Ice Age: The Meltdown

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This article is about the movie. For the video game, see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (video game).
Ice Age: The Meltdown

Ice Age: The Meltdown DVD Cover
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
Produced by Lori Forte
Written by Jon Vitti
Starring Ray Romano
John Leguizamo
Denis Leary
Queen Latifah
Jay Leno
Seann William Scott
Josh Peck
Will Arnett
Debi Derryberry
Music by John Powell
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) Flag of Uruguay March 1, 2006
Flag of the Philippines March 29, 2006
Flag of the United States March 31, 2006
Flag of Scotland April 3, 2006
Flag of Australia April 6, 2006
Flag of England April 7, 2006
Flag of Japan April 22, 2006
Running time 91 minutes
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Budget $80 000 000
Gross revenue $651,565,743
Preceded by Ice Age (2002)
Followed by Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Ice Age: The Meltdown, also known as Ice Age 2: The Meltdown in some international releases, or simply as Ice Age 2, is the 2006 film sequel to the computer-animated 2002 film Ice Age. It was produced by Blue Sky Studios for 20th Century Fox, and premiered in Belgium and the Philippines on March 29, 2006. It was eventually released in 70 countries, with the last release being in China, on June 9, 2006.[1] It was directed by Carlos Saldanha, co-director of the original Ice Age, and the music is done by Robots composer, John Powell.

This film was originally rated G by the MPAA, but was re-rated PG by the MPAA for some mild language and innuendo. The working title was Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, but for the movie's final release, the creators decided to remove the number 2, calling it Ice Age: The Meltdown, as the movie follows the same characters as the first one, starting where the first ended. However, in the UK, Ireland, Mexico, and Australia, its title is promoted as Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. Also, most of the sponsors of the movie had the 2 in their packaging after the name change (they however did edit the 2 out of their TV ads).

The BD and DVD were released in the United States and Canada on November 21, 2006 according to the official web store [2]. It was released in Mexico and Latin America in mid-June 2006 and released in the UK on October 23, 2006. They both include a brand new Scrat short, No Time for Nuts.

Contents

[edit] Characters

Main article: List of characters in the Ice Age films

Just as in the original, prehistoric animals are the focus of the story.

The protagonists are:

Joining them are:

Among the characters they meet are:

And attempting to stop them are:

[edit] Plot

In the opening scene, Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel climbs up a glacier side, hoping to take back his acorn. He pulls it out, unknowingly opening a hole in the glacier, which water soon jets out of. With that, Scat is shot down with the stream. The world of ice is slowly melting.

In the next shot, 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: Manfred, Sid, and Diego. Sid opens a day camp, where none of the younger creatures take him seriously, nor do Manfred and Diego, which leaves Sid seeking a daring deed for more respect. Soon, the trio discover Fast Tony and Stu, a pair of local con artists claiming that the earth will flood and that the bark and reeds which they sell are needed to snorkel and stay aloft. Manfred dismisses the idea, but is distracted when he sees that Sid will try to high dive from a giant waterfall; as Manfred goes with Diego to the top of the waterfall to save Sid from his act of daredevilry, they see that the pleasant weather caused the ice of the valley to melt, and it is kept from destroying the valley only by the glaciers, which have formed a dam. It is then that a turkey vulture known as the Lone Gunslinger tells the animals that a giant piece of a fallen tree can act as a boat and save them from the floods; all soon set out to find it.

During the time that the masses of animals escape, a glacier which contains two sea reptiles from the Mesozoic era, (Cretaceous and Maelstrom), breaks off. The con-man Stu is an example of these reptiles' hunger as he is soon devoured, leaving behind his shell alone.

Along the way, Manfred grows unhappy when other animals tease him about being the last mammoth alive. Manfred takes his leave for a moment leaving Diego and Sid alone unknowingly to be heckled by two opossums named Crash and Eddie. The opossums proceed to torture Sid and Diego, shooting pebbles at them and baiting them to fight in the manner of Whac-A-Mole. Meanwhile, Manfred meets Ellie, a female mammoth who believes she is an opossum and the sister of Crash and Eddie which makes no sense. Sid invites her to tag along with the group to escape the flood, and she brings her brothers, who spare no chance at their pranks.

After a perilous ordeal with Cretaceous and Maelstrom, Sid finds out that Diego is afraid of water. As they walk Ellie plays with her brothers and gets stuck under a log. Manfred lifts it off her and it opens up an area which Ellie recalls from her childhood as the place where she was adopted by her brothers' mother. She finally realizes she is a mammoth and starts getting along with Manfred but grows apart from him when he suggests "saving their species". In time, when the situation calls for it, to save them all from falling into a gorge of pointed rocks, they make up. huh. During the night, while all are asleep, Sid is kidnapped by a tribe of mini-sloths (small sloths) who believe Sid to be a god. Sid lights a fire for them, and believes that he has found respect as their deity, but they plan instead to sacrifice him to a volcano. Sid escapes this fate and returns with his herd.

The next morning Manfred and the others regroup with Sid who regales them with his experience with none convinced and they all find out that they had overslept. As they all rush to reach salvation, they find a field of hot geysers, which separate Manfred, Sid, and Diego from Ellie and her brothers. Each group believes in escaping the geysers differently.

When the flood comes, Manfred saves Ellie from drowning as she is caught in a grotto of rocks, while Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid. All is about to be ruined when Cretaceous and Maelstrom come about, but due to Manfred's quick thinking, they are finished off by a rock which falls on them, killing them both. While all this happens, the other animals are taken on a death ride on the boat as it floats about, and are all off at the mercy of the water currents like.

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 raging water.

In the final scene, a herd of mammoths shows up, removing the need for Manfred and Ellie to mate and proving to other animals that mammoths are not extinct; however, love triumphs and they decide to remain together anyway, taking Sid, Diego, and the opossum brothers along. Now they are one big happy family: a sloth, a sabre toothed cat, two opossums and two mammoths.

The epilogue shows Scrat having a near death experience after falling into the fissure he mistakenly opened. He enters a heaven full of acorns, amazed completely. He sees a gigantic acorn, reaches for it and nearly grabs it. Suddenly, he finds himself torn away from heaven (The music stopping abruptly). He wakes up in the arms of Sid the sloth, who had resuscitated him. Taken from his heavenly, giant acorn, Scrat is enraged and proceeds to attack his savior.

[edit] References to other films and culture

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • In the beginning of the movie, Scrat is seen climbing a glacier. This is a reference to Mission Impossible 2, when Tom Cruise is climbing a mountain in a similar fashion[citation needed]. Or in Vertical Limit, or in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier[citation needed] where Spock in thruster boots so disrupts Kirks concentration that he falls but is saved from death by Spock.
  • The vultures originally had a role in the previous Ice Age, but their roles were scrapped. Their original designs can be seen in the special features on the DVD.
  • The movie contains a spoof of Saving Private Ryan, when Manny is hit by a geyser and temporarily loses his hearing. Incidentally, the German voice for Manny, Arne Elsholtz, also synchronizes Tom Hanks, who also stars in that movie, which creates an inside joke by happenstance in the German version.
  • The sequences in which Scrat battles a group of piranhas and fighting a baby condor for the acorn were originally considered for the opening of the movie and teaser trailer.[1]
  • The reason why Roshan, the baby from the first movie and other humans are not featured in this movie is because the makers felt the idea was too predictable, considering that among the many story pitches the filmmakers received from other screenwriters, all including Roshan.[2] Instead, they chose to go with Sid's closing comment in the original movie of wanting to try Global Warming.
  • Manfred mockingly refers to Sid as a platypus. Syd the platypus was one of the three mascots chosen for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
  • When Ellie says that Manfred was fat and Manfred just says that his hair was poofy, it is very similar to Manfred and Sid's talk in the first movie.
  • While the group is travelling to find the boat, Sid inquires on what the large group of vultures are thinking about while the vultures look down on the group ominously. Then they begin to sing an altered version of "Food, Glorious Food" from the musical Oliver!

[edit] Facts on the film

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The breaking glacial dam is likely a reference to the Missoula Floods of the late Pleistocene.
  • The movie contains biblical references, such as the animals going onto the "boat" to escape the flood, which is likely a reference to Noah's Ark. Scrat dying to save the valley and "coming back" to life again may be a reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Scrat's act of parting the glaciers, that saves the other animals, may be a reference to Moses parting the Red Sea.
  • Many people found the film's plot about a flood coming, and walls of glaciers breaking inappropriate, since the movie was released seven months after Hurricane Katrina, which broke levees in New Orleans in a similar fashion. Many people at Blue Sky after Katrina's landfall wanted to delay the movie's release from March 2006 to November 2006, but could not. [3][4][5]
  • The ultimate ending of Cretaceous and Maelstrom, the two reptiles, remains dubious. The essential guide says that they were later eaten by mini-sloths, while the storybook maintains that they were picked off by vultures. The mini-sloths eating the bodies of these two creatures seems unlikely, as sloths of any species are traditionally vegetarian (though some species of ground sloths do sometimes eat meat) and the vultures picking the sea reptiles off seems more likely as the vultures were singing on how they'd wanted their meals.
  • The film has become the first Blu-ray disc released film to be pirated, meaning the copy protection has been cracked .The full uncompressed Blu-ray disk image was made available online in areas such as BitTorrent soon after the film Serenity, which was also the first film to be pirated in the competing HD DVD format.
  • In the South Park episode, Cartoon Wars Part II a poster at FOX Studios is seen that reads "Cold Age: The Smackdown"

[edit] Promotions

  • 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 for Brother Bear, I, Robot, and Robots (another Blue Sky Studios film).
  • On Family Guy's episode "Sibling Rivalry", Scrat is shown trying to take three nuts out of a side of a glacier; Peter shows up and tries to stop him, admonishing the squirrel for stealing, which drives Scrat to subsequently attack Peter. Apart from Peter, the scene was rendered in 3D (Family Guy is normally drawn in 2D), and Scrat was voiced by Chris Wedge who voices him in the films. The episode originally aired the week before the film opened. Fox aired promotions for the movie throughout the evening.
  • During the same evening of Scrat's Family Guy cameo, Sid was hosting the entire FOX line-up, showing up in intermittent times between commercials.
  • A teaser trailer for The Simpsons Movie was attached to every print of the movie, despite rumors that it was only on some prints.
  • Re-edited scenes of Ice Age: The Meltdown were shown in Airhead candy commercials on several kids' channels and programs, such as the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, ABC Kids on ABC, and more. It shows, in part, that after Scrat defeats a school of piranha, he proudly displays an Airhead packet (replaced by an acorn in the actual movie), when suddenly an eagle comes over and swipes it from him.
  • One of the posters for the film was a parody of an iPod advertisement, with "iAge" replacing "iPod" and an acorn replacing an iPod. The poster can be viewed at [3].

[edit] Box Office

Ice Age: The Meltdown opened on March 31, 2006. Critical reviews were mainly mixed, Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a "Rotten" rating, with only 56% of reviews positive. 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 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 movie in 2006 to pass the $100 million mark.

In the Netherlands, the film grossed €152,262 in its first week, not enough to enter the top 10. In its second week (March 30 - April 5), the film moved up to #1, grossing €1,350,375, kicking Inside Man from its #1 position there. The film has accomplished an amazing job by remaining in the top 3 for 9 weeks. In total, the film grossed € 6,108,685 in the Netherlands.

As of January 12, 2007, the film grossed a massive $651,564,512 worldwide according to Box Office Mojo, surpassing all expectations and netting the film a massive profit given the moderate budget of $80 million. At time of writing, it holds the 33rd spot on the list of highest-grossing films.

[edit] Soundtrack

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


[edit] Animals featured

  • Aardvark (the doubting giant anteater father which maintains that mammoths have truly gone extinct and several others)
  • Baptornis (seen going down the waterslides in formation)*
  • Beaver (seen in migration, exclaiming "Dam!" when the ice was cracking, referred to as "beaver" in script)
  • Brontops (seen in waterpark questioning Manfred's storytelling, referred to as "rhino" in script)*
  • Chalicothere (Cholly, as well as several others seen on the "boat")*
  • Condor (mother protective of her hatchling and young hatchling fights with Scrat over the acorn)
  • Dodo (seen being killed by the hot geysers, and then in the squirrel heaven)
  • Dung beetle (seen in migration complaining about toting a mound of dung along)
  • Elk (seen in migration, one making way down waterslide and poking a beaver in the rear with his horns, referred to as "elk" in script, the younger individuals acted like gazelles)
  • Euceratherium (seen in migration and accused of being fat by Fast Tony)
  • Fly (seen when Cholly breaks wind)
  • Gastornis (seen in migration getting her children in a moving nest, referred to as "Diatryma" in script)*
  • giant armadillo (Fast Tony)
  • Glyptodont (Stu, and many of them in the migration)
  • ground sloth (Sid as well as a female sloth seen at the start of the movie)
  • Hawk (seen when Crash and Eddie play dead)
  • Hedgehog (seen in migration, children trying to get their grandfather out of the burrow, referred to as "molehog" in script)
  • Icthyosaur (Cretaceous)*
  • Mammoth (Manny and Ellie)*
  • Macrauchenia (seen in migration and in waterpark, one individual getting stuck in a waterslide, referred to as "freaky mammal" in script)
  • Opossum (Crash and Eddie)
  • Palaeotherium (seen in migration and discrediting Fast Tony's selling of bark, referred to as "start"in script)*
  • Piranha (school of piranha fight with Scrat for life and his acorn, some were shown being chased by some Baptornis in the opening)
  • Platybelodon (seen in herd and openly laughing at Fast Tony, referred to as "shovelmouth" in script)*
  • Pliosaur (Maelstrom)*
  • Saber-toothed squirrel (Scrat)
  • Songbird (seen with younger animals questioning Manny on his family)
  • Smilodon (Diego)
  • Three-toed sloth (unsubstantiated) (Mini-sloths)
  • Triceratops (skeleton seen in the lava pit when Sid was falling)*
  • Turkey Vulture (seen explaining that there really is a flood coming and how to escape, singing "Food, Glorious Food" from Oliver! when in pursuit of their prey, and later guiding the survivors to the makeshift ark with words of caution)

Animals with an asterisk were extinct by the time the movie was set. However Cretaceous and Maelstrom were extinct prior to the melting of the ice block they were frozen in.

[edit] Sequel

According to Box Office Mojo, an Ice Age 3 is in the works, with a planned release date of July 4, 2009.[4]. The film is titled Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The teaser trailer was attached to the film Horton Hears A Who!.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Crew Commentary, Ice Age: The Meltdown DVD Special Feature
  2. ^ Crew Commentary, Ice Age: The Meltdown DVD Special Feature
  3. ^ ZapToIt Review
  4. ^ Austin360.com
  5. ^ MovieWeb

[edit] External links

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Preceded by
Inside Man		 Box office number-one films of 2006 (USA)
April 2, 2006 – April 9, 2006		 Succeeded by
Scary Movie 4
Preceded by
Hoodwinked		 Computer-animated films
2006		 Succeeded by
The Wild
v • d • e
Blue Sky Studios
Feature-length animations
Ice Age (2002) • Robots (2005) • Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) • Horton Hears a Who! (2008) • Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Short animations
Bunny (1998) • Gone Nutty (2003) • No Time for Nuts (2006)
Contributions in other films
Joe's Apartment (1996) • A Simple Wish (1997) • Alien Resurrection (1997) • Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) • Jesus' Son (1999) • Fight Club (1999) • Titan A.E. (2000)