The Day After Tomorrow

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The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow theatrical poster.
Directed by	Roland Emmerich
Produced by	Roland Emmerich Mark Gordon
Written by	Roland Emmerich (story) Roland Emmerich Jeffery Nachmanoff (screenplay)
Starring	Dennis Quaid Jake Gyllenhaal Emmy Rossum Sela Ward Ian Holm Jay O. Sanders Kenneth Welsh Tamlyn Tomita
Music by	Harald Kloser
Cinematography	Ueli Steiger
Editing by	David Brenner
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	May 26, 2004 (Kuwait); May 28, 2004 (rest of the world)
Running time	124 mins.
Country	United States Canada
Language	English
Budget	$125,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue	Domestic $186,740,799 Worldwide $544,272,402[1]

The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 apocalyptic science-fiction film that depicts the catastrophic effects of both global warming and global cooling, and a storm from the systems that are about to wipe out all life on Earth and dawning a new Ice Age. It was once part of the top 50 grossing films of all time, with total revenue of US $542,771,772. It is the second highest grossing movie not to be #1 in the US box office (behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding). The movie was filmed in Montreal, and is the highest grossing Hollywood film in history to be filmed in Canada (if adjusted for inflation).

The Day After Tomorrow premiered in Mexico City on May 17, 2004 but it was also shown to contestants on the reality television series Big Brother Australia beforehand, which is not classified as the premiere for the movie. It was released worldwide from May 26 to May 28 except in South Korea and Japan where it was released June 4 and June 5, respectively. The film was originally planned for release in summer 2003. The film made $110,000,000 in DVD sales, bringing its total film gross to $652,771,772.^[2]

[edit] Cast

[edit] Plot

The movie opens with Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) in Antarctica with two colleagues, Frank and Jason (Jay O. Sanders and Dash Mihok), drilling for ice core samples on the Larsen Ice Shelf for NOAA. The ice shelf cracks and breaks off from the rest of the continent and Jack almost falls to his death. He travels to a United Nations conference held in New Delhi, India on global warming where Diplomats from several countries, particularly the Vice-President of the United States (Kenneth Welsh), are unconvinced by Jack's theory.

The idea, however, resonates with Professor Terry Rapson (Ian Holm) of the Hedland Climate Research Centre in Scotland. Shortly after Dr. Rapson arrives back in Scotland from the climate conference, two buoys in the North Atlantic simultaneously show a massive drop in water temperature. Rapson soon concludes that the melting of the polar ice has begun to disrupt the North Atlantic current and calls Jack to see if his paleoclimatological weather model, a reconstructional data of the palaeoclimate change of the past which caused the first Ice Age, could be used to predict what will happen, and when it will occur. Jack is surprised because he predicted that the events would not happen in his lifetime, but rather in a hundred or a thousand years in the future. Soon Jack, with the aid of Frank, Jason, and NASA's meteorologist Janet Tokada (Tamlyn Tomita), begin to build a forcast model with his, Rapson's, and Tokada's datas.

Across the world, violent weather causes mass destruction and chaos: A hailstorm, with hailstones bigger than footballs, strikes Tokyo, Japan, devastating the city. In Los Angeles, a tornado warning is issued, due to a sudden outbreak of telltale funnel-systems. The first tornado strikes a residential area. Another tornado destroys the Hollywood Sign as seen by a news helicopter. In Downtown Los Angeles, a huge tornado, presumably an F-5, devastates the entire area. A news van reporting on the storm spots two large tornadoes in Los Angeles International Airport apparently merging as they devastate planes. As the news crew travels through the city, they narrowly avoid being struck by vehicles thrown through the air by the tornadoes in the Greater Los Angeles. A separate news report shows the Los Angeles Skyline being destroyed and the Capitol Records Building is shown being torn apart. Eventually, it is shown that most of the city has been leveled.

The US President (Perry King) authorizes the FAA to suspend all air-traffic over the United States, although the order comes too late, as two planes are brought down by severe turbulence (including an Avianca Boeing 707). Not long after, three RAF helicopters that are carrying the British Royal Family to safety are flying through one of three massive hurricane-like superstorms when they enter the eye, only to encounter a massive and phenomenal temperature drop lower than −150 °F (−101.1 °C) that instantly freezes their fuel lines and rotors causing them to crash.

Meanwhile, Jack's son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), is traveling to New York City for an academic competition with his friends, Brian and Laura (Arjay Smith and Emmy Rossum). During the time of the competition, the weather is shown to be becoming increasingly violent with strong winds and torrential rains. After the competition, Sam and his friends are stuck in New York as all flights have been canceled. Sam calls his father, promising him he'll be on the next train home. The group take shelter in J.D.'s apartment for the night while the storm worsens, forcing subways to close due to flooding, which shuts down Grand Central Station. J.D. offers to give them a ride to Philadelphia, where they can continue to Washington.

As the four walk to J.D.'s car, a enormous wave surges towards Manhattan, half-blanketing the Statue of Liberty, then reaching the island. The massive wave blankets the island, leaving the streets under several feet of water. Sam and his friends barely make it to the shelter of the New York Public Library. In Scotland, Rapson and his co-workers are trapped in their research lab by the deepening snow and the storm. They are last seen drinking scotch as the power supply fails, and runs out.

Survivors in the Southern States are forced to flee to the Southern, Southwestern United States, and Mexico. After advising the EOP of the plans for half country-wide evacuations from the superstorm, Jack decides to make the journey to Manhattan to find his son. Frank and Jason accompany him, though along the way, Frank dies.

Inside the library, Sam and a small group of survivors use advice Sam received from his father during a phone call to stay indoors and outlast the cold. They burn books to keep warm and break the library's vending machine for food. The following day Laura is found to be afflicted with severe blood poisoning and Sam, Brian, and J.D. go to search for penicillin in a Russian cargo ship that drifted inland during the storm. While within the ship, the three are attacked by a pack of hungry wolves (likely escaped from the Central Park Zoo), and during their escape J.D. suffers a bite wound. It is during their attempt to distract the wolves so that they can leave the ship that Sam notices that the eye of the superstorm has begun to pass over the city with its −150 °F (−101.1 °C) instant freeze. The top of the Empire State Building is shown to start to freeze, so the three hurry back to the library with the medicine as well as some food and supplies they found on the ship. At the same time Jack is shown to take shelter in an abandoned Wendy's restaurant.

Jack and Jason arrive in New York City, passing the now frozen and half-buried in snow Statue of Liberty and continue towards Manhattan eventually finding the library nearly buried in a snow drift. They manage to find everyone inside the library alive and signal for help and they are rescued by a group of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters.

As they leave they see people on the rooftops of buildings with Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters approaching to evacuate them. The movie ends with the two astronauts looking down at the view of the Earth from the International Space Station, only now a majority of the northern hemisphere is covered in ice.

[edit] Background

The movie was inspired by The Coming Global Superstorm, a book co-authored by Coast to Coast AM talk radio host Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. Strieber also wrote the film's novelization.

Shortly before and during the release of the movie, members of environmental and political advocacy groups distributed pamphlets to moviegoers describing what they believe to be the possible effects of global warming. MSNBC: Scientists warm up to 'Day after Tomorrow' Although the film depicts some effects of global warming predicted by scientists, like rising sea levels, more destructive storms, and disruption of ocean currents and weather patterns, it depicts these events happening much more rapidly and severely than is considered scientifically plausible, and the theory that a "superstorm" will create rapid worldwide climate change does not appear in the scientific literature. When the film was playing in theaters, much criticism was directed at politicians concerning the Kyoto Protocol and climate change. The film's scientific adviser was Dr. Michael Molitor, a leading climate change consultant who worked as a negotiator on the Kyoto Protocol.

The book "The Sixth winter" written by Douglas Orgill and John Gribbin published in 1979 follows a similar theme. So does the novel "Ice!" by Arnold Federbush, published in 1978.

[edit] Reception

The movie generated mixed reviews from both the science and entertainment communities.

• The online entertainment guide Rotten Tomatoes has rated the movie at 45%, with an average rating of 5.3/10.^[4]
• Environmental activist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot called The Day After Tomorrow "a great movie and lousy science."^[5]
• In a USA Today editorial by Patrick J. Michaels, a Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and global warming skeptic, Michaels called the movie "propaganda", noting, "As a scientist, I bristle when lies dressed up as 'science' are used to influence political discourse."^[6]
• In a Space Daily editorial by Joseph Gutheinz, a college instructor and retired NASA Office of Inspector General, Senior Special Agent, Gutheinz called the movie "a cheap thrill ride, which many weak minded people will jump on and stay on for the rest of their lives."^[7]

• Paleoclimatologist William Hyde of Duke University was asked, on rec.arts.sf.written, whether he would be seeing the film; he responded that he would not unless someone were to offer him $100. Other readers of the newsgroup took this as a challenge, and (despite Hyde's protests) raised the necessary funds. Hyde's review, which criticized the film's portrayal of weather phenomena that stopped at national borders, and finished by saying that it was "to climate science as Frankenstein is to heart transplant surgery", was quoted in New Scientist.
• In 2008, Yahoo! Movies listed The Day After Tomorrow as one of Top 10 Scientifically Inaccurate Movies.^[8]
• The film was criticized for depicting several different meteorological phenomena occurring over the course of hours, instead of the more plausible time frame of several decades or centuries.^[9]

Over its 4-day Memorial Day opening, the film grossed $85,807,341, however it still ranked #2 for the weekend, behind Shrek 2's $95,578,365 4-day tally, however The Day After Tomorrow led the per-theater average chart with a 4-day average of $25,053, compared to Shrek 2's 4-day average of $22,633. At the end of its box office run, it grossed $186,740,799. Its worldwide gross was $542,771,772.^[10]

[edit] Controversy

There was some controversy regarding the casting of Kenneth Welsh as the Vice-President of the United States due to his striking physical resemblance to Dick Cheney, who at the time was the real Vice-President. Roland Emmerich later confirmed that he deliberately chose Welsh for that very reason. Emmerich stated that the characters of the President and Vice-President in the film were intended to be a not-so-subtle criticism of the environmental policies of the Presidency of George W. Bush. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the film.^[11]

In response to accusations of insensitivity by including scenes of New York City being destroyed, not even three years after the September 11th attacks, Emmerich claims that it was necessary to depict the event as a means to showcase the increased unity people now have when facing a disaster, because of 9/11.^[12][13][14]

A number of scientists commented on the political and scientific aspects of the film:

• Dan Schrag, a paleoclimatologist and professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University expressed both support and concern about the film, stating that "On the one hand, I'm glad that there's a big-budget movie about something as critical as climate change. On the other, I'm concerned that people will see these over-the-top effects and think the whole thing is a joke... We are indeed experimenting with the Earth in a way that hasn't been done for millions of years. But you're not going to see another ice age -- at least not like that."
• Marshall Shepherd, a research meteorologist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center expressed similar sentiments, stating that "I'm heartened that there's a movie addressing real climate issues. But as for the science of the movie, I'd give it a D minus or an F. And I'd be concerned if the movie was made to advance a political agenda."
• Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria said, "It's the Towering Inferno of climate science movies, but I'm not losing any sleep over a new ice age, because it's impossible."^[11]

[edit] DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases

[edit] Releases

• It was first released on DVD in the USA on October 12, 2004 in both widescreen and full screen versions. It also had a limited VHS release with a full screen format.
• A 2-disc "collector's edition" containing production featurettes, two documentaries: a "behind-the-scenes" and another called "The Forces of Destiny", as well as storyboards and concept sketches were also included. It was released on May 24, 2005.
• It was released in high-definition video on Blu-ray Disc in the United States on October 2, 2007 and United Kingdom on April 28, 2008 in full 1080p with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track, however with few bonus features. The film made $110,000,000 in DVD sales, bringing its total film gross to $652,771,772.^[15]

[edit] See also

• Fifty Degrees Below, a Kim Stanley Robinson novel in which greenhouse warming similarly disrupts the Gulf Stream; the rate of cooling is somewhat less exaggerated.
• Superstorm, a 2007 miniseries.
• Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow, an episode of South Park that parodies the film.
• "The Midnight Sun," an episode of The Twilight Zone in which Earth is rapidly heating.
• Disaster Movie
• Time of the Great Freeze, a novel by Robert Silverberg about a second Ice Age.
• The Coming Global Superstorm, a book on which the movie is based.
• The World In Winter, a 1962 book by John Christopher about the beginning of a new ice age.
• Storm of the Century (1993)
• Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Day After Tomorrow

• The Day After Tomorrow at the Internet Movie Database
• The Day After Tomorrow at Allmovie
• The Day After Tomorrow at Rotten Tomatoes
• USA today review
• CoolJunkie review
• Bad Physics Review
• Yahoo! Movies: The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - Movie Info
• Scientific explanations of movie scenes on cisci.net