Roland Emmerich’s parable/escapist adventure based around the threat of global warming, The Day After Tomorrow, is the only initial throwaway feature which has become dangerously relevant with the passage of time. At the time of its release, it seemed as if only Emmerich was taking his film seriously (he paid out of his own pocket to make sure his film, the first of its kind, was carbon-neutral) as, even those in the know in respect to greenhouse gases, CO2 emissions, and global warming rolled their eyes at the lengths which the filmmaker went with his premise. Yet, as each year passes, Emmerich’s metaphor becomes less and less hyperactive by comparison and, as a consequence, is coming to resemble a documentary rather than a feature-length film.
The Day After Tomorrow needs no plot summary for, given its popularity, most everyone has watched, viewed its trailer, or heard about its contents. Granted, the subplot of a paleoclimatologist, Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), trekking across a quarter of the nation in sub-Artic climate in order to rescue his son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), is expendable given that the weather is the central figure in the picture. (Emmerich had to wrap his picture around something, otherwise it would have truly merited its critique that it is merely an excuse upon which to hang the latest special effects–yet, then again, I doubt few parents would rationally sit amid the thought of their offspring freezing to death, regardless of the risks involved . . . .) Yet herein lies why I am reviewing the feature as a horror film (Note: I’m not the only horror critic to associate the events within the film with the genre). The weather, though the immediate cause of the ensuing apocalypse, is not the true monster of The Day After Tomorrow for it is a consequence of a graver ill. Though on the surface it might appear as if we are being issued another “Man verses Nature” flick, at base, the film addresses a greater evil, one which Emmerich satirically scrutinizes: Man, for it is humanity who has created the avenue by which the earth is out of balance and, as such, it is he (and she) who must suffer the consequences of their actions. Thus, at the climax of the work, we receive a heavy-handed lecture upon just this via a Dick Cheney-look-alike mouthpiece, Vice President-cum-President Becker (Kenneth Welsh). But, as previously stated, many initially dismissed the warning, twice over, using the film’s compressed time element and heightened circumstances as alibis. Unfortunately, we cannot view the film today and use same ruse.
Yes, the metaphor was just that–exaggerated–yet though the rope by which our disbelief hung having snapped at film’s premier has miraculously repaired itself as, ironically, we are beginning to realize that we might not even need the rope at this venue in our history in that the time element involved is not as overstated or dramatized as it once was, that is, the six-to-eight week timeframe in which the super storm occurs during the film is now symbolic of the premature appearance of strange weather patterns since the film’s debut. Much like Jack Hall’s detractors, a large number of scientists criticized the film for what they deemed to be the director’s gratuitous dramatization of actual weather patterns and possibilities. Ironically, Hall’s fictional antagonists amend their positions during the course of the film in the face of the obvious while a large portion of flesh-and-blood viewers, well . . .
In the last few years, countless numbers have died due to severe weather anomalies. In 1999 in India, a cyclone claimed 9,574 lives. That same year in Venezuela, a mudslide killed an estimated 50,000. Similarly, due to abnormally heavy rains during 2006, a mudslide took almost 1,000 in the Philippines. In 1995, a heat wave in Chicago accounted for 600 deaths in only five days while, across the Atlantic, Europe suffered deaths upwards to 35,000 people due to extreme heat in 2003. In ironic contrast, there have been blizzards in the northern U.S. every year–with the exception of 2004–since 2003. In association, a freak cold snap decimated crops during the spring of 2007 while, dauntingly, the year slowly climbed to the hottest on record. Two years after the costliest hail storm in history struck St. Louis, in 2003 Nebraska received the largest hailstone ever recorded –with a circumference of almost 19-inches. Two years hence, 562 tornados were recorded in the United States–during the month of May while the average number of seasonal hurricanes tripled as Hurricane Katrina, Stan, Jeanne, and her kin took thousands upon thousands of people to an early grave. With this in tow, I’ll even–albeit reluctantly–meet skeptics halfway and concur that some of the aforementioned events might be the “natural” course of things as it were, however the atypical frequency of such events cannot be ignored with a clear conscious. Yet, even if none of this can be directly linked to the film, I offer one more, terrifyingly coincidental, similarity between The Day After Tomorrow and reality. During the production, we chuckle–as do the characters involved–when tornadoes rip through the most unlikely of locales, Los Angeles. However, on August 8, 2007, a tornado tore through Brooklyn . . . Brooklyn! (while saying nothing of the same occurring, in all places, the capital of Colombia, Bogotá, later that same month). As such, each day Emmerich’s film resembles less of an action adventure and begins to assume the guise of a parable for modern times.
Sure, we continue to have our nay sayers, in respect to both the film and the issue of global warming but, much like the latter who utter that the concluding term in the phrase “global warming” seems oxymoronic in respect to freezing temperatures, such people are giving as much time and consideration to the theory as they do the film for during the feature it is clearly posited how such can coincide given salinization ratios and their correlative global jet streams. It is with this foresight that, after the fact, we realize how well constructed Emmerich’s film really is for what was originally throw away lines are now, suddenly, poignantly hyperaware utterances. For example, a homeless man, Brian Parks (Arjay Smith), gripes to his dog about the smog and pollution–direct causes of the ensuing catastrophe. We thus find a twister destroying the Hollywood sign to, perhaps, be Emmerich’s prophetic thumbing of his nose to his critics, an indicator that, much like the author of the feature’s title, Friedrich Nietzsche, he knew his time would have to slowly arrive (sadly, not slowly enough). Furthermore, The Day After Tomorrow, given its agenda, cunningly fashions a need for its special effects. While insinuation and understated, after-the-fact scenarios which aim for time- and budget-saving insinuation work for most precepts, Emmerich knows we need to see what the consequences of our actions will be. Thus, in the wake of 2005’s Katrina, the director’s merging of two tornado cells into one look minor in comparison to its real-life successor.
2006 was the last year that the world could, not reverse, but neutralize the effects of global warming. It was during this time that President Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol despite the fact that the United States is the largest global contributor of greenhouse gases (a shameful blemish twice over considering the nation only comprises four-percent of the World’s populace). In this respect, perhaps Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow is a political tragedy for, despite the obvious, much like in the film, our analogous real-life Cassandra, Al Gore (whose An Inconvenient Truth now plays like a Cliff’s Notes version of Emmerich’s film), continues to bang his head against the wall. In short, as time proceeds to blow hurriedly by, what was first perceived as the director’s dramatic liberties are becoming chillingly close, not to metaphor, but reality. Moreover, it is hard to argue with the fact that if Emmerich (given his cinematic history) was earnestly going for storyline pizzazz and little else, he would have had his central figure save the world and millions of Northerners from freezing via, just a hop-and-skip from implausibility given what came before, reversing the effects of global warming. With this, I can’t help but think that Emmerich truly cares for, by showing exactly (literally) where the line will be drawn if his cautionary tale isn’t taken seriously, he gets our attention and, like so few directors, does something worthwhile while he has it.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
