Movies
Jake Gyllenhaal and Ian Holmes are returning to TV screens in their fan-favorite disaster movie. The duo’s smash-hit, critically and commercially successful The Day After Tomorrow is finally streaming on Netflix today.
Directed by Roland Emmerich, the sci-fi disaster is about a global superstorm that plunges the world into a new Ice Age. It is based on the 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber.
The Day After Tomorrow dramatically depicts the catastrophic climatic effects of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation. A series of extreme weather events accelerates climate change and leads to a new ice age. The film was a box office blockbuster, making around $552.6 million on a $125 million budget (via Box Office Mojo).
What makes The Day After Tomorrow one of Hollywood’s most memorable disaster movies?
Despite its 2004 release, The Day After Tomorrow remains one of Hollywood’s most memorable disaster movies for many reasons. These include its iconic visuals, terrifying sci-fi concepts, and its rescue journey.
The movie delivered a massive, high-budget spectacle, featuring scenes including a colossal tidal wave that swamps Manhattan and submerges the Statue of Liberty, multiple simultaneous tornadoes shredding Los Angeles, and even massive hailstones hitting Tokyo. It also popularized the terrifying sci-fi trope of super-cooled air descending from the eye of giant storms, which instantly flash-freezes everyone and everything in its path.
Amid the global cataclysm, the story centers on an intimate survival and rescue mission. Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) treks on foot from Philadelphia through a frozen wasteland to save his son, Sam (Gyllenhaal), trapped inside the New York Public Library.
Meanwhile, Holm stars as Terry Rapson, a Scottish oceanographer at Scotland’s Hedland Centre who befriends Jack over their shared concerns about climate change, triggering a new ice age by disrupting the North Atlantic Current.
The Day After Tomorrow’s cast was as star-studded as its storyline. It included Sela Ward, Emmy Rossum, Arjay Smith, Austin Nichols, Dash Mihok, Jay O. Sanders, Kenneth Welsh, Perry King, Nestor Serrano, Tamlyn Tomita, and Glenn Plummer alongside Quaid, Holm, and Gyllenhaal.
You can now stream The Day After Tomorrow on Netflix.
