How Tom Hanks turned ‘Cast Away’ into a classic: “They’re stuck with him”
Every A-lister enters Tinseltown with their own playbook. And no matter how similar their journeys look from afar, the truth is that no winning formula in Hollywood is one and the same. Tom Hanks has been a mainstay of the entertainment capital since the 1990s, whose trophy shelf is itself a living proof of timeless stardom. While the Oscar-winner has the Midas touch required to survive the waves of showbiz, Hanks proves even a deserted island can’t sand down his talent, as was seen in Cast Away.
Hanks portrayed a FedEx troubleshooter, Chuck Noland, stranded on a deserted island, but let’s not forget, he also turned a volleyball into a soulmate in the film. Cast Away was the third-highest-grossing film of 2000, which earned him a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor’ and an Oscar nomination in the same category at the 73rd Academy Awards.
Ahead of the Oscars ceremony, Hanks conversed with Good Morning America, shedding light on the film’s thematic crux: isolation. According to the actor, once his character learned survival, Chuck’s battle on the deserted island was all about “desperation”. This isolation was of a different and distinct pedigree, far removed from the likes of “being home on a Saturday night with nothing to do”.
Since he’s completely distanced from the “distractions” and noises that make up everyday life, he begins to unravel and “lose the battle of his own desperation”. Cast Away had Helen Hunt as Hanks’s girlfriend, but the primary protagonist opposite him was the volleyball, Wilson. Wilson is not exactly the kind of star one might expect to steal the show. However, Hanks insists it was crucial that he grinded solo on that island.
While he chose to deal with Chuck himself in the survival drama, the actor and the entire crew had a philosophical dogma they stuck by. “We’re not going to suddenly have one of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models show up for a photoshoot or something. Or drug-running pirates weren’t going to land in a seaplane in the lagoon, you know,” Hanks explained.
Instead, they made it a point of taking the audience so far along with them that there was no turning back from there. It was not just Hanks, Chuck, or the unlikely protagonist, Wilson, cast away on that island. With them, tailed every eye.
“We said we’re going to take this so far that the audience has no recourse. They’re stuck on the island with them, with Chuck, no matter what happens to him,” Hanks concluded, revealing how the film is as much Chuck and Wilson’s journey confronting pure unaluturated loneliness as it is for the audience, which earned it the classic status it occupies today.
Cast Away is currently streaming on Netflix.