Awesome Mankind-meets-the-worst-of-Mother-Earth

Rating: 7/10 (11 September 2006)

A surreal film about what could happen if global warming increases. The movie was mostly a focus on the events that happened, as it should be. The sub-plot was kind of cheesy, but I guess it needed something else to tie the characters together and open up the audience to be a family-style movie, not just one for science people. I would have liked to see more of the possibly effects and reasoning for the large-scale environmental shifts in climate. They could have shown more at the end of the film about what happened to other parts of the movie, not just New York.
There isn't a story about the future of the Earth more paramount than shown in the plot of The Day After Tomorrow. It's story tells the future of the effects of global warming reshaping the weather patterns of Earth. The movie starts in a field study in Antarctica. The scientists are drilling a glacier as the ice starts to crack; an entire shelf of ice breaks off, one the size of Rhode Island. In a science conference in India the scientists alert the group that they have witnessed the ice-caps breaking off, most likely due to global warming and suggest that this could be something of major concern within the next ten (10) to thirty (30) years. A control base in Scotland soon notices a drop in the oceans temperature in 4 different locations. Other major weather-related events take place in the next couple days such as large hail, strong hurricanes and astronomical rain. The elements of this progressive disaster get worse by the hour. Within hours it appears to the scientists that there is going to be a shift in global weather within the next few days. One of the scientists, Jack Hall, has his son, Sean, on a trip to New York, where the impact of the global shift is going to be severe. Jack wants to save his son from the extreme "cold wave" that is approaching the East Coast. The climax of the movie is while Jack is on his journey to save his son, and the eye of the storm hits the East Coast, causing people to freeze into ice within seconds. Jack and Sean both live the storm but face tragedy to many friends and people around them. This story's plot is very much the important aspect of the movie, as the series of events alone build up the movie and give it such astronomical content, yet somewhat relevant to near future possibilities to Earth's weather.
The setting takes place mostly on the East Cost of the United States, primarily New York and Philadelphia. The memorable scenes include shots from India, Los Angelus, Tokyo and Antarctica. It is very realistic in the way that the weather disasters look very real happening to cities in the modern world; It makes the movie seem very real since it seems to be happening in the present day. The research-style scenes were either in laboratories, governmental conferences or "in the field", but the action scenes were outdoors or in the New York Public Library. All of the places in the movie seemed very authentic. There was only one scene towards the end that I could tell was computer animated, it was a shot of New York city covered in snow, other than that, all scenes appeared very imaginable.
Nobody won any Oscars with the acting in this movie. It seemed like a lack of authenticity, but it somewhat gave the feeling like this is happening to ordinary people, not actors.
The photography and cinematic was exceptional. They must have put a majority of the money into the special effects. All the disasters looked extremely real and very detailed. The shots of huge tornados swooping through Los Angelus were awesome, realistic and scary. I felt like I was right there in the middle of it all as billboards and cars were thrown threw the city, knocking out telephone poles and crushing people. Once you see this movie you will never forget many of the horrific, yet incredible scenes. The detail in the photography was very high except for the one scene of New York City from a flyby from over the Atlantic Ocean. The buildings looked amateur and jagged as though the production team most likely ran out of money by the end of it all. They could have done more I feel with showing the after affects, such as going back around the world and showing the effects for some time after the large global shift.
The direction of the movie started by explaining the natural disasters that were effects of the global shift in climate. It focused on the details from city-to-city as it built up the story and explained how fast and enormous an actual event like this would cause. The sub-plot was then laced in as Jack Hall's son Sean was trapped in the worst part of the storm, New York City. The movie then swapped back to telling the events as soon as the public saw the animals in the city start to outrage and thousands of birds were rushing south. While building in both the sub-plot and the actual-plot together the movie ended with a primary focus on the sub-plot of Jack finally rescuing his son, and then showed a very brief summary of what happened to the rest of the world.
In closing, I must say this movie is amazing to witness and makes me want to ask "Is global warming real? Can it really do all of that?" and inspires me to learn more about global warming. I enjoy movies that could almost be real, especially ones pertaining to science or world events. No matter how many times I see this movie I will still be blown away by the awesome Mankind-meets-the-worst-of-Mother-Earth scenes.