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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 both global warming and cooling. Worldwide, it is the 46th 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 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.

Cast

Actor/Actress Role Notes
Dennis Quaid[1] Jack Hall Government climatologist 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 Doctor, 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 stationed in Scotland
Tamlyn Tomita Janet Tokada Hurricane specialist for NASA, colleague of Jack Hall
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
Christopher Britton Vorsteen

Synopsis

The movie opens with Jack Hall in Antarctica with two colleagues, Frank and Jason, 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, 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. Diplomats from several countries, particularly the vice-president of the United States, are not particularly convinced by Jack's theory. 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 boys 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 because he predicted that the events would not happen in his lifetime, but rather in a hundred or a thousand years in the future.

Across the world, violent weather causes mass destruction and chaos. As a series of violent tornadoes devastate Los Angeles, the US President authorizes the FAA to suspend all air-traffic over the United States. Not long after, three British RAF helicopters carrying the Royal Family are flying through one of three massive hurricane-like superstorms when they enter the eye, only to almost immediately encounter a massive and phenomenal temperature drop lower than −150 °F (−101 °C) that instantly freezes their fuel lines and their rotors causing them to crash.

Meanwhile, Jack's son, Sam, is traveling to New York City for an academic competition, with friends Brian and Laura, arriving there before the airports are shut down. The weather becomes increasingly violent with strong winds and torrential rains. 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 suspension of air travel. Sam calls his father, promising Jack that he'll be on the next train home. Sam and his friends, meanwhile, stay with a new friend they had met, J.D., and take a tour of New York. The group take shelter in J.D.'s apartment for the night while the storm worsens, forcing tunnels to close due to flooding, which shuts down the Grand Central Station. J.D. offers to give them a ride to Philadelphia, where they can continue to Washington by other means.

As the four walk to J.D.'s car, an enormous wave surges towards Manhattan. The massive wave blankets the island, filling the streets with tens of feet of water. Sam and his friends just barely make the shelter of the New York Public Library. In Scotland, Rapson and his coworkers are trapped in their research lab by the deepening snow. They are last seen drinking scotch as their power supply fails. The remainder of the story concerns itself with the proof of Hall's theory and the beginning of a new Ice Age, resulting in millions of deaths. Survivors are forced to flee to the Southern and Southwestern United States and Mexico. Jack decides to make the dangerous journey to Manhattan to find his son. Frank and Jason accompany him. Along the way, Frank, who falls through ice and starts hanging above a mall below, he cuts the rope connecting him to Jack and Jason, falling to his death.

Inside the library, Sam Hall and the other survivors use advice Sam received from his father to outlast the cold. They burn books to keep warm and break through the library's vending machines for food. The following day, Sam, Brian and J.D., are forced to enter a cargo ship that drifted inland in search of food and penicillin when Laura suddenly suffers severe blood poisoning because of a cut she suffered while escaping the tsunami earlier. Inside, the three encounter a pack of hungry rummaging wolves and barely escape alive, with J.D. suffering a bite wound. But then the eye starts to pass over the city with its −150 °F (−101 °C) instant freeze, so the three hurry back to the library with the medicine, just barely escaping the murderous freeze with mere feet to spare.

At the end of the movie after their long arduous trek Jack and Jason arrive in New York City, passing the now frozen Statue of Liberty, which is the iconic image of the movie, and continue towards Manhattan. Eventually, they find the library buried nearly up to its roof in a snow drift. They manage to find everyone inside the library alive and signal for help, but by then the storms are already dissipating. Jack, Jason, Sam, and all the people 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.

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.

The book "The Sixth winter" written by Douglas Orgill and John Gribbin published in 1979 follows a similar theme.

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 warmer 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 and Blu-ray Disc releases

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 plants.
  • 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
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