Cast Away


Cast Away is a 2000 American survival drama film directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, and Nick Searcy. Hanks plays a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific, and the film depicts his desperate attempts to survive and return home. The film was released on December 22, 2000. It grossed $429 million worldwide, with Hanks nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the 73rd Academy Awards.

Plot

In 1995, Chuck Noland, a time-obsessed systems analyst, travels the world resolving productivity problems at FedEx depots. He is in a long-term relationship with Kelly Frears, with whom he lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Chuck's busy schedule often interferes with their relationship.
During the family Christmas dinner, Chuck is summoned to resolve a work problem in Malaysia. Flying through a violent storm, his FedEx cargo plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Chuck escapes with an inflatable life raft, though the raft's emergency locator transmitter is ripped off. The next day, Chuck in the damaged raft, washes up on an uncharted and uninhabited island.
Several FedEx packages from the crashed plane also wash up on shore, as well as the corpse of a flight crewman, whom Chuck buries. He tries signaling a passing ship and makes an unsuccessful attempt to launch the damaged life raft, but the incoming surf is too strong, tossing Chuck onto a coral reef and injuring his leg. He is able to find sufficient food, water, and shelter. He opens the FedEx packages, finding a number of potentially useful items. He leaves one package, with a pair of wings painted on it, unopened.
While attempting to build a fire, Chuck cuts his hand. In anger he throws several objects from the packages, including a Wilson Sporting Goods volleyball, leaving a bloody hand print on it. He then draws a face into the smeared blood, and names the ball, Wilson. He regularly talks to Wilson.
Over four years, Chuck survives and has since taken shelter inside a cave. Wilson is his only companion. After a large section from a portable toilet enclosure washes up on the island, Chuck decides to build a raft, using a section of the plastic wall from the enclosure as a sail. He successfully launches the raft that he has stocked with food, water, and the one unopened FedEx package. After some time on the ocean, a storm damages his raft. The following day, Wilson falls off the raft and is lost, devastating Chuck. Soon after, a passing cargo ship rescues the barely-alive Chuck.
Upon returning to civilization, Chuck learns that he was given up for dead and his family and friends held a funeral; Kelly has since married and has a child. Chuck and Kelly reunite and profess their love for each other but knowing Kelly cannot abandon her family, they part. Kelly gives Chuck the keys to the car they once shared.
Chuck drives to Texas to return the unopened FedEx package to the person who had sent it. Finding no one at home, he leaves the package at the door with a note saying that the package saved his life. He departs and stops at a remote crossroads. A young woman in a pickup truck stops and gives information about where each road leads. As she drives away, Chuck notices the wing graphic painted on her truck is similar to the one on the parcel. He looks down each road, then at the one the woman took, and smiles.

Cast

Development

In a 2017 Actor Roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, Tom Hanks stated

Filming

The film's shooting occurred between 1998 and 2000, but was not shot consecutively. Hanks gained during pre-production, for the purpose of making his transformation more dramatic. After a majority of the film was shot, production was halted for a year so that he could lose the weight and grow his hair and beard to look like he had been living on the island for years. Another four-month production halt preceded the filming of the final return scenes. During the year-long hiatus, Zemeckis used the same film crew to make another film, What Lies Beneath.
Cast Away was filmed on Monuriki, one of the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji. It is in a subgroup of the Mamanuca archipelago, which is sited off the coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. The island became a tourist attraction following the film's release. After Chuck's return, it is identified by Kelly as being "about south of the Cook Islands," but there is actually no land between the southernmost Cook Islands of Mangaia and Antarctica.
The film essentially begins and ends in the same location, on the Arrington Ranch in the Texas Panhandle south of the city of Canadian, Texas.

Music

The film's minimal score was composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri for which he won a Grammy Award in 2002. The film's soundtrack is most notable for its lack of score and creature sound effects while Chuck is on the island, which is intended to reinforce the feeling of isolation. Cast Away contains no original musical score until Chuck escapes the island. However, there is a Russian choral piece heard near the start of the film that was not composed or even recorded by Silvestri, so it does not appear on the film's soundtrack list. It is a traditional Russian song written by Lev Knipper called "Oh, My Field" and it is available on various collections of Red Army hymns.
The official soundtrack CD is an anthology of musical pieces from all films up to that point directed by Zemeckis and scored by Silvestri. The only track from Cast Away itself is the theme from the end credits.

FedEx

FedEx provided access to their facilities as well as airplanes, trucks, uniforms, and logistical support. A team of FedEx marketers oversaw production through more than two years of filming. FedEx CEO Fred Smith made an appearance as himself for the scene where Chuck is welcomed back, which was filmed on location at FedEx's home facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. The idea of a story based on a FedEx plane crashing gave the company "a heart attack at first," but the overall story was seen as positive. FedEx, which paid no money for product placement in the film, saw an increase in brand awareness in Asia and Europe following the film's release.

Wilson the volleyball

In the film, Wilson the volleyball serves as Chuck Noland's personified friend and only companion during the four years that Noland spends alone on a deserted island. Named after the volleyball's manufacturer, Wilson Sporting Goods, the character was created by screenwriter William Broyles Jr. While researching for the film, he consulted with professional survival experts, and then chose to deliberately strand himself for one week on an isolated beach in the Gulf of California, to force himself to search for water and food, and obtain his own shelter. During this time, a volleyball washed up on shore. This was the inspiration for the film's inanimate companion. From a screenwriting point of view, Wilson also serves to realistically allow dialogue in a one-person-only situation.
One of the original volleyball props was sold at auction for $18,500 to the ex-CEO of FedEx Office, Ken May. At the time of the film's release, Wilson launched its own joint promotion centered on the fact that one of its products was "co-starring" with Tom Hanks. Wilson manufactured a volleyball with a reproduction of the bloodied handprint face on one side. It was sold for a limited time during the film's initial release and continues to be offered on the company's website.

Reception

Box office

Cast Away opened in 2,774 theaters in North America and grossed $28.9 million in its opening weekend. For the four-day Christmas long holiday weekend, it took in a total of $39.9 million. The film kept performing well and ended up earning $233.6 million domestically and $196 million internationally, for a total of $429.6 million, against its production budget of $90 million.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, Cast Away holds an approval rating of 88% based on 156 reviews, with an average rating of 7.36/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Flawed but fascinating, Cast Away offers an intelligent script, some of Robert Zemeckis' most mature directing, and a showcase performance from Tom Hanks." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Accolades

In popular culture

A FedEx commercial during the 2003 Super Bowl parodied the final scene of the film, in which Chuck returns a package to its sender. In this version, the woman answers the door, and when Chuck asks what was in the box, the woman replies: "Just a satellite phone, GPS locator, fishing rod, water purifier, and some seeds. Just silly stuff."
Media executive Lloyd Braun of ABC Studios first suggested the idea of a Cast Away–type television series at a dinner party in 2003. Thom Sherman later pitched the idea for Cast Away – The Series, but never developed the idea. The concept was later developed and pitched with the title Nowhere, which later turned into the ABC show Lost.