Posted on 05/29/2004 10:47:21 AM PDT by Roberts
Prepare for more religious propaganda: The Day After Tomorrow is the New Left's doomsday evangelism with ecology as its religion. Junk science is sacred to director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla) and most of his cast; the press notes read like Earth First! talking points. The Day After Tomorrow does not pretend to be anything else and, whatever one's view of how and whether global warming poses a danger to man, this disaster movie is undeniably bad.
The plot presumes environmentalist premises, which leads to wildly irrational notions that the world will end in a week's worth of climate change. What man might have done to prevent the end of the world is left unanswered, though a government-subsidized electric car does make an appearance. It is driven by Dennis Quaid's climatologist, who's been warning about catastrophe caused by global warming for years.
The lone voice warning of impending doom is a staple of disaster movies -- Burt Lancaster in Airport, Gene Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure, Victor Garber in Titanic -- and Quaid's is steady if unconvincing. But he is also limited by the character. Whether debating in India, discussing his theories with Ian Holm's aging professor or pleading with his 17-year-old son (lifeless Jake Gyllenhaal), Quaid's eco-hero is a bland savior.
This is the primary problem with The Day After Tomorrow, which features some eye-popping effects for those who separate sound and pictures from plot. People's lives are not the standard of value -- the earth is an end in itself. So the people who move about in the movie are like robots -- wired with ecology's corollary view, multiculturalism -- they feel, they speak, they act, and they don't count.
With Sela Ward's warm ex-wife as the exception, humans are depicted strictly as the earth's inhabitants, a means to the end of Earth as God. Day After trivializes its characters -- as Emmerich did in Independence Day and Godzilla -- by rendering them weak. The cast, from the high school science club stuck in Manhattan to Quaid and his cronies, are barely recognizable as humans -- they are sacrificial lambs for Mother Earth, paying for the sin of driving an SUV.
(Excerpt) Read more at boxofficemojo.com ...
You know for a guy who says he cares so much about the enviornment, Algore seems to have no problem letting terrorists run amok who are hell bent on setting off dirty bombs and/or bio bombs and God knows what else they can lay their hands on. Yeah Al, radioactive fallout or a nice dose of anthrax in the water would do wonders for that Bambi forest in your head, but lets constantly curse out the guy who`s trying to prevent it.
Some people roll their eyes at the thought of Irwin Allen, but he never was nowhere near as bad as Emmerich.
Well, except for the carrot man, perhaps....
Yet when Quaid goes after his kid he used a huge gas sucking SUV.
She who must be obeyed made me go see it (I'm so ashamed) and it was a hoot. Some of the visuals were pretty neat especially heartening was Antarctica and the destruction of NYC.
But the science was really weird, it started it's downhill departure from reality when the North Atlantic Current was apparently graphically depicted as flowing up the West Coast of Africa heading across the Atlantic and down the East Coast of the US.
The shark was jumped when some teenagers were attacked by wolves while aboard an ice bound Russian Tanker in the middle of downtown Manhattans.
The thing that worries me is that this movie will create a wave of anti-S.U.V-itic attacks.
Leftist will exit the movie theatres so worked up that there is sure to be some anti-S.U.V. violence.
Just like what happened when Christians saw The Passion.
Hell, he managed to make Godzilla into a wimp! I STILL haven't forgiven Emmerich for that one. Let's see...take a movie icon, which possessed almost unlimited power and fight, and make it a female iguana which spent most of its time running away, and was finally killed with a couple of missiles while tangled upp and screaming. Oh, yeah, Roland, way to connect with the fans who remembered the original!
After that disaster, why is this Leftist nonsense a surprise?
... The plot presumes environmentalist premises ...Loosely presumes, yes. The film is more about baby boomer family values than the environment. It's the story of a works-too-hard divorced father who is estranged from his son who gets to save the world and his family--and everyone who disagrees with him either dies or has a change of heart (IF ONLY WE HAD LISTENED TO DAD!). The worst moment of the film is when the Indiana Jones PhD climatologist hero bursts into a frozen apartment in a Manhatten library to discover a small band of survivors--a teenaged heroine asks, "who is that?"--"my father", gasps the climatologist's young son in awe of his father's prowess.
It's funny that you mention this..because in the context of the war in Iraq, Saddam has been this planet's worst environmental criminal. Not just as you say his bio/chem warfare...but from the first Gulf War, when he dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf and set his fields ablaze.
Saddam has committed some of the worst acts against Mother Nature, including his draining of the March swamps in an attempt to displace the March Arabs. This act alone, turned a vital eco-system into a disaster area. If enironmentalist were really concerned about the environment, Saddam would've been indicted and forcibly removed by the UN years ago.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I understood the point of it all, whether it was smarmy or preachy, and simply rolled my eyes. I was grinning from ear to ear about the "super tornado" in Los Angeles. And I just loved the Russian freighter floating down the streets of New York. A really fun movie! Only respect for others prohibited me from talking back to the screen, or laughing loudly about the "illegals" from America crossing the border into Mexico, or how nice it was of the third world countries to accept the refugees from the storm. Excuse me, Mr. film maker but hellllooo, if there were such a sudden migration, the "refugees" would be shot, raped, and robbed by the friendly third world governments.
"* In Grocka, bombs fell on the site of a nuclear reactor and large amounts of nuclear waste. (no US media outlet reported this.)
* In Baric, a large factory for the production of chloride (with similar technology as that of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India) was bombed repeatedly. "It is not necessary for me to explain what the blowing up of one of such factories would represent," Jovanovic said during the bombings. "Not only Belgrade, but the rest of Europe would be endangered."
* Pancevo, site of a large petrochemical factory and another plant used to produce fertilizers, was bombed at least a dozen times. Workers panicked and dumped tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube river, rather than risk it being blown up. At least three missile strikes later, oil and gas from the smashed refinery flowed into the Danube forming slicks twelve miles long. Temperatures inside the collapsing factory reached 1,000 degrees centigrade. When asked about the hazard from chemical smoke, NATO said that "there was a lot more smoke coming from burning villages."
* A chemical factory was bombed in Belgrade's suburb, Sremcica. A rocket fuel storage area was hit in the same town, pouring toxins onto surrounding land and into the water."
I am with you. We enjoyed the movie, but I saw it as nothing than another sci-fi with a few great effects. It was not a Great movie and I felt the plot was lacking.
I guess the only thing that really bothered me was the possibility that someone might mistake me as a tree hugger or algore fan, so I wore a Vote for Bush button. LOL
I did laugh out loud when we crossed onto Mexican soil!!
Heh, that was exactly my comment at that scene: "How nice of them!"
The movie was laughably bad, displaying an appalling ignorance not just of weather science but also weather technology. But, I sure enjoyed laughing at the silliness.
Don't get me started on Kosovo:) It's amazing what went on in that war that the media didn't cover. Bush and the US military shut down al-Sadr's anti-American rag and Kerry complains, calling Sadr a legitimate voice. I didn't hear a peep out of Kerry or the libs when Clinton intentionally targeted Serbia TV, killing 20 civilians...as they also went after more than 46 private radio/TV transmitters.
From the bombing of Train #373 to the Chinese Embassy...and the intentional targeting of "public" utilities and electrical grids (all Geneva violations), the US media and the Left reamined silent. As journalist scoured the grounds of pre/post war Iraq looking for the latest American atrocity, our mainstream media was suspiciously absent in Serbia and Kosovo...even though they were there to cover the refugee crisis (which they helped use to support this war).
We weren't taken into the Serb cities and hospitals to see what a 78-day aerial bombardment can do to a country. Of course what did we expect...it would've been called a great failure, since Slobo didn't even leave power for almost a year later, even though we thoroughly destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure.
About the only thing Clinton did right was to bomb the Chinese embassy. Otherwise, I am still skeptical about his motives.
I agree about the Chinese Embassy as it appears that they may have been tranmitting info and intel to slobo. But...what do you think this media would've done to Bush if he would've done the same...and then used the excuse, antiquated maps? This followed the blunder at Al-Shifa and Afghanistan...and unlike the empty tents and camels Clinton stuck earlier, 3 Chinese died in this strike. Whether one thinks Kosovo was right or wrong...it's the double-standard that sets me off.
I never accepted that it was an "accident." I too, think the Chinese were transmitting information that could have killed Americans, so tough luck. As we have seen, the press has been merciless in attacking the President for any mistake, real or imagined. Come to think of it, I distinctly recall Al Gore stridently demanding the resignation of the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of State because the Chinese Embassy bombing. (NOT)
LOL!! Why did the theme music from Indiana Jones come tumbling into my brain as I read the above?
MSNBC was reporting on the flooding on Hispanola, and the put up a side banner with the headline CARIBBEAN STORMS, and below it a picture of a breaking ocean wave, which has no actual relevance to the disaster.
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