decides to leave Gutt, after Diego convinces her to leave Gutt and join him; along with the herd, but she stays behind to ensure Gutt does not catch the herd who was attempting to escape on his new ice ship. Enraged, Gutt constructs a new ship, the Sweet Revenge, by breaking a towering chunk of ice apart from a nearby glacier and sails after the herd, determined to get revenge. Meanwhile, Scrat, using one of the hyrax's leaf "planes", flies off the island, only to be swallowed by a shark. Peaches finally begins to fit in with the mammoths her age, but when she tells that she is not friends with Louis, Louis, who overhears this, is estranged from her. When she realizes the other teens' careless disregard for danger, she turns her back on them, warning that their extinction will come sooner than they think. While sailing back on the current, Diego, Sid, and Granny encounter monstrous sirens preying on their deepest fantasies. Manny realizes this deception and prevents his friends from being lured to their deaths. Scrat encounters a siren as well, taking on the shape of Scratte, that Scrat ignores. The siren then turns into an acorn and Scrat immediately runs up and attempts to bury the "acorn", knocking out the siren, but is attacked by other ones and manages to escape unharmed. Manny, Sid, Diego, and Granny return home only to find the land bridge destroyed in an earthquake and that Gutt and his crew made it there first and captured Ellie and Peaches. Louis stands up and orders Gutt to release Peaches and a battle ensues between the herd and the pirates. Shira frees Ellie and helps fend off her former comrades, while Granny's "imaginary" pet whale, Precious, appears and turns the tables on the rest of the lot. Gutt then attempts to kill Ellie but Peaches, using her possum-like skills, manages to save her mother. Manny defeats Gutt in a duel on an ice floe and reunites with his family and friends. Gutt subsequently encounters a siren that appears the shape of a female Gigantopithecus, and is possibly eaten alive. With their home destroyed, the inhabitants then sail to an island that they find to settle down. Louis is now regarded as a hero among the teenage mammoths, while Shira agrees to stay with Diego as a member of the herd and Manny and Peaches reconcile. In the film's epilogue, Scrat discovers the island on the map, known as Scratlantis (a mock up of Atlantis), but his uncontrollable urge to hunt acorns in the acorn-rich city inadvertently causes the entire island to sink when he unplugs an acorn drain holder; Scrat is then ejected into what is now known as Death Valley, California.
Cast[]
- Ray Romano as Manny, a Woolly Mammoth who is Ellie's husband and Peaches' overprotective father
- John Leguizamo as Sid, a lazy, but caring Ground Sloth
- Denis Leary as Diego, a Smilodon
- Queen Latifah as Ellie, a Woolly Mammoth who is Manny's wife and Peaches' mother
- Seann William Scott as Crash, an opossum, Eddie's brother, and Ellie's close friend and adoptive brother
- Josh Peck as Eddie, an opossum, Crash's brother, and Ellie's close friend and adoptive brother
- Keke Palmer as Peaches, a teenage Woolly Mammoth and Manny and Ellie's daughter
- Chris Wedge as Scrat, a sabre-toothed squirrel
- Peter Dinklage as Captain Gutt, a Gigantopithecus
- Wanda Sykes as Granny, Sid's 80-year-old grandmother.
- Jennifer Lopez as Shira, a Smilodon, and Gutt's first mate, until she is separated from her crew.
- Josh Gad as Louis, a molehog and Peaches' best friend who has a crush on her
- Nick Frost as Flynn an elephant seal
- Aziz Ansari as Squint, a rabbit (Palaeolagus) who is Gutt's first mate
- Kunal Nayyar as Gupta, a Bengali Badger (Chamitataxus)
- Rebel Wilson as Raz, a Procoptodon
- Alain Chabat as Silas, a Blue-footed booby
- Drake as Ethan, a mammoth that Peaches has a crush on
- Nicki Minaj as Steffie, a mammoth who is Ethan's friend and makes fun of Peaches
- Heather Morris as Katie, one of Steffie's best friends.
- Alan Tudyk as Milton, Sid's father and Granny’s Hunky Siren
- Joy Behar as Eunice, Sid's mother
- Ester Dean as Sid and Gutt's Sirens
- Eddie "Piolín" Sotelo as Uncle Fungus, Sid's Uncle
Production[]
The first details of the movie were announced on January 10th 2010, when The New York Times reported that Blue Sky was working on a fourth film and was in negotiations with the voice cast. Fox later confirmed on May 5th 2010, that Ice Age: Continental Drift would be released on July 13th 2012.
Release[]
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift was released in theaters and 3D on July 13th 2012, ten years after the release of the first film. in the USA. The film is accompanied by the short animated film The Longest Daycare featuring Maggie Simpson.
Marketing[]
As a promotion for Ice Age: Continental Drift, Fox released two 3-minute short segments from the film, titled Scrat's Continental Crack-up Part 1 and Scrat's Continental Crack-up: Part 2. The first part premiered as a theatrical release attached to Gulliver's Travels in 2010, and it was released on-line on January 6th 2011, on iTunes Movie Trailers. The second part was released on November 16th 2011, on iTunes, and debuted in theatres with Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. The first part shows how the 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 #10 car driven by Tomy Drissi for the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Toyota/Save Mart 350 held on June 24th 2012.
Reception[]
Critical response[]
Ice Age: Continental Drift received generally mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 37% of critics have given the film positive reviews, with a rating average of 5.1/10 based on 131 reviews. The consensus statement 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." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 49 based on 29 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews."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 3-D, and the movie depends on bright colors, lots of noise and a few songs in between the whiplash moments." 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." 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."
Box office[]
Ice Age: Continental Drift earned $161,321,843 in North America, and $715,922,939 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $877,244,782. Its worldwide opening weekend totaled $126.9 million. Worldwide, it is the thirty-fifth highest-grossing film, the fifth highest-grossing film of 2012 (also, the highest-grossing animated film of that year), and the second highest-grossing film in the series. Overall, it is the eighth highest-grossing animated film. 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-largest opening weekend in the Ice Age series, only behind The Meltdown ($68 million). The film closed from theaters on February 7th 2013 with $161 million, thus standing as the lowest grossing film in the series. Outside North America, it is the twelfth highest-grossing film, the third highest-grossing 2012 film, the second highest-grossing Fox film, and was the highest-grossing animated film until Frozen (which starred Josh Gad) surpassed it in 2014. Ice Age 4 had a two-day (Wednesday-Thursday) opening of $11 million from 12 markets. On its opening weekend (through Sunday), it earned first place with $80.3 million from 34 markets, opening #1 in all of them. 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 also set opening-day records for an animated film in Russia and in Sweden and achieved the second highest-grossing opening day for an animated film in France ($4.5 million), Colombia, Argentina and Chile. The film set opening-weekend records for any film in Argentina (first surpassed by Iron Man 3), Colombia, Peru, Central America and Chile, and opening-weekend records for an animated film in Norway, Sweden, Ecuador and Bolivia. Its largest opening weekends were recorded in Russia and the CIS ($16.9 million), China ($15.7 million), and France and the Maghreb region ($12.8 million). It is the second highest-grossing film in Latin America with at least $181 million, only behind Marvel's The Avengers.
Soundtrack[]
Ice Age: Continental Drift is the soundtrack of the film scored by John Powell and was released on July 10th 2012. Featured in the film was "Chasing the Sun", performed by The Wanted[39] the film's first theme song, and the second theme song "We are (Family)" written by Ester Dean, performed by: Queen Latifah, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Heather Morris, and Ester Dean, herself.[40] 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. In addition to the original score by John Powell, the film also 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."
Home media[]
Ice Age: Continental Drift was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D on December 11th 2012.
Video game[]
Ice Age Continenatl Drift - Arctic Games, a video game based on the film, developed by Behaviour Interactive, published by Activision and was released on July 10th 2012 for Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, and Kinect for Xbox 360.
Trivia[]
Sequel[]
In December 2013, 20th Century Fox says that Ice Age 5 has been planned and will be released July 15th 2016, ten years after the release of Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.