The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

[Ginger Yellow]

I mean, I knew it wasn't going to be any good, but fuck me it's awful. I'm not even going to start on the science, although I will say that I nearly pissed myself laughing when they took shelter from the worst snowstorm in the history of civilisation in a fucking plastic tent.

But while the science is really, really dumb, it's not as bad as, say, The Core. But the film itself is far worse. To call the characters paper-thin would be an insult to paper, their actions make no sense, and of course, only America's suffering matters. Except that even America's suffering doesn't matter. None of the characters seem to care that it's the end of the fucking world.

[EIM]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

I'm off to France the day after tomorrow.

But the film, yes, is shit.

[tee rex]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

I gave up after the football-watching scene, early on. A guy shouts "kick it! kick it!" at the TV, and generally looks like he's never done this before in real life.

Mind you, he is supporting Man United.

[Guest]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

Oh I so disagree about The Core. I don't really care which one has the worst science (I liked Sunshine, until the final act) but the Core was absolutely fucking horrible in terms of the cliches, the dreadful manipulative shit with the guess which order they're going to die in, the horrendous pedestrian narrative, the lack of any form of fucking respect for its audience whatsoever. At least in TDAT there is a little bit of concern for humanity, a tiny glimpse of a political edge, a modicum of humour.

I just watched a thing about the history of the geology of the east coast of North America. Very interesting. New York was once under a glacier over a mile high! And will be again, in 40 million years.

[Outside Agent]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

I noted that the football match they were watching was between Manchester Utd and Boca Juniors. It was probably some pre-season friendly, but it's passed of as a Champions League tie. I hate factual incorrections like that - a bit like those football-themed birthday cards I used to get as a kid, with two players challenging for a ball. Then you realise that their career at their respective clubs never overlapped. It's just wrong, and very annoying.

In the movie, the weak science was annoying, but the worst part was Dennis Quaid's trek to New York. Despite the city being completely submerged in snow, with only the top of a handful of buildings to go by, specific parts of the city are easily found as though NY has been condensed into a small neighbourhood that you could walk across in fifteen minutes.

The freak weather scenes were ejnoyable to watch on the big screen however.

[Squid Ink]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

So what was weak about the science in the Day After Tomorrow? I loved the movie, it was great hacky B-movie stuff, albeit with a massive budget. I'm sure the science was weak, I'm just curious to know how and why.

[Outside Agent]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

The onset of an ice age, as occurred in the movie, goes against what every scientific study is pointing towards. And that such a shift could occur over the course of a few days was not just far-fetched, it was plain unbelievable.

I know it's only a movie, and needs to be edited and condensed in such a way as to make it entertaining viewing, but the scientific aspect to the movie was it's foundation - a major climatic change.

[Ginger Yellow]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

[Guest]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

Yeah, I couldn't work that one out. Has he seen Sunshine or what? It doesn't make much sense either way.

[ian.64]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

What, this is the semi-finals of the Anal-Retentive Pedant Of The Year 2009? If disaster movies stuck to hard, realistic science then most of them would be critic-proof in terms of detail, but they'd be fucking boring to watch ("Yes, this is Dr. Neidorf. It's bad news - that iceberg I told you about? It's shrunk another 3 millimeters in the last year. Get Swanson to organise the National Guard!"). Disaster movies are what they are exactly because they are gallumphing great orgies of destruction and noise that do away with logic and characterisation as soon as they begin (although, admittedly, it also makes them dramatically redundant at the same time). It's hard to adhere to a delicate narrative line or even care about any characters when the main reason that events are committed to celluloid is because people seem to want to see things crash, burn, collapse or explode.

I liked The Core mainly because it was a well-made, polished piece of senseless Hollywood tat that narrowed its obligatory large roster of Cast Members Who Wouldn't Make It to a small band of good actors making the most of what they were given, and, until its petered-out ending (it stopped being interesting when Stanley Tucci's superbly dream-queenish scientist bit the big one in its 'ripple in a pond' climax), was very watchable. That it wasn't a documentary that stuck to rigid scientific fact was signified by Hilary Swank's lesson in Space Shuttle 'Top Gear' driving at the start. You could possibly hear Ben Goldacre chucking his cup at the telly when the Golden Gate Bridge was cut to ribbons by savage sun rays, but the rules of ridiculousness were set down way before that, so what the hey.

The Day After Tomorrow suffered not from its strict committance to the decrees of science, but simply down to the fact that it was po-faced and, despite moments of interest, defiantly dull. Not to mention hugely irritating - the afore-mentioned Man Utd-supporting bloke holding up a glass of booze giving the Old Trafford outfit a toast seemed to smack of one hell of a desperate attempt to woo a football-supporting demographic as opposed to a normal cinema-going one. Bet that bit got cries of 'fuck off!' in the multiplexes. And Roland Emmerich is fast becoming one of the most boring filmmakers in cinema. Just ten minutes of 10,000BC, for example, is almost a challenge to you to find something else more constructive to do. Like picking your nose or farting.

Let's face it, it'll be a great day when a filmmaker manages to devise a disaster movie that not just engages the eye and the brain and provides characters that you can empathise with and believe in, but also manages to assauge those who seek a little more conviction and realism in the science that such films use as a basis for all that on-screen distruction. Until then, you've got (like it or not) 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, The Core, Twister, Volcano, Dante's Peak and many others. Some enjoyable, some shit, but all sharing the same shamelessly absurd element of patent ridiculousness against which any effort to make events comparable to the world in which we live is rendered useless.

It's either that or watching those cheapjack movies on the Sci-Fi Channel with names like 'Tornado: Nature Unleashed'. Now there's disaster.

[Guest]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

Lyra wrote:

Oh I so disagree about The Core. I don't really care which one has the worst science

[ian.64]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

So you don't like The Core and I do. Glad we got that cleared up, then.

[Moonlight Shadow]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

Hear, hear Ian. What got me in TDAT was the old bloke talking about a 10 years old single malt as if it was something unique and precious...It's level entry single malt, you can get a bottle at Tesco for less than 20£...

Anyhow, the science is slighlty less silly nowadays, a sudden cool down would merely take months rather than decades if that study on sediments in Ireland is confirmed.

PS You'll be surprised how sturdy some tents are GY...

[Ginger Yellow]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

In the spirit of Lyra's most recent post:

But while the science is really, really dumb, it's not as bad as, say, The Core. But the film itself is far worse.

Like I say, what makes TDAT bad is that it's a bad film. I really enjoy the Core, in large part because of its terrible science. That said, there is a point where suspension of disbelief becomes very difficult. It's one thing to take a ludicrous premise and run with it. It's another to take a reasonable premise and take a few liberties on the way. But it's another thing altogether to break the laws of physics every single time you even address them.

[evilC]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

Bah!

These films are huge tomes of reason next to the mad-fest that was 'The Giant Spider Invasion'

Quoting from IMDB, above:

"A black hole hits North Wisconsin and opens a door to other dimensions. Giant 15 meter spiders emerge from it, who have an appetite for human flesh! Dr. Jenny Langer and Dr. Vance from the NASA try to save the world."

Epic-ly shit special effects, too. Made 'Night Of The Lepus' look like Ben Hur.

[Guest]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

Ian, bloody hell, I was replying to

What, this is the semi-finals of the Anal-Retentive Pedant Of The Year 2009? If disaster movies stuck to hard, realistic science then most of them would be critic-proof in terms of detail, but they'd be fucking boring to watch

by pointing out that I already said I don't give a toss about it sticking to science. I think it's a shit *film*.

[De Geas Clean Linen]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit

The Core is watchable thanks to a great cast...

[Ginger Yellow]

The Day After Tomorrow is really, really shit