The Day After Tomorrow

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For other uses, see The Day After Tomorrow (disambiguation).

{{Infobox Film

| name = The Day After Tomorrow
| image = The Day After Tomorrow movie.jpg
| caption = The Day After Tomorrow Theatrical Poster
| director = Roland Emmerich
| producer = Roland Emmerich
Mark Gordon
| writer = -Story-
  Roland Emmerich
-Screenplay-
  Roland Emmerich
  Jeffery Nachmanoff
| starring = Dennis Quaid
Jake Gyllenhaal
Emmy Rossum
Sela Ward
Ian Holm
| music = Harald Kloser
Thomas Wanker
| cinematography = Ueli Steiger
| editing = David Brenner
| distributor = 20th Century Fox
| released = May 17, 2004 (Mexico) 
 May 28, 2004 (worldwide)
| runtime = 124 minutes
| language = English
French
Japanese
| budget = -Production-
  125 million USD
-Marketing-
  50 million USD
| imdb_id = 0319262

}} The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 apocalyptic science-fiction film that depicts catastrophic effects of global warming and boasts high-end special effects, and bends the lines between science reality and science fiction, creating a surprisingly adrenaline-rushed entertainment film.

The Day After Tomorrow premiered in Mexico City on May 17, 2004 and 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.

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 Background
4 Featured cast
5 Science analysis/criticisms
6 DVD release
7 Trivia, Goofs & Errors
8 References
9 See also
10 External links

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Synopsis

Global warming destabilises the climate causing a series of anomalies, eventually leading up to a massive "global superstorm" system containing three gigantic hurricanes, which result in an ice age within days for the northern hemisphere. One "hurricane" is over North America, one over Europe, and a third over Siberia. The movie follows Jack, a paleoclimatologist for NOAA; his son Sam, a high school student; and his wife Lucy, a doctor.

In reality, global warming is not a sudden onslaught of natural disasters, but is rather an observed (heretofore slow) trend in which the average climatic temperautures are shifting. In the film, the disasters are entertainingly sudden and cataclysmic, and according to current understanding could not occur as they are portrayed. The film was adapted in this form simply for the entertainment of viewers.

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie is based on the idea that the Gulf Stream (or North Atlantic drift), an ocean current which circulates warm water from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, is disrupted by the melting of the polar ice caps.

This leads to catastrophic changes in the Earth's climate, as the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere stabilises into a new pattern. The changes manifest as three interconnected hurricane-shaped storms spread across the entire northern hemisphere. Although not believed at first, the initial predictions are that this will take some six to eight weeks to take effect. However, these combine over the space of a week to form a huge planet-wide storm system. The eye of the three cells sucks supercooled air from the upper troposphere, causing anyone caught outside to be flash frozen.

Image:TDAT screenshot 1.jpg The story follows Jack Hall, a paleoclimatologist, who has forecasted such an event, though he expects it to happen much more slowly (on the order of 100 or 1,000 years). The movie opens with Jack, in Antarctica, with two colleagues, Frank & Jason, drilling for ice core samples for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The concentration of "greenhouse gases" (e.g., carbon dioxide) contained in the cores is used in a presentation he makes to a United Nations conference held in New Delhi on global warming. Ironically, in that scene, snow is falling on New Delhi, where it rarely, if ever, snows. Present at this conference is Dr. Rapson of the Hedland Climate Research Center in Scotland. After the conference, Jack and Dr. Rapson meet for a cup of tea to discuss Jack's findings, which establishes a relationship between the two that will be needed later.

Shortly after Dr. Rapson arrives back in Scotland from the conference two buoys in the North Atlantic simultaneously show a large drop in water temperature. Other buoys soon begin showing the same. Dr. 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 will happen. Image:TDAT screenshot 2.jpg In Tokyo and Los Angeles, the beginnings of the superstorm begin to show. Large hailstones the size of grapefruits (about 5 pounds) fall on Tokyo's Chiyoda District, causing massive damage and fatalities. In Los Angeles, numerous tornadoes devastate the city, destroying notable landmarks such as the Capitol Records Tower and the Hollywood Sign in a spray of debris. Jack approaches his boss, Tom, at NOAA for time on the mainframe to run his paleoclimatological weather model with Dr. Rapson's data. The results show the global climate will change in 6-8 weeks.

Meanwhile, the FAA stops all air traffic in the U.S. because of the unusual weather. However, two planes didn't get the order in time and crashed in the midwest due to heavy turbulence.

Sam, Jack's son, with his friends Laura Chapman and Brian Parks are attending an academic decathlon in Manhattan. When a severe rainstorm hits Manhattan, Sam calls his father (according to the DVD commentary, the woman on the other side of Sam from the phone is Kirsten Dunst). Jack convinces Sam to head back to Washington, D.C. via train the following morning. In the meantime, Sam, Laura and Brian stay at J.D.'s, a fellow decathlete's, apartment in Manhattan. While they are in the apartment, the rain continues and they see on TV that the train terminal has been flooded and service suspended on all trains; this changes their plans to driving. Their plans change once again when flooding continues and car transportion is no longer an option. On their way out of the apartment, electricity goes out in the entire area.

Stranded in Manhattan, and with a waist-high level of water, the group seeks a higher location: the New York Public Library. Before they get there, Laura cuts her leg (which will result in blood poisoning later) on a car fender, and helps a black woman and her daughter, who are trapped in a taxi by the rising water (both of them can only speak French, and Laura translates for a cop who is trying to help them), and the women get to the library in time. Meanwhile, beyond Manhattan Island, the Statue of Liberty is pounded in armpit's height by what appeas to be a storm surge over 255 meters high. In the film, the wave appears shorter as it proceeds through thr skyscrapers of Manhattan; in reality, this is beacause the wave is losing strength and velocity, and is losing its total height. The scene depicting a flooded Statue of Liberty was one of the most difficult special effects shots in film history, and is also the more famous scene from the movie according to audiences. Laura goes back to retreive the woman's purse from the taxi, while the water approches behind her, and Sam runs to her rescue. They reach the library in time, although thousands have drowned in the wake of the massive wave.

Image:TDAT screenshot 3.jpg

Trapped in the library (with many others) with no power, Sam manages to call his father on a payphone about what to do, following J.D.'s inability to gain service on his cell phone. Jack tells Sam to forget heading south, as the storm was going to worsen into a massive blizzard with possibilities of freezing to death in seconds. The flash-freezing effects were discovered when three helicopters and their crews were flash frozen in Scotland (the fuel in their fuel lines froze). Jack and his team discover that their estimates of "6-8 weeks" were not even close; the world will be in another ice age within ten days. He tells Sam to stay in the library and burn anything to stay warm, and wait for Jack to come to Sam. While waiting, a Russian freighter ship floats down 5th Avenue and stops just past the library.

Too late to leave, Dr. Rapson and his two colleagues, Simon and Dennis, stay at the Hedland Center. When they are about to run out of petrol, Simon suggests they burn a twelve-year-old bottle of Scotch. However, Dr. Rapson makes them have one final toast as their generator fails.

Prior to Jack leaving for Manhattan, he advises the President to evacuate the southern half of the country to Mexico, which he does (while saying that it is too late for people in the north due to the proximity of the storm). Jack's wife, Lucy, however, stays behind to care for a boy with cancer that she is treating until an ambulance arrives. It later does, after everyone leaves, and Lucy and the boy make it to Mexico. In the meantime, an ironic twist to politics causes Americans to flee the nation's border across the Rio Grande into Mexico illegaly (the Rio Grande is susbtantially lower due to the frozen water in the north from the ice age). As the superstorm approaches, the rain turns to snow in New York and the water freezes, beginning the ice age.

Most of the people in the library leave as they see hundreds of others in Manhattan heading south despite Sam pleading them to stay with the statements his father told him in mind. The only people left in the library are Sam, Laura, Brian, J.D., Judith the librarian, the black woman (nammed Jama) and her daughter, a man named Jeremy, a woman named Elsa, and a homeless man named Luther with his dog Buddha.

In order for this group to survive, Sam successfully convinces them to burn books, rather than the huge amounts of furniture that also happen to be in the building, which are used for comfort, and are less likely to burn. Sam (with Brian and J.D.) ventures out to the Russian ship to get Penicillin for Laura's blood poisoning. While they do so, the eye of the storm begins to develop above the city, leading to a race against time to avoid a somewhat incongruous wolfpack that escaped the Central Park Zoo before hand (strangely not affected by the storm surge) and return to the warmth of the fire in the library (with Brian, who was attacked and injured by the wolves, slowly in toe), in order to survive the flash freezing effects of the descending cold air. In the scenes depicting the "superfreeze", the Empire State Building is seen slowly being engulfed in ice from the aerial mast down. A unique twist is that when the freeze occurs, some of the windows on the skyscrapers shatter.

Meanwhile, Jack Hall and his buddy Jason Evans come to grief with their truck just north of Philadelphia as the ice and snow become too deep. They resort to walking from there, and as they do they face brutal hardships from the arctic conditions, and at one point one of their comrades falls into a deserted shopping mall, leading to his death. Eventually, they reach a frozen suburban Wendy's restaurant at the time the eye of the storm passes, leading them to hurriedly get inside and light stoves and fires as the supercooled air descends. Afterwards, near the end (Staten Island, New York) they discover the dead bodies of those who ignored Sam's plea to stay in the library.

Image:TDAT screenshot 4.jpg The mass evacuation of the southern half to Mexico results in a political drama after Mexico closes the border. In order to get Mexico to open the border, the President agrees to forgive all Latin American debt.

As Hall finally approaches New York, the storm suddenly disappates, as their last mile of journeying shows shockingly clear weather. He finds his son and the rest of their group have survived. The movie ends with people emerging onto the roofs of skyscrapers to be rescued and Jack (with the library group) being picked up by a helicopter.

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Background

The movie was inspired by The Coming Global Superstorm, a book written by Art Bell & Whitley Strieber. The pair used to co-host a paranormal themed talk show. Art appeared on the show throughout the week on his Art Bell Show (now Coast to Coast AM with George Noory) while Whitley hosted the weekend segment of the show entitled Dreamland. On both shows, the co-authors/paranormal talk show hosts would delve into such topics with guests as what life would be like after humans have depleted all of their natural resources and destroyed their environment.

Shortly before and during the release of the movie, members of environmental groups and former Vice President Al Gore distributed pamphlets to movie-goers describing what they believe to be the possible effects of global warming, which generally did not agree with the film; some believe Gore looked too much into the film as what he may have thought to have been "a scientifically accurate movie". During the session of which the film was out in theaters, much criticism arose towards politicians concering the Kyoto Protocol and climate change, and in the end the movie created quite the political stir.

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Featured cast

Actor	Role
Dennis Quaid	Jack Hall
Jake Gyllenhaal	Sam Hall
Emmy Rossum	Laura Chapman
Sela Ward	Dr. Lucy Hall
Ian Holm	Terry Rapson
Kenneth Welsh	Vice President Becker
Perry King	President Blake
Adrian Lester	Simon
Dash Mihok	Jason Evans
Austin Nichols	J.D.
Glenn Plummer	Luther
Sasha Roiz	Parker
Jay O. Sanders	Frank Harris
Nestor Serrano	Gomez
Arjay Smith	Brian Parks
Tamlyn Tomita	Janet Tokada

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Science analysis/criticisms

There is little meteorological or climatological science in the actual events of the movie. Then again, the film itself was designed specifically for the entertainment for audiences, not as a scientific truth. The following, though, are truthful facts behind the film:

The initial idea that an increase in freshwater could cause a slowdown or stop of the thermohaline circulation has some probability, say scientists, but would be more likely to cause regional rather than global cooling, and would probably operate on timescales of decades or more. It would vary in terms of severity, as the movie says, based on latitude (the higher north from the equator, the more severe the effects will likely be). Other aspects of the science in the film that descending stratospheric air would be cold, because it was apparently descending too fast to warm up, for example are incorrect; (the potential temperature of stratospheric air is higher (not lower) than the temperature of the surface air. Also, the "descending" air is depicted as freezing without a matching downdraft). George Monbiot called The Day After Tomorrow "a great movie and lousy science." [1]. The formation of the "supercells" has no obvious scientific basis at all.

Hurricanes do not form over land (as stated in the movie), but the superstorms have similar properties
Hurricanes cannot produce frozen precipitation, as what was done in the movie
The stoppage of the thermohaline circulation would probably take years or decades, not days
Supercooled air would actually warm before reaching the surface, as what does not occur as it descends into New York and Scotland. This is explained by the air falling too fast, but in reality adiabatic heating would warm up the air regardless of its speed.
The size of the superstorms is not under realistic proportions
The buildup of massive snowpiles and glaciers, such as in the ice age would again take thousands of years

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DVD release

It was first released on DVD in the USA on October 12, 2004 in both widescreen and full screen versions. A collector's edition was released on May 24, 2005.

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Trivia, Goofs & Errors

We are told that Australia has suffered its worst typhoon ever, though in Australia, they are refered to as cyclones instead.
In the shot where Jack Hall is explaining why the air coming out of the cyclone is so cold, the computer model of the low pressure system is spinning clockwise, not counter clockwise, as it should be in the northern hemisphere. Also in the starlit picture when the weatherman says that the low pressure systems resembles a "tropical hurricane" is also spinning clockwise.
It's not entirely certain, but Roland's former plans of "city-wide destruciton" by sandstorms, hurricanes, supercells, and many more bizarre weather disasters may have included the cities of Paris, Cairo, Moscow, Sydney, London, Hong Kong, and Rio de Janeiro, as well as the cities of Los Angeles, New York City, Tokyo, and New Delhi, which were all continually incorporated throughout the film.
One deleted scene included to surfer bums in Kona, Hawaii who's lives are cut short by a canoing rig hailed at their SUV by Hurricane Noalane.
Some audience viewers have reported that Vice President Becker coincidentally resembles Vice President Dick Cheney, the vice president at the time of this film's release into theaters.
The news reporter in Los Angeles at the time of the tornado outbreak is crushed by the infamous Angelyne Sign, a notable landmark to native Los Angelens.
When they are heading to New York they are shown incorrectly using a Trimble GPS. In all cases the Trimble unit shown is displaying the satellite screen; however, the map screen is required to identify location. Furthermore, given the severity of the storm, it is highly unlikely the system would be able to get a satellite reading.
3 months after the film's release On a Saturaday Morning, computers connected to the National Weather service in Oxnard had a computer glicth that said: "AT 825 AM PDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR WAS TRACKING A LARGE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO 7 MILES SOUTH OF GLENDALE...OR ABOUT NEAR DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES...MOVING NORTHEAST AT 20 MPH." An official bulletin issued at 8:39 AM PDT warned residents that a Tornado Warning was in effect until 9:15. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, but The warning remained on the state's EMERGENCY DIGITAL INFORMATION SERVICE database for 4 minutes, without further comment until 8:58 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time When it said: "PLEASE DISREGARD THE PREVIOUS TORNADO WARNING. NO TORNADO EXISTS."
Listen to the New York bus driver's radio: a news reporter is heard saying "There's a wall of water coming towards New York City...everyone, get out!". The voice of this reporter is of one of Roland's close friends who just so happened to play the voice out very well.
In a former helicopter super-freeze sequence, the story was supposed to have one of the British soldiers climbing out of the final crashed helicopter and stand on a large snowpile and then freeze: then the continually spinning helicopter blades were supposed to slice and shatter his frozen body where he stood frozen. For obvious reasons, Roland immediately pulled out this sequence as to keep the film at a PG-13 level.