Actor Tom Hanks is known to be one of the most successful actors in the industry and is famous for playing both comic and dramatic characters. Regarded as an American cultural icon, Hanks is also one of the highest-grossing actors.
The actor is known to be one of the most influential actors in the world and his Forrest Gump character is an iconic role that people still remember. Hanks has also appeared in movies including Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, The Post, etc. One thing that critics and audiences often point out and joke about, is the fact that his chosen films often invited doomed journeys and travel-related plots.
Critics joked about Tom Hanks’ film choices after Sully
Tom Hanks appeared in the 2016 biographical drama movie Sully based on the 2009 autobiography Highest Duty by Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles. It was directed by Clint Eastwood and follows Sully’s quick act of emergency landing of US Airway Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in January 2009. The flight had about 155 passengers and crew who survived and suffered minor injuries.
The movie received positive responses from the critics and the audience with people appreciating the performances of the actors. The movie was also caught up in a controversy with its fictionalized portrayal of the NTSB as being prosecutorial and closed-minded. However, Sully was picked as one of the best movies of 2016 and garnered a lot of attention at the time.
The situation took an interesting and funny turn when critics started to draw a pattern with Tom Hanks’ choices of movies and dubbed him as someone dangerous to travel with. According to a film critic for the Washington Post, Hanks’ movie choices make it clear that he does not have a safe track record when it comes to traveling.
His other travel movies include Apollo 13 in which the actor travels to space but after an explosion, spends the entire movie trying to get back home alive. 2000’s Cast Away in which the actor boards a plane that crashes into the Pacific Ocean and ends up spending four years on the remote island. Next was Road to Perdition
Hanks also appeared in Captain Phillips in which he is the captain of the unnamed container ship, which gets hijacked. Chris Lee for the LA Times wrote,
“Often overlooked in the star’s nearly 60 film oeuvre, however, is a recurrent theme of foiled plans and unreached destinations, of crash landing and turbulent seas, of interrupted journeys and uncertain repatriation.”
The critic further wrote that what was so interesting to note was that many of Hanks’ movies have him play a character that sets off on a trip but does not get where he is going. He also mentioned that the audience just doesn’t get tired of watching stories about Hanks’ failed travels.
Tom Hanks says he was honored to play a real-life hero in Sully
Clint Eastwood’s Sully may have given the actor a bad reputation for picking travel tragic movies but he says he was honored to play a real-life hero in the movie. Hanks shared that he indeed met with Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger who had to battle to prove that the emergency landing was not caused by the pilot error.
Hanks upon meeting Sully said via Female First,
“I think heroes are people who voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way. And by that criteria you could say that anybody that puts themselves in an airplane for a living and cheats death somehow.”
Tom Hanks continued that Sully was able to utilize his instinct and expertise that came from 40 years of experience for which there is no substitute. It’s extraordinary and he feels honored to have played him on-screen.