THE FIRST MOVIE TOM HANKS STARRED IN CAME OUT IN 1984. It was called Splash.¹ He played a lonely business owner in it, which is not weird, but then he falls in love with a woman who turns out to be a mermaid and they escape into the sea together as they’re chased by the government, which is definitely weird.² I’m not so interested in all of the movie, though—at least, not enough that I’d want to talk about the entire thing. What I’m most interested in is one specific scene. It happens about twenty minutes in.

Hanks, sad about a recent breakup, gets very drunk one night and, through a small amount of unfortunate coincidences, ends up on a beach near an island he’d intended on visiting. He catches a ride on a tiny motorboat from the beach to the island, but about halfway into the trip the boat’s engine stalls. The guy driving it bangs on it with a hammer a couple of times, decides that it’s unfixable, then jumps out in the water and says he’ll just swim to the shore and come back in a different boat.³ After sitting around and waiting a bit for the guy to come back, Hanks tries to start the boat up himself. And it works, but he’s so caught off guard by it that he falls out of the boat. As he thrashes about in the water, the boat, now speeding around in circles because no one is controlling the engine, rides by Hanks and bonks him in the head, knocking him out. As it were, this is how he meets the mermaid (he sinks under water after he’s knocked unconscious), but I mention it here because, mermaid aside, the boat ride is a pretty crummy trip for Hanks. And crummy trips are a thing that have since happened a lot in movies starring Tom Hanks.

He took a trip in Apollo 13 and it went bad. He took a trip in The Terminal and it went bad. He took a trip in Joe Versus the Volcano and it went bad. He took a trip in Cast Away and it went bad. He took a trip in Captain Phillips and it went bad. He took a trip in Sully and it went bad. There are a bunch, really. Far too many to ignore, really. And so the question here is big and bright and undeniable, really:

Which trip turned out the worst for Tom Hanks?

To be clear, this will not cover every single trip that Tom Hanks has taken in a movie.⁴ But it will cover enough of them to feel comprehensive,⁵ of that I am sure.⁶

TRIPS THAT ENDED UP BEING GREAT BECAUSE HE FELL IN LOVE

Splash (1984): This is the one we already talked about. And it starts off bad, sure, because one thing that I do not want to happen when I go on a boat ride is for me to fall out of the boat and then get bonked on the head by the boat. THAT SAID, it does lead to him meeting the mermaid that he’d eventually spend the rest of his life with. (And we know from the movie that he was very lonely and unhappy and longed to be in a relationship.) So, I guess it comes down to: Would you rather be alone and unhappy and human, or in a relationship and happy and a former human who is now a mermaid who lives underwater? I, of course, can’t say what your specific answer is here, but what I can say is that this was not the trip that turned out the worst for Hanks. Rating: This was a good trip, assuming Hanks is able to successfully transition into mermaid life.

Joe Versus the Volcano (1990): He rides on a yacht and the yacht sinks. He gets stranded at sea with an unconscious woman for an unreasonable amount of time. Eventually, they make it to land, but that’s only a good thing for the woman because Hanks, who believes he has an incurable disease that will kill him, is visiting the island so that he can jump into a volcano and kill himself. So that’s a bunch of sucky things. HOWEVER, Hanks finds out later that actually he’s not dying, and also that the woman he’s with has fallen in love with him. So: Rating: It started out as a very bad trip, but ends up as a very good trip.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993): Hanks goes to New York. He meets a woman that he falls in love with. Rating: This was a very good trip. Possibly his best trip, which is really saying something when you remember that the trip to New York starts because Hanks is trying to find his eight-year-old son, who somehow flew to New York on his own and then went to the top of the Empire State Building.

A Hologram for the King (2016): This one is a little bit tricky, but not really. Hanks plays a guy who goes to Saudi Arabia to make some kind of presentation to the government on behalf of a company. There are delays and screwups and a lot of waiting and everything is mostly bad. HOWEVER, while there he does end up having a surgery that saves his life. And also he does start a relationship with the doctor who performed the surgery. And also they fall so thoroughly for each other that he decides to just live there instead of going back to America. So, all things weighed and accounted for, this is probably actually a good, good trip. Rating: Probably actually a good, good trip.

TRIPS THAT, DESPITE FORMING A RELATIONSHIP WITH A WOMAN WHILE ON THEM, END UP BEING ONLY OKAY BECAUSE TOO MANY OTHER BAD THINGS HAPPEN

Big (1988): A young boy named Josh Baskin makes a wish at a carnival one night to be big. When he wakes up the next morning, he’s suddenly the thirty-year-old version of himself. (It’s Tom Hanks.) He goes on a trip to New York City to try to reverse his grown man body back to its normal boy body. While on the trip, he, among many other things, gets a job at a toy company. (He finds out it’s going to be about six weeks before he can change back, which is why he gets a job.) He’s so accidentally good at it that, after a single week, he gets made vice president of a branch of the company. His new job pays him enough money that he’s able to get a giant loft apartment in the city, which he decorates with a trampoline and a basketball goal and a pinball machine.⁷ Also, he dates a woman and they sleep together. Rating: This was a very good trip for Hanks, but a bad trip for everyone else.

A sidebar about Big: there are definitely a lot of different angles that could be talked about here,⁸ but the one that I think about the most: Josh’s mother is very happy when he finally returns home more than six weeks after she believed he’d been kidnapped, as any mother would be in that situation. But Josh’s mother got a good look at the grown man version of himself that first morning after the transformation. And I can’t imagine there’s any way that she’d ever forget his face. So how weird do you think it was for her when Josh grows up to look exactly like the man she believes kidnapped him?

Volunteers (1985): Hanks goes to Thailand to escape the wrath of a bookie he owes a bunch of money. (Good trip.) However, he didn’t know the trip was a Peace Corps mission to help build a bridge. (Bad trip.) He doesn’t want to do the work (bad trip), but ultimately he does it and he falls in love (good trip). By my count, that makes this a neutral trip. Rating: Neutral trip.

The Terminal (2004): Hanks plays an Eastern European man who comes to America to get an autograph from a jazz musician.⁹ He gets trapped in the JFK Airport terminal for nine months because his home country entered into a civil war during Hanks’s flight to America, opening up some weird loophole in the system that prevented Hanks from entering America and also prevented him from returning home. I’m not quite sure how to rate this one. Because on the one hand, living in an airport terminal is probably better than living in an Eastern European country during a civil war. On the other hand, the JFK Airport terminal is like if an Eastern European country during a civil war had a Panini Express located in the middle of it. So, I guess this is a push? Rating: Neutral trip.