Originally slated for release in the summer of 2003,The Day After Tomorrow premiered inMexico City on May 17, 2004, and was theatrically released in the United States by20th Century Fox on May 28. It was a commercial success, grossing $552 million worldwide against a production budget of $125 million, becoming thesixth-highest-grossing film of 2004. Filmed inMontreal, it was the highest-grossing Hollywood film made in Canada at its time of release. The film was nominated forBest Science Fiction Film andBest Special Effects at theSaturn Awards.
At aUN conference inNew Delhi, Jack discusses his research showing thatclimate change could cause an impendingice age, butUS Vice President Raymond Becker dismisses his findings. Professor Terry Rapson, anoceanographer of the Hedland Centre inScotland, believes Jack and befriends him over his views of an inevitable climate shift.
Tokyo is struck by a giant hailstorm, and astronauts from theInternational Space Station spot three gigantic superstorms aboveCanada,Europe, andSiberia. Rapson's team in Scotland begins noticing severe temperature drops from multiple buoys in the North Atlantic, realizing Jack's theories were correct, with the climate shift happening too quickly. Remnants of a hurricane spawn a destructivetornado outbreak over theL.A. Basin. Three helicopters sent to rescue theBritish royal family fromBalmoral Castle crash in Scotland after they flew into a superstorm'seye.
Jack and Rapson's teams, along withNASAmeteorologist Janet Tokada, built a forecast model based on Jack's research, discovering that the impact of climate change would happen in 6–8 weeks (later discovered as being 7–10 days). Rapson notifies Jack that siphoned air from the uppertroposphere flash freezes anything caught in the eyes of thecyclones with temperatures below −150 degrees Fahrenheit (−101 degrees Celsius), which caused the helicopter crash by freezing the fuel on board.
InNew York City, Jack's son Sam, along with his friends Brian and Laura, participates in anacademic decathlon, where they make a new friend, JD. The North American superstorm creates strong winds and rain that floodManhattan with knee-deep water. All transportation halts, stranding the city's population. While helping to rescue two French-speaking tourists in distress from a cab with a police officer, Laura cuts her leg. A massivestorm surge inundates the city, forcing Sam's group to seek shelter at theNew York Public Library. Sam contacts Jack and his mother Lucy, apediatrician, through a workingpayphone. 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.
Upon Jack's suggestion,President Blake orders the populations of the southern states to be evacuated intoMexico. In contrast, the government warns those in the northern areas to seek shelter and stay warm. Jack, Jason, and Frank make their way to NYC. While trekking acrossPennsylvania, Frank falls through the skylight of a mall covered in snow and sacrifices himself by cutting his rope to prevent his friends from also falling in. In the library, most survivors set out to join the southern states refugees after the floodwater freezes, despite Sam's warnings. In Mexico, Becker learns that Blake's motorcade perished in the superstorm.
Laura developssepsis from her injury, whereupon Sam, Brian, and JD scour an abandonedRussiancargo ship that drifted into the city before the water froze forpenicillin and supplies. When they find them, they also encounter a pack of escapedwolves from theCentral Park Zoo. The boys fend off the wolves and return to the library with what they need as the eye of the North American superstorm passes over and freezes Manhattan. Jack and Jason barely escape by taking shelter in an abandoned restaurant.
Days later, the superstorms dissipate. After finding people outside frozen to death, including those from the library who tried to escape, Jack and Jason reach the library, finding Sam's group alive. Jack sends a radio message to US forces in Mexico to begin evacuation efforts.
In his first address as thenew president from the US embassy in Mexico, Becker apologizes onThe Weather Channel for his ignorance and sends helicopters to rescue survivors, including Jack and Sam's group in New York. On theInternational Space Station,astronauts look down in awe at Earth's transformed surface, now withice sheets extending across much of the Northern Hemisphere, remarking that the air never looked so clear.
The Day After Tomorrow was inspired byCoast to Coast AM talk-radio hostArt Bell andWhitley Strieber's book,The Coming Global Superstorm,[5] and Strieber wrote the film'snovelization. To choose a studio, writer Michael Wimer created an auction, with a copy of the script being sent to all major studios along with a term sheet. They had a 24-hour window to decide whether to produce the movie with Roland Emmerich directing, and Fox Studios was the only studio to accept the terms.[6]
The Day After Tomorrow features 416 visual effects shots, with nine effects houses, notablyIndustrial Light & Magic (ILM), andDigital Domain, and over 1,000 artists, working on the film for over a year.[12]
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 ofManhattan,[13] with over 50,000 scanned photographs used for building textures.[14] 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.[15] 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.[16]
Similarly, the opening flyover of Antarctica was alsoCGI, 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 ofContact (1997).[17]
The film came in second at the US box office behindShrek 2 over its four-dayMemorial Day opening and grossed $85,807,341.[22] 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 byTwisters.[23] It led the per-theater average, with a four-day average of $25,053 (compared toShrek 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.[1]
OnRotten 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."[24] OnMetacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 47 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[25] Audiences surveyed byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade "B" on an A+ to F scale.[26]
Roger Ebert of theChicago 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.[27] Mark Caro of theChicago Tribune wrote a completely negative review which considered the film unworthy of publicity for the climate change debate it had created.[28]
Emmerich did not deny that his casting of a weak president and the resemblance ofKenneth Welsh to Vice PresidentDick Cheney were intended to criticize theclimate change policy of the George W. Bush administration.[29] Responding to claims of insensitivity in his inclusion of scenes of a devastated New York City less than three years after theSeptember 11 attacks, Emmerich said that it was necessary to showcase the increased unity of people in the face of disaster because of the attacks.[30][31][32]
Some scientists criticized the film's scientific aspects. Paleoclimatologist and professor of earth and planetary science atHarvard UniversityDaniel 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 anotherice age – at least not like that."[29]J. Marshall Shepherd, a research meteorologist at theNASAGoddard 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."[29] According toUniversity of Victoria climatologistAndrew Weaver, "It'sThe Towering Inferno of climate science movies, but I'm not losing any sleep over a new ice age, because it's impossible."[29]
Patrick J. Michaels, a former research professor ofenvironmental science at theUniversity of Virginia and fellow at theCato Institute who rejected the scientific consensus[33] onglobal warming, called the film "propaganda" in aUSA Today editorial: "As a scientist, I bristle when lies dressed up as 'science' are used to influence political discourse."[34] College instructor and retired NASA Office of Inspector General senior special agent Joseph Gutheinz calledThe 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 aSpace Daily editorial.[35]
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.[36]
Environmental activist andGuardian columnistGeorge Monbiot calledThe Day After Tomorrow "a great movie and lousy science".[37]
In 2008,Yahoo! Movies listedThe Day After Tomorrow as one of its top-10 scientifically inaccurate films.[38] It was criticized for depictingmeteorological phenomena as occurring over the course of hours, instead of decades or centuries.[39] A 2015Washington Post article reported on a paper published inScientific 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 theAtlantic meridional overturning circulation caused by global warming.[40]
