The Day After Tomorrow

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Jack Hall, a paleoclimatologist for the NOAA, drills for ice-core samples in the Larsen Ice Shelf with his colleagues Frank and Jason. A large portion of the ice shelf splits away, but they manage to escape.

At a United Nations conference on global warming in New Delhi, Jack shares his theory that climate change could lead to a new ice age through the disruption of the North Atlantic Current. United States vice president Raymond Becker is dismissive of Jack's research, but Professor Terry Rapson, a Scottish oceanographer, befriends him over their shared concerns.

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 notice severe temperature drops from multiple buoys in the North Atlantic, providing evidence for Jack's theory and that a climate shift may already be occurring. 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 fly through the eye of the European superstorm.

Jack and Rapson's teams build a forecast model that predicts that the climate shift will occur in 6–8 weeks (later revised to 7–10 days). Rapson shares with Jack that siphoned air from the upper troposphere will flash freeze anything caught in the eye of a cyclone with temperatures below −150 degrees Fahrenheit (−101 degrees Celsius), which caused the royal family helicopter crashes by freezing the fuel on board.

In New York City, Jack's son Sam, along with his friends Brian and Laura, participate in an academic decathlon, where they befriend JD. The North American superstorm creates strong winds and rain that flood Manhattan. All transportation halts, stranding the city's population. While helping to rescue two French-speaking tourists, 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.

Per Jack's suggestion, President Blake orders the populations of the southern states to be evacuated to Mexico, while instructing those in the northern areas to shelter-in-place. Jack, Jason, and Frank depart by snowshoe to NYC. While trekking across Pennsylvania, Frank falls through the skylight of a mall covered in snow, only stopped by his tether to Jack and Jason. When more of the skylight begins to crack, he sacrifices himself by cutting the tether. In the library, most survivors decide to move south on the frozen floodwater, despite Sam's warnings. In Mexico, Becker learns that Blake's motorcade perished in the superstorm and that he is now President.

Laura develops sepsis from her injury, leading Sam, Brian, and JD to scour an abandoned Russian cargo ship that drifted into the city before the water froze for medical supplies. After finding penicillin, they encounter a pack of escaped wolves from the Central Park Zoo. The boys fight the wolves and return to the library before the eye of the North American superstorm passes over and freezes Manhattan. Jack and Jason barely escape the eye by taking shelter in an abandoned restaurant.

Days later, the superstorms dissipate. Jack and Jason reach the library, finding Sam's group alive. Jack sends a radio message to US forces who arrive by helicopter. While being evacuated, other groups of survivors emerge. In his first address as president, Becker apologizes for his ignorance and shares the news of the New York survivors and further rescue missions being carried out. On the International Space Station, astronauts look down in awe at the ice sheets covering much of the Northern Hemisphere and remark that the air has never looked so clear.

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,^[6] and Strieber wrote the film's novelization. Emmerich wrote a first draft of the script and showed it to producer Mark Gordon, who had produced Emmerich's film The Patriot. Nachmanoff came in to help with rewrites.^[7] On May 1, 2002, Creative Arts Agency held an auction, with a copy of the script being sent to all major studios along with a term sheet indicating a budget of $125 million, including $10 million for Emmerich against 10% of the gross.^[8][7] Twentieth Century Fox made a deal to make the film on May 3 putting it into pre-production straight away with production due to start in fall 2002, although believed that the budget could be kept to $100 million.^[7]

Filming

The Day After Tomorrow was filmed predominantly in Montreal^[9] and Toronto,^[10] with some footage also shot in New York City^[11] and Chiyoda, Tokyo.^[12] Filming ran from November 7, 2002, until October 18, 2003.^[13]

Visual effects

The Day After Tomorrow features 416 visual effects shots, with nine effects houses, notably Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), and Digital Domain, and over 1,000 artists, working on the film for over a year.^[14]

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,^[15] with over 50,000 scanned photographs used for building textures.^[16] 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.^[17] 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.^[18]

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 (1997).^[19]

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The Japanese dub has an exclusive theme song called "More Than a Million Miles" by a band coincidentally called Day After Tomorrow.^[20][21][22]

Soundtrack

Quick facts Soundtrack album by Harald Kloser, Released ...

The Day After Tomorrow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Soundtrack album by Harald Kloser
Released	May 18, 2004
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	38:18
Label	Varèse Sarabande Fox Music
Producer	Various Artists
Harald Kloser chronology
Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story (2004) The Day After Tomorrow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2004) Alien vs. Predator (soundtrack) (2004)

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The Day After Tomorrow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack of the film. It was released on May 18, 2004.

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.^[23]

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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.^[24] 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.^[25] It led the per-theater average, with a four-day average of $25,053 (compared to Shrek 2's four-day average of $22,633). 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.^[2]

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."^[26] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 47 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[27] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "B" on an A+ to F scale.^[28]

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.^[29] 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.^[30]

Accolades

More information Award, Subject ...

Award	Subject	Nominee(s)	Result
Saturn Awards	Best Science Fiction Film	The Day After Tomorrow	Nominated
	Best Special Effects	Karen E. Goulekas, Neil Corbould, Greg Strause and Remo Balcells	Nominated
BAFTA Awards	Best Special Visual Effects		Won
VES Awards	Outstanding Visual Effects in an Effects Driven Motion Picture	Karen Goulekas, Mike Chambers, Greg Strause, Remo Balcells	Nominated
	Best Single Visual Effect	Karen Goulekas, Mike Chambers, Chris Horvath, Matthew Butler	Won
MTV Movie Awards	Best Action Sequence	"The destruction of Los Angeles"	Won
	Best Breakthrough Performance	Emmy Rossum	Nominated
Irish Film & Television Awards	Best International Actor	Jake Gyllenhaal	Nominated
Golden Trailer Awards	Best Action Film	The Day After Tomorrow	Nominated
Environmental Media Awards	Best Film	The Day After Tomorrow	Won
BMI Film Awards	Best Music	Harald Kloser	Won
Golden Reel Awards	Best Sound Editing – Effects & Foley	Mark P. Stoeckinger, Larry Kemp, Glenn T. Morgan, Alan Rankin, Michael Kamper, Ann Scibelli, Randy Kelley, Harry Cohen, Bob Beher and Craig S. Jaeger	Nominated

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Emmerich did not deny that his casting of a weak president and the resemblance of Kenneth Welsh to Vice President Dick Cheney were intended to criticize the climate change policy of the George W. Bush administration.^[31] Responding to claims of insensitivity in his inclusion of scenes of a devastated New York City less than three years after the September 11 attacks, Emmerich said that it was necessary to showcase the increased unity of people in the face of disaster because of the attacks.^[32][33][34]

Some scientists criticized the film's scientific aspects. Paleoclimatologist and professor of earth and planetary science at Harvard University Daniel P. Schrag said, "On the one hand, I'm glad that there's a big-budget movie about something as critical as climate change. On the other, I'm concerned that people will see these over-the-top effects and think the whole thing is a joke ... We are indeed experimenting with the Earth in a way that hasn't been done for millions of years. But you're not going to see another ice age – at least not like that."^[31] J. Marshall Shepherd, a research meteorologist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, expressed a similar sentiment: "I'm heartened that there's a movie addressing real climate issues. But as for the science of the movie, I'd give it a D minus or an F. And I'd be concerned if the movie was made to advance a political agenda."^[31] According to University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, "It's The Towering Inferno of climate science movies, but I'm not losing any sleep over a new ice age, because it's impossible."^[31]

Patrick J. Michaels, a former research professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia and fellow at the Cato Institute who rejected the scientific consensus^[35] on global warming, called the film "propaganda" in a USA Today editorial: "As a scientist, I bristle when lies dressed up as 'science' are used to influence political discourse."^[36] College instructor and retired NASA Office of Inspector General senior special agent Joseph Gutheinz called The Day After Tomorrow "a cheap thrill ride, which many weak-minded people will jump on and stay on for the rest of their lives" in a Space Daily editorial.^[37]

Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, an expert on thermohaline circulation and its effect on climate, said after a talk with scriptwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff at the film's Berlin preview:

Clearly this is a disaster movie and not a scientific documentary, [and] the film makers have taken a lot of artistic license. But the film presents an opportunity to explain that some of the basic background is right: humans are indeed increasingly changing the climate and this is quite a dangerous experiment, including some risk of abrupt and unforeseen changes ... Luckily it is extremely unlikely that we will see major ocean circulation changes in the next couple of decades (I'd be just as surprised as Jack Hall if they did occur); at least most scientists think this will only become a more serious risk towards the end of the century. And the consequences would certainly not be as dramatic as the 'superstorm' depicted in the movie. Nevertheless, a major change in ocean circulation is a risk with serious and partly unpredictable consequences, which we should avoid. And even without events like ocean circulation changes, climate change is serious enough to demand decisive action.^[38]

Environmental activist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot called The Day After Tomorrow "a great movie and lousy science".^[39]

In 2008, Yahoo! Movies listed The Day After Tomorrow as one of its top-10 scientifically inaccurate films.^[40] It was criticized for depicting meteorological phenomena as occurring over the course of hours, instead of decades or centuries.^[41] A 2015 Washington Post article reported on a paper published in Scientific Reports which indicated that global temperatures could drop relatively rapidly (one degree Fahrenheit change or 0.5 degrees Celsius change over an 11-year period) due to a temporary shutdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation caused by global warming.^[42]

• "2012"
• Geostorm – a 2017 film with a similar premise from Emmerich's longtime collaborator Dean Devlin