Posted on 06/02/2004 12:44:36 AM PDT by kattracks
In 1997’s “Batman And Robin,” a maniacal Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) runs around with an ice-emitting blaster gun turning Gotham into the North Pole, while he grunts: “Stop Global Warming! Start Global Freezing!”
There may actually be more science in the last installment of the Caped Crusader saga than in “The Day After Tomorrow,” which premiered on May 28th.
The $200-million Summer blockbuster features super-tornadoes smashing LA, hail stones the size of Toyotas falling in Tokyo, waves that wash an oil tanker up Fifth Avenue in New York, and a blizzard that turns Manhattan into Mt. Everest.
It’s “Deep Impact” meets Willard Scott. It’s junk science meets disaster films. It’s Chicken Little with brain freeze. It’s – really, really dumb.
In “The Day After Tomorrow,” melting polar ice caps caused by our failure to elect Al Gore in 2000, result in a change in ocean currents, unleashing cataclysmic weather patterns and plunging much of the northern hemisphere into a new ice age. This all happens in the time it takes for moviegoers to visit the concession stand and make it back to their seats with popcorn and Slushies.
The movie is filled with cinematic clichés : the intrepid scientist who dumb politicians won’t listen to (Dennis Quaid), the stupid Republican vice president who actually cares about the impact of draconian regulations on the economy ( the film stopped just short of having this character wear a name badge that says “Hi, I’m Dick Cheney”), the wise homeless person (who mutters about people in cars poisoning the environment, as he pushes his shopping cart down the street), the angry-but-caring feminist, and the New York intellectual who doesn’t believe in God but insists on saving a Gutenberg Bible because the printed word represents “man’s greatest achievement.” Coming from Hollywood, which has done so much to promote functional illiteracy, the last is truly hilarious.
Roland Emmrich -- the producer and co-writer of this eco-hysteria, a German who once told Der Spiegel, “I would never want to be an American” -- even managed to work in a plea for open immigration, as millions of Americans, fleeing frigidity, cross the Rio Grande illegally into Mexico but nevertheless are warmly welcomed by our big-hearted neighbors to the south, who – the film implies – are far more generous and humane than Americans, who cruelly want to control their borders.
The impact on moviegoers who think Newton’s first name is Fig remains to be seen. The left – from establishment to fringe – loves it. So bereft of logic is Gore, that he’s taken to using the film to make the case for global warming.
The Bush-a-phobic MoveOn.org breathlessly discloses, “The Day After Tomorrow” is “the movie the White House doesn’t want you to see.” Presumably, this is because voters will then realize that Bush is single-handedly destroying the environment – from ozone layer to rain forests -- and send him into chilly exile in November.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which generally favors repealing the Industrial Revolution, gushes that the film is “an opportunity for the scientific community to help educate the public and decision-makers about the known causes and consequences of climate change as well as solutions at hand.” (At the same time, the scientific socialists confess on their website, “the dramatic, virtually instantaneous cooling depicted in the film is fiction.”) In other words: “The Day After Tomorrow” bears no relation to REALITY, but is a really great propaganda, nonetheless.
In an article in the May 27 New York Times (“A Film That Could Warm Up the Debate on Global Warming”), editorialist Robert Semple, Jr., while admitting the frosty epic has “a relationship to scientific reality tenuous at best,” nevertheless chortles, “the timing couldn’t be better.”
Particularly since, “scientists, environmentalists and a few lonely politicians have been trying without great success to get the public and the Bush administration to take global warming seriously, and to inject the issue into a presidential campaign that so far seems determined to ignore it.”
Indeed, according to an April 20th. Gallup Poll, for most Americans global warming is (gnash your teeth, Al Gore) “a bit of a yawn.” Worse, for environmental doomsayers, the public thinks the media is exaggerating the seriousness of the problem, by 38% to 33%.
So, what do you do when objective scientific inquiry and argumentation based on reason fail? Bring on the Hollywood scaremongers, a la “The China Syndrome” and 1982’s made-for-TV movie “The Day After”, where the arms race triggers nuclear winter!
What passes for science in “The Day After Tomorrow” is “beyond laughable,” says New Republic Senior Editor Gregg Easterbrook.
Is the Earth’s overall temperature rising? Probably. The best measurements show that, around the globe, temperatures have risen approximately 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900 – not quite enough to make polar bears migrate to Miami. Satellite-based weather sensors, recording data since 1978, show little appreciable warming.
If the Earth is heating up, why is anyone’s guess. It might be so-called greenhouse gases. Then again, it could be just the periodic warming and cooling of the planet.
Plaeoclimatologists tell us that between 800 and 1300 AD, much of the Earth was several degrees warmer than it is today -- not due to too many SUVs in Medieval villages. Then the Little Ice Age descended and the Earth cooled for roughly 600 years. Around 1900, overall temperatures began to rise again.
Global warming due to the concentration of greenhouse gases produced by emissions from burning fossil fuels is – now pay attention, Al – a THEORY.
What isn’t theoretical is the impact the Kyoto Treaty would have on our economy. Signed by the Clinton administration in 1997 (over a unanimous protest by the Senate), it was never submitted for ratification for a simple reason – other than Bill, Al and the environmentalist hard core, no one supports it.
The cost? Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” believes: “The cost of such a Kyoto pact, just for the U.S., will be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation. It is estimated that the latter would avoid two million deaths (from diseases like infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year.”
Such calculations don’t faze environmental elitists – from Hollywood to Times Square. For them, it’s an article of faith that production and consumption are inherently evil. Mankind must be purged of the original sin of the internal combustion engine, regardless of the costs or consequences.
In short, even if they truly believed that global warming was a myth, they’d still want us to kill our SUVs, ride bicycles to work, burn chicken manure and have the economy of North Korea. – that is, for everyone except the Hollywood/New York elites, which would continue to private-jet to exotic destinations, ride in stretch limousines and build 40-car garages attached to their primary mansions for friends attending their parties.
How much of an impact “The Day After Tomorrow” will have on the producer’s hoped-for 20 million moviegoers remains to be seen. But the real disaster in the film isn’t super-hurricanes leveling L.A. or glaciers in New York. It’s the twisted attempt to harness pseudo-science to the cause of environmental hysteria through the medium of cinema.
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant.
The real question is how much of the 200 million will this movie lose?
None unfortuenetly. $85 million is spectatuclar for any movie. Even if it drops 50% for the second weekend, thats still about 42.5 million. Adding 125.5 million right there in two weeks. Granted, part of the money goes the theaters, but, factor in future DVD sales, and the buzz overseas which broke worldwide records (fueled by the hate Bush crowd in many of these nations), it will make a profit.
As one who follows "BoxOfficeMoJo.com" religiously, I can tell you the "The Day After Tomorrow" will make money! Not much, but it will make money. What it will not do is be successful with its political message. It that area it is already a total failure. This movie, hyped to Nth degree by MoveOn.org and Al Gore, will die in its second week. For goodness sake, "Shrek II", a cartoon whipped its butt this first week! One needs to go to the Friday/Saturday revenues to spot the trend of a movie going nowhere. When the Saturday revenue does not increase over the Friday revenue that generally means the movie has no legs. I suspect the revenue this week will fall off the cliff in the same manner that "Troy" has. The trick is to watch the dollar revenue numbers. They always tell the story. The big boys never let politics get in the way when they want "real" blockbusters such as Shrek II, Nemo, Spiderman, Titanic, The Passion of Christ, The Lion King, The Godfather Series, etc. Why make a movie that destroys at least half your audience before it hits the screen? That is insanity! The Day After Tomorrow has had its brief fifteen minutes of fame, and like moron Al Gore will tumble into the black hole of obscurity rather quickly!!!
The liberals' "Passion Of The Christ."
Al Gore and friends have such contempt for the American People that they think this movie will help their Global Warming case. I think exactly the opposite -- that this obviously overdone garbage will, if anything, result in people taking him and his case even less seriesly.
The obviously linking of the movie's Veep to Cheney will not help them either. It is TOO OBVIOUS that this movie is blatant political propaganda. Unfortunately for them, it makes Saddam's "Baby Milk Factory" look subtle.
Of course it's scientifically unsound. So was "Independence Day", with all the anti-gravity stuff. But I'm pretty sure I would enjoy the movie for the special effects. I'll just wait for the video. I wouldn't want to give money to a political front.
They should make a movie of the book Lucifer's Hammer.
4 posted on 06/02/2004 1:42:41 AM PDT by Simmy2.5 (Kerry. When you need to ketchup...)
I'm not so sure about that..125 mill in two weeks...say maybe 50 mill from dvds etc (which few people will buy, IMHO)..larger than 200 mill production costs (am I correct there?)..
Now take a look at The Passion (Christian religious film - DAT is the Athiest religious film). The Passion cost Gibson around $30 million to produce, and it's likely to take in a total of around 400 million total.
Which religious film was more of a success?
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