Ice Age: Collision Course

Plot

Scrat, trying to bury his acorn, accidentally activates an abandoned alien ship that takes him into deep space, where he unwittingly sends several asteroids en route to a collision with Earth. Meanwhile, Manny is worried about the upcoming marriage between Peaches and her fiancé, Julian. Diego and his wife Shira want to start a family, but their fierce appearance tend to scare kids. Sid is dumped by his girlfriend, Francine, just as he is about to propose to her, and he laments his solitude. During Manny and Ellie's wedding anniversary party, some of the asteroids strike the place and the herd barely escape with their lives. Meanwhile, at the underground cavern, Buck returns a dinosaur egg back to its rightful owner after it was stolen by a trio of dromaeosaurs named Gavin, Gertie, and Roger. Buck discovers an ancient stone pillar and takes it to the surface, where he meets Manny and the others.

Buck explains to the herd that according to the pillar, the asteroids had caused several extinctions in the past and with a massive one still incoming, he believes that the only place they could find a clue to stop it is on the site of the impact of the previous ones, as according to its engravings, they always fall at the same place. However, the three dromaeosaurs overhear their conversation, and Gavin and Gertie decide to stop them, believing that they could be safe from the impact, as they can fly, thus not only getting their revenge on Buck, but also killing all mammals and securing domination over Earth for their species. Roger is reluctant, but Gavin and Gertie strong-arm him into cooperating.

As the herd travels to the crash site, they discover that the asteroids have electro-magnetic properties. Buck theorizes that if a huge quantity of smaller asteroids should be gathered and launched into orbit, they could attract the main asteroid as well and prevent it from falling on Earth. After facing several obstacles and the interference of the dromaeosaurs, the herd arrives at "Geotopia", a community of immortal animals formed inside one of the asteroids that have fallen long ago, where Sid meets Brooke, a female ground sloth who falls in love with him. However, Shangri Llama, the leader of Geotopia, refuses to cooperate with Buck's plan to send the city's crystals into space in order to prevent the imminent impact, as they are the key to the residents' longevity. Sid inadvertently destroys the entire city when he attempts to remove one of the stones to present Brooke with, immediately aging all of the Geotopians to their true ages.

Once Brooke convinces the Geotopians that preventing the asteroid's fall is more important than their lost youth, they and the herd help with Buck's plan, which is to fill up a geyser with the crystals so that the pressure launches them into space to draw the asteroid away. The dromaeosaurs attempt to intervene, but Buck convinces Roger that they will not be able to survive the asteroid, and he in turn convinces Gavin and Gertie to help. The plan works, and the asteroid is pulled back into space. The herd then departs back home, including Sid, who parts ways from Brooke, but just after they leave, an asteroid piece falls inside a hot spring, giving it rejuvenating properties and making the Geotopians and Sid's grandmother, who stayed behind with them, regain their youth. After the herd returns, Manny reconciles with Julian, Peaches and Julian celebrate their wedding, Diego and Shira become heroes to the kids who were scared of them before, and a rejuvenated Brooke appears during the ceremony to reunite with Sid.

In the film's epilogue, Scrat keeps struggling to control the alien ship until it crashes on Mars, destroying all life on the planet.

In a mid-credits scene, Scrat finds his acorn and gets beaten by some doors.

Voice cast

Additionally, Chris Wedge reprises his voice as Scrat, a saber tooth squirrel while new cast additions include: Neil deGrasse Tyson as Neil deBuck Weasel, a weasel astronomer who exists in Buck's mind, Stephanie Beatriz as Gertie, a dromaeosaur and Gavin's daughter, and Michael Strahan as Teddy, a fearless rabbit and a resident of Geotopia.

Melissa Rauch has a voice cameo voicing Francine, a ground sloth who has a close relationship with Sid as she is his former girlfriend, and Lilly Singh voices Bubbles and Misty, a pair of "minicorns" who reside in Geotopia.

Production

The concept of Collision Course was deeply rooted in a scene from the first Ice Age film where Manny and his friends are walking through an ice cave and they spot a spaceship that's encased in ice, an item that inspired this film in the series. As with the third film, which was also inspired by the ice cave scene in which the herd comes across a dinosaur that was incased in ice, the team went back to the first film to search for a possible inspiration for this next installment. The characters were first hand-drawn on animation software, complete with color and animated clips of the characters doing specific actions. They were then sent to be hand-sculpted with clay, and ultimately scanned into CGI software and animated around the model.

The "Figaro's Aria" sequence which involved Buck saving an egg from a trio of dromaeosaurs proved to be one of the most challenging sequences for Blue Sky Studios' animators, as it involved a continuous uninterrupted shot that ran for around two minutes long. It was one of the first scenes put into production but also one of the last to exit production due to its time-consuming and difficult structure, as the team would only be able to produce three or four seconds of footage a week.

The recording session took place in Los Angeles, California since most of the actors live there while the studio is based in New York City. Director Mike and co-director Galen T. Chu would take turns travelling to L.A. to head the recording sessions. In the film, Simon Pegg sang a rendition of "Pigaro". Jesse Tyler Ferguson was offered the role after the producers saw his performance in Modern Family. It is his first time working in an animated film. Ferguson blew out his voice on the first day of the recording session because he did a lot of yelling. He then took a few days off and came back later to finish his part. He admitted that he struggled the first time he heard his voice come out of his character's mouth. As a result, he decided to stop watching interviews of himself on television because he found them to be "too weird".

A promotional poster, shown in June 2015, at the Licensing Expo, revealed the film's full title: Ice Age: Collision Course.

Track listing

The film was composed by John Debney, who replaced John Powell from the previous three films due to Powell being busy with other projects.

Release

Initially the film was scheduled for release on July 15, 2016. However, the release was delayed to July 22, to avoid competition with the Ghostbusters reboot that was also scheduled for July 15. An extended sneak peek of the movie in the form of a short film called Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe was attached to theatrical showings of Blue Sky Studio's The Peanuts Movie on November 6, 2015. The teaser poster of the film was revealed on November 6, 2015 with the words "Bring Scrat Home" spoofing The Martian. The short film was released later on November 9, 2015, on 20th Century Fox's official YouTube page.

Home media

Ice Age: Collision Course was released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, 4K Blu-ray and digital download on October 11, 2016. Special features include a new short film titled Scrat: Spaced Out, which is primarily made up of scenes that were cut from the final film.

Box office

Ice Age: Collision Course grossed $64.1 million in North America and $343 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $407.1 million, against a budget of $105 million. In terms of total earnings, its biggest markets outside of North America were China ($66 million) (with the country being also its largest territory overall), France ($26.3 million), Brazil ($25 million), Germany ($24.7 million) and Mexico ($22.2 million).

In the United States and Canada Ice Age: Collision Course opened on July 22, 2016, alongside Star Trek Beyond and Lights Out, and was projected to gross $30–35 million in its opening weekend. It made $850,000 from Thursday night previews and $7.8 million on its first day. It had a disappointing $21 million debut in its opening weekend, finishing fourth at the box office.

The film began its international theatrical run two weeks prior to its North American release, earning $18 million from seven markets on about 5,286 screens. In its second weekend, it added $32.2 million from 25 countries. As a result, it only topped the international box office for a non-Chinese film but also helped Fox pass the $2 billion mark internationally, making this the eighth consecutive calendar year Fox has surpassed this milestone, and the 10th time in the studio's history. The film came in third place overall, behind the two Chinese films Cold War 2 and Big Fish & Begonia. By its third weekend, after grossing another $53.5 million from 15,132 screens in a total 51 markets, it finally topped the international box office and became the biggest grosser of the weekend.

It recorded the biggest opening of all time for Fox in Argentina ($3.77 million), where its debut is also the third biggest of all time behind Furious 7 and Captain America: Civil War; Colombia ($2.18 million), Central America ($2.2 million), and Uruguay ($620,618); the second biggest in Mexico ($8.4 million), behind Ice Age: Continental Drift; Peru, Chile, and Ecuador; the biggest opening among the series in Brazil ($4.5 million) and the biggest non-holiday animated opening ever in India ($1.66 million). Elsewhere, it had No. 1 openings in Russia ($5.9 million), Italy ($4.5 million), Germany ($4.2 million), Austria ($893,350), and Switzerland ($514,789) and No. 5 in Australia ($3.1 million). In France, it opened amidst the 2016 Nice attack and delivered an opening weekend of $7.1 million. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, it debuted in second place with $5.2 million, behind Ghostbusters which also opened the same weekend. In China, it opened on Tuesday, August 23, alongside Jason Bourne and delivered a six-day opening of $42.7 million and a Friday to Sunday debut of $23.1 million. The debut makes it the top non-local animated opening in the country this year and is also the franchise’s best debut. It has so far grossed a total of $63.6 million there.

Critical response

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 15% based on 104 reviews and an average rating of 4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Unoriginal and unfunny, Ice Age: Collision Course offers further proof that not even the healthiest box office receipts can keep a franchise from slouching toward creative extinction." Rotten Tomatoes also ranks it as the worst-reviewed film in the Ice Age franchise. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 34 out of 100 based on 27 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Katie Walsh of Los Angeles Times gave the film a negative review, saying "Collision Course is simply a perfunctory, watered-down entry in the series that feels like it should have been released on home video." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film one out of four stars, saying "The fifth entry in the Ice Age series is a loud, lazy, laugh-starved cash grab that cynically exploits its target audience (I use the term advisedly) by serving them scraps and calling it yummy. "

Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave the film a positive review, saying "The long-running series returns to form with an infectious chatterbox comedy about the end of the world as we know it."

Sequel

On the possibility of a potential sequel, in June 2016, Galen T. Chu, co-director of the film, stated that there were some ideas for the sixth installment.