Mother nature wreaks havoc in Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow, starring indie favourites Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. Despite getting a hammering by critics, writing it off as a "join-the-dots disaster movie", it regaled audiences around the world with its spectacular visuals. But whether you liked it or not, this Special Edition package offers a compelling inside look at the making of a big budget, special effects blockbuster.

Breaking The Ice

Placing the film in context is a one-hour documentary The Force Of Destiny, exploring the science and politics of climate change. It's a riveting and often very unsettling examination of the issues underlying Emmerich's film, made more frightening by knowledge that this is not Hollywood sensationalism but an all-too real prognosis of global disaster waiting to happen. Two interactive features also ask the question: Are we on the brink of a new ice age? Global Watch offers a record of recent freak weather events that point to this possibility while City Freeze is a rather superfluous click-a-thon that trivialises the matter by offering you the chance to see various cities being cheerfully decimated.

Eye Of The Storm is another hour-long documentary, this time going inside the making of The Day After Tomorrow. It takes the project back to its genesis, a book titled The Coming Of The Global Super Storm, which first sparked Emmerich's imagination. Stars Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal also lend their thoughts on acting against a blue screen, with Gyllenhaal rightly noting, "The actors play a secondary part to the special effects." An overview of the way the effects were designed to meet Emmerich's aspiration to "photo-realism" is also dealt with here.

Essentially a CGI-animated storyboard, previsualisation is a relatively new technique that's exploded in popularity in recent years. Visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas is on hand to talk you through a storyboard-to-previs-to-final-film comparison while, in Pushing The Envelope, she explains more about the pioneering efforts made by nine special effects houses over the course of a year to bring those jaw-dropping scenes of devastation to realisation. An interactive gallery of storyboards and concept art nicely complements this.

In The Bunkers

Rare insight into pre-production and post-production is also available here. Cameras go inside a (sometimes heated) meeting to discuss the finer details of the imminent shoot eg what colour should the spacesuits be? Meanwhile The Final Mix ventures into the sound suite where a team of technical bods fuss over the RAF helicopter scene. The same scene is deconstructed into eight tracks of sound, which you can access via a separate interactive feature.

Emmerich and producer Mark Gordon offer commentary for 18 minutes of deleted scenes. These feature a gruesome death by hailstones ("a fun scene", according to Emmerich), a few unfinished visual effects shots, and the president's appeal for help to Mexico... Emmerich conceding that it was "over the top". He offers more behind-the-scenes titbits in a feature commentary, while Jeffrey Nachmanoff, cinematographer Ueli Steiger, editor David Brenner and production designer Barry Chusid speak about their specialist areas in an alternative track.

The Day After Tomorrow offers a torrent of extras in a Special Edition package that will both fascinate and frighten you. Put the kettle on, it's going to be a long night...

EXTRA FEATURES

DISC ONE

DISC TWO (ONLY AVAILABLE AS PART OF THIS SPECIAL EDITION PACKAGE)