Cast Away
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| Cast Away | |
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| Directed by | Robert Zemeckis |
| Produced by | Jack Rapke Robert Zemeckis Steve Starkey Tom Hanks |
| Written by | William Broyles Jr. |
| Starring | Tom Hanks Helen Hunt Wilson the Volleyball |
| Distributed by | - USA - Twentieth Century Fox - non-USA - DreamWorks |
| Release date(s) | December 22, 2000 |
| Running time | 2 hrs. 23 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $ 90.000.000 |
| IMDb profile | |
- For other uses, see Castaway (disambiguation).
Cast Away is a 2000 film by 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks about a FedEx employee who is stranded on a deserted island after his plane goes down over the South Pacific. The plot is very loosely based on the novel Robinson Crusoe.
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[edit] Plot synopsis
In the opening scene, a FedEx truck rolls past a large sign reading "Dick-Bettina" to a ranch-style Texas residence where the driver takes for delivery a FedEx package marked with a custom logo in the form of angels' wings. These wings are also seen as freestanding sculptures on and within the property. The woman sending the package, an artist in a welder's suit, tells the driver she will have another one for him to take that coming Thursday. We see the package delivered all the way to a residence in Moscow, Russia, to a man in a cowboy hat and robe. A Russian woman who is with the man, apparently on intimate terms, asks, "Who is it from?". He replies, "My wife".
The next scenes follow Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks), a highly efficient FedEx executive, as he attempts to improve the performance of FedEx's Moscow branch. He returns to the U.S. (Tennessee), where he is trying to guide a relationship with his girlfriend Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt) toward marriage. It is obvious that Chuck's harried professional life with FedEx is making it difficult to progress with Kelly. Their Christmas together is interrupted by a last minute business trip. They exchange presents in the car on the way to the FedEx hub, Kelly giving him a family heirloom timepiece holding a photo of herself and Chuck giving her a number of joke presents before solemly offering her an engagement ring. She is too nervous to open it and he walks off to the FedEx jet saying, "I'll be right back".
Somewhere over the Pacific ocean the flight goes disastrously wrong, crashing into the nighttime sea in flames. Saved by an inflatable raft, Chuck is stranded alone on a deserted tropical island. After landing and ascertaining the island is uninhabited, Chuck's most immediate need is drinking water, which he satisfies by drinking coconut water and later by storing rain water in the discarded husks. His second immediate need is shelter, which he secures by draping his raft over palmtree trunks and, later, by discovering small caves in the island rock. Third, he needs food. He attempts to fish, but is wholly unsuccessful at the start. As time progresses, his fishing skills steadily increase. Shortly after his first fishing attempt, he finds a compelling need to produce fire, which after great effort, many attempts, and some injury he succeeds in doing.
Luckily for Chuck, a few FedEx packages from the plane and the body of one of the pilots wash up on the shore shortly after he lands on the island. After some refitting, Chuck dons the pilot's rubber-soled shoes and improvises some tools from items in the washed-up packages, in particular a pair of gift ice-skates. Chuck also finds a small pocket flashlight amongst the pilot's possessions. Around this time he sees a light on the horizon, presumably from a search party, and having realised the futility of attracting attention using the flashlight he takes to the sea on the tiny liferaft. However, he is thwarted by the high surf around the island's reef.
As time passes it seems Chuck has risen to the challenges of physical survival but it is also evident he is in a fragile mental state, relying heavily on his memories of Kelly, whose picture-in-a-timepiece he now wears round his neck.
One of the FedEx packages bears the distinctive angels' wings custom logo observed in the first scene. It is the package the artist woman mentioned she would be sending on "Thursday". For some reason, this is the only package Chuck does not open.
Four years later, a piece of a port-a-john appears on the shore. Chuck, now with a beard, long hair and wearing a loincloth, his body much leaner and weatherbeaten, uses this fragment as a sail for the raft he makes to leave the island. It is revealed that in previous years he has considered suicide as an alternative to escape from the island.
After construction of the raft, Chuck sets off into the ocean, desperately hoping for rescue. By raising his makeshift sail at a precisely timed moment in the curl of a wave, he breaks free of the rough shore surf that foiled him years earlier. After sailing for an unknown period of time for 600 miles—when he is on the verge of death—he is rescued by a passing ship.
On returning home, Chuck must come to terms with the fact that almost everyone he knew has irrevocably changed, including Kelly who has since married and had a child with another man. After a dramatic scene in which the pair comes close to resuming the romance, Chuck reconciles himself to "losing her all over again". In the film's short philosophical coda, Chuck explains to his close friend, "I've got to keep breathing. Because tomorrow, the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"
The film ends with Chuck at a crossroads after delivering the one unopened package from the island to the residence from the first scene (due to the long passage of time, the package is being returned to sender). The sign over the residence has had the "Dick" portion of the "Dick-Bettina" name removed, but the angels' wings sculptures are still there. No one is home so Chuck leaves the package propped in the screen door with a note, which reads "This package saved my life". Chuck returns to the crossroads a short distance away, stopping his car to study a map. The artist woman, pretty, friendly and around his own age, drives up in an antique truck and says, "You look lost." She describes where all the roads branching from the intersection lead. He thanks her, and as she drives away, Chuck notices the angels' wings painted on the back of her truck. A long close up of Chuck smiling directly into the camera closes the film.
[edit] Wilson
One of Cast Away's notable "characters" is "Wilson," a volleyball from Wilson Sporting Goods (in real life, the dominant manufacturer of volleyballs). The volleyball is found in one of the FedEx boxes. When Chuck tries to make a fire and cuts his hand, he angrily palms the volleyball and throws it. This makes the hand-shaped mark that forms the ball's "face". Then he bandages his hands and makes Wilson. This volleyball plays the role of a mute, infinitely patient, non-living listener in the movie, providing Chuck with a companion for the 1,500 days he spends on the island (one might go so far as to suggest that Wilson is Friday to Chuck's Robinson Crusoe). Wilson is also slightly modified by Noland sometime during the four-year gap; a section of the volleyball above the face has been removed and a coif of leaves has been inserted, serving as hair. From a theatrical standpoint, Wilson also serves to realistically simulate dialogue in a one-person only situation. Tragically, Chuck loses Wilson after the volleyball washes off the raft and drifts too far out to sea for Chuck to be able to retrieve it. Towards the film's end, Noland is seen driving with a brand new volleyball sitting in the passenger seat, this may suggest that his relationship with Wilson would continue.
[edit] Product placement
Cast Away is well-known for its prominent product placement marketing. In this case the movie benefited two major brands: Wilson and FedEx. However, contrary to popular belief, FedEx did not pay the filmmakers anything for their presence in the movie, a fact which the director has made clear in a number of interviews.
At the time of the movie's release, Wilson Sporting Goods launched its own joint promotion centered around the fact that one of its products was "co-starring" with Tom Hanks.
Despite the fact that the plot revolves around the tragic crash of a FedEx plane, the company correctly guessed that the movie would not damage its reputation. FedEx cooperated closely with the filmmakers to ensure that all FedEx materials seen in the movie were authentic. Chuck's "coming-home" scene was filmed on location at FedEx's home facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. According to an interview on the DVD release of the film, FedEx Corporation did not pay for product-placement rights. However, the extensive support that the company provided to the film can be considered a form of payment for the placement.
Some commentators claim that the use of the FedEx brand and logo in its present form is an anachronism, since the first half of the film was set in 1995 while FedEx Corporation was officially titled FDX Corp. at the time. (FedEx Corporation changed to its present name in 2000, when Noland returned) However, the brand "FedEx" began to be used by the overnight-courier division of the company in 1994. The complete absence of references in the film to the old names that had been recently in use could still be considered a flaw.
[edit] Trivia
- The producers made up a list of seemingly-useless items that would be in the packages that Noland recovered: party dress, ice skates, divorce papers, video tapes, etc. They turned this over to a group of survival experts, who decided what the protagonist might be able to do with them: fish net, axe, etc.
- In the "Making of" content of the DVD, the producer states the film was shot in the Fiji Islands.
- A FedEx advertisement in the United States features a character who survived an ordeal very similar to Chuck Noland returning an unopened package to its owner. She tells him that it contains a few "simple things" such as a GPS Receiver, satellite phone, seeds, and a water purifier.
- After the movie's release, NASCAR stock car driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. drove several races with a volleyball in his car, whom he called "Wilson".
- The CEO at the end of the movie is actually Fred Smith, the real-life CEO of FedEx.
- In the 2006 videogame Far Cry Instincts: Evolution, set in a tropical south Pacific location, there is a hidden island containing an easter egg: a small wrecked boat, two corpses, rocks laid out to spell "HELP!", and a volleyball resembling Wilson (except in the game, instead of a bloody handprint on the ball, it is a footprint)
- The Stargate Atlantis episode "Epiphany" references Cast Away when Lt. Col. Sheppard, stranded in a cave, says into his radio, "This is Sheppard. I'm pretty sure you can't hear me, but I don't have a volleyball to talk to, so what the hell."
- In the game Commandos 2: Men of Courage, there is a mission with a castaway named "Wilson". It can be possible he is based on the famous Wilson the Volleyball.
- The movie was spoofed in Family Guy. It shows Peter on the raft with Wilson (the ball). Peter keeps yelling, "Wilson! Wilson! What are we gonna do now? Wilson! Wil-" At that moment the ball interrupts saying, "My name is Voit, dumbass!!"
- Cast Away was spoofed in the movie Behind Enemy Lines, when Owen Wilson's Character, Chris Burnett, lost a football out to sea. Chris then yells "Wilson!"
- It was also spoofed in the movie Madagascar, when Alex is stranded on the beach, talking to his basketball "Spalding." After Alex sees Marty having fun on the other side of the beach, and the Melman and Gloria start complaining, Alex says "Shut up, Spalding" Incidentally, this film was made by DreamWorks Animation, which was spun-off from DreamWorks in late 2004.
- In a panel discussing the movie, Director Robert Zemeckis jokingly said that the final unopened package at the end contained a waterproof, solar-powered satellite phone.
- Chuck tells Wilson that his dentist's name was Dr. Spalding after he said that he wished Wilson was a dentist. Spalding is a company best known for its basketballs.
- The Jeep Cherokee shared by Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt's characters in the movie is a 1997+ model year. This is an error considering that the film's opening section is set in 1995.
- Lloyd Braun of ABC Studios pitched the idea of a television series based on the movie, obviously titled: Cast Away: The Series. That show later evolved into the hit ABC show Lost. The pilot episode of the show was the most expensive pilot ever produced and fearful ABC executives subsequently fired Braun, ignorant of the success to come for Lost.
- Wilson, the sports equipment manufacturer, actually created and marketed a volleyball with Wilson's face on it.
- Production was on hiatus for about a year to allow Tom Hanks to lose some weight and grow his hair. During that period, Robert Zemeckis used the crew to produce What Lies Beneath.
[edit] Movie score
- Although most notable for its lack of score, while Chuck is on the island and there is no music at all until he escapes. The film's minimal score was composed by Alan Silvestri for which he won a Grammy in 2002. A pseudo exception to this could be said to be the scene where Tom Hanks' character creates fire, in which he sings "Light My Fire" by The Doors, among others.
[edit] Cast
- Tom Hanks – Hanks' performance earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
- Helen Hunt
- Wilson the Volleyball
- Valerie Wildman
- Geoffrey Blake
- Jenifer Lewis
- Chris Noth
- Nick Searcy
- Lari White
[edit] Notable award nominations
- 73rd Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Tom Hanks), Best Sound
- BAFTA Awards: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Tom Hanks)
- Golden Globes: Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama: For which he won (Tom Hanks)
- Screen Actors Guild: Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Tom Hanks)
- MTV Movie Awards: Best On-screen Team (Tom Hanks and Wilson)
