Ice Age: Continental Drift


Ice Age: Continental Drift is a 2012 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to ' and the fourth film in the Ice Age series. The film was directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier from a screenplay by Michael Berg and Jason Fuchs. In the film's ensemble voice cast, Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, and Chris Wedge reprise their previous roles alongside Keke Palmer, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Jennifer Lopez, Josh Gad, and Peter Dinklage voicing new characters. The plot focuses on Scrat 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.
Ice Age: Continental Drift was released in the United States on July 13, 2012. This was the first Ice Age film to be presented in the 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The film grossed $877 million worldwide, marking it the fifth highest-grossing film of 2012 and the highest-grossing animated film of 2012. A sequel, ', was released in 2016.

Plot

Sixteen years after the events of, Manny and Ellie are forced to deal with the trials and tribulations of their daughter Peaches, who has trouble fitting in with her peers. Ellie tries to support her daughter, but 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 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 left for dead.
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, and is eaten alive. 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

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. Fox later confirmed on May 5, 2010, that Ice Age: Continental Drift would be released on July 13, 2012.

Soundtrack

A soundtrack album of music by John Powell was released on July 10, 2012 by Varèse Sarabande. In addition to Powell's original score, 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."
Featured in the film was "Chasing the Sun", performed by The Wanted the film's first theme song, and the second theme song "We are " written by Ester Dean, performed by Keke Palmer. 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 " sung only by Keke Palmer is available for download.
Captain Gutt’s pirates also perform a sea shanty during the film.

Release

Ice Age: Continental Drift had its premiere on June 20, 2012, at the CineEurope film distributors' trade fair in Barcelona. It publicly premiered on June 27, 2012, in Belgium, Egypt, France, Switzerland, and Trinidad, and was released on July 13, 2012, in the USA. The film was 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 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 6, 2011, on iTunes Movie Trailers. The second part was released on November 16, 2011, on iTunes, and debuted in theatres with . 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 No. 10 car driven by Tomy Drissi for the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Toyota/Save Mart 350 held on June 24, 2012.

Home media

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

Reception

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. Its worldwide opening weekend totaled $126.9 million., worldwide it is the 66th-highest-grossing film of all time, the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2012, and the second-highest-grossing film in the Ice Age series. Overall, it is the fifteenth-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-largest opening weekend in the Ice Age series, only behind The Meltdown. The film closed from theaters on February 7, 2013 with $161 million, thus standing as the lowest-grossing film in the series, until Ice Age: Collision Course would gross less than $100 million in 2016.
;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. Ice Age 4 had a two-day opening of $11 million from 12 markets. On its opening weekend, it earned first place with $80.3 million from 34 markets, opening No. 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, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile. The film set opening-weekend records for any film in Argentina, 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, China, and France and the Maghreb region. It is the second-highest-grossing film in Latin America with at least $181 million, only behind Marvel's The Avengers.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 37% based on 134 reviews and an average rating of 5.09/10. 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." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 49 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
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, turned out to be thoroughly, thoroughly entertaining family blockbuster."

Video games

Ice Age Village is a mobile video game, developed by Gameloft, and was released on April 5, 2012 to iPhone, iPad and various Android devices.
Ice Age: Continental Drift – Arctic Games, a video game based on the film, developed by Behaviour Interactive, published by Activision and was released on July 10, 2012 for Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, and Xbox 360.

Sequel

A sequel, titled Ice Age: Collision Course, was released on July 22, 2016.