Western Animation / Ice Age: Continental Drift

The end of the world is just the tip of the iceberg.

Ice Age: Continental Drift is the sequel to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and the fourth film in the Ice Age franchise, released on July 13th, 2012.

Taking place a few years after the events of Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Scrat's pursuit of the acorn has world-changing consequences. When Manny is separated from Ellie and their now-teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer^note replacing Ciara Bravo from A Mammoth Christmas) on an iceberg with Sid, Diego, and Sid's loudmouth Granny (Wanda Sykes), he promises that he will find a way to return home. While crossing the ocean they are captured by the evil pirate ape Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage) and his gang of pirates. However, they escape and Manny plots a plan to steal Gutt's ship and return to his family in a dangerous voyage through the sea. But the cruel pirates seek revenge against Manny and the gang determined to stop them from returning home.

Previews: International Teaser, International Teaser 2 Trailer 1, Trailer 2, International Trailer

This film is followed by Ice Age: Collision Course.

In theaters, this film was proceeded by a Simpsons cartoon short, The Longest Daycare.

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This film provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion: Granny keeps referring to Diego as a "Lady" (though Diego is FAR more dismissive about it).
• Action Pet: Granny's giant sperm whale turns out to be this in the climax.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: Ellie, Peaches, and the other villagers try to escape from a stone wall threatening to crush them.
• Advertised Extra: Drake and Nicki Minaj get a ton of focus in advertising due to being A-list rap stars, but their characters are very minor and largely irrelevant to the plot. This also comes into play with Sean William Scott and Josh Peck, both of whom get top billing despite Crash and Eddie being Demoted to Extra in this film (they’re billed higher than Peter Dinklage, who voices the Big Bad of the film).
• Agony of the Feet: Louis slams a heavy ice chunk on Gutt's foot to make him release Peaches.
• Alpha Bitch: Steffie, who even has her own Girl Posse.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parent: Manny is this in some respects to Peaches.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Apes have nails, not claws. That's one of the things that make them Old World simians, not lemurs or tarsiers. It's a wonder why they couldn't have just given Gutt sharpened nails.
  • Hyraxes have small fang-like tusks, not rodent-like incisors.
  • Whales don't have nostrils nor three dorsal fins nor several rows of teeth like a shark, unlike Precious.
• Artistic License – Geology: The diagram of the Earth's core comes with the disclaimer "The inner core is 6,000 kilometers below the Earth's surface and composed primarily of molten iron. It is often drawn in textbooks to look like a floating pinball. Fun fact: it's near 7,000 C. down there, so bring your oven mitts! Blue Sky Studios takes no responsibility for the scientific accuracy of the information presented here."
• Atlantis: At the end of the movie Scrat arrives at Scratlantis... and then causes it to sink.
• Bamboo Technology: This movie gives us sailing ships made of ice, complete with wooden cannons.
• Booping the Snoot: During "Master Of The Seas", Captain Gutt taps Sid's nose at the beginning of the song.
• Casting Gag: The Jerk Jock mammoth is voiced by rapper Drake. Not the Drake & Josh reunion some were hoping for...^note Josh Peck is already on the cast as Eddie, one of the possums.
• The Cavalry: Subverted with the hyraxes. They do a charge against the pirates as if to battle them, only to then escape at the last minute with some flying leaves piloted by other hyraxes. However, it was all part of The Plan set up by Manny to trick the pirates into leaving their ship so they could then steal it.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Granny's pet, Precious (a giant whale) turns out to be real and the cavalry.
• Cool Old Lady: Sid's Granny. She's tough, funny, and has a pet whale.
• Crash-Into Hello: Peaches does this with Ethan, albeit accidentally.
• Dance Party Ending: The credits feature every main character (plus a few of the side characters) dancing to the tune of "We Are Family" while their voice actors sing it.
• Demoted to Extra: Crash and Eddie have extremely small roles compared to the previous two films. They barely even appear and contribute nothing to the plot.
• Didn't Think This Through: Sid gulps down a lotus berry that Diego vainly tries to warn him about, while bragging that he "knows [his] berries". The end result not only leaves him temporarily paralyzed from the neck down and required to be dragged around by Manny for a while, but also causes the ship that the Herd were going to use to narrowly take off without them, forcing them to chase it down as Gutt and his crew catch on to Manny's plan and chase them down in turn for revenge.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: With their world destroyed by Continental Drift, our heroes must take the last working ship and find a New World. And they do. One with a suspiciously-arranged rock structure. It's worth noting that practically the whole cast is comprised of known immigrant races at one point or another (Jewish, Italian, Irish, Hispanic, Black...)
• Don't Eat and Swim: When Sid is about to be forced to walk the plank on the pirate ship, he mentions that he ate twenty minutes ago and should at least have more time to digest before being thrown into water. Raz the kangaroo than tells him that not swimming after eating is just a myth.
• "Far Side" Island: Scrat comes across a teeny-tiny island with only a single tree and a skeleton while out on the ocean.
• Foreshadowing: The sirens, who try to lure in Manny, Sid, Diego, Granny and Scrat, later end up eating Captain Gutt alive.
• Giant Enemy Crab: One briefly harasses the group during their first day at sea.
  Sid: Holy Crab!
• Glamour Failure: The sirens. Sometimes their real nature leaks through their disguises, which amusingly flicker off like a bad signal.
• Gun Ship Rescue: Granny's "pet" invokes this trope when it shows up near the end of the film to help rescue Manny and his friends from Gutt. It even launches a water attack which Sid utilizes into a makeshift weapon against the pirates, and later saves Manny from certain doom after he defeats Gutt.
• Gutted Like a Fish: This is how Captain Gutt got his name (and not, as Manny guessed, because of his stomach). It's the way he dispatches his victims.
• Heel–Face Turn: Shira, particularly after she sees how well Diego, Sid, and Manny get along with each other, contrasted with how Gutt treats his crew.
• I Will Find You: Stated word for word by Manny:
  Manny: STAY ALIVE! No matter how long it takes, I WILL FIND YOU!
• I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!:
  • By Crash and Eddie not just once but twice! First when they fall asleep when they're supposed to watch for Peaches and then when Manny asks about his daughter, they tell him her whereabouts without considering they were probably supposed to keep it a secret.
    Manny: You two were supposed to be responsible uncles!
    Crash: What? I didn't see Peaches sneak off maybe 15 or 20 minutes ago.
    Eddie: Or that she went with Louis to the falls.
  • Then again some time later, after accidentally revealing themselves:
    Eddie: [appears from the bushes] Who are we stalking?
    Crash: [appears from the bushes] Is it Ethan? I bet it's Ethan.
    Eddie: Hey, Weiner.
    Peaches: What are you guys doing here?
    Eddie: Manny told us to keep an eye on you.
    Crash: But that you don't see us.
    Eddie: Under any circumstance!
    [Beat]
    Crash & Eddie: [slapping each other] Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
• Involuntary Smile of Incapacitation: When Scrat comes across Sid and Granny, Granny mistakes Scrat for a rat and whacks him several times with her cane. As Scrat plummets down, he has a dazed smile on his face.
• Join or Die: Gutt offers Manny a place in his crew, then he orders his crew to throw the mammoth and his friends overboard for refusing.
• Jolly Roger: Captain Gutt's pirate crew includes a badger called Gupta who basically qualifies as a living Jolly Roger due to the skull-and-crossbones pattern on his back. When he wants to alert potential victims to what's coming after them, he runs up the mast and holds onto it with his claws and teeth, letting his body wave in the wind.
• Just Desserts: Captain Gutt is eaten by the sirens, although it's left vague whether or not he survived. And even if he did, he doesn't have his crew or his ship anymore, rendering him harmless, and no chance of longer survival.
• Kissing In A Tree: When Manny and Sid discover Diego has fallen for Shira, they taunt the sabretooth with this old classic.
• Killer Gorilla: In this case, Gutt is a Killer Gigantopithecus (a giant prehistoric orangutan).
• Killer Rabbit: Squint the rabbit pirate. He's insane, vicious, bloodthirsty...and adorable! Don't tell him that though, or you're bunny chow.
• Knight of Cerebus: Downplayed, as the film remains pretty light and he doesn't drain the comedy from a scene, but Gutt is the first true antagonist of the series since Soto. He's even worse than Soto as he does what he does for greed, power, and revenge, whereas Soto wanted to avenge his fallen pack. Due to the resources he commands, he's also a much more powerful threat than Soto was.
• Know Your Vines: Diego knows his berries. Sid knows better. So he thinks.
• Maniac Monkeys: Captain Gutt, the main villain, is a prehistoric ape pirate captain.
• Monster-Shaped Mountain: In a Companion Cube variant, the island of Scrat-lantis is shaped like a giant acorn when seen from the right angle.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sid fails to carry out his part of the plan to steal the pirate ship because he couldn't resist eating a random berry he finds. Manny even calls him out on it later, but Sid can't do anything because said berry paralyzed him.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Used with Scrat against the Sirens. While they nearly successfully lure the other characters with various appealing opposite-sex characters, when they try it on Scrat with Scratte, he looks for a moment, only to then turn away to continue searching for the acorn treasure. They then immediately turn into acorns, which then does get his attention. It backfires when Scrat accidentally kills the siren while trying to bury the "acorn." This causes all the other sirens to attack him, but Scrat escapes.
• Oh, Crap!: Several characters have this look throughout the film, such as when the continent first starts breaking apart, and later when Precious shows up.
• Our Sirens Are Different: Towards the beginning of the third act, the four heroes get attracted by sirens (portrayed as mudskipper-amphibian hybrids) which take the form of their greatest desires.
• Out-of-Character Alert: This is how Manny realizes he's seeing fakes of his family.
• Pale Females, Dark Males: Peaches' love interests have darker fur than her.
• Parenthetical Swearing: Shira does this, as Diego notes.
  Shira: Wait, I'll take it. [Diego pushes the bowl to her again] Thank you.
  Diego: You know you have a way of saying "thank you" that makes it sound like "drop dead".
• Parting-Words Regret: After her father embarrasses her in front of all the teen mammoths, Peaches furiously states to Manny "I wish you weren't my father!" Shortly afterwards, the continent plates divide and separate Manny, Sid, and Diego away from Ellie and Peaches. As the iceberg holding her father drifts from the view, Peaches sobs and blames herself for getting separated from her father since the last thing they did was argue.
  Peaches: (sobbing) Mom, this is all my fault! If I had just--
  Ellie: Peaches! This is not your fault, okay?
  Peaches: What if I never see him again? And the last thing we did was fight!
  Ellie: Hey, your father is the toughest, most stubborn mammoth I've ever met! He'll come back for us. (wraps her trunk around Peaches) That's a promise.
• The Pig-Pen:
  • Granny apparently hasn't taken a bath in decades, and when she floats in the water she leaves a large oily sheen, and a dozen fish immediately float belly-up (including a shark).
  • Sid's uncle Fungus, who is a moldy green colour, and makes a velcro-like sound as Manny peels him off his face.
• Pirate Girl: Shira, a female white sabretoothed cat pirate. Also Raz, the short-faced kangaroo.
• The Power of Friendship: Diego tells Shira about this, and why he left his pack. She later sees Manny try to stop the ship so he could get on, as well as the teamwork they show throughout the time they're fighting the pirates.
  • By contrast, Gutt is a ruthless slave driver, and only wants the strongest animals, and doesn't care too much for failures.
• Revenge: Gutt tries to do this with Manny after the latter breaks his first ship and steals his second one.
  Gutt: That mammoth has taken my ship, my bounty, and now the loyalty of my crew! I will destroy him! And everything he loves!
  • Gutt later beats Manny and the gang to the continent and takes Ellie & Peaches hostage, stating that Manny took everything he had from him, and the evil ape intended to do the same. Louis then steps up to the ape just as all seems lost.
    Manny: Alright! Let them go!
    Gutt: (chuckles darkly) I don't think so. You destroyed everything I had! I'm just returning the favor.
    Manny: NO! (tries to charge at Gutt, but the crew rapidly lassoes him)
    Gutt: I warned you...
    Louis: Stop! Let [Peaches] GO!
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The hyraxes are absolutely adorable, just like their real life counterparts.
• Self-Deprecation: Sid tells Granny that she'll love hanging out with him and the herd, because they've survived the ice age and "fought dinosaurs, which didn't make sense, but it sure was exciting!"
• Semiaquatic Species Sailor: Flynn the elephant seal is part of Captain Gutt's pirate crew.
• Shout-Out: The hyraxes are obviously references to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, and to the Celts in Braveheart.
• Sirens Are Mermaids: Prehistoric amphibians, actually, but close enough.
• Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: Sid's little brother Marshall uses a piece of clear ice in this manner to burn an ant hill. We then pull back to see Sid's Granny doing the same thing to Marshall's head.
• Standard Snippet: Downplayed. "Master of the Seas," Captain Gutt's Pirate Song, has an original tune, but the melody borrows from "Drunken Sailor" in a few lines, such as "You've been saved by the ape that rules these waters."
• Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: Manny at first tries talking with the hyraxes, but realizes they have no idea what he's saying. Sid says he'll try, and starts using gibberish to talk to them. They then seem to understand what he's saying, and agree to help Manny rebel against Gutt.
  Diego: That they got?
• Sword Drag: Gutt scrapes his claws against the ground at one point.
• Tailfin Walking: Averted with Flynn the elephant seal, who flops and hops while remaining upright (he even has a posterior), but played straight with Scrat when he's trawled through a mess of sea-junk and winds up half-gobbled by a fish, and has to walk around with its tail for a bit.
• Tap on the Head: Manny is knocked out by a giant ball of ice thrown by the pirates. He gets better.
• Tempting Fate: Happens at least twice or thrice.
  • The first time with Diego roaring into the wilderness, then asking Mother Nature if that's all she's got. A giant log then appears out of nowhere and hits him. Which is actually a "car" driven by Sid's family so they can drop Granny off with Sid.
  • The second time is when Manny Sid & Diego are drifting on the ice chunk. Sid tries to give some advice by saying:
    Sid: You know, my mother once told me that bad news was just good news in disguise.
    Diego: Was this before she abandoned you?
    Sid: Yes it was. But the point being is that even when old things look bad, there's a rainbow round every corner. And nothing but smooth sailing ahead!
    (As Sid speaks, strong wind blows at him. The trio find a huge thunderstorm of clouds behind them.)
    Manny: "Smooth sailing", Sid?!
  • The third is when Sid also asks something similar after they survive a lot of large waves while out at sea. He was clinging to a giant crab prior to this, and then it turns out the crab's leg was the only part of it still on their iceberg/ship.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Peaches gives one to the Brat Pack after realizing that they don't care about the situation they in, bullying Louis, especially when they put Peaches' button too far when they tell her that it's bad enough that her family is ''half-possum''.
• Time Skip: A sizable one has occurred since the third film, enough for Peaches to grow from newborn to teenager. Assuming mammoths had a lifespan comparable to modern day elephants, their adventure in the underground dinosaur world happened at least a decade before the start of this movie.
• Took a Level in Badass: Louis. Throughout the whole movie he is timid and shy. But at the climax he fearlessly challenges Captain Gutt to a one-on-one battle. Noted that Gutt can keep two mammoths captive with ease, and aside from claws has multiple deadly weapons; not mention Gutt was pretty much an equal fighter towards Manny, a full grown mammoth. So where Louis was heading, whether he knew or not how dangerous Gutt was, he had serious balls to do this.
• Unusual Euphemism: This film gives us this line:
  "Holy Crab!"
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Captain Gutt is a murderous pirate who tries to kill Manny's whole family.
• Villain Song: "Master of the Seas", sung by Gutt and his crew.
• Villainous Breakdown: After Manny steals his ship, Gutt is so furious, it's quite obvious he's lost a huge amount of his sanity. He later beats Manny and the gang to the continent and takes Ellie & Peaches hostage, stating that Manny took everything he had from him, and the evil ape intended to do the same.
  • Later, during the battle when Precious vanquishes his crew, only Gutt dodges them, now not caring about his crew. Then he attempts to kill Ellie but not before Peaches kicks him to the wall. Finally losing what's left of his sanity, Gutt then blocks Manny's path to return to his family, just as a landmass sends both of them hundreds of feet high.
    Gutt: Told ya, Tubby. You shouldn't have messed with the Master of the Seas!
• Villainous Face Hold: Captain Gutt lifts Shira's face up using one of his claws while he threatens her for failing to kill Manny, Sid and Diego.
• Walk the Plank: The Pirates intend to get rid of Sid and Granny that way.
• What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: At the end of the movie, Scratlantis.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A few scenarios:
  • Peaches calls Manny out after he embarrasses her in front of the other mammoths.
    Peaches: How could you embarrass me in front of my friends?!
    Manny: You deliberately went where you weren't supposed to!
    Peaches: [scoffs angrily] You can't control my life!
    Manny: I'm trying to protect you! That's what fathers do!
    Peaches: Well, I wish you weren't my father!
  • Manny calls out on Sid when the sloth fails to carry out his part of the plan to steal the pirate ship because he couldn't resist eating a random berry he finds, which paralyzes him.
    Manny: One thing Sid! You couldn't do one thing!?
  • Peaches calls out on Ethan and his gang when they refer to barely escaping a cave in as "fun."
    Ethan: Yo, that was insane! Hey Peach, loosen up; have some fun.
    Peaches: "FUN?!" You call that "fun"? I'm outta here.
    Steffie: Come on, I mean do you really want to go back to hanging out with a weird molehog freak and give all of us up?
    Ethan: I mean, it's bad enough that your family's ''half possum''—
    Peaches:"Bad enough?!" There is nothing bad about being part of my family. I like hanging by my tail! And if you geniuses are normal, the species is gonna end up extinct!
    [leaves]
    Katie: Ah, yeah? Well, your species is gonna be extinct first.
    Buddy: Haha, burn!
    Ethan: (sighs) We're the same species, geniuses.
    Buddy: What? Double burn!
• Wham Line:
  • Peaches says this line to Manny after embarrassing her in front of the other mammoths.
    Peaches: Well, I wish you weren't my father!
  • At the climax, Manny and the gang finally arrive back at the continent, but the land bridge is destroyed with no sign of Ellie and Peaches. Manny sadly closes his eyes in despair...when he hears his daughter calling is name in the distance and they see her in the distance joyfully calling for him. Then as they draw closer, the reunion quickly turns to horror as Captain Gutt emerges from the fog and grabs Peaches by the throat, holding a dagger near her neck!
    Peaches: Daddy!
    Manny: Peaches!
    Gutt: Welcome home, Daddy!
    Peaches: LET GO OF ME!
• Whispered Threat: When Manny tells the pirates nothing will stop him from getting back to his family, Captain Gutt walks up close to his head and whispers this into his ear:

  Gutt: That family is going to be the death of you…

• Wilting Odor: When Sid's grandmother takes a bath, it causes a "dirt slick" which is so greasy it resembles an oil slick and it kills several fish which pop up at the surface dead—including a shark.

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