The 2002 animated children’s movie Ice Age, about some extinct mammals, was produced by Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox. The movie was both critically and financially successful, and it started a series of Ice Age movies. On their journey north, Manny and Sid become friends, and while watching over the human youngster, Manny and Sid run across Diego. While attempting to survive the Ice Age, this is how the three people meet and end up being close friends.
It may be challenging to follow the series if you’ve just seen the first Ice Age movie or if you started watching after the third one. You’re probably more interested in knowing how many Ice Age movies there are. For a chronological breakdown of the Ice Age movies, keep reading.
Ice Age Movies in Order at a glance
Currently, there are five animated movies in the Ice Age series that depict the coexistence of Manny, a sarcastic woolly mammoth, Sid, a clumsy ground sloth, and Diego, a saber-toothed tiger, throughout the Ice Age. The best sequence to see the Ice Age movies is in the order they were released because the series has no prequels or jumps. The films in the Ice Age series are listed below in order of when they were released:
“Ice Age” (2002)
Ice Age: The Collapse (2006)
Dinosaurs at the Dawn of the Ice Age (2009)
Continental Drift, Ice Age (2012)
Collision Course: Ice Age (2016)
Buck Wild’s Ice Age Adventures (2022)
Ice Age Movies in Order
Ice Age (2002)
Order of Ice Age Films: All Films Chronologically speaking, the first feature film from Blue Sky Studios, Ice Age, was released in 2002, a time when Disney-Pixar-Dreamworks dominated the animation industry. It centres on three Pleistocene-era characters—Sid the sloth, Manny the woolly mammoth, and Diego the saber-toothed tiger—who go out on a quest to return a baby Neanderthal named Roshan to its tribe’s dwelling.
One of the characters in the movie, Scrat, would go on to become one of the most recognisable animated characters of the twenty-first century as well as Blue Sky’s mascot, and the movie was an instant hit with parents, kids, and critics alike thanks to its inventive animation and refreshing comedy.
20 thousand years ago. On the eve of the Ice Age, a group of people leave their camp and join a never-ending caravan of prehistoric animals heading south.
A tribe camps by a waterfall on their way to their settlement in the mountains, led by their chief Runar, his wife Nadia, and their young son Roshan. The leader of a pack of saber-tooth tigers, Soto, keeps a watch on the people with the help of Diego, a devoted cat. Soto is getting ready to eat Runar’s kid Roshan the following morning because he wants to exact revenge on humans for killing off half of his pack.
Diego chases Nadia during the attack, but she flees with Roshan by jumping over the waterfalls, leaving Diego alone himself in Soto. The pack makes plans to meet at Half Peak, where Diego will deliver the child for Soto.
Manny and Sid continue their journey, the sloth’s constant chatter grating on Manny’s nerves, until they come across Nadia on a riverside. She has been gravely injured by her jump over the rapids and is barely able to hand off her child to Manny before she disappears. Manny leaves, but Sid decides to take the baby back to his “herd,” something that Manny will not help with.
The savage Soto’s voracious pack of saber-toothed tigers, however, surprise the group and attack, leaving an unprotected youngster behind. After this tragic event, Diego, the crafty primordial tiger, Sid, the sloth-like outcast, and Manny, the enormous shaggy mammoth, embark on a perilous search for the baby’s parents. However, they are unaware that danger is much closer than they think. Before the planet is fully buried by enormous glaciers, can the unlikely rescuers find the human family?
Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
In 2006’s Ice Age: The Meltdown, Manny, Sid, and Diego did make a second appearance, but this time they were accompanied by a larger cast of supporting characters, including Ellie, Crash, and Eddie, all of whom would appear in later instalments of the franchise. The movie follows the aforementioned characters as they battle for survival after widespread flooding makes it harder for them to access icy terrain.
The unlucky prehistoric squirrel/rat Scrat is still with Manny the woolly mammoth, Sid the sloth, Diego the saber-toothed tiger, and they are all enjoying the perks of their melting globe.
After Fast, two young people escape in fear. The valley’s resident con man, Tony (a six-banded armadillo), claims that the earth is about to flood and that the bark and reeds (which he sells) are essential for survival. Manfred dismisses the idea but becomes enthralled when he sees Sid doing a high dive from a huge waterfall.
Manny and Diego discover that the excellent weather has caused the valley’s large, bowl-shaped glacier’s underlying layers of ice to melt as they ascend to the top of the waterfall to save Sid from his irresponsible act. Only the outermost layers of the glaciers, which formed a dam, kept the valley from overflowing.
Manny warns everyone of the impending horror in the valley if the dam fails. While a haughty aardvark disputes Manny’s survival advice in light of the demise of his own species, the mammoths, the animals, on the other hand, laugh it off. The animals’ upbeat attitudes begin to wane as a commanding vulture warns them of their imminent demise, though. To the relief of the valley residents, he then casually mentions a large boat at the valley’s end that might save them all.
Although Manny thinks he might be the last mammoth, there haven’t been any sightings in a very long time, and he may not be ready to start a family. That is, until he unexpectedly comes across Ellie, the sole female mammoth in existence. The only problem is that they hate each other, and Ellie thinks she’s a possum. Crash and Eddie, Ellie’s two possum “brothers,” are brazen troublemakers who love to play practical jokes on people.
Manny, Sid, and Diego quickly learn that one huge drawback of a rising environment is that a massive glacier barrier that has been keeping seas of water at bay is in danger of crumbling, putting the entire valley in jeopardy. The far end of the valley holds the sole possibility of survival. Thus, as they embark on a journey through a constantly shifting, increasingly dangerous world in search of forgiveness, our three protagonists transform into the most unlikely family—in any “Age”—ever.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Order of Ice Age Films: All Films According to the chronology, 2009 was a great year for theatrical animation, with Pixar’s Up, Laika’s Coraline, and Disney’s The Princess and the Frog all garnering positive reviews. A lesser-known but nevertheless crucial addition to this list is Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which follows the main protagonists of the first movie as they try to save Sid from a long-forgotten, underground habitat where a hostile herd of dinosaurs lives. Although the film received negative reviews, fans of the originals loved this silly continuation of the series.
After the events of “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” Manny and his friends’ life start to change: Scrat is still looking for his prized acorn while also exploring the possibility of a romance with a female saber-toothed squirrel named Scratte. Ellie and Manny, who are now a couple, are expecting a kid, and Manny is eager to make sure that everything is ready for the birth of his child.
Since his earlier experiences as a husband and parent ended in tragedy when his family was slain by hunters, Manny is intent on creating an ideal and safe life for the family while Ellie is pregnant with their first kid.
At the same time, Diego (Denis Leary), who had been pursuing a brazen gazelle (Bill Hader), fails to subdue him and departs the herd, believing he has lost his tiger instincts. Envious of Manny and Ellie, Sid (John Leguizamo) takes in three eggs that appear to have been abandoned and names them Eggbert, Shelly, and Yoko. Sid takes care of the eggs, which hatch the following morning as a baby Tyrannosaurus, despite Manny’s instructions for him to return them.
Sid tries to take care of the three dinosaurs, but their raucous antics scare away the young of the other animals and wreck a playground Manny built for Ellies’s child.
In order to escape Diego’s pursuit, Momma, the female Tyrannosaurus whose eggs Sid stole, hurriedly makes her way back and takes Sid and her young underground. Following suit, Manny, Ellie, Crash, and Eddie learn that the ice cavern leads to a huge rainforest populated with extinct dinosaurs. Despite Diego’s best efforts, an Ankylosaurus threatens the herd in this location. A mad, one-eyed weasel named Buckminster, or Buck, saves the herd from yet another swarm of angry reptiles.
Diego worries that he has gotten too relaxed because he is sick of being treated like a housecat. When Sid decides he wants a family of his own, he steals some dinosaur eggs. As a result, Sid gets stuck in a strange underground environment, where his herd must save him by avoiding danger and dodging dinosaurs. They also encounter Buck, a one-eyed weasel who is passionate about dinosaur hunting.
Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)
Blue Sky wasn’t going to pass up the chance to capitalise on their enormous success given that they were surpassing such titan studios as Pixar and Dreamworks in terms of animated pictures. After the acorn-minded Scrat split up a supercontinent, the group continued in Ice Age: Continental Drift as they battled to avoid multiple perilous pirate encounters while stranded on an adrift ice block.
Since the last movie, Peaches, the daughter of Manny and Elise, has grown up sixteen years, and Manny and Elise are finding it challenging to parent her.
When Peaches, his teenage daughter, goes to the falls to see Ethan, a young mammoth, Manny starts to get nervous. Manny’s wife Ellie comforts him and explains that Peaches won’t always be his little girl. Peaches tries to get to the falls with Louis, her best friend, a mole hog, but Manny stops them and kidnaps Peaches.
While The Herd seeks for his disagreeable Granny, Sid rejoins his family but is abandoned once more by her. Peaches is travelling to the falls with Louis when Manny stops her and finds her with Ethan. Manny then humiliates Peaches in front of her friends. Peaches said she wished Manny had never been her father as she was upset with him.
After escaping a terrifying sea storm, Manny and his friends find Granny, who had been hiding inside a tree trunk on the same floating iceberg the entire time. A group of pirates led by Captain Gutt, a Gigantopithecus, and Shira, a female saber-toothed cat, capture Manny and his comrades. By singing them a song to introduce Gutt along the road, Gutt and the pirate crew try to enlist Manny and his friends, but they are rejected.
Gutt tries to have them walk the plank again, but they manage to flee, destroying the pirate ship. The pirate crew is concerned for Shira’s health when Gutt and the pirates are separated from her, but Gutt deserts her. The herd intervenes to save Shira.
In his never-ending search for the ideal supply of round, shiny acorns, Scrat, the restless saber-toothed squirrel, unintentionally triggers an epic geologic chain reaction. Consequently, Manny is cut off from Ellie and their disobedient teenage daughter Peaches and ends up stuck on a sizable iceberg with Diego, Sid, and Granny, Manny’s fiery grandmother.
To make matters worse, the mismatched seafarers encounter the legendary sea monster, Captain Gutt, a grizzled barbarian pirate who wants to sell them into slavery. Is there any chance that the newest members of the ice-galley will ever see their loved ones again?
Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
Ice Age: Collision Course, released in 2016, provided the Ice Age series a fifth episode with brand-new animation, breaking all previous records. The same popular characters from the first four movies return, this time to prevent their – very likely – extinction at the hands of a series of deadly meteorites fired by the consistently blind Scrat.
The movie opens with Scrat (voiced by Chris Wedge) looking for a place to store his acorn, as is traditional. Before he can poke it in, he crashes through some ice and into what appears to be a cave. When Scrat deposits the acorn on a pad, a sizable flying saucer is launched. He releases it from the ice block it was enclosed in and sends it into orbit. Scrat collides with the planets like pinballs or pool balls and is then launched out of the saucer with the acorn. The asteroid he decides to put it inside naturally divides and hurtles toward Earth.
Manny and Ellie are getting ready for Peaches’ impending nuptials to Julian in the meanwhile. Diego and his wife Shira want to have children, but kids are scared of them because of their intimidating appearance. Sid regrets his loneliness when his fiancée Francine breaks up with him just as he is about to pop the question.
The Herd barely survives an asteroids attack that occurs during Manny and Ellie’s wedding anniversary party. In the underground lost planet, Buck returns a dinosaur egg to its rightful owner after it was abducted by the flying tyrannosaurs Gavin, Gertie, and Roger. Buck finds Manny and the others after recovering an old stone pillar from the depths and bringing it to the surface.
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022)
The misadventures of the possum brothers Crash and Eddie, who set out to discover a place of their own, are continued in The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild. They go up against the dinosaurs who live in the Lost World with the help of Buck Wild, the one-eyed weasel.
Due to the absence of Scrat and Peaches, Manny, Ellie, Sid, and Diego only play supporting roles in the movie.
Do you have to watch ice age movies in order?
You can watch and enjoy the Ice Age movies by yourself. However, as the premise and characters are the same throughout all of the Ice Age movies, watching them in order will help you understand the story better. Aside from that, each movie starts with a scene from the one before it, which makes little sense if you haven’t seen the earlier movies.
Will there be more Ice Age Movies?
The release of a new Ice Age movie in 2022 has been confirmed. Regarding the potential for the sixth movie It was revealed that the project had been modified into a feature film called Ice Age: Adventures of Buck Wild in December 2020. The movie would follow Buck as he sets out on an adventure with Crash and Eddie in the Dinosaur World.