The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist, must make a daring trek from Washington, D.C. to New York City 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 5 wins & 12 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 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 City to attend an event. There, they discover that it has been raining non-stop for the past three days, and after a series of weather-related disasters begin to occur all over the world, everybody realizes the world is about to enter 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 City 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:

global warming | end of the world | climate crisis | climate | weather | 

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Taglines:

Now it's fiction... Tomorrow it's real

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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:

Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English Japanese French Arabic

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 USA:

$68,743,584, 30 May 2004

Gross USA:

$186,740,799

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$552,639,571

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox, Centropolis Entertainment, Lions Gate Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

124 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

During the filming of the tsunami scene, Jake Gyllenhaal needed to use the restroom very badly, so he went in the water tank.

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Goofs

Near the end of the movie, Dennis Quaid comes out of his tent and immediately plunges his hands into the snow surrounding the tent. He pulls his hands out, and his hands are dry, not wet with melted snow. He also has no reaction to wetness being applied to his hands, even in the high windchill factor. His partner emerges from the tent immediately after and does the same thing - no wet hands, and no reaction to wet hands and high windchill factor. This shows that the snow is fake.

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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 A Behind the Scenes Look at the Special Effects of 'The Day After Tomorrow' (2004)

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Soundtracks

Karma
Written and Performed by Emanuele Arnone (as Fungone)
Courtesy of Compression Records/Magelic Productions Inc.

User Reviews

One of the last great disaster flicks

Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow is one of those textbook disaster flicks where every recognizable element is in full swing: determined scientist, sure of his curveball theories that no one else buys, saddled with a dysfunctional family and a clock that's quickly ticking down towards some looming cataclysm, in this case severely bat tempered weather. It's cliche after cliche, but this is one of the ones that works, and I have a theory why. These days it seems like the formula for the disaster film is pretty dead, or at least doesn't carry the same magic it did throughout the 90's and early 00's.

Stuff like San Andreas, 2012, Geostorm (shudder) just feel dead on arrival, and instead we go back and revisit things like Armageddon, Independence Day, and for me, ones like this. There's a quality, a feel for time and place that got lost somewhere along the way as time passed in Hollywood, and this is one of the last few that serve as a milestone as to where that happened. The first half or so is cracking stuff, followed by a slightly underwhelming final act. Dennis Quaid is the scientist who gets all in a huff about an extreme weather front that's apparently barrelling towards the east coast, threatening to give the whole region one wet day in the park. There's an exaggerated halfwit Vice President (Kenneth Welsh) who scoffs at him, an excitable veteran professor (Bilbo Baggins) who eagerly supports him, and an estranged family right in the storm's crosshairs who he must rescue. The special effects are neat when the maelstrom slams into New York like a battering ram, pushing over buildings with walls of water and chucking hurricanes all about the place. Quaid's wife (Sela Ward) and wayward son (Jake Gyllenhaal) are of course stuck in this mess, as he races to find out what's causing it, and how to escape. The initial scenes where it arrives are big screen magic, especially when Gyllenhaal's girlfriend (Emmy Rossum) is chased down main street by a raging typhoon and barely scapes into a building, a breathless showcase moment for the film. The second half where the storm levels off isn't as engaging, despite attempts to throw in extra excitement, such as wolves, which I still can't quite figure out the origin of, despite watching the film a few times now. Holed up inside a library, it's a long waiting game in the cold dark where the writing and character development is spread a bit thin for the time they have to kill, but what can you expect here. Should have thrown in a T Tex or some ice dragons to distract us from sparse scripting. Still, the film gets that initial buildup deliciously right, the nervous windup to all out chaos, the editing between different characters and where they are when the monsoon shows up, and enough panicky surviving to make us thankful for that cozy couch and home theatre system all the more. One of the last of the finest, in terms the genre.