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20 years ago, Blue Sky Studios first released the film Ice Age, which opened to positive reviews for its goofy fun and humorous gags. The first film was released in 2002. As a result of its box-office success and positive reception, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. When Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019, they also became owners of this classic franchise.
The first film revolved around a mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), a dysfunctional sloth named Sid (John Leguizomo), and Diego, the saber-tooth cat (Denis Leary). The three friends started as total misfits and resented each other for their differences. But they eventually came together to help an infant child reunite with his family after being separated.
In honor of the film’s 20th anniversary, this article dives into the franchise and ranks movies according to their merit. Many of the sequels were deemed worse than the last installment as the franchise progressed.
‘Ice Age’ - Worst to best
6) The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
How do you ruin a franchise with so much promise and hope even when people begin to lose faith in it? All one has to do is recast voice actors, employ a boring villain, and make a spin-off that nobody asked for.
The film follows the adventurous opossums Crash and Eddy trying to break away from their sister Ellie to seek their independence. However, that all changes when they accidentally fall back into the Lost World hidden beneath them, where they encounter their old friend Buck (Simon Pegg). He is tasked with taking down a criminal and intelligent Protoceratops named Orson.
What’s genuinely insulting about the film is that the filmmakers decided to forgo the main characters that started the series and favor a few less interesting ones.
5) Collision Course
The fifth entry follows the mammal friends trying to escape a deadly asteroid hurling itself to Earth. The film also serves as a decent vehicle to find Sid a love interest named Brooke. However, the film does nothing else.
This was technically the nail in the coffin that put the extinction in the Ice Age franchise. It seems like the writers ran out of ideas for catastrophes and decided to try to make the film bigger with an asteroid rather than a flood or a continental shift in plates. At this point, the franchise is a shell of what it once was.
4) Dawn of the Dinosaurs
In the third installment of the franchise, Sid comes across three abandoned Tyrannosaurus eggs and raises them as his own. Things go awry when the mother goes looking for her children and then kidnaps Sid, thus leading the prehistoric gang into The Lost World beneath the mammals’ world.
While watching, the filmmakers decided to go a different route beyond the ice age theme while still trying to make a film during the ice age.
The film proved to be a colorful and enjoyable outing for fans of the franchise and dinosaur lovers, even if it didn't embrace the magnitude of its earlier films. It still has a sense of goofy charm that encapsulates it from start to finish with the help of Buck Wild, akin to watching a goofball superhero flick.
3) Continental Drift
This was one of the more entertaining films in the series, to its credit. The film revolves around Manny and the gang being separated from his family by a continental break in the shifting plates of the era. The crew comes across a ship full of pirates led by the vicious Captain Gutt.
The film proved edgier and funnier than its previous installment with some swashbuckling pirate action. Peter Dinklage’s Captain Gutt proves to be a standout for the film with some intense sequences of colorful splendor.
2) Ice Age
This was the Ice Age movie that started it all. When Sid’s family ditches him during the great migration, he comes across Manny the mammoth as they attempt to bring an orphaned child back to his family. When Diego, the tiger, tries to take the child for his pack to devour things, things get complicated.
The film is arguably a classic in its own right and has garnered a positive reception from critics and made audiences fall in love with Scrat the squirrel’s hilarious antics. Despite the animation being somewhat dated in 2022, that seems to be a small price to pay for a film that was a staple in so many people’s childhoods.
1) The Meltdown
Contrary to popular belief, this truly was the best film in the franchise. The film sees Manny and the gang trying to escape a massive and imminent flood. They come across a mammoth named Ellie (Queen Latifah) and her opossum brothers Crash and Eddie during the journey.
With new characters and adventures, their herd grows even more. However, all of that is threatened when the family is hunted down by two treacherous sea creatures from the Mesezoic era.
The film has heart, horror, and a penchant for stunning action sequences. Its brilliant animation was easily an improvement over the original. Its ardent emotional presence is also a plus for this mammoth-sized adventure.
Disclaimer: This article reflects the views of the author.
