History YMMV / IceAgeTheMeltdown

** The GIANT spider queen that serves as a boss at one point in the game.

** * The WombLevel after Maelstrom swallows Scrat, especially the "boss": a parasitic [[EyesDoNotBelongThere circle of eyeballs]] surrounding a huge [[{{Squick}} sphincter]].

** Later installments got criticized for turning the franchise from a semi-accurate portrayal of animals surving the ice age into a FantasyKitchenSink with dinosaurs and fantasy elements. However, it can be argued the trend started with Cretaceous and Maelstrom, who are reptiles from the Mesozoic era that were long extinct by the time the Ice Age started, the main difference is that First of all, they do have a semi-realistic justification in the plot, [[MonsterInTheIce by being sealed in the ice and then realesed with the titular meltdown]], meaning that the creators were lampshading the fact they wouldn't be alive during the ice age with these two being a notable exception. And most importantly, they don't drive attention away from the ice age-related natural disasters like the main flood, which is still the focus of the plot. In the latter movies, the more historicallly inaccurate and fantastical elements took center attention to the plot leading the Ice Age-elements to become irrelevant and they never bothered to give them a realistic justification.

* CommonKnowledge: Oppositors of later movies tend to argue that this movie involves the melting of the glaciars and therefore the end of the Ice Age, which is used as a justification for this installment being considered the GrandFinale of the series. That's not what happens, the movie focused on the valley where the protagonists are living in, being about to flood because of an ice wall barely holding a massive body of water, there's no sign in the movie that this is an issue for anyone else besides the valley where the Herd were living at the time, so is quite a stretch to argue this will be the end of the Ice Age at a global scale.

* NightmareFuel: Death by drowning is unnervingly dark and graphic considering [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids this game's target audience]] and the rest of the game having more slapstick-y failure scenes. If Scrat's OxygenMeter runs out underwater, his life rapidly decreases as he makes pained gurgling and choking noises. If ''that'' hits zero as well, the squirrel's eyes roll into the back of his head as he visibly inhales a lungful of water and goes limp.

** Later installments got critizied for turning the franchise from a semi-accurate portrayal of animals surving the ice age into a FantasyKitchenSink with dinosaurs and fantasy elements. However, it can be argued the trend started with Cretaceous and Maelstrom, who are reptiles from the Mesozoic era that were long extinct by the time the Ice Age started, the main difference is that First of all, they do have a semi-realistic justification in the plot, [[MonsterInTheIce by being sealed in the ice and then realesed with the titular meltdown]], meaning that the creators were lampshading the fact they wouldn't be alive during the ice age with these two being a notable exception. And most importantly, they don't drive attention away from the ice age-related natural disasters like the main flood, which is still the focus of the plot. In the latter movies, the more historicallly inaccurate and fantastical elements took center attention to the plot leading the Ice Age-elements to become irrelevant and they never bothered to give them a realistic justification.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: Cretaceous and Maelstrom are either fun and creepy villains or [[PlotIrrelevantVillain unnecessary characters that were only added to give Manny a fight at the climax.]]

* FranchiseOriginalSin: Among other things, later sequels got heavily criticized for constantly adding brand new characters to the herd to the point that they either [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter failed to get utilized to their full potential]] or [[SpotlightStealingSquad forced other characters who'd been around longer and were already more widely beloved off to the wayside of the plot]]. However, as WebVideo/{{Animat}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b552FkXQpYA points out]], these trends technically have their roots in this film with the introduction of Ellie, whose romance with Manny takes up so much of the plot that, between said romance and the threat of the flood, Diego's arc of [[FaceYourFears overcoming his fear of water]] only gets a comparative handful of scenes devoted to it and Sid's DudeWheresMyRespect arc feels almost like an afterthought. However, viewers were willing to accept, or at least overlook, these matters since Ellie's presence made perfect sense from a narrative perspective due to her romance with Manny serving as both a natural continuation of Manny's storyline from the original movie involving his lost previous family as well as a [[ThereIsAnother happy resolution]] to his LastOfHisKind fears he undergoes earlier in the film. And of course, the amount of time devoted to her and Manny in the story allowed for her to be well written and fleshed out enough to be able to stand on her own merits as a character in the story without coming across as a SatelliteLoveInterest. As far as Diego and Sid's comparative downplaying in the plot was concerned, Diego was still the character amongst the original trio that managed to get the 2nd highest amount of screen time devoted to his arc after Manny, while Sid made up for his own arc's comparatively getting underserved by playing a crucial role in helping Diego overcome his fear of water. Later sequels, however, would keep adding even more characters to the herd's roster while not allowing them to have anywhere near enough time to be properly fleshed out and integrated with the rest beyond the most barebones personalities or story roles while also at times completely upstaging more widely beloved older characters, with Diego perhaps being the worst hit in regards to this. This gives viewers much less reason to like them in comparison to how much effort and care had been put into Ellie's integration into the plot.

* CommonKnowledge: Oppositors of later movies tend to argue that this movie involves the melting of the glaciars and therefore the end of the Ice Age, which is used as a justification for this installment being considered the GrandFinale of the series. That's not what happens, the movie focused on the valley where the protagonists are living in, being about to flood because of an ice wall barely holding a massive body of water, there's no sign in the movie that this is an issue for anyone else besides the valley where the Herd were living at the time, so is quite a strech to argue this will be the end of the Ice Age at a global scale.

* CommonKnowledge: Oppositors of later movies tend to argue that's this movie involves the melting of the glaciars and therefore the end of the Ice Age, which is used as a justification for this installment being considered the GrandFinale of the series. That's not what happens, the movie focused on the valley were the protagonists are living in being about to flood because of an ice wall barely holding a massive body of water, there's no sign in the movie that this is an issue for anyone else besides the valley where the Herd were living at the time, so is quite a strech to argue this will be the end of the Global Ice Age.

* FranchiseOriginalSin: Among other things, later sequels got heavily criticized for constantly adding brand new characters to the herd to the point that they either [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter failed to get utilized to their full potential]] or [[SpotlightStealingSquad forced other characters who'd been around longer and were already more widely beloved off to the wayside of the plot]]. However, as WebVideo/{{Animat}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b552FkXQpYA points out]], these trends technically have their roots in this film with the introduction of Ellie, whose romance with Manny takes up so much of the plot that, between said romance and the threat of the flood, Diego's arc of [[FaceYourFears overcoming his fear of water]] only gets a comparative handful of scenes devoted to it and Sid's DudeWheresMyRespect arc feels almost like an afterthought. However, viewers were willing to accept, or at least overlook, these matters since Ellie's presence made perfect sense from a narrative perspective due to her romance with Manny serving as both a natural continuation of Manny's storyline from the original movie involving his lost previous family as well as a [[ThereIsAnother happy resolution]] to his LastOfHisKind fears he undergoes earlier in the film. And of course, the amount of time devoted to her and Manny in the story allowed for her to be well written and fleshed out enough to be able to stand on her own merits as a character in the story without coming across as a SatelliteLoveInterest.\\
\\
As far as Diego and Sid's comparative downplaying in the plot was concerned, Diego was still the character amongst the original trio that managed to get the 2nd highest amount of screen time devoted to his arc after Manny, while Sid made up for his own arc's comparatively getting underserved by playing a crucial role in helping Diego overcome his fear of water. Later sequels, however, would keep adding even more characters to the herd's roster while not allowing them to have anywhere near enough time to be properly fleshed out and integrated with the rest beyond the most barebones personalities or story roles while also at times completely upstaging more widely beloved older characters, with Diego perhaps being the worst hit in regards to this. This gives viewers much less reason to like them in comparison to how much effort and care had been put into Ellie's integration into the plot.

* ContestedSequel: A lot of fans see it as a great follow up on the first movie that perfectly expands on the characters and story of the original movie and gives complements and concludes Manny's arc from the first movie nicely. Other fans see it as a bland movie with a boring and predictable story that wastes Sid and Diego and is a huge FranchiseOriginalSin for the whole franchise. How it compares with the rest of the franchise is also a point of contention, some fans see it as a EvenBetterSequel, others think is [[ToughActToFollow good but not as good as the first one]] and other fans think is the worst of the trilogy by far.

* ContestedSequel: Which sequel is better? The second film or the third film? Is it even good at all, does it manage to be better than the original, or does it suffer from {{Sequelitis}}?

* InformedWrongness: How Mannie and Ellie's first argument ultimately works out. She's furious when he says it's their responsibility to breed, but in the end, apologizes for "overreacting." Mannie lamely apologizes for making her overreact and even that has to be dragged from him.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[spoiler:[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHaTudYdFF4 "Mammoths"]]]], which unsurprisingly plays when [[spoiler:an enormous herd of mammoths appears at the very end of the movie]]. Even critics and audience members who otherwise didn't like the movie agree that the song and its scene are ''magnificent'', especially considering it was composed by Music/JohnPowell, who would go on to create the universally acclaimed soundtrack for ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon.''

* SignatureScene:
** Scrat's CurbStompBattle against a school of piranhas after one of them bites down on the hand holding his cherished acorn.
** [[spoiler: The mammoth herd appearing after the flood waters recede,]] in no small part due to the SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic accompanying their arrival.

* SugarWiki/NoProblemWithLicensedGames: An overall enjoyable game with nice looking graphics, good gameplay, and solid minigames.

** As far as Diego and Sid's comparative downplaying in the plot was concerned, Diego was still the character amongst the original trio that managed to get the 2nd highest amount of screen time devoted to his arc after Manny, while Sid made up for his own arc's comparatively getting underserved by playing a crucial role in helping Diego overcome his fear of water. Later sequels, however, would keep adding even more characters to the herd's roster while not allowing them to have anywhere near enough time to be properly fleshed out and integrated with the rest beyond the most barebones personalities or story roles while also at times completely upstaging more widely beloved older characters, with Diego perhaps being the worst hit in regards to this. This gives viewers much less reason to like them in comparison to how much effort and care had been put into Ellie's integration into the plot.

* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The animation and lighting is a great improvement over that of the first film and, among the nearly-dozens of computer-animated films released in theaters in 2006, its visuals hold up by far the best.

As far as Diego and Sid's comparative downplaying in the plot was concerned, Diego was still the character amongst the original trio that managed to get the 2nd highest amount of screen time devoted to his arc after Manny, while Sid made up for his own arc's comparatively getting underserved by playing a crucial role in helping Diego overcome his fear of water. Later sequels, however, would keep adding even more characters to the herd's roster while not allowing them to have anywhere near enough time to be properly fleshed out and integrated with the rest beyond the most barebones personalities or story roles while also at times completely upstaging more widely beloved older characters, with Diego perhaps being the worst hit in regards to this. This gives viewers much less reason to like them in comparison to how much effort and care had been put into Ellie's integration into the plot.

* CriticalDissonance: The film received mixed reviews from critics, scoring a 57% on Website/RottenTomatoes, but went on to become a box office success, grossing $660 million on its $80 million budget.

* CriticalDissonance: The film received mixed reviews from critics, scoring a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, but received generally positive reviews from the general public, scoring a audience score of 71% on the site. The film also went on to become a box office success, grossing $660 million on its $80 million budget.

* FranchiseOriginalSin: Among other things, later sequels got heavily criticized for constantly adding brand new characters to the herd to the point that they either [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter failed to get utilized to their full potential]] or [[SpotlightStealingSquad forced other characters who'd been around longer and were already more widely beloved off to the wayside of the plot]]. However, as WebVideo/{{Animat}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b552FkXQpYA points out]], these trends technically have their roots in this film with the introduction of Ellie, whose romance with Manny takes up so much of the plot that, between said romance and the threat of the flood, Diego's arc of [[FaceYourFears overcoming his fear of water]] only gets a comparative handful of scenes devoted to it and Sid's DudeWheresMyRespect arc feels almost like an afterthought. However, viewers were willing to accept, or at least overlook, these matters since Ellie's presence made perfect sense from a narrative perspective due to her romance with Manny serving as both a natural continuation of Manny's storyline from the original movie involving his lost previous family as well as a [[ThereIsAnother happy resolution]] to his LastOfHisKind fears he undergoes earlier in the film. And of course, the amount of time devoted to her and Manny in the story allowed for her to be well written and fleshed out enough to be able to stand on her own merits as a character in the story without coming across as a SatelliteLoveInterest. And as far as Diego and Sid's comparative downplaying in the plot was concerned, Diego was still the character amongst the original trio that managed to get the 2nd highest amount of screen time devoted to his arc after Manny, while Sid made up for his own arc's comparatively getting underserved by playing a crucial role in helping Diego overcome his fear of water. Later sequels, however, would keep adding [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters even more characters]] to the herd's roster while not allowing them to have anywhere near enough time to be properly fleshed out and integrated with the rest beyond the most barebones personalities or story roles while also at times completely upstaging more widely beloved older characters (with Diego in particular being amongst the worst hit in regards to getting upstaged in the plot by newer characters), thus giving viewers much less reason to like them in comparison to how much effort and care had been put into Ellie's integration into the plot.

* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The animation and lighting is a great improvement over that of the first film.

* ContestedSequel: Which sequel is better? The second film or the third film? Is it even good at all, manages to be better than the original, or does it suffer from {{Sequelitis}}?