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The Day After Tomorrow

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The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow theatrical poster.
Directed byRoland Emmerich
Written byRoland Emmerich (story)
Roland Emmerich
Jeffery Nachmanoff (screenplay)
Produced byRoland Emmerich
Mark Gordon
StarringDennis Quaid
Jake Gyllenhaal
Emmy Rossum
Sela Ward
Ian Holm
Jay O. Sanders
Kenneth Welsh
Tamlyn Tomita
CinematographyUeli Steiger
Edited byDavid Brenner
Music byHarald Kloser
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release dates
May 28, 2004 (worldwide)
Running time
124 mins.
Country United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$125,000,000 (estimated)
This article is about the 2004 theatrical disaster film dealing with global warming. For the 1983 made for television movie about nuclear war, see The Day After. For other uses, see The Day After Tomorrow (disambiguation).

The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 apocalyptic science-fiction film that depicts the catastrophic effects of global cooling. Worldwide, it is the 45th top grossing film 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). It currently holds the record for biggest opening weekend gross for any movie not opening at #1 with $68.7 million. The movie was filmed mostly in Montreal, and, as of 2008, is the highest grossing Hollywood film in history to be filmed in Canada.

The Day After Tomorrow premiered in Mexico City on May 17 2004 but it was also shown to the housemates on a Big brother episode 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.

Cast

Actor/Actress Role Notes
Dennis Quaid[1] Jack Hall Protagonist and father of Sam Hall
Jake Gyllenhaal[1] Sam Hall Son of Jack Hall
Emmy Rossum[1] Laura Chapman Friend and love interest of Sam Hall
Arjay Smith Brian Parks[1] Friend of Sam Hall
Dash Mihok Jason Evans Friend and colleague of Jack Hall
Jay O. Sanders Frank Harris Friend and colleague of Jack Hall
Sela Ward Dr. Lucy Hall Wife of Jack Hall and mother of Sam Hall
Nestor Serrano Gomez Director of NOAA
Austin Nichols J.D. Friend of Sam Hall
Ian Holm Terry Rapson Colleague of Jack Hall
Tamlyn Tomita Janet Tokada Colleague of Jack Hall and a hurricane specialist for NASA
Kenneth Welsh Raymond Becker Vice President of the United States (later President of the United States)
Perry King President Blake President of the United States

Synopsis

The movie opens with Jack in Antarctica with two colleagues, Frank and Jason, drilling for ice core samples on the Larsen Ice Shelf for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The ice shelf cracks and breaks off from the rest of the continent, nearly killing Jack. The concentration of greenhouse gases contained in the cores is used in a presentation he makes to a United Nations conference held in New Delhi, India on global warming. The idea, however, resonates with Dr. Terry Rapson of the Hedland Climate Research Center in Scotland.

Shortly after Dr. Rapson arrives back in Scotland from the conference, two buoys in the North Atlantic simultaneously show a massive drop in water temperature. Rapson 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 could be used to predict what, and when it will occur. Jack is surprised at what Dr. Rapson is saying because he predicted that the events would not happen in his lifetime, but rather in a hundred or a thousand years from then. At that moment, Dr. Rapson is watching a news report, the reporter saying that several RAF helicopters initiating a search and rescue mission over Scotland to rescue the royal family who are at Balmoral Castle. The movie switches to the helicopters and radio chatter saying things as "We've lost visual contact." Soon after that, a huge ice hurricane strikes, freezes the choppers fuel and hydraulic lines, therefore bringing the choppers down and actually freezing the crew to death in a few seconds.

Across the world, violent weather causes mass destruction and chaos. In Japan, massive hailstones devastate the crowded streets in the Chiyoda District of Tokyo and violent tornados rapidly form across Los Angeles, destroying the Hollywood Sign and Capitol Records Tower as well as The Angelyne Billboard, which kills a news reporter after it is thrown from a tornado, and a massive tornado forms over downtown Los Angeles covering the U.S. Bank Tower and much of the Los Angeles skyline.

Meanwhile, Jack's son, Sam Hall (Jake Gyllenhaal), is travelling to New York City for an academic competition, with friends Brian and Laura. The weather becomes increasingly turbulent with strong winds and torrential rains. Large flocks of birds begin flying south while animals at the Central Park Zoo become violently erratic. Unable to make the competition in the taxi, they walk to the hotel where the competition is being held.

After the competition, Sam and his friends are stuck in New York, as the flight they were supposed to leave on was grounded due to the turbulance Sam calls his father, promising Jack that he'll be on the next train to Washington, where they live. Sam and his friends, meanwhile, will stay with a new friend they had met, J.D., and take a tour of New York, including visiting the American Museum of Natural History. The group take shelter in J.D.'s apartment for the night while the storm worsens. J.D. decides to give them a ride to Philadelphia, where they can continue to Washington by other means.

J.D.'s driver is stuck in traffic a ways from the apartment, so they decide to walk there, deciding that it'll be faster to get out of town that way. As they exit, the street is seen in ankle deep blue-black water. Laura makes the suggestion to stay put, but Sam insists that they get home, quickly to avoid the awful weather. Meanwhile, sewers are backing up, and the water is starting to rise, and bubble right out of manholes on the streets.

As the four walk to J.D.'s car, water continues to rise at an incredible rate. No more than an hour or two later, the water becomes waist deep, and still rising. At this point, the power is out in a large fraction of the city and traffic is at a dead stand-still. Laura comments that they won't be able to drive anywhere in the chaos, and proposes to go back to the apartment. Sam, assessing the situation, states that they need to move to higher ground, and they decide to go to the Public Library, as its steps are still out of the water. As they climb over cars to get there, Laura gets a deep gash in her leg on a car's sharp bumper, and bleeds in the waist deep water.

Meanwhile, an enormous wave is shown ramming into the Statue of Liberty as water covers Liberty Island and the wave continues towards Manhattan. Suddenly a news report on the radio saying in a muffled voice, shrouded in static, "There's a wall of water coming towards New York City! Everybody, take-" it is cut off by severe static. As the people listening to the report stare at the radio in sheer disbelief, the massive wave slams the coast of Manhattan covering people, cars, streets and buildings, moving inland at high speeds. Meanwhile, an African French tourist is trapped with her child in a car, by the rapidly growing level of water. Laura, being fluent in French, speaks to the trapped woman and tells her to shield herself. A police officer smashes the car's windshield and the woman escapes the car with her child unharmed. The woman then realizes she left her purse with their passports behind so Laura goes back to retrieve it, reaching into the car to grab it as the wall of water can be seen heading towards her in the background. Sam meanwhile, wondering where Laura went, catches sight of the wave smashing down the opposite street, he runs after Laura screaming her name, causing Laura to turn around and see the giant wave heading right for them. Sam and Laura run towards the library as the wave closes in on them, barely making it up the stairs as water smashes through the windows filling the lower floors. The final shot of the scene is the wave passing the library (almost covering it) and continuing through Manhattan dragging cars and people with it.

In Scotland, the situation is increasingly worsening, and Rapson and his coworkers are trapped in their research lab. When asked to evacuate: Jack (over the phone) says "It's time you got out of there, professor." Rapson: "I'm afraid that time has come and gone, my friend." Jack: "What can we do?" Rapson: "Save as many as you can." (Static gets louder, phone disconnects). Later, Rapson's generator runs out of fuel, and his coworker takes out a bottle of scotch, proposing to run the generator for a little longer with the alcohol. Instead, Rapson, Simon, and Dennis pour themselves a drink and make one last toast to "England", "mankind", and "Manchester United", respectively, as the generator fails and the three are left in solemn darkness. They are never heard from again.

The remainder of the story concerns itself with the proof of Hall's theory and the beginning of a new Ice Age, one that is short but still very devastating to the planet, resulting in millions of deaths. Survivors are forced to flee to the Southern and Southwestern United States and Mexico where strained relations between the two nations lead to refugee problems.

Dr. Hall decides to make the dangerous journey to Manhattan to find his son, Sam, who becomes stranded when one of the Arctic storms settles over that area, trapped in the New York Public Library with a great number of other survivors. Before he leaves, he briefs the president and they decide to evacuate all the southern states. He also says grimly that it is already too late for the northern US. When he leaves in his pickup truck, accompanied by his coworkers Frank and Jason, snow is shown completely covering the streets of Washington, in massive blankets. Meanwhile, Sam and his companions speak with the rest of the survivors in the library, and even make jokes despite the worsening situation. Along the route, Dr. Hall hears a radio message warning all people in the northern states that going outside can be deadly, and to burn everything they can to stay warm, and that all highways are closed due to dangerous driving conditions. Jack's truck then gets stuck in a snowbank, just north of Philadelphia, prompting him and his coworkers to undertake the rest of the journey to New York on foot. Jack and his assistants must endure the deadly storm, without any shelter save for a small tent. Midway through their trek, Frank falls through the ground, and his friends quickly realize that they are walking on the glass roof of an abandoned shopping mall. Jason tries to pull him up, but their combined weight threatens to kill them both, so Frank cuts the rope, and falls to his death, to save Jason.

Jack's wife, a doctor, is forced to stay behind in Washington because her patient can only be transported by an ambulance. A call is put to the county ambulance service, and one comes just in time to save her and the patient from the storm. They go south to Mexico. The president also decided to evacuate at the last minute, but he was less fortunate- his motorcade is caught in the storm and he is killed.

Inside the library, Sam Hall and the other survivors use advice Sam got from his father to outlast the cold, they burn countless books, in an attempt to keep warm and break through the library's vending machines to get food. Then, a loud ship horn is heard. They wonder where it is coming from, and who could be sailing a ship in the middle of the cataclysm. They discover that an abandoned cargo ship has drifted inland, carried by the deep water on the streets, and it sails through the streets silently. At one point, Sam and his two friends, Brian and J.D., are forced to leave the library and enter the ship when a companion, Laura, starts to suffer from blood poisoning because of the cut she suffered when she was attempting to escape the tsunami earlier. They figure it is the perfect time, because the weather seems relatively calm, compared to earlier "instant-freezing" temperatures at least. Onboard, they narrowly avoid being killed by wolves that escaped from the New York Zoo, and manage to reach the library safely with the medicine found on the ship. Soon, the "instant-freezing" air from the upper troposphere makes landfall. The Empire State Building is shown with a layer of ice spreading, starting at the upper tip, and descending toward the cold, abandoned streets. Meanwhile, everyone crowds into the inner areas of the library trying to escape the instant-freeze that slowly creeps into the building from the streets. They quickly throw many books into the fire, in an attempt to stop the ice's advance toward them. It stops, just 20 feet from the refugees. Jack and Jason manage to survive by taking shelter in a restaurant, and turning on the gas stove for heat.

At the end of the movie Jack arrives in New York City, passing the now frozen Statue of Liberty, which is the iconic image of the movie, and continues towards Manhattan. He manages to find the library and signal for help, by then the storms were already dissipating. Jack, Sam, and everyone inside the library are rescued in a helicopter. As they leave, they see other people leaving buildings, indicating that there were other survivors of the storm. The new president (formerly vice president) gives a televised speech, saying in a moral tone that for many years the world had ignored nature's destructive force, and that they "operated under the belief that [they] could continue consuming [the] planet’s natural resources without consequence." He admitted his fault, then went on to express his gratitude over Mexico assisting Americans in a time of need, and that there was cause for hope when Jack found his son alive in New York. He then tells the news crew that he has received a radio signal of a small band of survivors in New York City. He immediately sends a search and rescue mission involving Chinooks, and Black Hawk helicopters. They soon pick up the survivors, along with hundreds of other survivors on high building rooftops. The movie ends by showing the Earth from the International Space Station, the storms gone, and the astronauts commenting that the skies above the planet look clearer than they have ever been. The camera zooms out showing most of the land mass and water on the northern part of the earth frozen.

Background

The movie was inspired by The Coming Global Superstorm, The New York Academy of Sciences, 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.

Science portrayed in the movie

There is little meteorological or climatological science in the actual events of the movie.

In the film, the disasters are entertainingly sudden and cataclysmic. Criticisms of the science portrayed in the movie include:

  • While the initial idea that an increase in freshwater could slow or shutdown thermoelastic circulation in the northern Atlantic ocean is scientifically valid and has a certain amount of probability to develop, it is impossible for the change to occur as rapidly as shown in the movie. They would need to pump about the amount of fresh water in the Greenland ice sheet for this to happen.
  • The plot-feasibility condition that descending tropospheric air would be cold, because it was descending too fast to warm up, is physically impossible. Bringing air downward means the air must be compressed from a very low pressure to a much higher pressure. By the ideal gas law, the temperature of the air must increase. Furthermore, the potential temperature of tropospheric air is higher, not lower, than the temperature of surface air. If brought to the surface, it would have a higher temperature than the surface air.[2]
  • The freezing temperature for the kerosene fuel used in most commercial and military jet engines, such as the RAF helicopters, is between -40 to -52.6 °F ( -40 to -47 °C) and not at the −150 °F (−101 °C) Prof. Rapson informs Jack is the freezing temperature ("We had to look it up!" Rapson tells Jack). Yet jet engines are routinely flown at 30,000 ft (9,000 m), the upper part of the troposphere whence the supercooled air is supposed to be descending across the northern hemisphere.
  • The temperature required in the scene where helicopters froze solid in mid air would be far too low for snow to occur. Below about −40 °C (−40 °F) the moisture capacity of air is so low that snow is very unlikely. The temperature in this scene would need to be much colder than −40 °C.
  • In order for the sea ice to reach the level it does on the Statue of Liberty (approximately 215ft or 65.6m), 75% of Antarctica's ice would have to melt, which would take more than 2½ years - only if all the solar radiation received by the Earth were concentrated on Antarctica (which could not happen due to the axis of the Earth). Also, the height of the water is hugely different throughout the film, managing to rise up to 10 stories on buildings in some shots and in others only being not much more than five feet or 1.5m (street lamps and traffic lights were visible at times).

Reception

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

On its opening weekend, the film grossed $85,807,341. At the end of its box office run, it grossed $186,740,799. Its worldwide gross was $542,771,772.[6]

DVD Details

Releases

Deleted scenes

  • One deleted scene included two surfers in Kona, Hawaii, who are killed by a canoe rigging thrown at their SUV by Typhoon Noelani.
  • Another deleted scene revealed that the Japanese man killed in the hailstorm was talking on a cell phone to the rude businessman (the same one who later dies on the bus when the tidal wave hits New York City) about a failing insider trading scheme. Instead, in the final cut of the film, he is shown talking to his wife.
  • Another deleted scene showed Sam, Laura and Brian at Jack's house, preparing for the decathlon a few days before they depart to New York. Sam's bitterness towards his father is clearly shown when he is seen deliberately setting fire to his pants.
  • Another deleted scene shows Jason and Jack recovering from the snow storm in the kitchen of the Wendy's. They eat and talk about what would happen after the storm.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ a b c d "The Day After Tomorrow (2004) Full cast and crew". IMDB. Retrieved 2008-03-17.
  2. ^ Assuming −50 °C (−58 °F) for the temperature of the tropopause and generously estimating it at a lower, winter-time level, of 30 kPa. Using the potential temperature formula, we see compressing it to an average surface pressure of 100kPa would give it a temperature of about 30 °C (86 °F). Movie Physics: The Day After Tomorrow™: Could It Really Happen?
  3. ^ Rotten Tomatoes: The Day after Tomorrow (2004). [1]
  4. ^ The Guardian:A hard rain's a-gonna fall[2]
  5. ^ USA Today: 'Day After Tomorrow': A lot of hot air [3]
  6. ^ Box Office Mojo

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Day After Tomorrow.
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