When the first Ice Age movie arrived in 2002, it was a huge success for animation studio Blue Sky Studios, with audiences quickly falling in love with the antics of a group of prehistoric creatures. The film introduced us to accident-prone sloth Sid, aloof mammoth Manny, and saber-toothed tiger Diego, not to mention feisty squirrel Scrat and his eternal quest to bury his acorn at all costs.
Since then, five sequels have been released, and the pack meets new friends like Manny’s love interest Ellie, dinosaur hunter Buck, and saber-toothed pirate Shira. The franchise has earned $6 billion at the box office, although the sixth film, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, premiered on Disney Plus.
A spin-off TV series, centered on the misadventures of Scrat, also landed on the streaming platform earlier this year.
In addition to the six films, the characters have also appeared in a selection of short films, which focus heavily on Scrat’s escapades.
Unlike so many film franchises, the Ice Age movies follow a fairly straightforward timeline, as the release and chronological order are the same. Here’s what you need to know if you want to dive back into the series…
How to watch the Ice Age movies in chronological order
ice age (2002)
Sloth Sid (John Leguizamo) is left behind by his family when a herd of prehistoric creatures begins migrating south in an attempt to avoid the impending Ice Age. While trying to catch up with them, the accident-prone Sid finds himself on the wrong side of a pack of rhino-like Brontotheres and must be saved by Manny (Ray Romano), a lone, sarcastic mammoth going against the grain and traveling to the north. Meanwhile, the saber-toothed squirrel Scrat desperately tries to bury the acorn from him.
Much to their annoyance, Sid decides to tag along, and on their journey they come across a woman who jumped into a waterfall to protect her son from an attack by a saber-toothed tiger. She has enough strength left to entrust the baby to her care, and the duo decide to track down the rest of the child’s family and return it to them. However, a saber-toothed tiger named Diego (Denis Leary) has been ordered to kill the baby as an act of revenge, and when he crosses paths with Sid and Manny, he hatches a plan to trick them. What he doesn’t count on, however, is the joining of this unlikely duo and his being protected from him, and he will eventually have to choose between his new friends and his old tribe.
Gone Nutty (2002, short film)
This Academy Award-nominated short film focuses on Scrat’s acorn-loving antics and picks up right after the events of Ice Age. The squirrel seems to have finally found the perfect place to hide his most prized possession, until everything goes wrong and Scrat and his stash take a nosedive.
more like this
Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
Sid, Manny and Diego live in a valley surrounded by a huge wall of ice, or so they think. The wall is actually a dam that barely manages to hold back a large body of water, and when it breaks, the valley will be engulfed, leaving nearly a mile underwater. According to a vulture, there is a boat on the other side of the valley that could provide them with a way out, but they only have three days to get there before the dam breaks.
During their search, the gang meets a mammoth named Ellie (Queen Latifah). Manny thinks he might have found ‘the one’, until he learns that Ellie is convinced she’s actually a possum and is traveling with her two possum “sisters”, Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh). Peck). Meanwhile, Sid gets his moment in the spotlight when he meets a tribe of mini-sloths who treat him like a god. Will he join them or stay with his old friends, if they make it out of the valley in time?
No Time for Nuts (2006, short film)
While trying once again to find a place to hide his acorn, Scrat ends up digging up a time machine that takes him (and his acorn) on a journey through the ages, from the Middle Ages to ancient Rome and the era of of the revolution in France. and the Wild West.
Surviving Sid (2008, short film)
In his new guise as a camp counselor, Sid takes a group of schoolchildren on a camping trip. With this accident-prone sloth in charge, what could go wrong?
The Ice Age: The Origin of the Dinosaurs (2009)
With Manny and Ellie expecting their first child, Sid worries that his friends will leave him behind, and in an attempt to have a family of his own, he steals three dinosaur eggs. When her mother, a Tyrannosaurus rex, comes looking for them, he refuses to return the babies, leading her to take Sid and the kids to an underground world full of dinosaurs once thought extinct.
Manny and company follow Sid underground where they meet Buck (Simon Pegg), a one-eyed weasel who is hunting down a fearsome dinosaur named Rudy to get revenge on him. Meanwhile, Scrat the saber-toothed squirrel falls in love with her, but can their new romance overcome her longstanding fixation on her beloved acorn?
Scrat’s Continental Crack Up (2012, short film)
Think of this as a short prequel to Ice Age: Continental Drift. Scrat considers that a sheet of ice would be the perfect place to hide the acorn from him, but when it begins to crack under him, he foolishly tries to fill the space, which only makes things worse.
Scrat’s Continental Crack Up Part 2 (2012, short film)
In the second installment, we see Scrat suffering the consequences of his stupidity as he drifts across the ocean on an ice float and sees the evil Captain Gutt and his crew, who will be introduced in Continental Drift.
Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)
Set 16 years after the events of Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Manny is overly protective of his now-teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer), who is scared away by his pampering. Scrat is still trying to bury that acorn, but this time, his efforts have big consequences, causing the ice to break. Manny, Sid, Diego and Sid’s grandmother (Wanda Sykes) are caught in a moving fragment that is being carried away from Ellie and Peaches by the current.
As they float away from land, they are captured by a group of pirates led by the villainous Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage). The group must fight to escape his clutches and try to find their way back home, but Shira (Jennifer López), the first officer of Gutt’s crew, throws Diego’s feelings off balance.
Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe (2015, short film)
This time, Scrat’s antics at burying acorns catapult him into space on a derelict rocket, triggering an asteroid strike.
Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
Ellie and Manny are preparing for Peaches’ upcoming wedding to a mammoth named Julian, but their preparations are marred by the fact that Manny doesn’t rate his future son-in-law at all, despite his daughter’s pleas for him to do so. meet. Julian better. Scrat’s search for the acorn has thrown him into the stratosphere and sent asteroids crashing down on Earth, nearly wiping out Manny and company in the process.
In an attempt to prevent another similar attack, the gang, along with Buck, venture to Geotopia, a sealed community of immortal creatures found inside an asteroid that fell to earth many years before. Here, they meet characters like yoga-loving Shangri Llama (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and lazy Brooke (Jessie J), who falls in love with Sid.
Scrat: Spaced Out (2016 short film)
Still trapped in space, Scrat is captured by Scratazons, the saber-toothed squirrel’s alien counterparts, who steal the acorn. Can he retrieve it and avoid being sucked into a black hole?
Buck Wild’s Ice Age Adventures (2022)
When opossum brothers Crash and Eddie leave the pack’s camp in an attempt to prove they can survive without their friends’ help, they end up finding the entrance to the Lost World, a land where dinosaurs still roam. Here, they meet their old friend Buck, who tells them that a Protoceratops named Orson (Utkarsh Ambudkar) is trying to take over the dinosaur world.
They’ll have to team up with some of Buck’s old dino-hunting friends, as well as Momma Dino, the T-rex whose children were briefly adopted (or kidnapped) by Sid in Dawn of the Dinosaurs, to protect him. . Aside from Pegg reprising his role as Buck, the sixth Ice Age film features an entirely different voice cast.
visit our Films central for the latest news and features, or find something to watch tonight with our tv guide.
The latest issue of Radio Times is on sale now: subscribe now to receive each number at your door. To learn more about TV’s biggest stars, listen to the Radio Times Podcast with Jane Garvey.