Film Critique

Description
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) Centropolis Entertainment 20
th
Century Fox
Brief Plot Summary
Jack Hall is a climatologist he studies ancient and current weather patterns.Basically,
everybody on his team says global warming is a huge problem and studies it. However,
he is smarter than them and sees that the weather system of the earth is collapsing and
an ice age coming the same time after seeing similarities to things that had happened in
the past, and so was able to make predictions about what was to come. Jack's son Sam
goes to NYC for a school competition. Huge storms knock out power. Multiple huge
tornadoes wipe out the Hollywood sign and half of several skyscrapers. Sam gets stuck
in a library when a tidal wave about the height of the statue of Liberty hits. Knowing that
this ice age is coming, and coming fast no one believes Jack. As North America is
slowly raining and icing over, he tells Sam who in NY that he needs to stay warm and
gives him specific instructions. Sam's friends with him think it's nonsense as well as
everyone else in America. As the US is going crazy with the freezing climate, Jack is
telling his son and the 2 other kids how to keep warm. They go to the library basement
while New York is iced over and burn books to keep a fire going and keep them alive.
The next day the ice age passes tons of people have died but Jack's son and all the
other survivors are rescued by helicopter to end the movie.
naIysis
The Day after Tomorrow was a Hollywood release movie. A movie similar to it is the film
2012 that came out in 2009. The Day after Tomorrow made $544 million at the box
office while 2012 made $769 million. A couple of similarities about these films are that
they are created by the same director Ronald Emmerich who is widely known for his sci-
fi and natural disaster films.They are both movies about the fictitious catastrophes on
the earth. n The Day After Tomorrow, global warming is the main cause of the disasters
in the film. cebergs melted and climate changed sharply. While in 2012, is all
speculated from an odd Mayan prediction that the world will end on Dec 21st, 2012.
This was due to human's endless waste of nature resources and the creation all kinds
of pollution, the balance of ecosystem was destroyed and the disaster inevitably came.
n the two movies, people who first knew the truth felt extremely shocked and scared.
For example Jack in the Day after Tomorrow felt like he had risk his live making a long
trip from Washington DC to New York fearing his son was in great danger. While in
2012 Dr Adrian Helmsley finding out about that 2012 disaster and going to great lengths
to verify his information just to prove his information is real to government officials who
didn't believe him in the first place, n both films find that throughout everything that is
happened everyone is relocated and the film ends happen giving off the theme of
triumph and closure. The Day after Tomorrow ends with the survivors relocating to
Mexico while in 2012 the survivors create a new homeland. didn't really pick up any
real differences aside from the visual effects and the plots. t's obvious 2012 had more
realistic looking CG due to the advancements in film from 5 years earlier. found the
plot in 2012 really weak didn't give us a clear theme and the screenwriter's idea about
some profound significance problems of life didn't expressed well leaving us with
questions.
nterpretation
Roger Ebert May 28 2004 rogereber.suntimes.com
Ebert says this movie takes a big-budget, special-effects-filled look at what the world
would look like if the greenhouse effect and global warming continued at such levels
that they resulted in worldwide catastrophe and disaster, including multiple hurricanes,
tornadoes, tidal waves, floods and the beginning of the next ce Age. The whole movie
itself is silly but the visual and graphic effects make up for it. Watching the movie made
him frustrated due to the movie giving away its plot by making all the protagonists that
the movie focused on surviving in unrealistic weather conditions. But at the same time
he thinks it's funny since the president is addressing the nation on the weather channel
which would never happen and Americans having to flee to Mexico which in today's
society we would never think we would have to resort to Ebert's states the message is
global climate change is real but at the end good always prevails. Things that would
convey this are for example from the review Ebert states that all the protagonists
survive including that cancer patient. n a disaster movie everyone likes to see the good
guys live. This gives the audience a warm feeling knowing the difference factor in good
vs. evil. Another thing that would convey the message is good guys always overcoming
the odds stacked against them. For example from the review Jack and his buddies are
trying to walk from Washington DC to New York to see Sam his son on sheets of ice in
blizzard not knowing if his son is alive or not. This creates suspense leaving readers
either on the edge of their seats or bored.
James Beradinelli May 28 2004 reelreviews.net
What James is trying to say about that film is that it's just a plain old disaster film with
improved effects. The director Emmerich blows things out of proportion like climate
change which would take place over time not just a few days. Visual CG effects make
the film believable such as seeing a twister blowing through Manhattan and the Statue
of Liberty covered in ice but makes Jack's journey to New York from Washington D.C
glorifying and impossible for the average human to handle. The message Benradinelli is
trying to convey in the film is that if you run out of options your main priority is survival.
For example from the review Sam and his friends from the article burn books in the
library to keep warm. t's obvious any person would keep warm seeing as you can't do
anything else when u are shivering and so cold to the point where it affects functions
that are necessary to sustain life such as eating, sleeping or thinking critically afraid
you are going to die.
;aIuation
agree with both reviewers. Ebert and his whole protagonists have to live perspective is
right. Who wants to see a disaster film where everyone dies besides the cheesy
Hollywood slasher films? A disaster film should end as the same way as a superhero
film should happy and leaving you hanging. For me watching at least 1 protagonist live
makes me feel a sense of ending and closure knowing that maybe a sequel might come
in the future. With James also agree with his survival perspective. f we are in a
situation of disaster or when there's limited quantities of something, knowing man our
basic instinct is every man for himself and we must do what it takes to survive like
fighting over the last loaf of bread or trampling everyone over sales on Black Friday.
Darwin's good ole survival of the fittest theory. My evaluation of this film is that thought
it was terrible film. 'm a type of guy who likes everything realistic and up to date such as
cars in need for speed or well known characters in superhero movies The events in the
film could happen but it is impossible for everything to happen is the length of time it
took such as the twisters, hurricanes, blizzards that happened one after the other.
Everything that happens in that movie is scientifically possible it would just take years
not hours. Weather is usually bi polar and random. would how weather is supposed to
be to heavy rain or heavy snow we experience once in a while. They are random on and
off usually not lasting long like the weather in the movie should be lasting. They would
not happen at the same time either. f it did happen Mother Nature would just keep
throwing even worse stuff at us until she lost it and went off on us. Ways this movie has
affected popular culture that it was parodied in south park in the episode Two Days after
the Day of Tomorrow where Stan and Cartman crash a boat into a beaver dam flooding
a town and blaming global warming for it. Another way it affected popular culture is that
how we around almost a year from Dec 2012 it made people paranoid. For example a
website opened called 2012stockup.com that sells freeze dried food generators as well
as other supplies for survival.