The Day After Tomorrow at 20: a strangely prescient

The disaster flick is riddled with inaccuracies, cliches, and gusts of machismo. But with its global climate catastrophe, it feels more relevant than ever

In the winter of 2013, a breakdown in the polar vortex allowed freezing cold air to escape southwards towards the North American continent. As ice storms, tornadoes and blizzards swept across the US, Donald Trump tweeted. “I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing,” he wrote. “Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!”

It was all a little too reminiscent of Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow – which opens with US leaders dismissing scientific concerns about the loss of a huge chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf. The researchers are soon vindicated: within days, the melting ice sets off a chain of freak weather events, culminating in a global superstorm that plunges the entire northern hemisphere into a new ice age.