The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist for NORAD, must make a daring trek across America to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden international storm which plunges the planet into a new Ice Age.

Director:

Roland Emmerich

Writers:

Roland Emmerich (story), Roland Emmerich (screenplay),

Stars:

Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum

Won 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 4 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Dennis Quaid	...	Jack Hall
Jake Gyllenhaal	...	Sam Hall
Emmy Rossum	...	Laura Chapman
Dash Mihok	...	Jason Evans
Jay O. Sanders	...	Frank Harris
Sela Ward	...	Dr. Lucy Hall
Austin Nichols	...	J.D.
Arjay Smith	...	Brian Parks
Tamlyn Tomita	...	Janet Tokada
Sasha Roiz	...	Parker
Ian Holm	...	Terry Rapson
Nassim Sharara	...	Saudi Delegate
Carl Alacchi	...	Venezuelan Delegate
Kenneth Welsh	...	Vice President Becker
Michel 'Gish' Abou-Samah	...	Saudi Translator (as Michael A. Samah)

Storyline

As Paleoclimatologist named Jack Hall is in Antartica, he discovers that a huge ice sheet has sheared off. But what he does not know is that this event will trigger a massive climate shift that will affect the world population. Meanwhile, his son Sam is with friends in New York to attend an event. There they discover that it has been raining non-stop for the past 3 weeks, and after a series of weather-related disasters begin to occur over the world, everybody realizes the world is entering a new Ice Age and the world population begins trying to evacuate to the warmer climates of the south. Jack makes a daring attempt to rescue his son and his friends who are stuck in New York and who have managed to survive not only a massive wave but also freezing cold temperatures that could possibly kill them.

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Plot Keywords:

new york | global warming | climate | disaster | professor | 

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Taglines:

Whoever said "Tomorrow is another day"... didn't check the weather.

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for intense situations of peril

Details

Official Sites:

20th Century Fox [Japan]

Country:

USA

Language:

English Japanese French Arabic Spanish

Release Date:

28 May 2004 (USA)

Also Known As:

Tomorrow

Filming Locations:

Colton Street & N Edgeware Road, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$125,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$2,432,545 (Japan) (4 June 2004)

Gross:

$186,739,919 (USA) (29 October 2004)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Centropolis Entertainment, Lions Gate Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

124 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is the third time Roland Emmerich has destroyed New York. He did the same in Independence Day and Godzilla.

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Goofs

The penicillin aboard ship was found in solution. If in solution it should have been found frozen and it is clearly liquid when picked up. Normally penicillin is stored as a powder and reconstituted (by adding water or sterile sodium chloride solution) just prior to use. Penicillin in solution is not clear, it is a milky white color.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Frank Harris: See how it's done?
Jason Evans: Yeah, I think I got the hang of it.

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Crazy Credits

In closing credits the movie is copyrighted 2004, but movie poster reads © 2003.

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Connections

Featured in The Rotten Tomatoes Show: The Men Who Stare at Goats/A Christmas Carol/Precious (2009)

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Soundtracks

"Do You Really Want to Hurt Me"
Written by Boy George (as George O'Dowd), Jon Moss, Mikey Craig (as Michael Craig) and Roy Hay
Performed by Culture Club
Courtesy of Virgin Records
Under license from EMI Film & Television Music

User Reviews

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel okay.

"The Day After Tomorrow" is a disaster movie, but it isn't a disastrous one. But if Roland Emmerich really thought he was making a movie with a message, he didn't quite succeed - to be honest, Emmerich is to serious film-making as Naomi Wolf is to recommending "Voluptuous" magazine. The fact that the movie begins with the Twentieth Century Fox logo under stormy skies doesn't make it any more significant.

Well-intentioned it may be, but the movie's plot takes second place to the imagery - the opening credits over an icy landscape, the massive weather systems over the planet, colossal hailstones pelting down on Tokyo, snowstorms over India, tidal waves - and the numerous effects houses make it an eye candy feast, especially for people with a grudge against the Big Apple (kudos to Industrial Light and Magic, Digital Domain and all the less renowned FX companies involved). So on that level, it works; the music by Harald Kloser and Thomas Wanker is also a bonus, being more restrained and serious in its support than is usually the way with Emmerich movies.

And then there's the script - it has a whole load of characters but doesn't do much with any of them. Example: Climatologist Dennis Quaid's relationship with son Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't seem to be as estranged as it's intended to be, and similarly the friendship Quaid has with a longtime colleague gets about as much emphasis as the crush his younger colleague has on fellow scientist Tamlyn Tomita (and the movie pays for it later on in a sequence shamelessly ripped off from "Vertical Limit," which has little of the emotional resonance it should). In fact, all the human elements - Gyllenhaal's repressed feelings for classmate Emmy Rossum, his doctor mother Sela Ward's problems with a young patient, etc - all of them are underdeveloped or just plain undeveloped, and some moments practically scream "Contrived Climax Ahoy!"

Those moments are there because "The Day After Tomorrow" doesn't have an enemy as a natural outgrowth of its story; the elements aren't really villainous as they have no concept of right or wrong, and the closest thing to a villain here is the current administration in the White House, so Emmerich and co-writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff have to impose a tangible enemy (why else are those wolves there?) on the proceedings. This does help things from getting totally boring in the second half, though it's still pretty watchable even then - but if some more thought had been put into the screenplay, like exploring the characters or developing the promising ideas therein (like Americans fleeing to Mexico, or further looks at the Government side), it would have carried more weight and made the movie into more than an improvement on "Godzilla."

As it is, it's a competently done if implausible attention-holder that wants to be more; that it actually had the potential to be more makes it a bit of a disappointment, but at least it's a watchable one.