“He is the visionary”: when Tom Hanks finally played a villain and ended up with his worst movie
The mark of a great actor is often their diversity, an ability to pivot between good and evil, loud and quiet, with relative ease and cover all aspects of the human condition. It’s a wonder, then, why Tom Hanks is so universally beloved as a true, unarguable great.
First things first, I am one of those people. His profound turns in a string of films shaped my understanding of modern life, along with many other film viewers. Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away and Forrest Gump all prove that, highlighting a sense of diversity with it as well. Hanks’ characters can clearly be placed in any environment, from solitude to warfare, and still express a sense of earnestness.
But evil has slipped the net in his portfolio, and so for those with sharpened knives, a glaring reputational hole appears. Hanks’ subversion from protagonist to antagonist hadn’t really happened until The Circle in 2017, where he played Eamon Bailey, the charming and manipulative CEO of a powerful, cult-like tech firm.
“He is the visionary, the ideas man, not the financial guy, not the tech guy,” Hanks remembered of the character, “He is the guy that dreams big”.
Then he launched into outlining the film’s plot, presenting a truly dystopian picture: “The Circle is that great thing that the internet hopes to be and wants to be but dear God, I hope it never becomes. It is what would happen if you took of the great companies and all of the great ideas, if you took Google and Amazon and Apple and Facebook and Uber, and jammed it all into one entity; that is what The Circle is… Once you’ve entered The Circle everything you need to is in one house on one tablet or one phone. You never have to give faith or allegiance to anyone outside The Circle because The Circle will take care of all of your lifestyle needs.”
It was a compelling concept, emboldened by the recruitment of Hanks to play the film’s charismatic villain. He had the trust of the cinematic world in his eyes and thus was the perfect man to lure us all into this supposed utopian vision of the film.
But somehow, his foray into villainous territory fell flat on its face. Despite a strong cast that included Bill Paxton, Emma Watson and John Boyega, the film had shallow character development, and while Hanks’ portrayal of Bailey tried to hold that up, it failed. It lacked the nuanced crossover of good and evil that a furiously ambitious CEO could have represented, and so weakened his anti-hero reputation.
Hanks hasn’t gone back to the cinematic dark side, and his portrayal of Bailey remains one of his only villains. And such a failure has begged the question of whether he has the diversity of other actors who have crossed the line so seamlessly.
Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis and Anthony Hopkins have all gone where Hanks couldn’t, and so many people argue that until he does, he might not be in the same echelons of greatness.
