After setting sail with The Hunger Games  on Thursday 22, cruising with Avengers Assemble last Friday, hitting choppy waters with Men in Black 3 last Saturday, being caught up in a storm with Snow White and the Huntsman last Sunday, being helped along by Prometheus on Monday, and escaping the storm with The Amazing Spider-Man on Wednesday, we’re now at the immovable iceberg in the middle of the sea, and it’s time for part seven of Twelve for 2012. It’s Thursday, and it’s time for the one with the squirrel, the acorn, and… you know the drill. Part seven, Ice Age: Continental Drift!

THE GOOD STUFF

The writers seem to be trying to avoid franchise bloat with this fourquel. Very few franchises (except adaptations of a book series) have made a decent fourth movie. Mission: Impossible did it last December with Ghost Protocol, but I’m struggling to think of any other decent fourquels. The reason why fourquels tend to be bad is this: the scale of the movie getting so huge that the movie loses sight of where it began. But the writers of Continental Drift want to buck that trend. Too bad; Mission: Impossible got there first.

There’s an amusing moment in the trailers, with Scrat the squirrel, on the hunt for his precious acorn, literally tearing the world apart. Even by the standards of Ice Age, it’s completely unrealistic, very silly, and a bit pointless, but hell, it brought a smile to my face. And if they emphasize that moment in the TV spots, people will be flocking into the cinemas to see a little bit of classic Scrat… acorn-hunting. Yeah. Acorn-hunting.

Even if the movie’s utter rubbish, it’ll make a lot of MONEY at the box office. The previous entry in the franchise, the pretty bad Dawn of the Dinosaurs made $886 million at the box office, and with the franchise ever-growing in popularity, expect Drift to make loads of MONEY, and for a fivequel to be green-lit, followed by a nomorepleasequel. God, I hope not.

THE BAD STUFF

In my opinion, the Ice Age series is a two-movie story, stretched over four movies. The first movie was brilliant. Meltdown was a crushing disappointment, with a heavy handed green message forming the bulk of the plot. And Dinosaurs was just taking it way too far. There’s no way to replicate what the first movie did without copying the plot, so maybe it’s time for the series to end. And anyway, I think that they should have left the series at the first movie, preserving the greatness of it for a while untarnished by unnecessary sequels. Essentially, they should never have made Meltdown.

Will it be good? Probably not, but Fox’s target market will lap it up anyway, and that’s what really matters.

How much money will it make? More than the third movie, so probably a staggering $950 million. It could, just maybe, hit one billion dollars. It’s pretty unlikely, though. This sounds nasty, but I hope it’s a flop, so Fox leave the series alone.

Next time: From the ridiculous… to the sublime. I rise up with Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, THE film of the year. DESHAY BASHARAH!