Last weekend marked the release of Tom Hanks’ newest starring vehicle and sophomore directorial effort, Larry Crowne. While some people were excited by the prospect of Hanks and Roberts teaming up for a romantic comedy, it turns out that very few people were actually interested in seeing it. The film garnered mediocre reviews and less than mediocre box office its opening weekend, grossing only $13 million over the holiday weekend while the latest Transformers sequel earned the equivalent of the entire GDP of Botswana. This paltry showing from Hanks would not have seemed possible ten years ago, when Hanks was the king of Hollywood. Throughout the 1990s, Hanks battled Tom Cruise for the title of biggest movie star on the planet, and while Cruise’s films made more money, Hanks’ films were not just financially successful, but critically beloved as well. His consecutive Best Actor Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump are well-documented and cemented his legacy forever, but Hanks was also nominated twice after that in the same category for Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away. However, since the release of the latter film eleven years ago, Hanks has failed to garner an Oscar nomination and his filmography has been much more inconsistent.
From the release of Catch Me if You Can on Christmas Day, 2002 to the current release of Larry Crowne, one could argue that the only film that truly lived up to Hanks’ untouchable run in the 90s’ was 2010’s Toy Story 3. However, that film was the finale to one of the most beloved trilogies of all time and the first movie in the series since 1999, so the anticipation by fans and critics was enormous. Other than that, the other films that he starred in which made money were not very well received by critics and audiences equally. The aforementioned 2004 double bill of Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal and the Coen Brothers’ The Ladykillers were both underwhelming from both critical and financial perspectives, garnering Rotten Tomatoes aggregate scores of 60 and 55 percent and earning 78 and 40 million dollars respectively in domestic box office. While one can consider The Terminal’s gross respectable, one has to factor in the 60 million dollar budget and the film’s other marketing costs, and all of a sudden 78 million does not seem that impressive. The other film starring Hanks that was released in 2004, Robert Zemeckis’ animated Polar Express, grossed $180 million on a 150 million dollar budget and received a middling critical average of 56% and gained notoriety for its motion-capture techniques that made all of the characters look like soulless, murdering robots.
For the first time since Hanks won his second Oscar, he was beginning to receive criticism for his performances. While one can’t help but admire him for wanting to stretch himself and play honest-to-god “characters,” the reason that Tom Hanks became America’s Biggest Movie Star is because he was the next Jimmy Stewart: a true Everyman who could occupy the soul of the collective American spirit while never seeming to take himself too seriously. When he played these types of roles, Hanks was unstoppable. In films such as Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan, he was able to make people in abnormal situations relatable to audiences. If we could ask for anyone to lead us through the horrors of World War II, it was Tom Hanks because we could look into his eyes and believe that everything was going to turn out alright (though in that movie, things didn’t turn out great for him). We believed that no matter what his character did, the audience would go along with it because Hanks was something that actors are not supposed to be: sincere.
After 2004, the next role he took on seemed to be a step back into the kinds of everyman heroes he portrayed in his prime. Based on the international bestseller, The Da Vinci Code was supposed to establish Hanks as the thinking-man’s action hero, and while the film made over 200 million dollars in the U.S. alone, many people were critical of the film, Hanks’ performance (as reflected by its pathetic 25% RT score) and, most deservedly, his hair. Watching the film, it seems like Hanks is disinterested in the journey of his character. The audience should want Robert Langdon to solve the mystery, but Hanks does not carry the same swagger and charisma that he would have had he played the role a decade earlier and for the first time in his career, one can argue Hanks phoned in a performance.
The next year, 2007, Hanks took the title role in the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Charlie Wilson’s War, and on the surface, it would seem like a home run: Hanks was playing a charismatic and capable authority figure with a wry sense of humor opposite fellow Oscar winners Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a true-life story. It was positioned as an awards contender and seen as Hanks’ best shot at a nomination since Cast Away. Unfortunately, while the film received an 81% aggregate Rotten Tomatoes score, it was unable to make back its $75 million budget and the only Oscar nomination for the film went to Hoffman for his supporting turn.
The next year saw the release of Angels and Demons, Hanks’ second go-round as symbologist Robert Langdon, and it was an even bigger disappointment than The Da Vinci Code, grossing little more than half that its predecessor did domestically from a $150 million budget. With this and the box office disappointment of Larry Crowne, it seems like Hanks, at 55 years old, has lost the desire to play truly compelling characters. His passion for moviemaking is still alive and well as evidenced by his involvement in several critically acclaimed HBO miniseries, but it just does not appear that he wants to really involve himself in a role like he did in Cast Away. We can only hope that his next two projects, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Cloud Atlas represent a return to form for the actor America could once proudly say was one of its finest.
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