Ice Age: Collision Course, also informally referred to as Ice Age 5, is an installment to the Ice Age franchise in the same number ordinal. It was released on the year 2016 and was produced by Blue Sky Studios, the same company that produced Rio (2011) and Rio 2 (2014), as well as The Peanuts Movie in 2015.
The story followed the life of the original trio – Manny, Sid, and Diego, but each now had the loves of their lives. The mammoths already had an offspring, a daughter named Ellie, and were about to get married. Sid also had a girlfriend whose relationship was not too elaborate. Finally, Diego had a sweetheart and was also planning to have kids, but was reluctant because their child could be avoided by his or her future friends because they were predators. All that family matters were set aside when they got the news that an asteroid was heading towards Earth, and they must stop it to prevent the extinction of everyone’s kind.
Unlike most Ice Age movies that preceded it, Collision Course was regarded as a flop. It was not regarded positively and scored too low on review sites like Rotten Tomatoes. Some may even consider the movie the worst of the Ice Age movies until 2017.
Below, we will critique the plot of Collision Course. We will try to see what made the movie unlikeable, which was a huge contrast and a slap to all of its predecessors.
Scrat’s scene was too slapstick
If you had watched the movie, you would know that Scrat was the reason behind the approaching asteroid because his spaceship accidentally knocked that thing off course.
I never really liked Scrat in the first place. He was always a deus ex machina character. I don’t even consider him a character. He’s more of a mascot who merely appears in the opening credits scene just to introduce the Blue Sky Studio’s logo. A great example of him being a deus ex machina producer was in The Meltdown where he tried to bury his acorn by piercing it in an ice wall, breaking it into two, and eventually draining all the flood behind it.
As the franchise produced more movies, he became more of a nuisance, and it culminated here, and this is where I draw the line. The involvement of Scrat seemed to be there just for the sake of the movie having a plot. Not only that it was highly impossible to knock an asteroid off its orbit, but there could also have been a better story for the fifth installment of Ice Age. The problem, having been produced too easily, gave the vibe of a slapstick comedy, which removed the authenticity that the previous movies had established.
The plot is confusing and full of things that the characters already know
First, we have Buck’s involvement. He explained all that extinction stuff and why the asteroid heading toward them was a big deal. It was, if anything, spoonfeeding. The movie could have been better if no one had fed that information to them. They would realize what Buck told them at some point. Then we have some suspenseful music here and there after they realize the grim fate that awaits them.
I won’t even question the film’s scientific inaccuracy by trying to throw electromagnetic crystals into space to deflect the asteroid. Humans have been considering gravitational deflection to save Earth from a possible asteroid impact.
Let’s just assume that their idea makes sense scientifically; what did not are the details behind it! How could the crystals be launched into space during an eruption? The best ending for the crystals would be submerging them into the lava!
Overall, the movie was bad regarding the problem, the character development, and how the characters tried to solve the problem.
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