Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

Ice Age: Continental Drift is about a mammoth father trying to get back to his family after the land itself splits apart. The story opens with Peaches, Manny's teenage daughter, who is growing up fast and wants to fit in with a group of cooler young mammoths. Manny, as any parent of a teenager will recognize, is struggling to let her go.

Meanwhile Scrat, chasing his acorn, makes things worse on a planetary scale. His pursuit of the acorn cracks the Earth open and changes the shape of the continents. Manny, Sid, Diego and Sid's Granny end up on a floating chunk of ice that drifts out to sea, while Ellie and Peaches are cut off on the other side of the split, heading for a land bridge that is about to disappear. Manny vows to get back to his family however he can. If you are watching with younger children, the sea voyage that follows is the heart of the film, and the official rating is PG in the US and Australia and U in the UK.

The full plot of Ice Age: Continental Drift follows two journeys at once: the stranded herd on the water and Peaches on the land.

After the continents break apart, Manny, Sid, Diego and Granny are caught by a band of pirates led by the ape Captain Gutt. Shira, a saber-toothed cat who serves as Gutt's first mate, is ordered to deal with the heroes, and instead she ends up growing close to Diego. Manny and his friends free a group of enslaved hyraxes, take a ship, and Shira stays behind to slow the pirates down.

Back on land, Peaches realizes her new friends are shallow and makes up with Louis, who had always been loyal to her. Gutt then tracks the herd down, takes Ellie and the others hostage, and threatens everyone. Granny's sea monster, Precious, helps drive off the pirates, and Manny beats Gutt in a final fight, after which Gutt is eaten by a siren. The herd settles on a green island, the hyraxes begin rebuilding their home, and Shira joins the herd as Diego's partner.

The closing gag belongs to Scrat. Chasing a map shaped like an acorn, he finds the lost city of Scratlantis, which then sinks and leaves him stranded in a desert.

Ice Age: Continental Drift reached theaters in Australia first, on June 27, 2012, then in the UK on July 12 and in the US on July 13, 2012. The US date is confirmed by The Numbers, while the UK and Australian dates are reported by Box Office Mojo. No premiere date, city or venue has been published for the film.

The release was a financial success built overseas. The film earned about $877 million worldwide on a $95 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. Of that, $161 million came from the US and Canada and $716 million from the rest of the world. Among the five theatrical Ice Age films, that international total is the largest, and the worldwide figure is second only to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The full comparison sits on the Ice Age box office page. It is rated PG in the US and Australia and U in the UK.

The ending of Ice Age: Continental Drift settles three separate stories, and in my opinion it handles the family one best.

First, the villain. Manny beats Captain Gutt in a final fight, and Gutt is eaten by a siren, so the sea he ruled as a pirate captain finishes him off. Granny's sea monster, Precious, has already helped drive off the pirates, which gives the sea voyage an odd, comic payoff: the creatures of the deep end up on the herd's side. It is also the kind of set piece the filmmakers planned carefully. According to Animation World Network, the team previsualized the big storm sequence and ran a seasick test with 3-D glasses to check how the wave motion felt, so the ocean climax was built to be felt rather than only watched.

Second, the family. Peaches has realized her new friends are shallow and has made up with Louis, and with Ellie and the others rescued, the household is whole again. It could be argued that this is the real resolution, because the film started with a father who could not let his daughter grow up and ends with her having chosen her own friends well. It also pays off a thread from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, where Manny was anxious about becoming a father at all. Ice Age: The Meltdown had him worrying that he was the last mammoth alive, so this saga has now taken him from loneliness to fatherhood to letting a teenager go. Ice Age: Collision Course continues that line, with Peaches engaged to Julian.

Third, the herd. They settle on a lush island where the hyraxes can rebuild their home, and Shira joins them as Diego's partner. That pays off the bond that formed while she was supposed to be his captor, and it gives Diego something the earlier films never did, a relationship of his own.

Then comes Scrat. Chasing a map shaped like an acorn, he reaches the lost city of Scratlantis, which sinks and leaves him stranded in a desert. In my opinion it is a fitting last gag, since the film began with his acorn chase splitting the continents and finishes with him losing yet another prize. The same engine drives the saga's other openers: his acorn also sets the asteroids in motion in Collision Course. For where the saga goes next, the Ice Age movies in order page shows the full sequence.

There are no real places to visit from Ice Age: Continental Drift. Every frame was built in computers at Blue Sky Studios, the studio that made the first five Ice Age films. Its settings exist only in animation, from the open sea and the floating ice to the land bridge and the green island where the herd finally lands.

The sea was the hardest place to build. According to Animation World Network, computer generated water was a major new challenge for Blue Sky, handled with the studio's in house renderer plus Houdini simulation data and RealFlow for some of the splashes. In my opinion, that effort shows in how much of the film happens on water compared with earlier entries such as Ice Age: The Meltdown, whose flood is a threat the herd is racing against rather than a place the story lives. It is also the first Ice Age film made in a widescreen aspect ratio, a choice aimed at a more epic scope, and an open ocean is a natural fit for that frame.

Continental Drift is the first Ice Age film made in a widescreen aspect ratio, a choice aimed at giving the story a more epic scope.

Computer generated water was a major new challenge for Blue Sky. The team handled it with the studio's in house renderer, Houdini simulation data and RealFlow for some of the splashes. The animators also previsualized the big storm sequence and ran a seasick test with 3D glasses to check how the wave motion felt to an audience.

The film's director handover is a piece of franchise history too: Chris Wedge directed Ice Age (2002), Carlos Saldanha followed, and Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier took over for this film. John Powell's score is the third he wrote for the saga, after Ice Age: The Meltdown and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. And producer John Donkin later directed Buck Wild. The upcoming film, Ice Age: Boiling Point, is set for a US release on February 5, 2027, according to TheWrap.