I've been seeing mention of this upcoming film on a few different boards, but haven't yet found a dedicated board for it, so here goes...

One thing that this film reminds me of is an old novel my mom had in a box of books when I was a kid in fourth or fifth grade... I don't remember the title nor the author, but the subtitle always stuck with me: "The Year Nature Went Berserk." The front cover fascinated me: in the background, lightning descends from stormy clouds into a storm-tossed sea, while in the foreground, a lifeboat or raft contains several people clinging for survival. In the middle ground behind the raft is the Empire State Building, or rather, the upper floors of the Empire State Building sticking up out of the water.

FOX TV has advertised in tv guides that on Wednesday it is going to show a ten minute preview of "The Day After Tomorrow" between 8 and 10.
Get your VCRs ready!

So that would be on the day after tomorrow!

<<Shakes head and groans...>>

Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week!

Director Roland Emmerich managed some pretty spectacular destruction scenes in 1996's Independence Day using traditional model work. It will be interesting to see how much more sophisticated the effects will be in 2004 using the more advanced CGI effects of today.

Fans interested in the 10 minute preview of The Day After Tomorrow had to sit through 10 minutes of excruciating "That 70s Show" bloopers to see the preview.

The preview was fun, although some of the scenes seemed a little derivative. The collapsing ice flow reminded me of the "X-Files" movie. The LA tornado scenes looked reminiscent of "Twister", and the New York flood scenes reminded me of Emmerich's own "Independence Day". This time, instead of a wall of fire, there's a wall of water. The tidal wave seemed to be much slower than the one in "Deep Impact" (that wave was supposed to be going hundreds of mph though). Maybe, I'm a little disaster "filmed out" after seeing 10.5 on NBC. At least this one won't be four hours long!

I think I saw all the best effect scenes in the movie. I"m wondering if I should still go to see the movie!

An item in Entertainment Weekly said that environmentalists have taken an interest in this movie. MoveOn.org will host a town meeting in NYC (to coincide with the film's premiere). Al Gore and Al Franken will discuss the film's take on global warming.

The item concludes with a quote from Peter Schurman on The Day After Tomorrow : " [this] is the movie George Bush doesn't want you to see!"

Al Gore and Al Franken? More like global BORING.

Gore yes, Franken no. Oh and the thing I read about what environmentalists think of this film is that they don't want you to see it either. One of them said "now we have 2 myths. One is that there is no global warming and the other is that this is what will happen as a result of it."

"...two myths..." That's funny!
Still, it's not reality, it's a sci-fi movie; everyone should just relax and enjoy the show, or not bother to see it if it doesn't interest them. (Much ado about nothing, in my opinion, especially considering some of the things going on in the world these days.)


The film Independence Day had a scene that was a specific homage to the film The War of the Worlds: in both films, a flying wing drops a nuclear bomb on the aliens, but the blast has no effect on them.
I wonder if The Day After Tomorrow will have an homage to another classic sci-fi flick, When Worlds Collide: that film featured a scene of Times Square in NYC getting inundated by a wall of water.

The New York flood scenes reminded me of Emmerich's own Independence Day...
Also, a lot like Deep Impact, only more elaborate

Kenneth Welsh, who plays the Vice President here, played President Harry S Truman in the cable pic Hiroshima. He also played the brother of the kidnapping suspect in the Law & Order episode that was patterned after the Unabomber. That ep was run the same day The Day After Tomorrow opened. I'm sure Mr. Welsh's being made up to resemble Vice President Cheney in this film was more than coincidence.

Were Jack and Lucy Hall (Dennis Quaid and Sela Ward) divorced? They were at least separated, but still had strong feelings for each other.
In most films like this, that take place over the span of several days, the men usually remain clean shaven, even when they couldn't possibly have shaven. Not Quaid's Jack. His stubble becomes quite prominent.

Kenneth Welsh is a familiar face to Canadian tv viewers, having appeared in numerous productions over the years such as Love and Hate.

OK... the sea levels rise as a result of the polar icecaps melting and Florida still exists in its current state? Funny, considering Quaid even remarks about finding retreat in the parts of Florida that are still left.

Considering that the highest point in FL is about 50 ft above sea level.

Correction, Mt. Trashmore at the South Dade Solid Waste Disposal Facility in Miami rises 149 ft. above sea level.

OK, highest non man-made point.

Waterworld was also totally impossible too. There isn't enough water in the polar ice caps to flood the entire world.

True, but that film just used that as a device to get the story going. I enjoyed Waterworld for what it was: an action-adventure like The Road Warrior on water. There was little science involved, putting it more in the realm of fantasy than sci-fi. The Day After Tomorrow makes more use of science (OK, mention of science) and tries to be more "scientific" in its approach. It's more heavy on "fi" than "sci", of course.

Finally got around to seeing The Day After Tomorrow...It was better than I expected. My two home town papers gave it opposite reviews. One said it was good, the other said to avoid it. The negative review faulted the film because most of the characters were kind and polite. That was no fault to me. It's a relief to see a film where people are basically decent. Two hours of nasty characters ain't my idea of fun. It did strike me as odd on how the film focused on the Vice President and not the President (I guess Cheney isn't particularly loved in Hollywood!).

For all the complaints about the far fetched science in the film, my biggest gripe was about something else...those darn psycho wolves. They seemed to be out of place in this movie. I don't know why they would hunt down live prey when it had already been established that bodies of people were in the city. Wolves would never pass up an easy meal of carrion.

The film makers did resist an easy attempt at appearing noble. I really was expecting the characters to burn the Guttenberg Bible and say "People are more important than books". It was nice to see the librarian protectively clutching the treasured book at the end!

The effects were impressive, particularly the wide vistas of a frozen New York. The shot of the Russian ship slamming into the submerged bus was impressive too.

Apparently, those wolves had learned to climb ladders too!

I don't know why they would hunt down live prey when it had already been established that bodies of people were in the city. Wolves would never pass up an easy meal of carrion. - Mark

Yeah... apparently the Central Park Zoo (or wherever they were housed) kept the most vicious wildlife in existence. But (and I admit to being somewhat ignorant of wolf physiology and psychology) would wolves have been able to smell the frozen dead bodies? If not, perhaps they didn't really recognize them as carrion because of their frozen state. So ravished wolves hunting the medicine patrol didn't bother me as much as the fact that they were CGI and extremely fake-looking.


The film makers did resist an easy attempt at appearing noble. I really was expecting the characters to burn the Guttenberg Bible and say "People are more important than books". It was nice to see the librarian protectively clutching the treasured book at the end! - mark

But I did wonder why a Gutenberg Bible was housed in the New York Public Library and not in, say, the Smithsonian.


Apparently, those wolves had learned to climb ladders too! - Treklon

??? Can you explain?

I guess he didn't think the wolves could get on the boat except by ladder. Did the three guys climb a ladder? I don't really remember. Sounds logical. Hmm...then how did the wolves get there?

Minor nit: a caption on the screen said National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. There should be an 'and' after 'Oceanic.'

One of the guys in the news helicopter saw the destruction wrought by the tornados and said, "There are people down there taking pictures!" What does he think he's doing?

ANTI-NIT #1: It's his job.
Well...maybe the people on the ground were planning to sell their photos to a magazine.

ANTI-NIT #2: Those people should have been running for their lives.
Yes, BUT...the copters weren't exactly safe with all those tornados springing up suddenly. Maybe THEY should have left.

I was never very clear on exactly what city Sela Ward was in. Maybe I missed it.

What's gonna happen to those astronauts/cosmonauts?

Anti-Nit #3. Maybe they were storm-chasers (ala "Twister"). And yes, they do exist.

The review in the British magazine Sight and Sound suggested that the scene where Tokyo was pelted by huge hail was Emmerich's way of getting back at the Japanese for their dislike for his version of Godzilla. That is quite possible, since Godzilla features some characters (a fat Mayor Ebert always munching on junk food and his dim-witted aide) based on Ebert and Siskel. The two critics (perhaps unfairly) really trashed Independence Day. Emmerich obviously wanted to mock them in return. In that case, it was a bit excessive, though, since the public at large loved Independence Day.

I was just reading a book on tornados and they mentioned that air flows downward in the center of hurricanes. And since the superstorms in the movie are supposed to be ultrahurricanes then it might be possible using movie physics to do what they do. Just a thought.

I was talking yesterday with some simulation guys. One of his buddies worked for Digital Domain (sim and FX are close relatives), and the upshot was that they used a real fluid dynamics modelling program to model the wave going through NYC, and TPTB didn't like it... not real enough. So they just created the wall of water.

Re the 'nauts on board the space station - Moscow is an ice cube... Houston is in the sub-Arctic zone and it's winter there now! Cape Canaveral is under water. Probably the only place for a shuttle to land is Edwards in California. Except no shuttles are going up for a year or two until Vandenberg's mothballed facility is made operational. However, the shuttles are garaged at Canaveral, so unless they got them out when they smelled trouble (not likely), the shuttles are lost now.

All the 'nauts have is their Soyuz escape capsule, and they'll have to land in the southern US since Kazakhstan is an ice cube. No more launches until they can arrange to use the Ariane complex in French Guiana.

I think, if they were to make a sequel to this movie, it would be a social-political story. We, the haves, have moved into the countries that are the have-nots, and we are in refugee camps there. Now, they are the haves and we are the have-nots, and we must adapt to expect a far less luxurious life style. That would make good fodder for a movie, the clash of cultures, and the "former-haves" having to start (many grudgingly) yielding on their expectations and accepting a severe reduction in what they expect for housing, food, jobs, income.

As smashing a movie as it made for a "disaster", I think such a sequel would be a dynamite indictment of the lifestyle we in the "have" countries expect to enjoy, supported by resources imported from the "have-not" countries.

Especially interesting to watch: would the US government voluntarily "dissolve" itself? There won't be a US, as we know it, for hundreds or thousands of years. About all that's left is Hawaii, southern California, southern Texas and other areas of similar latitude. (I am assuming that the LA tornadoes were the only ones "covered" by TV news in the movie, and that they were far more widespread.) Other areas still American would be Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands. Russia is virtually wiped out, although bits of the Ukraine might still be livable. The Sahara Desert might be the refuge for hundreds of thousands of Europeans.

If the US government is going to continue, see statehood for Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and for Honolulu to possibly become the new national capital! American refugees might disperse to these other locations, although the vast majority may become Mexican residents, and perhaps, after a clash of visions and cultures, help Mexicans remake their country.

It's a movie I would like to see, if it is handled sensitively and sensibly, without completely trying, convicting and executing the lifestyle of the "haves".

Geoff Capp
Frozen solid in the extinct country of Canada! (which wouldn't be extinct if it had agreed to let the Turks and Caicos Islands join! Grand Turk, the new capital of Canada!)

Just rented this one. Not bad, the effects were pretty amazing. Don't know if I'll bother with the deleted scenes, though.

The film makers did resist an easy attempt at appearing noble. I really was expecting the characters to burn the Guttenberg Bible and say "People are more important than books". It was nice to see the librarian protectively clutching the treasured book at the end!
I don't believe that was a librarian, but just a guy who happened to be in the library. And he wasn't protecting it out of any religious context (he said he didn't believe in God), but as a gesture to preserve the beginnings of "civilization", i.e., the origin of the press-printed word.

Darth Sarcasm wondered why a Gutenberg Bible would be at the NYPL. Answer: it's on tour. This from their website:


The Gutenberg Bible

From March 25, 2004 through December 31, 2006
Edna Barnes Salomon Room (Third Floor)
Humanities and Social Sciences Library, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788 (directions)
Hours:   Tues, Wed: 11 to 7:30; Thurs-Sat: 10 to 6

Special Display: The first substantial printed book in the West is the royal-folio two-volume Bible on display, comprising nearly 1,300 pages and printed in Mainz on the central Rhine by Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1390s–1468) in the 1450s. Probably completed between March and November 1455, when Gutenberg’s bankruptcy deprived him of his printing establishment, the Bible epitomizes Gutenberg’s triumph, arguably the greatest achievement of the second millennium. Over possibly twenty or more years, at Mainz and perhaps at Strasbourg, he succeeded in developing printing from movable type in the West.
Perhaps some 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible were originally produced, including about 45 on vellum. Of these, 48 integral copies survive, including eleven on vellum. The Lenox copy on display, printed on paper, is the first Gutenberg Bible to come to the United States, in 1847. Its arrival is the stuff of romantic national folklore. James Lenox’s European agent issued instructions for New York that the officers at the Customs House were to remove their hats on seeing it: the privilege of viewing a Gutenberg Bible is vouchsafed to few.

Andre the Aspie's Capsule Review:

I loved this movie when it first came out. But now I feel differently.

It's nothing but a lousy the-world-nearly-ends movie with an environmentally-concious theme, where billions of people perish, but the poor little cancer patient is A-OK!

Oh yeah, the British Royal Family and the puppet President perish as well, but the Dick Cheney look-alike lives. Darn.

In short, excellent special effects, but has gaping plotholes, dumb dialogue, and uninteresting main characters.

But I LOVE it when LA and NY are destroyed. That's just me, I guess!

GCapp's idea of a sequel is interesting in that the world in the movie would be totally changed. We saw American (and presumingly some Canadians) down in Mexico. I imagine North Africa got a lot of Europeans. Next would come culture shock, meaning the refugees would have to face reality that this is not something like a normal hurricane, where you can eventually go back home. These people CAN'T go home, because home no longer exists. The Northern Hemisphere will not be habitable again for at least two hundred years (according to Dennis Quaid's character's remarks near the start of the film). Those Canadians in Mexico would have to come to grips that Canada is GONE! Same with the Europeans in Africa. It would be interesting to run with that concept.

The depicted sea level rise makes no sense in this context. An ice age is getting started. Three vast storms are dumping meter after meter of snow over the northern continents. That water has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere can only be the oceans. Sea levels should be dropping, not rising.

In the eyes of the storms, strong downdrafts are shown drawing super cold air from high altitude all the way to the ground, where it instantly freezes everything it touches. But as that thin high altitude air is forced downward, it gets compressed by the increasing pressure and should warm up significantly before reaching the ground. The scientists in the movie try to address that problem by saying that the air moves too fast and doesn't have time to warm up, but it doesn't work like that. If the air moves faster and thus compresses faster, its warming rate will also speed up to match.

Sam calls his parents using a public phone in a hall that is fast being submerged by the rising waters. The phone keeps working even after it goes under, but this is salt water from the ocean and it should short out the phone the second it reaches its circuits.

We had a real life version of this movie in Ontario, two weeks ago:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2022_Canadian_derecho


My power was off for over a week. I had to seek refuge in a hotel until it came back on.