"The Day After Tomorrow" - Analysis
When watching this movie, it is obvious how the world is punishing its people for their ignorance of the environment. The Earth is furious in this movie, almost as if it were a character itself, using natural disasters to get back at humanity. The Earth not only kills the people responsible for its demise, but also innocents who may have in fact been trying to help it prosper. An example of this is the death of Frank, he worked tirelessly alongside Jack trying to warn the people of the world about how dangerous global warming is. His sacrifice at the hands of the environment shows that no one is truly safe from the dangers of global warming and highlights the steps we must all take in the right direction.
Frank hanging from his harness after falling; moments before his death - link
Despite this movie being PG-13, it depicts some horrible deaths to many characters. One of which is when the British helicopter pilots froze to death.
British pilot freezing from the extreme cold - link
This serves as a reminder to all just how dangerous nature can be and how important it is to take care of it. The director of the movie also reminds the viewer to learn from their mistakes through important dialogue, such when Jack Hall states, “Well, mankind survived the last Ice Age. We are certainly capable of surviving this one. The only question is, will we learn from our mistakes?” (Emmerich). While this applies directly to the movie, this applies to the world currently too; it serves as a reminder that all hope is not lost and that we can do something to make a change. It is clear that Jack believes that many adjustments need to be made in the future in order for humanity to prosper alongside with nature and it is ultimately up to humanity to make these fundamental changes in preventing climate change.
With the film’s fast paced depiction of climate change, many critics have problems with this movie as it contains a plethora of scientific inaccuracies and drastically overexaggerates the timing of climate change. While it’s obvious that there is no way the climate could change that drastically in a matter of days, it's evident that the movie creators were more interested in drawing in and entertaining the viewer over the accuracy of science. While this does increase the viewership and allow for the film to spread global warming awareness on a greater scale, it can also cause viewers to see climate change as unrealistic, giving them no reason to change their ways. For this, the overexaggerating of the effects of climate change is both a negative and a positive for the sake of the film. However, the director does an extremely effective job of instilling fear in the audience with the horrid storms that devastated the world. Stefan Rahmstorf acknowledges, “the film makers have taken a lot of artistic license. But 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.” This is one of the main topics that the creators tried to convey. At the end of the day, global warming and climate change is a real thing, and by producing such a film for mainstream media at this time, it at least puts the idea in peoples mind and strengthens the importance in the minds of people who have already known the threat of climate change. Ultimately, The Day After Tomorrow effectively entertains and shines light on global warming and climate change.
Throughout the beginning of the film, many politicians, including the vice president question climate change and deny taking any actions to combat it. This reflects the overall attitude of the American government in real life and it takes the world getting demolished for politicians like the vice president to finally open their eyes to climate change. Jack constantly fought for the environment but never got the respect he deserved until the very end. Just before Jack leaves to save his son he briefs the president and vice president on the dangers currently at hand. Whilst doing so the vice president questions his motives, to which Tom explains, “His son is in Manhattan. I just thought you should know that before you start questioning his motives” (Emmerich). This serves to remind them that Jack is not some crazy mad scientist who wants to shut down America, but also has some heart in the game, as this issue is directly affecting him and his family, thus, giving him more credibility. Finally at the very end of the movie, the now president, previous vice president, addresses the nation from the television and acknowledges all of the mistakes the country and he had made. This is a pivotal moment in the film, as the vice president was one of the most antagonistic people towards global warming in the first place. The vice president’s character arc models the film’s overarching message of the changes that need to be set in place in current society.
An effective choice the director made was splitting up Jack and his son, Sam. By doing so it demonstrates to the younger audience that they will not always have a parent or other authority figure to tell them the best course of action. They must be able to take things into their own hands and deal with them themselves. In this way the director is showing the younger audience that their parents will not always be there to tell them to take care of the Earth, however, they should do so regardless. Another author, Robert Daniels even states the idea of, “If we don’t change something, our children will pay the price — permeates throughout the film”. This is very obvious in Sam being stuck in New York while his father aimlessly does everything he can to get to and save his son. Sam has no other choice but to suffer in grueling cold and blizzard like New York, all because of global warming. In the same way that the younger generations suffer the most from global warming, it is also up to them to take actions to stop global warming, thus the film also provides this message.
Splitting up Jack and his son largely contributed to the horror of the whole situation. The director successfully builds tension, as is common in horror movies, in scenes such as the one where Sam, Jack’s son, swims to a payphone to reach his father. At the end of this scene Sam must swim under water as the water level is already at the roof. The director waits several seconds before revealing to the audience that Sam is alive, producing feelings of anxiety among the viewers. This illustrates to the audience that death is a possibility, and that nobody is safe from the dangers of an angry world.
In the end, the movie does a good job of portraying the dangers of environmental fatalism as it portrays well known, seemingly invincible, cities as places ransacked and destroyed by the raging world. By showing the horrors of catastrophic natural disasters and the frightening deaths they cause the director successfully shows the younger and older audience the importance of taking care of the world we live in, thus encouraging less ignorant behavior in the future.