Ice Age: The Meltdown

'Ice Age 2: The Meltdown'
Directed by	Carlos Saldanha
Produced by	Lori Forte
Screenplay by	Peter Gaulke Gerry Swallow Jim Hecht
Story by	Peter Gaulke Gerry Swallow
Voices of	Ray Romano John Leguizamo Denis Leary Queen Latifah Seann William Scott Josh Peck
Music by	John Powell
Editing by	Harry Hitner
Production company(s)	Blue Sky Studios 20th Century Fox Animation
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	March 13, 2006
Running time	92 Minutes
Country	US
Language	English
Rating	G (original rating) PG (edited for re-rating)
Budget	$80,000,000
Box office	$660,940,780
Preceded by	Robots (2005) Ice Age (2002)
Followed by	Horton Hears a Who! (2008) Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)

This article is about the movie. If you are looking for the video game, see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.

Ice Age: The Meltdown is a 2006 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to Ice Age (2002) and the second installment in the Ice Age film series. The film was directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay written by Peter Gaulke, Gerry Swallow, and Jim Hecht, and a story by Gaulke and Swallow. Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Chris Wedge reprise their roles from the first Ice Age film, with newcomers Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, and Queen Latifah joining the cast. In the film, Manny, Sid, and Diego attempt to escape an impending flood, during which Manny finds love.

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

Manny, Sid, Diego and Scrat join forces with new friends: Ellie, a female wooly mammoth, and her possum brothers, Crash and Eddie, to save the valley from an epic flood.

Plot

Manny, Sid, and Diego live in a valley surrounded by a high ice wall on all sides. The trio discovers that the ice wall is actually a dam that is barely holding a reservoir that could flood the valley if it fails. A vulture tells them that there is a boat at the other end of the valley that may save them, but they must reach it in three days. A chunk of ice breaks off from the top of the dam, initiating their immediate evacuation. Manny is also struggling with the thought of possibly being the last mammoth alive and Diego is revealed to suffer from severe aquaphobia due to his inability to swim.

Meanwhile, Cretaceous, an ichthyosaur and Maelstrom, a pliosaur—both frozen since the Mesozoic era—escape due to melting ice and seek to eat all the mammals they can during the flood. On their journey to the boat, the trio meet Ellie, a mammoth who believes she is an opossum, and Crash and Eddie, two mischievous opossums whom Ellie believes to be her brothers. Sid invites them to join their journey to the boat, and Ellie accepts. After a dangerous encounter with Cretaceous and Maelstrom while crossing a pond, Sid tries to teach Diego how to swim, while Ellie realizes that she is a mammoth. Manny begins to fall in love with her, but denies his feelings at first because he feels like he is replacing his deceased wife and child. Despite this bonding moment with Manny, she distances herself from him when he suggests "saving their species". Ellie and Manny ultimately reconcile when they must co-operate to save the group when the ground cracks under their feet. Ellie begins to reciprocate Manny's feelings afterwards.

The herd takes a break for the night, and while the others are asleep, Sid is kidnapped by a tribe of mini-sloths who believe him to be the God of Fire and that sacrificing him by tossing him into a volcano is the only way to stop the flood; Sid narrowly escapes and reunites with the others as they wake up. After being harassed by vultures, the group finds the boat behind a field of hot geysers. Manny, Sid, and Diego separate from Ellie, Crash, and Eddie when the two mammoths argue about which route is safest.

The "boat".

Just as Manny, Sid, and Diego bypass the geysers, the ice dam fails, unleashing a flood upon the valley. Ellie, Crash, and Eddie, who took the safer yet longer way, are trapped inside a cave due to falling rocks. Crash and Eddie escape through a small hole and warn Manny, who rushes back to save Ellie. Crash and Eddie are taken by the current; Sid tries to save them, but is knocked unconscious on an ice block. Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid and the possums. Cretaceous and Maelstorm ambush Manny underwater, but he tricks them into dislodging a boulder, killing them and freeing Ellie at the same time. Manny and Ellie reunite with the others atop a boulder, but the water is still rising. Meanwhile, Scrat, after a series of misadventures to get back his acorn, climbs the adjacent glacial wall beside them and inadvertently creates a long crack when he punctures the ice. The crack widens into a gigantic fissure which splits open the wall and drains the floodwaters, saving everyone; in the process, Scrat falls within the fissure and is washed away.

Shortly after, Sid encounters the mini-sloth tribe again. Their leader suggests that Sid should join them, thinking he is the one that stopped the flood, but Diego refuses to let Sid go, saying that he is a vital part of their group. A group of mammoths later appear from the fissure, proving to everyone that mammoths are not really extinct. Manny initially lets Ellie go with the mammoth herd, but after some encouragement from Sid and Diego to move on from his past, he catches up to her, expressing his desire to stay with her. Manny, Sid, Diego, Ellie, Crash, and Eddie then venture out of the valley.

After falling into the fissure and nearly drowning, Scrat has a near death experience, entering a heaven full of acorns. Suddenly, he finds himself being "sucked back" just as he is about to reach a gigantic acorn. Scrat then discovers that he has been resuscitated by Sid. Scrat is enraged, believing that Sid stole his acorn, and proceeds to viciously attack him.

Voice cast

Ellie is stubborn about being a possum.

• Ray Romano as Manny, a woolly mammoth
• John Leguizamo as Sid, a giant ground sloth.
• Denis Leary as Diego, a saber tooth tiger.
• Chris Wedge as Scrat, a saber-toothed squirrel.
• Queen Latifah as Ellie, a female woolly mammoth, who is under the delusion that she is a possum.
• Seann William Scott and Josh Peck as Crash and Eddie, two opossums and Ellie's brothers
• Will Arnett as Lone Gunslinger Vulture
• Jay Leno as Fast Tony, the giant armadillo.
• Tom Fahn as Stu, a Glyptodon.
• Alex Sullivan as James, a aardvark.
• Alan Tudyk as Cholly, a chalicothere.
• Clea Lewis as Female Mini Sloth/Dung Beetle Mom.
• Debi Derryberry as Diatryma Mom.

Production

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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.

Reception

General reception

Ice Age: The Meltdown
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
Metacritic	58
Rotten Tomatoes	57%
Review scores
Publication	Score
Chicago Sun-Times
Entertainment Weekly	B+

Despite receiving mixed reviews from film critics, the film was positively welcomed from audience and fans which praised its story, humor heart, characters, action, character development, animation, John Powell's musical score and the ending.

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 2, Toy Story 3 and the sequel, Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Awards and Nominations

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.
• Ice Age: The Meltdown is the second Blue Sky Studios film to have non-humans cast, after Robots.
  • This is also the first Ice Age film that have animals with no humans.
    • Thus is also Fox's third animated film to become a franchise after FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Anastasia, followed by Space Chimps and Rio.
• The third computer-animated sequel after Toy Story 2 and Shrek 2.
• This is the 1st blue sky film have Jason Fricchione in it.
• This is the second Blue Sky Studios film to feature TV star, Jay Leno, who voices Fast Tony.
• This is the first Ice Age film, where Scrat isn't voiced by Chris Wedge (Chris Wedge is replaced by Josh Peck).
• This is the second Blue Sky Studios film to use bloopers reels, after Robots.
  • This is also the first (so far), and only Ice Age film to end with a blooper reel.
• This is the first Ice Age film to come out the same year as a Pixar movie, Cars.

• 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.

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.
• Scrat has a bigger role in this film and from here he started to become a more important character in the franchise.
• 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 Dodorex 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 Diego 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 Herd faces comsic adventures.

Gallery

References to Ice Age

• When the Cretaceous is on Manny's tusks, Manny throws the Creteacous up in the air which is kind of similar when he threw Carl up in the air In the first film.
• When the Kid Bird asks Manny where is his happy family he becomes sad because he remembers what happened to his family.
• 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 the first film and this one 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 sucks his thumb which is similar to when he's sleeping on a rock in the first film.
• Which is kind of similar when he was trying to sleep on the rock.
• 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.
• The film is a continuation of Manny's storyline after his family got killed in the first film.

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