“I hated it”: the 2004 movie Tom Hanks couldn’t stand making
For someone who’s made some of the most popular and beloved movies of the modern era, and who’s become one of the most popular and beloved movie stars of the era as a result, Tom Hanks doesn’t rate many of his films too highly.
He’s appeared in around 80 features, and by his own estimation, only about four of them are “pretty good,” in his estimation. He didn’t name the quartet that he believes stands head and shoulders above the rest of his filmography, but you could likely bet your house on Cloud Atlas being one of them.
The two-time Academy Award winner would be in the minority on that one, since the sci-fi epic is one of his most polarising releases, but he loves it, and he’s Tom Hanks, so if he wants to think that it’s one of the only four worthy flicks he’s made in his professional life, then so be it.
We’re only assuming that because he can’t stop talking about how much he loves Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis’ mind-bender, but as for the other three? It could be Forrest Gump, Big, That Thing You Do!, Saving Private Ryan, Sleepless in Seattle, one of the Toy Storys, or none of them at all.
It’s definitely not Punchline, because he doesn’t like that film in the slightest, and the same can be said of The Bonfire of the Vanities, which he called one of the crappiest movies ever made. It isn’t Robert Zemeckis’ The Polar Express, either, because when he was asked about his first flirtation with the world of motion capture, Hanks summed up his experience in three simple words: “I hated it.”
From the outside looking in, it doesn’t look particularly fun for a performer to be suited up in a grey, skin-tight leotard with dots placed all over their face and body, acting and reacting to things that aren’t there until they’re added later by the visual effects wizards, regardless of whether it’s Avatar or Tintin.
For Hanks, not being able to wear a costume was the biggest stickler, which he called “the greatest ally an actor has.” He played six different parts in the festive fantasy, but he had no idea what they’d look like until after he’d given his performance, and he wasn’t too hot on his drab surroundings, either.
The Polar Express was shot “in a grey, lifeless ‘volume’, as it was called, in which the computer lenses are all around you, and you’re wearing these markers on these essentially skin-tight suits that record the data on a hard drive,” which doesn’t sound like the most exciting form of filmmaking, but he was willing to give the technologically focused Zemeckis the benefit of the doubt anyway.
Anyone who’s seen the movie, and there are many, since it’s a staple of the Christmastime viewing calendar, knows that it never manages to escape the uncanny valley, something Hanks acknowledged, conceding that “there was always some kind of aspect of it that was missing when once you finally saw it.” Funnily enough, that was the first and last time he slipped into a leotard in the name of cinema.
