8 Sci-Fi Movies Built On A Lie

3. The Day After Tomorrow

lucy scarlett johansson
20th Century Fox

As a dumb big-budget spectacle, The Day After Tomorrow is an enjoyable beast that ticks a whole load of the right boxes.

While climate change is a very real thing and a genuinely worrying topic that needs to be addressed on a daily basis, The Day After Tomorrow takes this concerning matter and gives it a large dollop of Hollywood glitz and glamour.

By that, it means that rather than the centuries required for extreme weather changes to happen, Roland Emmerich's 2014 picture ushered in a whole new ice age in just a matter of hours. Not only did numerous scientists call out this cinematic lie, but those same scientists went even further and insisted that it simply would not be possible for the Earth to be plummeted into a new ice age.

Still, The Day After Tomorrow works well as a mindless popcorn movie that you can just sit back and enjoy for its visuals and sense of grandeur - just make sure to be well aware that the immediate nature of the extreme climate change depicted in the film is far from being true.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks/Saints, Jamie Hayter, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.