The Day After Tomorrow (spoilers warning)

mafiaman · Post by **mafiaman** » Sat May 29, 2004 2:29 am

I saw it this morning. I had some nachos and a cherry coke to snack on during the movie. The only good thing about the movie I can say is that those were the tastiest nachoes and the most refreshing cherry coke I ever had.

The movie was overly preachy (yes, global warming sucks, we know this, its all caused by those damned consumer culture countries too) when it showed the 'reformed'/'humbled' vice president denouncing his poor policy decisions which led to the crisis and when the astronauts were looking out the porthole at Earth after the Killer Storm and remarked about "having never seen the sky so clear" - as if the mass death that happened from this storm was a good, cleansing kind of genocide - I felt like standing and saying "Amen, brother!"

When I go to see a flick like this, I want to see an Irwin Allen kind of Disaster Flick. Something along the lines of 'The Poseidon Adventure' or even 'Volcano', though it wasn't an Irwin Allen - it was up to those standards. 'The Day After Tomorrow' had some nice special effects, it was obvious that quite a bit of money had been spent on those, I wish that at least one-tenth of the special effects budget had been spent on the script. See, the trick in any fantastic movie, either science fiction or fantasy, is maintaining the audiences suspension of disbelief in the events happening on the screen. If the actions and events are too unbelievable, then the story fails. I'll touch on a few of my favorite gaffs.
1) The wolves. Now it isn't bad enough that Our Heroes are trying to get supplies from a Russian ship that is ice-locked nearby, they also have to fend off a quartet of arctic wolves who have escaped from the zoo. How they survived a few days of flooding and killing cold in Manhattan and then managed to zero in on Our Heroes is pushing it. But hey, I guess you just can't have an arctic survival setting without a few wolves - is old Russian tradition....
2) The characters of the Scientist's Wife and the Heroic Self-Sacrificing Assisstant had no real purpose in the movie. The Scientist's Wife did not help move the plot along or illustrate the dangerous nature of this Killer Storm, she was just some extra eye-candy to ensure that the women in the audience didn't feel left out of the story by not having a character to relate to. The Heroic Self-Sacrificing Assisstant had as much purpose in the story as socks on a rooster, he dies to save the others and the main characters just go on without a second thought, after the obligatory anguished face on glass moment - he might as well have been a redshirt from Star Trek.
3) The politics. I sincerely doubt that Mexico would welcome refugees from the United States unless they were bringing with them as much of their wealth and industrial capacity as could be shipped. It seems more like the grounds for a war then a peaceful coexistance being invade by several million Americans looking for a new home.
4) the science seems questionable, but I am still researching this one and so will say nothing.

Last but not least, one of my pet peeves. The space station was tumbling. A new thing for cinematographers is to have objects in space spinning and moving to show that they that they are IN SPACE. This just makes it look like the ship or station has a drunken redneck at the steering wheel because it has no attitude control to provide stability.

I think that if you want to see this movie, then you should rent it on DVD or see a matinee or wait for the dollar theatre.

rec|use · Post by **rec|use** » Sun May 30, 2004 12:52 am

uhm
i posted this on another msg board it won't touch on all the topics you brought up but i don't wanna think or type anymore about this movie today so i'll just some topics i'd like to touch on
here they are

the cancer kid
to me was kinda symbolic of the fact that despite the society around these people was being destroyed more and more every min
in times of chaos it's still ingrained in our minds to take care of our offspring (even though he wasn't hers, and he did have cancer) so that our species can continue to exist

the wolves are kinda on the other spectrum of this
despite what tragedy may face all species on the planet
the wolves represent the programed cycle of nature
they have no pitty or concern for any other thing except for themselves
they want to live
they want to eat
they could care less if the boy needs penicillin for the girl
it's true nature and instinct

another great statement i think the movie made
is how blindly all the people followed the cop out into the storm
not knowing if they would live or not
but
everyone else is doing it
and the guy in the uniform
the man that protects the people (who didn't even listen to the people)
lead them to death

then there is the guy who loved nietzsche
and grasped to the copy of the bible
as a token of western civilization
a symbol of one of many of the downfalls and decline of our civilization
(i'm really not sure what to make of all of this scene)

then again i'm probably reading way to much into this 2 hour commercial for hiking gear and honda cars
but all and all i thought it was a good movie

and the mexico border scene was pure beauty
as was the capital records building and hollywood sign being destroyed

Lost Traveler · Post by **Lost Traveler** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 11:28 am

the ONLY good things about this movie is 1. the so-so cg of LA getting hit by the tornados and it even gets boring before its done, 2.The flooding of new york city (but then its just the reverse or independance day) 3. The little homage to 9/11 firefighters.
..... so lets ad that up to a total of about 5 mins.

The rest of it is pretty much crap and stupid crap at that. In the movie they even point out that some of the stuff going on wouldnt go on :roll:

At some point some of the main characters must have realized how bad this was going to be (als Tim Robbins in Mission to mars, with his happy face death) and simply disapeared (sometimes not even with a contrived plot twist). And then the preachyness :roll:

, I actually agree with most of the ideals behind this movie and was ready to vote bush by the end (and the down troden and poor people of the third world welcomed us with open arms :roll:

)

Though the kid who was playing the son, if the guy doing spider man ever gets too upity about his contract, this kid could easly step in.

anyway dont waste your money. (hell just because they made this such a bad movie, you should take what you would spend on it and go out and burn up that much gas.)