Continuity mistake: When Jack is briefing the President, he draws a line on a map of the U.S. and tells the President to have everybody south of that line evacuated. The shape of the line changes three times between shots. (01:04:20)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, Sela Ward, Dash Mihok, Jay O. Sanders
Jack Hall and Sam both survive the storm. Jack finds Sam in the library, they get rescued by some government helicopters and are flown back to Mexico. Laura Chapman also survives. Most of the people in the Northern States / Canada / Northern Europe die during the storm (including all the people who leave the library during the storm to walk south). The US president also dies. The rest flock down to Mexico which only allowed the Americans in because they nullified all the Latin American debt.
Rolf Campbell
More mistakes in The Day After Tomorrow
Sam Hall: Look, I got every question right on the final, and the only reason Mr. Spengler failed me is because I didn't write out the solutions.
Jack Hall: Why not?
Sam Hall: I do 'em in my head.
Jack Hall: Did you tell him that?
Sam Hall: I did. He said he didn't believe me. He said that if he couldn't do them in his head, then I must be cheating.
Jack Hall: Well, that's ridiculous! How can he fail you for being smarter than he is?
Sam Hall: That's what I said.
Jack Hall: You did? How did he take it?
Sam Hall: He flunked me, remember?
Trivia: The man who offers a 100 dollars to the bus driver to get on the bus is the same guy who is on MTV's Boiling Points, and hands out 100 dollars if you pass the test. (00:45:20)
Question: Why would Sam and his friends go to the library?
Answer: It was the closest building they could access. While the smarter move would have been to just go back to JD's apartment (which Brian and Laura suggest) it may have been too far a walk to get out of the flooding streets.
Why did they burn the books and not the wooden shelves that the books were on?
As for burning books rather than shelves, it was just easier. They would have had to expend more energy to break down the shelves into manageable size.
They burn books instead of the wooden shelves because burning books is a quicker and more efficient way to generate heat in a desperate situation, as the paper readily catches fire and produces a substantial amount of heat compared to solid wood, which might take longer to burn properly.
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Answer: Possibly because it was the closest building with height to it as they are about to be hit by a gigantic wave of water. There was no snow yet, so I don't believe burning books or snow was on anybody's mind yet. It turned out to be a great idea as snow soon starts to fall and those books were literally a life saver.
Susan D. Santos