The one thing Tom Hanks hates about action movies: “It’s just not fair”
Not many A-listers manage to go through their entire careers without starring in at least one blockbuster action movie, but Tom Hanks continues to be one of the very few exceptions that prove the rule.
That’s not to say the actor has been entirely averse to high-concept fare or expensive bouts of Hollywood escapism; he’s been in plenty of pricey pictures and cinematic flights of fancy. However, in the conventional sense, embodying an old-fashioned action hero has never been of interest.
The closest the two-time Academy Award winner ever came was when he headlined Ron Howard’s Da Vinci Code trilogy as Robert Langdon. The trio were nonsensical adventures that pit Hanks’ stoic hero against nefarious forces, but at the end of the day, he was still playing a professor who used his wits rather than his fists to get the job done.
Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away, the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer’s Cloud Atlas, Miguel Sapochnik’s Finch, and Paul Greengrass’ News of the World were all costly productions that featured at least one major action sequence, but nobody would classify them as action flicks in the strictest sense.
If Hanks had a vested interest in onscreen running and gunning, he would have scratched that itch a long time ago, so he’s evidently unconcerned about the notable lack of a silver screen shoot ’em up in his filmography. He can still enjoy them as an audience member, though, even if he does have his issues with a recurring trope the medium has been relying on for decades.
Sexism and objectification are hardly fresh concerns for the film industry, but as it applies to action in general, Hanks was left frustrated by the archetype that defines so many female characters in those kinds of movies. “There’s only ever one girl in an action movie,” he told The Guardian. “And it’s like, ‘Hi, I’m mysterious but hot.'”
It’s hardly an inaccurate statement, considering how often filmmakers have returned to that well, with Hanks resigned to the fact “that is literally the place for an awful lot of women in film.” He did admit that television had made strides in trying to rectify that imbalance, “but in the commerce of motion pictures, it’s just not fair.”
It’s a generalisation to a certain extent when action cinema has regularly thrown up indelible and iconic figures like Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor, Carrie-Anne Moss’ Trinity, Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo, and many more, but Hanks isn’t wrong in voicing his frustrations with how often the only function women have been asked to serve in a high-profile actioner is to be the enigmatic eye candy who aids the hero on their journey.
