‘Here’: the “kooky” lead role that gave Tom Hanks his biggest flop in years
Even though Tom Hanks still holds legendary status in Hollywood, it would take a genuinely die-hard fan to deny that he’s lost his grip slightly on what people want to see from him in recent years. Among hits like A Man Called Otto and Elvis, Hanks has also made decidedly middling efforts like Greyhound, News of the World, Finch, and Pinocchio, all of which vanished into the straight-to-streaming abyss. In November 2024, though, Hanks experienced arguably his biggest bomb in years, which probably shocked him, as the kooky film saw him reunite with the director he collaborated with on two of his most beloved films.
When Hanks heard from Robert Zemeckis – the man who led him to Oscar glory in Forrest Gump and another nomination in Cast Away – in 2022 about a unique new project, he didn’t take much convincing to sign on. After all, Zemeckis has always been known as a technological pioneer in cinema, so Hanks hearing that the Polar Express director wanted him to come on board his latest experiment was likely music to his ears.
Zemeckis was mounting an adaptation of a one-of-a-kind graphic novel by Richard McGuire named Here, which depicted the same exact static location in time and space over thousands of years. Zemeckis wanted to apply that experimental storytelling style to the story of one plot of land from far in the past, right up until the 21st century. Most of the story follows Hanks and Robin Wright as young lovers who are first seen at 18 years old and last seen as an elderly married couple.
Naturally, Zemeckis didn’t just want to experiment with cinematic form in terms of the structure of the story – he also wanted to try out a new toy. Therefore, the movie was shot using Metaphysic Live, an Artificial Intelligence-enhanced technology capable of face-swapping and de-ageing actors in real-time. This meant Hanks and Wright could look at the monitors as they were performing and see themselves as much younger people – and Hanks admitted, “It was kooky.”
The iconic star acknowledged that some might see the tech as a gimmick because de-ageing has classically been achieved using makeup and prosthetic effects. He even confessed that it took some getting used to. However, once he saw the benefits of adjusting and calibrating his performance in real-time thanks to instantly being able to watch himself move and talk like a young man, he warmed to the process. By the end of the shoot, though, he told People magazine that seeing himself as a young man again was “great,” but he’d still “rather be as old as I am.”
Unfortunately for Hanks and Zemeckis, rolling the dice on Here didn’t capture the viewing public’s imagination. It debuted at fifth place in the box office charts before quickly dropping out of the top ten altogether. In total, it made a scant $15.3million worldwide – a fraction of the $45-50million budget. Reviews were no better, with both men taking a kicking for a film viewed as ham-fisted and cloying in its sugary sentimentality. It appeared their grand cinematic experiment hadn’t worked – but Hanks wouldn’t take the negative reception lying down.
During an appearance on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Hanks said he was at peace with Here’s reception, as experiencing defeat is par for the course of a career in Hollywood. “That’s the thing we all signed up for,” he mused. “That’s the carnival. That’s the contest. I got faith in that.” However, he did take unusually foul-mouthed umbrage with critics who pan a film so viciously upon its release, because he sneakily suspects many of them will change their tune over the years.
After all, it’s happened to him before, such as with his directorial debut That Thing You Do!, which was criticised for looking like a TV movie but later called a cult classic by the very same critic. “Let me tell you something about these cocksuckers who write about movies,” Hanks said in a semi-jokey fashion. “Same exact person. All you need is 20 years between now and then, and it ends up speaking some words.”
He’ll be hoping Here shares the same fate.
