20 Years Later, One of the Most Accurate Disaster Movies Blew Up Netflix Top

Roland Emmerich became famous for his commercially successful end-of-the-world blockbusters. The filmmaker always sacrificed plot logic for spectacle, for which he was repeatedly criticized.

However, the director could rightly ignore the reviews of journalists. His films almost always made back their large budgets, and the giant Hollywood studios were ready to spend even more money, knowing that the cost of producing another large-scale science fiction or disaster film would bear fruit.

The Day After Tomorrow Is One of the Best Emmerich Disaster Films

In May, one of his most famous films, The Day After Tomorrow, turned 20. At first glance, it is not much different from a typical Emmerich film. The same non-stop cascade of special effects and another threat to the human race as the main plot trigger.

However, the director managed to repeat not only the commercial but also the artistic success of Independence Day, his best film of the 1990s. And even 20 years later, The Day After Tomorrow has managed to rise to the second place in terms of views on Netflix.

Emmerich Based the Plot on Potential Global Threats Discussed by Scientists

Roland Emmerich certainly didn't set the film crew the task of studying a vast array of scientific data on global warming in order to create a realistic picture. Time and again, disaster filmmakers have sacrificed the laws of physics for the sake of spectacle, because if audiences want to know what scientists think, they can always turn to the popular science genre.

Emmerich and his regular co-writer Dean Devlin had a different goal in mind – to reinforce the illusion of plausibility at the expense of a pressing global problem that's on everyone's lips.

The Day After Tomorrow was inspired by an episode of Coast to Coast AM, a radio show where guests speculate on potential global threats. Roland Emmerich was also impressed by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber's book The Coming Global Superstorm, in which the authors predicted various climate change scenarios.

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin visualized many of Bell and Strieber's assumptions in the film. For example, that the northern states would freeze as a result of a change in the Gulf Stream.

Bell and Strieber also theorized that since the mammoths were found well-preserved and with food in their mouths, it meant they were killed by a sharp drop in temperature during the Ice Age. Emmerich took up this idea and imagined a cold cyclone on the screen, instantly freezing everything in its path.

The director warns of the possible consequences of not thinking about the world around us. So it is not surprising that Emmerich's well-constructed ecological disaster movie not only made a lot of money at the worldwide box office, but also sparked a new wave of discussion about environmental issues.