The Day After Tomorrow - 05/26/04

Written by: Roland Emmerich, Jeffrey Nachmanoff

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Sela Ward, Ian Holm

Official Site

This is the first film that Emmerich has made without producer/writer partner Dean Devlin. I found that pretty strange, since the two have been working together since Universal Soldier in 1992. They would then go on to make Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and The Patriot... all of them (especially ID4) were money makers.

Devlin also helped produce (with Emmerich) on Eight Legged Freaks. He's got a film called The Girls Next Door, being directed by Emmerich, in 2006 he's producing... we shall see.

Emmerich came up with the idea for this film while making The Patriot. Outdoor scenes were being pushed back because of the weather, and it made him wish he was able to control the weather. It prompted him to read 'The Coming Global Superstorm' by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber to help him tailor the action and effects of the film.

I'm a big fan of Emmerich's movies. Even Godzilla, which was an incredibly ambitious project that was overtly muddy in its relying on CG effects. I remember when I saw ID4 in the theaters, July 2nd, two days before it opened. It was the single most fun I've had in a theater, because the crowd went nuts during some great scenes. Well, seeing this film in the theater ranks upon the top five of my favorite times watching a movie in the theaters.

The crowd was juiced up. I got my ticket from JoBlo.com, Mike Sampson over there. He hooked me up with a ticket, and when I got there, at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan, the line was around the block. It seems that K-Rock (a music station here) had their own promo going, and, well, the Ziegfeld holds 1,200 seats... so, I got to the back of the line and waited. And waited. Then my girlfriend showed up and we got into the theater and waited some more...

By the time the movie started, everyone was psyched.

I've never seen anything by Jeffrey Nachmanoff... so I think it's safe to assume that Emmerich and Nachmanoff know each other in some way.

The plot for this film is relatively simple. The basic plot, I should say. The circumstantial plot, i.e. the weather, is more of a character than anything else. I found that the weather was the source for the majority of the suspense in the film... but since you knew that the weather was the main reason behind the film, it didn't really come as a surprise. You knew the weather was going to get so bad that it would be doing huge amounts of damage...

My point is that the weather isn't the plot of the film. The plot of the film is a man trying to find his son. That's it. I call the weather 'circumstantial' because it is the conflict of the story. It's a circumstance that prevents certain things from happening, and helps add the tension to the movie.

So, with the weather evolving and propelling the story along, we get to know the characters pretty well. The development isn't bad, the characters dialog is written pretty well, so I think that Nachmanoff and Emmerich did a good job with the writing of this script.

One could say that with enough money, anyone could make a movie that centered around effects, but I don't think that's the case. Steadily, Emmerich has found a nitch market for movies that take people's breath away. ID4 is a perfect example of that. Godzilla was supposed to be that, but fell short. I really can't comment on The Patriot because I never saw the movie all the way through... but this film definetely delivers on some awe inspiring imagery.

I really don't want to go into the acting too much in this film, because it's a summer movie and it's not that the actors did a bad job, they didn't... in fact, they were quite good... but I didn't go to this movie to see Dennis Quaid, or Gyllenhaal or Holm. I went to see what Emmerich had up his sleeve.

Everyone did a good job with their respective roles. Gyllenhaal was the best of the group, and had some of the funnier moments in the film. Sometimes I think he comes off as a little bland in his roles, but I was impressed with his work here.

DP Ueli Steiger has worked on a number of Emmerich's films. He was an additional photographer on ID4, then took the reigns on Godzilla, then did second unit work on The Patriot. Soapdish, Singles, Chasers, The Jerky Boys, Austin Powers 2, Bowfinger, Just Visiting, Rock Star, Stealing Harvard... a strange group of work, the majority of which doesn't have half the CG that Emmerich's films have, which is a little strange.

Steiger did some phenomenal work in this film. You have to wonder how much knowledge a DP has to have of CGI to make sure that the scene they are working on will be usable for the CG team. I would think that the CG team and the DP work very closely together... but the DP has so many other things to worry about, including the lighting... which, in this film, was pretty important.

All in all, this is an incredibly entertaining summer movie. Keep in mind that this film has some strange scenes of humor, including some political satire that I, and the rest of the audience, found hysterical. It's very tongue-in-cheek, but is very apropos of the current administration.