The Day After Tomorrow

directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day; The Patriot)
story by Roland Emmerich (Godzilla)
screenplay by Roland Emmerich (The Patriot) and Jeffrey Nachmanoff (The Big Gig)
 

        Roland Emmerich needs to understand that the movie-going public is really not that stupid. People will continue going to his pictures for the spectacle but shall also remain disappointed with their narrative imperfections. For many directors, this is suitable. As long as the audiences are there, little care is given to whether or not they actually enjoy what they’re watching. Emmerich may not think this way, though, as his new extravaganza, The Day After Tomorrow demands a resonance with viewers beyond the special effects sequences. Because he confuses ignorance with stupidity, though, the film lacks any hope of influence.
       Following last year’s The Core with minor improvement on the environmentally fearful disaster genre, The Day After Tomorrow surrounds a plot equally around scenes of mass destruction and scenes of political preaching hardly disguised as morally thematic exposition. Emmerich is being public with all of his intentions from casting a Dick Cheney look-alike as a callous vice-president (the German born director’s loyalty to America is assured with his opening shot of Old Glory) to abandonment of scientific and geographic accuracy in favor of dramatic license. He also wants people to know that the production was “carbon-neutral” meaning that any carbon dioxide emitted during its course was balanced with tree planting and other environmental support.
         What Emmerich assumes to be a compromise is harmful to his film because people cannot take his message seriously if they’re required to suspend disbelief in the supposed evidence and consequence of the film’s proposals. Never mind the normal cinematic holes and absurdities of blockbuster entertainment; audiences are expectant of them, but they do need assurance in the validity of added propaganda in order to walk away thinking about it. If we don’t have faith that we can survive a week-long ice age or that a subterranean vehicle can dig to the center of the earth to repair its rotation or that NASA will protect us from an asteroid aimed at our planet, then as skeptics we become reminiscent of a time when disaster movies showed us nothing but groups of people overcoming tragedies without wondering how to stop them. Earthquake and Twister and Volcano didn’t make attempts to rid these natural occurrences from our world. They are an accepted part of life and are endured as such. Today’s films utilize scientific theory as a substitute for ancient practices of sacrifice and prayer in the delusion that man can control such calamity.
          Disaster films are scary because and/or when they deal in real, unpredictable, inevitable death and devastation. Though typically marked as action movies, they are similar to horror films in their instillation of fear yet, aside from the chance accidents in the Final Destination franchise, horror films lack the same sense of contingency. Just as the first Final Destination suffered from one simple shot of a retracting water leak, The Day After Tomorrow collapses with a sequence involving a group of characters sighting and then running away from cold. Not one single person who witnesses this moment could find it thrilling and that many could dismiss it and continue their enjoyment with the movie is doubtful.
          Roland Emmerich, with all his intentions, may not see his career as a stepping-stone for his saving the human race, but he does have a sense of influence. He cites Independence Day as possible inspiration for terrorists and correlates New Yorkers’ togetherness on 9/11 to that movie’s defeat of an alien invasion (Underground Online). Before The Day After Tomorrow was released, the media was on its case and discussion of global warming was in the public eye again, but after the movie is seen, the public is likely to remain apathetic or, worse, even less convinced. Emmerich may end up doing more harm than good. The main thing to consider, with regard to the movie’s facts and disaster pics in general, is that all of this has happened before and will happen again and all we can do is hope that somebody, if not ourselves, is still alive in the end.

Expectation Key


there's no possible way we will even see this

we'll eventually see this but we aren't really expecting much

anticipating the release of this one but we're sure to be left unsatisfied

such high expectation of this film only leaves room for disappointment