Funnily, there aren’t as many rules governing Weather and Climate Change films. But they do tend to be more factually sound than say Alien Invasion or Monster films: there has to be some scientific basis for a weather or climate event change, and that basis is typically rooted in the current climate changes we’re experiencing today.
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The first film I’m remarking, The Day After Tomorrow, was made in 2004, and concerns perhaps the most serious and widely discussed climate change today: the effects of global warming, and what if that process of change is accelerated by changes in water temperature and ocean currents on Earth.
While the cause-effect sequence of such a calamity occurring could be roughly correct in principle, the acceleration and speed of such change requires a big leap across that chasm of disbelief.
Once that’s out of the way, The Day After Tomorrow wasn’t too bad. And that fact is the more surprising considering that the film was directed by Roland Emmerich of Godzilla and Independence Day. He surely must have a thing about disaster epics LOL.
I like the premise too: rather than have Earth cooked by global warming as conventional wisdom would lead you to guess what the disaster is, Earth was getting a (re)visit from the Ice Age. Lots of people getting frozen to death, helicopters crashing because of frozen fuel lines etc.
As for the cast, the show had Dennis Quaid who typically stars in thankless and unfortunate father-dude roles, and the younger Jake Gyllenhaal whom I enjoy watching and look forward to his new upcoming Prince of Persia film.
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The other climate change film was made a year before in 2003: The Core, and this film couldn’t had been more different. Earth’s molten core has stop rotating, which leads to the gradual disappearance of the huge electromagnetic field around the planet that’s protecting us from the deadly radiation from the sun. Without that field, all of us are cooked, literally. Talk about getting roasted LOL.
Our solution? Rather than have a bunch of heroes shooting out into space to, I don’t know, construct a huge Neutral Density 8 filter to block out the sun’s rays, the intrepid heroes barrel back into earth in a driller vehicle/machine to restart the core using nuclear bombs.
Unfortunately, once the film gets to the part where the heroes decides to drill, it also gets into areas which require you to abandon all factual sense.
But then again, no one on earth has dug past a few kilometres into the Earth’s crust. Who’s to say what really lies beyond that? For all we know, there could indeed be a few Balrogs hiding in caverns and who like it hot and near the molten core. So, there’s a lot of apparent fiction from the point in which everyone wakes up to how serious the threat is.
The cast was at least good. We had Hilary Swank as a terranaut who’s promoted to mission commander after an unfortunate accident kills the commander, Aaron Eckhart as the accompanying scientist who first discovers the threat but no one believes him, and Bruce Greenwood whose role as President JFK in Thirteen Days I really enjoyed from three years earlier.
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The Day After Tomorrow: 
The Core:
The last post in this series next: Disaster – Tornadoes & Volcanoes!
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