‘I don’t accept that abandoning half of the country is necessary…’
I haven’t seen The Day After Tomorrow for a long time. In my head, it’s a film that I’ve always enjoyed but the sands of time have not been kind to Roland Emmerich’s disaster epic. Indeed, time has not been kind to Emmerich at all if his 2022 fiasco Moonfall is anything to go by. Emmerich is something of a master of disaster having also gifted the world Independence Day, Godzilla and 2012. While he is obviously adept at blowing things up, it’s hard to argue that his films are actually good beyond Independence Day and his best film Universal Soldier. The Day After Tomorrow is not a good film. But it has moments that just about make it worthwhile…
I feel like attempting to write down the plot of a Roland Emmerich is a fool’s errand but as something of a fool myself let’s get to it. Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), an American paleoclimatologist, has discovered some kind of climate-based disaster is imminent. Naturally, his pleas for action fall on deaf ears. Elsewhere, his precocious son Sam (Jack Gyllenhaal) is travelling across America for some reason and there is a girl he likes (an anonymous Emmy Rossum). It’s all utter nonsense.
While I guess it’s admirable that Emmerich crafted a mainstream blockbuster that also serves as a stark warning against the dangers of climate change, that message is delivered so bluntly that it makes Don’t Look Up seem subtle. While this film never plunges the depths of the aforementioned, it is also eye-rollingly portentous. Indeed, the whole thing would be a complete mess if not for the competency of Quaid and Gyllenhaal. Both of whom turn derivative, one-note characters into something approaching human. Some of the set piece sequences are impressive and all the stuff in the library is great, but much of the SFX are horribly dated now and it is hard to imagine The Day After Tomorrow finding a new audience any time soon.
Emmerich’s ecological disaster movie has moments of greatness, but in 2025 it feels more like the pilot to a particularly ambitious TV show rather than a huge, cinematic event – a film that should be left in the past where it belongs.