The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 American science fiction disaster film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Roland Emmerich, based on the 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, and starring Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward, Emmy Rossum, and Ian Holm. It depicts catastrophic climatic effects following the disruption of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation, in which a series of extreme weather events usher in climate change and lead to a new ice age.
Originally slated for release in the summer of 2003, The Day After Tomorrow premiered in Mexico City on May 17, 2004, and was theatrically released in the United States by 20th Century Fox on May 28. It was a commercial success, grossing $552 million worldwide against a production budget of $125 million, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2004. Filmed in Montreal, it was the highest-grossing Hollywood film made in Canada at its time of release. The film was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Special Effects at the Saturn Awards.
Plot
Jack Hall, a paleoclimatologist, along with his colleagues Frank and Jason drill for ice-core samples in the Larsen Ice Shelf for the NOAA, moments before the ice shelf splits away.At a United Nations conference in New Delhi, Jack discusses his research showing that climate change could cause an impending ice age, but United States vice president Raymond Becker dismisses his findings calling them "Sensationalist Claims". Professor Terry Rapson, an oceanographer of the Hedland Centre in Scotland, believes Jack and befriends him over his views of an inevitable climate shift.
Tokyo is struck by a giant hailstorm, and astronauts from the International Space Station spot three gigantic superstorms above Canada, Europe, and Siberia. Rapson's team in Scotland begins noticing severe temperature drops from multiple buoys in the North Atlantic, realizing Jack's theories were correct, with the climate shift happening too quickly. Remnants of a hurricane spawn a destructive tornado outbreak over the L.A. Basin. Three helicopters sent to rescue the British royal family from Balmoral Castle crash in Scotland after they flew into a superstorm's eye.
Jack and Rapson's teams, along with NASA meteorologist Janet Tokada, built a forecast model based on Jack's research, discovering that the impact of climate change would happen in 6–8 weeks. Rapson notifies Jack that siphoned air from the upper troposphere flash freezes anything caught in the eyes of the cyclones with temperatures below, which caused the helicopter crash by freezing the fuel on board.
In New York City, Jack's son Sam, along with his friends Brian and Laura, participates in an academic decathlon, where they make a new friend, JD. The North American superstorm creates strong winds and rain that flood Manhattan with knee-deep water. All transportation halts, stranding the city's population. While helping to rescue two French-speaking tourists in distress from a cab with a police officer, Laura cuts her leg. A massive storm surge inundates the city, forcing Sam's group to seek shelter at the New York Public Library. Sam contacts Jack and his mother Lucy, a pediatrician, through a working payphone. Jack warns Sam of the impending superstorm, urges him to stay inside and warm, promising to rescue him. Rapson and his team succumb to the European storm. Lucy remains in her hospital, caring for bedridden patients, where the authorities eventually rescue them.
Upon Jack's suggestion, President Blake orders the populations of the southern states to be evacuated into Mexico. In contrast, the government warns those in the northern areas to seek shelter and stay warm. Jack, Jason, and Frank make their way to NYC. While trekking across Pennsylvania, Frank falls through the skylight of a mall covered in snow and sacrifices himself by cutting his rope to prevent his friends from also falling in. In the library, most survivors set out to join the southern states refugees after the floodwater freezes, despite Sam's warnings. In Mexico, Becker learns that Blake's motorcade perished in the superstorm.
Laura develops sepsis from her injury, whereupon Sam, Brian, and JD scour an abandoned Russian cargo ship that drifted into the city before the water froze for penicillin and supplies. When they find them, they also encounter a pack of escaped wolves from the Central Park Zoo. The boys fend off the wolves and return to the library with what they need as the eye of the North American superstorm passes over and freezes Manhattan. Jack and Jason barely escape by taking shelter in an abandoned restaurant.
Days later, the superstorms dissipate. Raymond Becker succeeds Richard Blake. After finding people outside frozen to death, including those from the library who tried to escape, Jack and Jason reach the library, finding Sam's group alive. Jack sends a radio message to US forces in Mexico to begin evacuation efforts.
In his first address as the new president from the US embassy in Mexico, Becker apologizes on The Weather Channel for his ignorance and sends helicopters to rescue survivors, including Jack and Sam's group in New York. On the International Space Station, astronauts look down in awe at Earth's transformed surface, now with ice sheets extending across much of the Northern Hemisphere, remarking that the air never looked so clear.
Cast
Production
Development
The Day After Tomorrow was inspired by Coast to Coast AM talk-radio host Art Bell and Whitley Strieber's book, The Coming Global Superstorm, and Strieber wrote the film's novelization. To choose a studio, writer Michael Wimer created an auction, with a copy of the script being sent to all major studios along with a term sheet. They had a 24-hour window to decide whether to produce the movie with Roland Emmerich directing, and Fox Studios was the only studio to accept the terms.Filming
The Day After Tomorrow was filmed predominantly in Montreal and Toronto, with some footage also shot in New York City and Chiyoda, Tokyo. Filming ran from November 7, 2002, until October 18, 2003.Visual effects
The Day After Tomorrow features 416 visual effects shots, with nine effects houses, notably Industrial Light & Magic, and Digital Domain, and over 1,000 artists, working on the film for over a year.Although a miniature set was initially considered according to the behind-the-scenes documentary, for the destruction of New York, effects artists instead utilized a 13-block-sized, LIDAR-scanned 3D model of Manhattan, with over 50,000 scanned photographs used for building textures. Due to its overall complexity and a tight schedule, the storm surge scene required as many as three special effects vendors for certain shots, with the digital water created by either Digital Domain or small effects house Tweak Films, depending on the shot. Miniatures were employed for a later underwater scene in which a city bus is crushed under the bulbous bow of an abandoned Russian tanker ship that had drifted inland.
Similarly, the opening flyover of Antarctica was also CGI, created by digitally scanning miniature iceberg models created out of sculpted styrofoam; the falling pieces of ice as the shelf cracks were entirely hand-animated. Running for approximately two and a half minutes in length, the scene was at the time the longest continuous all-CGI shot in film history, surpassing the space zoom-out from the opening of Contact.
Music
The Japanese dub has an exclusive theme song called "More Than a Million Miles" by a band coincidentally called Day After Tomorrow.Soundtrack
The Day After Tomorrow is the soundtrack of the film. It was released on May 18, 2004.Release
The film had its world premiere in Mexico City on May 17, 2004. It was released to theaters in the United States on May 28, 2004.Home media
The film was released on VHS and DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on October 12, 2004, and was released in high-definition video on Blu-ray in North America on October 2, 2007, and in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2008, in 1080p with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track and few bonus features. DVD sales were $110 million, bringing the film's gross to $652,771,772.Reception
Box office
The film came in second at the US box office behind Shrek 2 over its four-day Memorial Day opening and grossed $85,807,341. For twenty years, it would hold the record for having the highest opening weekend for a natural disaster film until 2024 when it was dethroned by Twisters. It led the per-theater average, with a four-day average of $25,053.At the end of its theatrical run, the film had grossed $186,740,799 domestically and $552,639,571 worldwide. It was the second-highest opening-weekend film not to lead at the box office; Inside Out surpassed it in June 2015.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, 45% of 219 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The Day After Tomorrow is a ludicrous popcorn thriller filled with clunky dialogue, but spectacular visuals save it from being a total disaster." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 47 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "B" on an A+ to F scale.Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as "profoundly silly", but nonetheless said the film was effective and praised the special effects. He gave it three stars out of four. Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune wrote a completely negative review which considered the film unworthy of publicity for the climate change debate it had created.