Template:Film infobox
- This article is about the movie. If you are looking for the video game, see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown is the third feature film released by Blue Sky Studios and the first sequel to Ice Age.
The movie was made by Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox and released in theatres on March 31st 2006.
Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film was warmly-received by audiences and fans alike.
The film was also a huge box office success, grossing $660 million worldwide against it's $80 million budget.
Synopsis
The Ice Age is coming to an end as the globe heats up.
But when Manny, Diego and Sid realize that their valley is going to flood, they must warn everyone and somehow find a escape route for survival.
Manny is ready to start a family but no one has seen a mammoth in ages making him think he is the last mammoth alive.
Until on the way, he meets Ellie who thinks shes an opossum now making them think they are the last of their kind.
2 sea monsters an underwater crocodile called Cretaceous and a mosasaur called Maelstrom are thawed out of the ice and intended to devour the heroes.
Plot
In the opening scene, Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel climbs a glacier but accidentally opens a hole in it.
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 day camp, where none of the younger creatures take him seriously, nor do Manfred 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.
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.
As the animals begin their journey, Sid sings three songs to tease Manny about Mammoths being.
The Lone Gunslinger tells the animals that a giant tree can act as a boat and save them; 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 "boat".
Manfred is teased about being the last mammoth alive, but meets Ellie.
Sid invites her to tag along with the group to escape the flood, and she brings her brothers.
After a perilous ordeal with Cretaceous and Maelstrom, Sid finds out that Diego is afraid of water.
They discover an area which Ellie recalls as the place where she was adopted.
She finally realizes she is a mammoth but distances herself from Manny when he suggest.
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 to a volcano.
Sid escapes. The next morning Sid tells them his experience but none are convinced.
They find a field of hot geysers, which separate Manfred, Sid, and Diego from Ellie and her brothers.
When the flood comes, Manfred saves Ellie from drowning as she is caught in some rocks, while Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid.
Cretaceous and Maelstrom arrive, but due to Manfred's quick thinking, they are finished off by a rock which falls on them, likely 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.
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 and thus beating him up
- Spoilers end here.
Cast
Ellie is stubborn about being a possum.
| Main Character | Voice Actor |
|---|---|
| Manfred | Ray Romano |
| Sid | John Leguizamo |
| Diego | Denis Leary |
| Ellie | Queen Latifah |
| Crash | Seann William Scott |
| Eddie | Josh Peck |
| Cretaceous | Frank Welker |
| Maelstrom | Frank Welker |
| Secondary Character | Voice Actor |
|---|---|
| Scrat | Chris Wedge |
| Fast Tony | Jay Leno |
| Lone Gunslinger | Will Arnett |
| James | Alex Sullivan |
| Billy | Caitlin Rose Anderson |
| Ashley | Caitlin Rose Anderson |
| Rose | Emily Anderson |
| Traffic Vulture | James Edmund Godwin |
| Stu | Tom Fahn |
| Cholly | Alan Tudyk |
| Baptornis | Frank Welker |
Production
|
Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information may be found on the talk page. |
Carlos Saldanha strove to make the characters eyes appear alive and not mechanical.
in his own words.
The characters, despite being from the last movie, were remodeled for the sequel.[1]
Reception
Critical reception
| Ice Age: The Meltdown | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| Metacritic | 58 |
| Rotten Tomatoes | 57% |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Chicago Sun-Times |   
|
| Entertainment Weekly | B+ |
Ice Age: The Meltdown opened with mixed to average and positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a category.
Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four.[2]
Box office
The movie was a major success in the box office, grossing $660,940,780 worldwide.
This marks it as the highest grossing animated movie in 2006 and the seventh highest grossing computer animated film, behind Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek Forever After, Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and the sequel, Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
Awards and Nominations[3]
- Main article: Ice Age 2: The Meltdown/Awards
Ice Age: The Meltdown received 13 nominations, including Annie Awards for Best Animated Effects, Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production, Best Directing in an Animated Feature Production, Best Music in an Animated Feature Production and Best Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production.
It was nominated for Kid's Choice Awards' Favorite Animated Movie and Favorite Voice from Animated Movie from which it won the later.
Video Game
- Main article: Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (video game)
A multi-platform game based on the movie was released by Vivendi Games on March 14th, 2006, 17 days before the movie.
Soundtrack
- Main article: Ice Age: The Meltdown (soundtrack)
The scores were done by John Powell. He composed brand new theme music replacing the original ones.
DVD Release
The DVD was released in the U.S. in November 21, 2006.
Trivia
- Ice Age is the first Blue Sky Studios film to become a franchise, followed by Rio.
- Thus, it is also Fox's third animated film to become a franchise after FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Anastasia, followed by Space Chimps and Rio.
- This is the 1st blue sky film have Jason Fricchione in it
- Many birds appear in this film:
- Gastornis
- Unknown birds
- Vultures
- Little song birds
- Hawks
- Condors
- This is the second Blue Sky Studios film to feature TV star, Jay Leno, who voices Fast Tony.
- This is also the second Blue Sky Studios film to used bloopers reels.
- Ice Age 2: The Meltdown is the only Ice Age movie to otilize with the bloopers reels.
Goofs
- An opossum average lifetime is from 2 to 4 years, considering Ellie and the opossum brothers were infants at the same time, and that Ellie is now an adult, the opossums should have been long gone.
- This was done deliberately. Obviously, Crash and Eddie were never supposed to be exactly like opossums in real-life, as with most other prehistoric mammals.
- When Manny introduces Ellie to Diego and Sid, he calls her by her name, however, she never told him her name, it is possible he heard it as it was said once but Ellie was whispering to her and Manny wouldn't have been able to hear them.
- Ellie wasn't exactly whispering. she was talking normally.
- Manny could have heard her with good enough hearing.
- However it could be possible that the film editor accidentally edited out the characters introducing themselves.
- Condors don't eat acorns.
- This was also done deliberately. These condors are not supposed to be like in real-life.
- In this movie, Diego is afraid of water; however, in the original, he is clearly seen chasing Nadia across a river.
- The piranha that eats Scrat's acorn is a different one than the one that Scrat forces the acorn out of.
- Sid is wrong. Baby Smilodons can swim.
- Sid was joking when he said that baby tigers can't swim. He wasn't talking for seriously. Anyway Sid doesn't know many things about tigers.
References
- Manny's blurry vision on the hot geysers field refers to Normandy beach landing scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan.
- Manny mockingly refers Sid as a platypus as a reference to one of the three mascots of the 2000 Summer Olympics, Syd the Platypus.
- Scrat's fight with the piranhas is a direct parody of the 2000 film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
- The song the vultures sing is a parody of from the musical and the movie of the same name.
- In the first Ice Age, Sid says : The second movie is, in fact, about global warming.
Misc.
- The film has some similarities to the biblical tale of Noah's Ark.
- The characters are soon to experience a flood in their habitat.
- Noah had to gather two animals of each species to save the diversity.
- In the movie, Manny thinks his species is in extinction and finds Ellie, leaving both of them apparently as the last couple of mammoths in the world.
- Crash and Eddie bear a strong resemblance and similar demeanor to Pip and Pop, the twin otter brothers in Bear and the Big Blue House.
- Animation of the movie only took a speedy eight months.
- The movie was originally going to be released November 4, 2005, After the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans and they thought it would be similar to 911 Terrorist Attacks, so they delayed the film to be released on March 31, 2006.
- Prior to its release, the film was once mistaken to be rated G by the MPAA all over the internet. However, when the production was finished, the film was officially given a PG rating by the MPAA for some mild language and innuendo.
- It is the first Ice Age film that contains mild language.
Sequels
Following the success of Ice Age The Meltdown, three more sequels to Ice Age were produced and released in 3D:
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was released July 1st 2009.
- In The film Manny and Ellie are married and are excepting a baby and Sid starts a family of his own.
- He steals dinosaur eggs and their real mother a T-rex kidnaps him.
- The gang goes to recuse their friend and discover an underground world of Dinosaurs.
- There they meet a weasel named Buck who agrees to help them find and save Sid.
- Ice Age: Continental Drift was released July 13th 2012, ten years after the release of the first movie.
- In that film, Manny, Sid and Digeo are sent adrift on an Iceberg.
- A fifth Ice Age Movie Ice Age: Collision Course was released July 22nd 2016, ten years after the release of this movie.
- There the gang faces comistic adventures.
Gallery
References to Ice Age
- When the Creteacous is on Manny's tusks, Manny throws the Creteacous up in the air.
- Which is kind of similar when he threw the Rhino up in the air In the first film.
- When the Kid Bird says Manny looks concerned. It could be possible that they mentions his past family that was killed by hunters.
- When Sid looks at the flower,he seems kind of smiling, which his kind of similar when Sid looked at the dandelio in the first film.
- Also, the dandelion is the same one, but in a different size.
- Both movies end with the herd walking by the sunset.
- Manny uses his quote from the first film, Although,he said that quote in the third and fourth film.
- When Scrat is climbing on the ice wall when the flood is happening,loud cracks start to move around.
- Which is kind of similar to the very beggining of the first film.
- The animals walking to the end of the Valley is kind of similar to the great migration in the first film.
- In the end of the movie, when Scrat is being pulled out of Acorn Heaven, he makes the same scream from the first film, when he falls down to the ground.
- When Sid is sleeping, he sleep talks.
- And he sucks his thumb.
- Which is kind of similar when he was trying to sleep on the rock.
- And suck his thumb like the baby.
- When Manny is going to the cave to save Ellie, he walks the other way.
- It's kind of similar when he walked the other way during the great migration.
External links
- Official Website
- Ice Age: The Meltdown at the Internet Movie Database
- Ice Age: The Meltdown at Rotten Tomatoes
- Ice Age: The Meltdown at Metacritic
| Ice Age |
|---|
| Films |
| Ice Age (2002) • Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) • Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) • Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) • Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) • The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022) |
| Characters |
| Scrat • Manny • Sid • Diego • Ellie • Crash and Eddie • Buck • Peaches • Granny • Shira • Zee |
| Shorts |
| Gone Nutty (2002) • No Time for Nuts (2006) • Surviving Sid (2008) • Scrat's Continental Crack-up (2010) • Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas (2011) • Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe (2015) • Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade (2016) • Scrat: Spaced Out (2016) |
| TV Series |
| Scrat Tales (2022) • Buck Wild (TBA) |
| Other clips |
| Lost Historical Films during the Ice Age period • Falling for Scratte • Unearthing the Lost World • Buck: From Easel to Weasel |
| Video games |
| Ice Age • The Meltdown • Dawn of the Dinosaurs • Continental Drift |