Ice Age: The Meltdown

Ice Age: The Meltdown

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
Produced by Lori Forte
Screenplay by Peter Gaulke
Gerry Swallow
Jim Hecht
Story by Peter Gaulke
Gerry Swallow
Starring Ray Romano
John Leguizamo
Denis Leary
Seann William Scott
Queen Latifah
Music by John Powell
Edited by Harry Hitner
Production
company
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release dates
  • March 31, 2006 (2006-03-31)
Running time
 91 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $80 million
Box office $660.9 million[1]

Ice Age: The Meltdown (also known as Ice Age 2: The Meltdown or simply as Ice Age 2) is a 2006 American computer-animated comedy adventure film and the first sequel to the 2002 computer-animated film Ice Age. It was produced by Blue Sky Studios for 20th Century Fox, and premiered in Belgium on March 1, 2006. It was eventually released in 70 countries, with the last release being in China, on June 9, 2006.[2] It was directed by Carlos Saldanha, co-director of the original Ice Age, and the music was composed by John Powell. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Chris Wedge reprise their roles of Manny, Sid, Diego and Scrat. They are joined by Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott and Josh Peck. The plot focuses on the herd escaping an upcoming flood, during which Manny finds love.

The Meltdown received mixed critical reaction but was a box office success by earning over $660 million. Three more sequels were released — Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 2009, Ice Age: Continental Drift in 2012 and Ice Age: Collision Course in 2016.

Plot

In the opening scene, Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel climbs a glacier to bury his acorn, but accidentally opens a hole in it, causing water to spurt out. The world of ice is slowly melting. The creatures of the Ice Age are all shown enjoying themselves on slides and pools made by the melting ice; among them the three protagonists of the first film: Manny, Sid, and Diego. Sid opens a small day camp, where none of the younger creatures take him seriously, nor do Manny and Diego, which leaves Sid seeking a daring deed. Fast Tony, a local con artist is claiming that the earth will flood and that the bark and reeds which he sells are needed to stay alive. Manny dismisses the idea, but is distracted when he sees that Sid will try to high dive from a giant waterfall; as Manny goes with Diego to the top of the waterfall to save Sid from his act of daredevilry, suddenly the ice under Diego's feet begins breaking, causing him to bolt in fear, this also made Sid figure out that Diego is afraid of the water. The herd figure that the pleasant weather has caused the ice shelves to melt, and it is kept from destroying the valley only by the glaciers, which have formed a dam.

A lone vulture warns the animals that a giant tree can act as a boat and save them if they make it to the end of the valley within three days time, and all soon set out to find it. As the animals begin their journey, Sid sings three songs to tease Manny about Mammoths being "extinct". During the evacuation, a glacier which contains two sea reptiles from the Mesozoic era, Cretaceous and Maelstrom, breaks off.

When Manny briefly is separated from them, Diego and Sid encounter two cheeky opossums named Crash and Eddie who drive them nuts by playing Whac-A-Mole with them. Manny is still worried about being the last mammoth alive and his family, who had been killed by humans, but is surprised when he encounters Ellie, a female mammoth who believes she is an opossum and Crash and Eddie's adoptive sister. Sid invites her to tag along with the group to escape the flood, and she brings her brothers. After a dangerous encounter with Cretaceous and Maelstrom while crossing a pond, Sid prompts Diego to encourage him to admit and face his fears - Diego insists that "fear is for prey", so Sid points out that Diego is behaving as if he is the water's prey. They discover an area which Ellie recalls as the place where she was adopted. She finally realizes she is a mammoth and also expresses her suspicions about how different she was from other opossums. Despite this bonding moment with Manny, she distances herself from him when he suggests "saving their species". Ellie and Manny ultimately make up when they must co-operate to save the group when the ground cracks under their feet. Sid is kidnapped by a tribe of mini-sloths who believe Sid to be a god. Sid lights a fire for them, and believes that he has finally found respect, but they plan to sacrifice him by tossing him into a volcano. Sid narrowly escapes. The next morning, Sid tells the others his experience but none are convinced. They find a field of hot geysers, which separate Manny, Sid, and Diego from Ellie and her brothers when they argue about which way to go through it.

When the flood comes, Manny saves Ellie from drowning as she is caught in a cave (due to falling rocks), while Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid, Crash and Eddie from drowning. Cretaceous and Maelstrom arrive, but due to Manny's quick thinking, they are finished off by a rock which falls on them, killing them both. The other animals are at the mercy of the water currents. Meanwhile, Scrat climbs up the glacier and at the top sticks the acorn he has into the ice. This forms a crack in the glacier, which widens into a fissure, diverting the flood and saving the animals. Scrat is then washed away. In the final scene, a herd of mammoths shows up, but Manny and Ellie decide to remain together anyway, taking Sid, Diego, and the opossum brothers along. Sid encounters the mini-sloths again - they believe Sid stopped the flood and invite him to be their leader. Diego, surprised to see the mini-sloths are real, convinces Sid to stay with the others, reluctantly admitting that Sid is a vital part of their 'herd'.

The epilogue shows Scrat having a near death experience after falling into the fissure. He enters a heaven full of acorns. Suddenly, he finds himself torn away. He unhappily wakes up, having been resuscitated by Sid, who he proceeds to viciously attack.

Voice cast

Production

After the release of Ice Age in March 2002, executive producer Chris Meledandri commented on the potential Ice Age sequel: "The success of Ice 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 potential Ice Age sequel.[5] During an interview with Denis 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 of Ice Age 2,[8] it was renamed by June 2005 to Ice Age 2: The Meltdown,[9] but for the film's final release in March 2006, the creators decided to remove the number 2, calling it Ice Age: The Meltdown. However, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico, and Australia, its title is promoted as Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. Also, most of the sponsors of the film had the 2 in their packaging after the name change (they however did edit the 2 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]

Promotions

Soundtrack

Ice Age: The Meltdown
Film score by John Powell
Released March 28, 2006 (2006-03-28)
Genre Score
Length 62:58
Label Varèse Sarabande
John Powell film scores chronology
Mr. & Mrs. Smith Ice Age: The Meltdown United 93

The score is by John Powell; the soundtrack also features the song "Food Glorious Food" from the musical and film Oliver!. Powell composed brand new music for the film that replaced the theme songs from the previous film. Aram Khachaturian's Adagio from Spartacus is featured during Scrat's Heavenly vision.

Ice Age: The Meltdown was composed by John Powell and was released on March 28, 2006 by Varèse Sarabande Records.[11]

Release

Ice Age: The Meltdown had its world premiere on March 19, 2006, at the Mann's Grauman Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California.[12] The film was re-released in 3D on October 13, 2014 in China only.

Box office

The film exceeded expectations by opening with an $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 of the The Passion of the Christ. But the record for highest grossing weekend for March only lasted a year, due to the $70,885,301 weekend of 300. The film grossed a total of $195,330,621 at United States and Canadian box offices, making it the first film in 2006 to pass the $100 million mark. The film has grossed $660,940,780 worldwide and it is the 66th highest-grossing film of all time.[1] Ice Age: The Meltdown was the highest grossing animated film worldwide of 2006, but lost to Cars for being the highest grossing animated film in North America.

Critical reaction

Ice Age: The Meltdown received mixed reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a "rotten" rating, with 57% 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."[13] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, calculated a score of 58, placing it at the high end of the site's "mixed or average reviews" category.[14] Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, stating "the first Ice Age movie more or less exhausted these characters and their world, and the meltdown doesn't add much."[15]

CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave The Meltdown an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[16]

Home media

Ice Age: The Meltdown was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD were released in the North America on November 21, 2006 according to the official web store.[17] They were released in the UK on October 23, 2006, and both include a new Scrat short, No Time for Nuts.

Video game

A 2006 video and computer game based on the film was developed and published by Vivendi Games, and the Wii version was released shortly after the launch of the system. It was Fox Interactive's last title.[18]

Sequels

Main article: Ice Age (franchise)

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Ice Age: The Meltdown (2003)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
  2. ↑ Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) - International Box Office Results
  3. ↑ Lyons, Charles (March 24, 2002). "Fox, Blue Sky warming up assembly of 'Robots'". Variety. Retrieved May 9, 2015.
  4. ↑ Hettrick, Scott (June 25, 2002). "Fox thaws 'Ice' vid plan". Variety. Retrieved May 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.
  5. ↑ Bloom, David (March 5, 2003). "Fox finds its Forte". Variety. Retrieved March 5, 2003.
  6. ↑ "'Ice Age 2' Going Ahead According To Denis Leary". July 10, 2003.
  7. ↑ Graser, Marc (June 1, 2003). "'Tooning up or 'tooning out?". Variety. Retrieved May 9, 2015. Blue Sky Studios, which created last year’s CGI hit “Ice Age” for Fox and is now prepping a sequel for 2006,...
  8. 1 2 "Ice Age 2". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on August 13, 2004. Retrieved May 8, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Drea de Matteo and Queen Latifah set for 'Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.'". MovieWeb. June 20, 2005. Retrieved July 25, 2015.
  10. ↑ Dunlop, Renee (April 10, 2006). "Carlos Saldanha, Director of Ice Age 2: The Meltdown". CGSociety. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  11. ↑ "Ice Age: The Meltdown". Varese Sarabande. Archived from the original on June 15, 2012. Retrieved June 18, 2012.
  12. ↑ Twentieth Century Fox (March 13, 2006). "Save the Date: ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN -- World Premiere, Los Angeles, CA -- Sunday, March 19th, 2006" (Press release). Business Wire. Archived from the original on May 8, 2015. Retrieved May 8, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  14. ↑ "Ice Age: The Meltdown". Metacritic. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  15. ↑ Ebert, Roger (March 31, 2006). "Ice Age: The Meltdown". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  16. ↑ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  17. ↑ Ice Age: The Meltdown DVD: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Seann William Scott
  18. ↑ http://www.gamespot.com/ice-age-2-the-meltdown/
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