The signs of global warming are now being felt all over the world. I believe that our planet is in a warming trend, and it will eventually lead us to a new ice age. However, this will not happen over night like the movie The Day After Tomorrow portrays but over the course of centuries. Little weather anomalies will happen in deferent parts of the world; such as, droughts, floods, and larger hurricanes and typhoons. For example, in August of 2005, Central and Eastern Europe experienced the worst flooding in thirty years. The counties that received the most damage were Germany, Switzerland and Romania. These countries lost billions of Euros and hundreds of human lives. In Romania, 30 towns were destroyed and 13,000 people were permanently displaced (“Guy Carpenter”). The most recent example of these weather anomalies happen in Northern Australia. On April 23, 2006 Darwin, Australia was hit with a category five typhoon. This typhoon set a new record wind speed of 217 miles per hour and caused a tremendous amount of damage (“Hurricane Monica”). In the future, it will become a challenge for mankind’s survival because of the increasingly unstable environment. Humanity will have to adjust to these weather anomalies. As a global community, we must learn that consuming our natural resources comes with its consequences.
These consequences are vividly revealed in the movie The Day after Tomorrow staring Dennis Quaid as Jack Hall. Hall is a climatologist trying to save his son Sam played by Jake Gyllenhaal from a destructive tidal wave the hits New York City. Sam is invited to New York to participate in jeopardy contest between the elite private high school on the east coast. He is driven there because of a passion he has with a fellow female student. During the jeopardy contest, the weather continues to deteriorate, the rain fills the streets and eventually floods the subways and storm drains. At the same time, Hall is in Washington D.C. trying to convince the president and vice president of the impending global weather anomalies. Jack Hall wants an immediate evacuation of all Americans that live north of the Mason Dixon line, but his request is denied. The weather continues to worsen, and snow begins to fall in New York. Hall realizes that his son is stranded in New York City. So after he finished his summit in Washington D.C., he and his fellow co-workers joined together in the arduous journey to New York City to save his son and a small band of survivors. This movie has a wonderful plot of Mankind vs. Mother Nature, and a to beat all odds theme. On the other hand, it doesn’t rightfully depict the growing issue of global warming. Global warming is an event that takes centuries not days.
The special affects were cataclysmic and over dramatic. It left the audience with an unrealistic view of what global warming is currently doing to our planet. The movie depicts that a global catastrophe like that could be real. In reality, in a three day time period for this chain of events could not happen. For example, the oceans are rising at a conservative estimate of one meter per century (“Polar Ice”). This proves that the 25 foot wall of sea water that engulfed the East Coast of Canada and the city of New York could not happen. The only way a tidal wave of that size could form is by a tsunami. The movie America’s Tsunami claims that this would happen if the Madriena Island’s fault-line located next to the West Coast of Africa gave way. This is caused from years of rain water due to the development of hurricanes in that region. Therefore, the rain is saturating the island’s volcanic cave network. In return, this would cause a liquefaction of the island’s steepest mountains. If these mountains slide into the Atlantic Ocean, it would create a tsunami that could wipe out most of the Atlantic coast line in North America. Scientists have been predicting this catastrophe for years (America’s). Even though the special effects were not that accurate, it was still interesting and entertaining. The movie industry should spend more time on the research behind the special effects. This would make the movie more believable.
The movie The Day After Tomorrow presents some accurate and current issue to its audience. The movie deals with a United States presidential administration that is unwilling to sign the Kyoto protocol. In the vice president’s defense, he argues that the global economy and the U.S economy have a larger precedence over global warming. Even though the Kyoto committee is being held in the tropical region of New Delia, India and the irony of the weather in that region turning cold and snowy. This presents the viewer with a visual weather anomaly that our vice president cannot deny or ignore. This scene makes the United States look like the main culprit in the production of greenhouse gases. In the movie, the opinions of the vice president are striking similar to the ones that are currently believed in by President Bush. The article “U.S. walks out of climate change” states that the Bush Administration walked out of Kyoto protocols in December of 2005 because of the greenhouse gas restrictions that 150 nations wanted to put on the United States. The Bush administration claims that these restrictions could have a damaging effect to the economy. In response to this, Tony Juniper, the director of Friends of the Earth states, “The U.S is responsible for 25 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. It should take its responsibility for leading the way but instead, under George Bush, it has been taken backwards” (Buncombe). This is only one of thousands of articles about the United State’s lack of participation in the Kyoto protocols. In the movie, the New Deli summit is the key symbol, and it is the driving force for the main plot. Furthermore, I believe this seen is also politically motivated by the world governments that support the Kyoto protocols.
In closing, The Day After Tomorrow has a Science Fiction genre to it. However, the use of the scientific theories of global warming did not make the movie’s special effect very believable. An example of this is the outbreak of tornados in Los Angeles. The tornados did not look real and the computer simulations of these scenes were at best…marginal. The cover of the movie reads, “From the directors of Independence Day.” I saw this movie, and the special effects were more believable than The Day After Tomorrow. However, the acting was very good. I enjoyed Dennis Quaid’s persuasive performance, when he was trying to convince the vice president of the United States of the effects of global warming. Furthermore, the journey to New York City was believable because I can empathize with Jack Hall the climatologist. In Montana, I used to hunt with my Dad in the middle of the winter, and it was some of my coldest and snowiest memories. And last, the title The Day After Tomorrow gives humanity a since of hope and security after a global catastrophe. Also, it makes clear that consuming our natural resource will only destroy the future of mankind.
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