Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2024)

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is the third installment in the Ice Age series. It was produced by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox.

It was released in July 1, 2009 with a sneak preview shown nationwide at selected theaters on Father's Day in the USA. It is the first Ice Age movie to be released in digital 3D and is by far the most popular movie in the Ice Age franchise so far.

Synopsis[]

After the events of Ice Age: The Meltdown, life begins to change for Manny and his friends: Scrat is still on the hunt to hold onto his beloved acorn, while finding a possible romance in a female saber-toothed squirrel named Scratte. Manny and his new wife Ellie are expecting a baby, which leaves Manny anxious to ensure that everything is perfect for when his baby arrives. Diego is fed up with being treated like a house-cat and ponders the notion that he is becoming too laid-back. He eventually leaves the herd. Sid begins to wish for a family of his own, and so steals some dinosaur eggs which leads to Sid ending up in an underground world where dinosaurs roam free, and where his herd must rescue him, while dodging dinosaurs and facing danger left and right, and meeting up with a weasel known as Buck who hunts dinosaurs intently and has a mammal chauvinism.

Plot[]

Ellie and Manny are expecting their first child, and Manny is obsessed with making life perfect and safe for the family. He is shown bringing a shell full of water to Ellie believing that she is giving birth, although this is just a false alarm. At the same time, Diego finds himself unable to catch an antelope he has been stalking. The antelope starts to taunt him. Believing that he is losing his predatory as a tiger, he decides to leave the herd after a talk with Manny. Sid grows jealous of Manny and Ellie and “adopts” three apparently abandoned eggs that he finds in an icy underground cavern. Manny tells him to put them back, but Sid instead looks after the eggs, which hatch into baby Tyrannosaurus the next morning.

Although Sid tries his best to raise the three dinosaurs, their rambunctious behavior scares away all the other animals’ young and ruins a playground Manny built for Ellie’s baby. The mother dinosaur soon returns and carries both Sid and her youth underground, with Diego in pursuit. Manny, Ellie, Crash, and Eddie follow as well and discover that the icy cavern leads to a vast jungle populated by dinosaurs thought to be extinct. Here, an Ankylosaurus threatens the herd despite Diego’s efforts to fend it off. Ellie gets a Brachiosaurus to lean down at the ledge and they slide down the dinosaurs neck. On the ground, they are saved from a further crowd of angry dinosaurs (including Kentrosaurus, Iguanodon, and Pachycephalosaurus) by a one-eyed, slightly crazed weasel named Buckminster, or Buck.

Buck has been living in this jungle for some time and chasing Rudy (a giant albino Baryonyx that is this world’s biggest dinosaur), intending to avenge the eye he lost to it. He agrees to lead the herd through the jungle’s perils to Lava Falls, where “Momma” has taken Sid and her babies. Soon Manny and Diego are captured by a carnivorous plant, but thanks to Buck, they are freed. In the meantime, Sid and the mother try to outdo each other in feeding the offspring; Sid loses this contest, but is soon welcomed into the family regardless. Suddenly, Mamma hears a loud roar off in the distance and nudges her kids to go forward. This makes id wonder What on Earth could be bigger than Mamma. After the group leaves you see Rudy's foot come down on one of Mamma's footprints, witch was about the size of Rudy's middle toe.

That night, Buck tells the story of how his eye was taken by Rudy, and was nearlly swallowed by him, but buck launched himself out of his mouth, knocking one of his teeth out in the process, which he then proceeded to use as a weapon.That night, while the herd was resting Manny had a bad dream of Ellie all alone in a jungle and being killed by Rudy. After he wakes up, Ellie was still sleeping; however, she woke up, too, and Manny explains to her about his nightmare. Because Ellie was in the nightmare, she explains the most dangerous place in the world is bigger than her and Manny. Buck hears that if Manny was nicer to Sid, they wouldn't be searching for him. Buck says that Manny risked his own life and his unborn baby. That makes Manny a friend and a hero.

The next day, however, Rudy attacks Sid, who was knocked off of Mamma's tail by a rock. Rudy proceeds to chase Sid to the shore of Lavefalls, where one of Rudy's feet cracks the rock that makes up the shore and the slab Sid is on begin to float off. Sid is relieved that he escaped Rudy, but then realizes that the lava leads to a fall.

As the herd moves toward Lava Falls, Ellie goes into labor and a Guanlong pack strikes, causing a rock slide that separates her from Manny and Diego. Manny doubles back to protect her and Diego fends off further attacks, while Buck takes Crash and Eddie ahead to rescue Sid. Just as the sloth goes over the falls, the trio swoops in on a commandeered Harpactognathus and saves his life (after being chased by some Pterodactylus). Manny reaches Ellie just as their baby is born, a girl they decide to name Peaches (the codeword they had chosen for Ellie to use if she went into labor during the trip). Sid is saddened at the fact that he never had a chance to say goodbye to "his" children as he is reunited with the herd.

Before they can exit the jungle, Rudy is hiding in te cave the group entered through, his rough, grey skin ressembling rock in the darkness. Buck is saying his goodbye's to the group when Rudy exhails, which moves bucks fur when he realizes that they are not alone. Buck draws him away from the herd by showing off his knife, being made from Rudy's tooth, and Rudy licks the scar that was left behind. Buck helps the others ensnare him briefly, but he escapes and resumes his onslaught. The herd is saved by the timely arrival of Momma, who charges at Rudy and knocks him off a cliff. As she and her children wish Sid well, Buck – now without a purpose in life since Rudy is gone – decides to join the herd and live on the surface. However, a distant roar tells him that Rudy is still alive; he changes his mind and sends the herd home, he destroys the path to the underground jungle at the same time so that no one can go down there. Manny and Ellie welcome Peaches into their frozen world and admit that Sid did a good job looking after Momma's children. Diego decides to remain with the herd, while Buck stays where he wants to be: underground, matching wits with Rudy.

Scrat and Scratte[]

As in the previous Ice Age films, Scrat does everything he can to retrieve his precious acorn. His efforts are complicated by the presence of Scratte, a female of his species, with whom he is instantly smitten. Scratte outsmarts him a number of times, once by demonstrating her ability to glide like a flying squirrel, but the two eventually fall in love after Scrat saves her from falling to her death in the lava river. He even chooses to focus his attention on her instead of the acorn until the end of the film, when he tires of her finicky nature and reverts to his old ways. The ensuing fight between the couple leads to a volcanic explosion that hurls Scrat and the acorn back to the surface, leaving Scratte trapped underground. As Scrat is about to enjoy his acorn, though, a stray piece of ice falls on him and knocks it back into Scratte’s hands. He screams in frustration, having lost both his love and his acorn.

Characters[]

Ice Age animals[]

Dinosaurs[]

Development[]

Rumors about a third Ice Age film started when Ice Age: The Meltdown's DVD said in the director commentaries that there was probably going to be made a third movie called "Ice Age: A New Beginning". It wasn't until January 30, 2007 when Fox president Hutch Parker, based on the box office success of Ice Age: The Meltdown, announced and approved a third film. The movie is considered to be the biggest blockbuster this summer, with only Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince rivaling it.

Blue Sky decided to do "more of a what-if adventure" in the third Ice Age installment, "like finding the giant ape in King Kong or a Shangri-la in the middle of snow," and added the dinosaurs to the story. Character designer Peter de Sève welcomed the new plot addition, since he could not think of any other giant mammal to put into the story. The "lost world" approach led to colorful dinosaurs, because "the dinosaurs didn't have to be just brown, and you can take liberties because no one knows what color they were", according to de Sève. Rudy's design was inspired by the Baryonyx because of his crocodile-like look, which de Sève considered even more menacing than the T. rex.^[1]

The film's original trailer debuted with the film Horton Hears a Who! on March 14, 2008, then online on April 7, 2008. There are three others that have been released, with the third and fourth (which shows Buck) being the most closely resembling each other. Queen Latifah recorded a cover of the song "Walk the Dinosaur".

Award Nominations[]

Main article: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs/Awards

The film's score by John Powell and the voice acting of Sid by John Leguizamo have been considered for the Annie Awards.^[2]

Box office[]

The movie has made $13,791,157 on an opening day at the box office. It reached approximately $42,500,000 on its opening weekend at #1, according to studio estimates, tying last week's champion Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The actual grosses declared Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen the victor between the two.

Ice Age 3 grossed $67,506,000 after 5 days, $148,000,000 internationally for a total of $215,506,000 for the first week. The film closed on November 22, 2009 with a total of $883,718,521 USD worldwide.

It is the 2nd highest grossing computer animated film of all time (behind Shrek 2) and the highest grossing Ice Age film. It is currently the highest grossing 20th Century Fox film of the year. Also, it is the highest grossing international computer animated film in history, with $678 million, surpassing Finding Nemo's $524 million.

Soundtrack[]

Main article: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (soundtrack)

The musical scores were done by John Powell who did the scores for the previous movie. Queen Latifah's cover of Walk the Dinosaur was used to promote the movie though it doesn't appear in the soundtrack.

Video game[]

Main article: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (video game)

A video game was released on June 30, 2009.

Blu-ray Disc DVD release[]

Main article: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs/Home media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on October 27, 2009 in the US. Release on other countries varied and ended on Dec 4, 2009.

Unlike previous Ice Age films, the DVD was released as 20th Century Fox's Halloween treat and didn't feature a new Scrat animated short.

The movie was rated PG for some mild rude humor and peril, as seen on the back of the DVD and Blu-Ray Disc of the movie.

Behind the Scenes[]

• The first Blue Sky Studios movie that wasn't released in March.

• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was the last Blue Sky Studios movie to be shot in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio and to use the 1994 20th Century Fox logo (the studio's next film, Rio, the studio's first movie musical, released in 2011, would become the first Blue Sky film to be shot in the 2.35:1 ratio and use the new 20th Century Fox logo which was first in shown with Avatar). The 20th Century Fox logo featured in the theatrical version was retained in the Blu-ray 3D and TrioScopics 3D DVD releases and may be retained in the TV release of the film.

• It took only 26 days approximately to fetch $670 million and overcome its predecessor Ice Age 2: The Meltdown.

• The Lou Rawls song You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine is featured in the movie and was adapted to become the You'll Never Tango that plays when Scrat and Scratte fight over the acorn and afterwards.

Trivia[]

According to the Book called “The Art of Ice Age”, There were a few concepts of another Dinosaur called Parasaurolophus. Parasaurolophus Was originally planned to appear in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs alongside some of the other Dinosaurs, but at the end of both final decisions & Productions, the Parasaurolophus was cut out.

References[]