TRIPS THAT INVOLVE OUTER SPACE, OR FEDEX DELIVERIES, OR BIRDS

Apollo 13 (1995): Two things here: (1) It would be easy to say that this was a good trip because Hanks and his friends end up not getting killed in space, which I assume is the A1 goal when one goes to space. But I would argue that it was a disastrous trip, and part of that is because there was a long amount of time where all the astronauts thought they were going to die, which is likely terribly upsetting, but mostly it’s because they trained all of that time and spent all of that energy dreaming about walking on the moon and then ended up having to abort the mission. That had to have been terribly frustrating. (2) Ed Harris is in this movie. He’s also in The Right Stuff, a very good space movie where he plays astronaut John Glenn, and he’s also in Gravity, the best ever space movie.¹⁰ If there ever is a moment in my life where, for reasons I cannot at this moment foresee, I am tasked with being a movie astronaut, I would very much like for Ed Harris to be part of my movie space team. Rating: Frustrating trip.

Cast Away (2000): Hanks is riding in an airplane to Malaysia. (He’s working as a FedEx employee.) The airplane crashes. Everyone on the plane dies except for Hanks, who ends up stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for over four years. He has to do many terrible things while he’s on the island, not the least of which is knock out his own rotten tooth with an ice skate blade and a rock. And I understand that all of those things—the plane crash, the death, the being stranded part, the self-dentistry—are bad. But listen, by the end of his time on the island Hanks is (a) very fit, (b) very good at fishing, (c) very good at building things with his hands and creating fire with his hands, and (d) he has a beard. Those are all things I am envious of. As such: Rating: Great trip.

Sully (2016): Hanks plays a pilot who has to land his plane in the Hudson River because it hits a flock of birds. And I know that doesn’t sound all that intimidating, and also I know that, as far as emergency landings in movies go, a river landing isn’t quite as spectacular as the upside-down landing that Denzel Washington had to do in Flight while he was drunk or Kenan Thompson landing the plane in Snakes on a Plane after the snakes wrecked everything. But planes are terrifying to me. And even one tiny thing going wrong on one of them registers as a mega emergency in my head. So, even though Hanks landed the plane fine and no one was killed, I’m still classifying this as a catastrophic trip. Rating: Fuck birds.

TRIPS THAT INVOLVED COMPLICATED GEOPOLITICAL POLITICS THAT DID NOT RESULT IN HANKS DYING

Forrest Gump (1994): Hanks goes on several trips in Forrest Gump, the two most massive of which being (a) when he joins the military and gets sent to Vietnam, and (b) when he decides he’s going to jog across the country, a running excursion that he participates in for more than three years. Going to war is always a sucky thing (he loses his best friend; he gets shot), so that’s one mark to the bad for that trip, but also Hanks earns the Medal of Honor for his bravery and becomes an American hero, so that’s one mark to the good for that trip. And with the jogging thing, he becomes famous for it, sure, but also he has to fucking run for three years, which to me sounds like getting sentenced to prison for a hundred years. Rating: Cumulatively, these are neutral trips.

Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986): Hanks plays a pilot in World War II. His plane gets shot down. He is injured, but he does not die. Rating: Bad trip.¹¹

Captain Phillips (2013): Hanks is the captain of a cargo ship that gets overtaken by Somali pirates. They beat him and take him hostage and nearly kill him. The only reason they don’t kill him is because U.S. Navy SEALs kill the pirates first. Rating: Catastrophic trip, but still not his worst trip.

Bridge of Spies (2015): Hanks, playing a high-powered lawyer, goes to Berlin to negotiate the exchange of prisoners between the U.S.S.R. and the United States. He’s successful at it, but I’ve still not forgiven Ivan Drago for killing Apollo Creed so I’m not going to give anyone credit ever for dealing with the U.S.S.R. Rating: Technically a good trip, but I will not acknowledge it.

A TRIP WHERE HANKS TOLD TWO GUYS TO GO FUCK THEMSELVES

Catch Me If You Can (2002): An admission: there are some trips that Hanks takes in this movie, yes, but mostly I just wanted to include it here because I like Catch Me If You Can. It’s a great deal of fun. I almost always enjoy stories about good scams and clever hustles. And watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks try to outsmart each other for a couple of hours is a fine way to spend an evening. The scene when Hanks catches DiCaprio in the hotel room but then DiCaprio convinces Hanks that he’s part of the Secret Service is so delicious and also probably the most memorable. My favorite part of the movie, though, is when Hanks is riding around in a car with two other FBI guys. One of them is giving Hanks a hard time about being so serious all the time. Hanks, pretending to offer them an olive branch, asks if they’d like for him to tell them a joke. They say yes, and are very excited to finally see a more playful side of Hanks. Hanks says, “Knock knock.” One of the FBI guys asks, “Who’s there?” Hanks waits a beat, then says, “Go fuck yourself,” and then turns the radio up. It’s a top-tier Hanks movie moment. Rating: Good trip(s).

A TRIP WHERE RACE PLAYS A BIG PART

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990): Hanks plays a Wall Street millionaire who ends up in the South Bronx by accident one night. He sees a tire in the middle of the road blocking the entrance ramp onto a freeway, and so he gets out of his car to move it. When he does, two black teenagers show up and ask him if he needs help. He panics, hits one of them with the tire, then runs back to his car. The woman he was with who was waiting for him in the car moves over to the driver’s side. Hanks jumps in. As they try to escape, she runs over one of the teenagers. Hanks and the woman flee the scene. It becomes a big, news-grabbing court case. Rating: A really bad trip for the teenager who got run over, and a kind of bad trip for Hanks, who gets caught and sent to court but ultimately is acquitted.

TRIPS WHERE HANKS DIES BUT NONE OF THEM IS THE WORST TRIP

Road to Perdition (2002): Hanks plays a mob enforcer who, after driving his son to his aunt’s house, gets shot and killed. He dies while his son holds him. Rating: Extremely bad trip, but not quite the worst trip.

Elvis Has Left the Building (2004): Hanks has a bit part in this. He plays an Elvis impersonator who gets killed on his way to Las Vegas. What’s more, he gets his head stuffed into a mailbox after he’s dead. (He is listed in the credits as “Mailbox Elvis.”) (Right here feels like a good spot to point out that Tom Hanks, who, again, PLAYS A BIT PART AS AN ELVIS IMPERSONATOR WHO GETS HIS HEAD STUFFED INTO A MAILBOX, has been nominated for the Best Actor award at the Oscars five different times, winning two of them.) Rating: A bad trip, but I’m counting it as a good trip because Hanks deciding to take this part was a flex. It’d be like Peak Era LeBron deciding he wanted to leave the NBA for a few years and use his college eligibility to help Sam Houston State University make a Final Four.

The Ladykillers (2004): Hanks goes on a trip to dispose of a dead body. And if you can even believe this, a bird causes Hanks to accidentally hang himself, and so I say again: Rating: Fuck birds.

THE TRIP THAT TURNED OUT THE WORST FOR HANKS

It’s Saving Private Ryan. It has be.

In Saving Private Ryan, Hanks plays a schoolteacher pulled into conflict by the gravity of World War II. He suffers through an unreasonable amount of terror and terrible things, including but not limited to: the opening beach scene when he first arrives into war with his unit; watching many of his friends and fellow soldiers die over the course of a few days; watching many of his friends and fellow soldiers die over the course of a few days as they try to save one single soldier; and getting shot and killed by the same guy whose life he spared earlier in the movie. It’s a lot.

It’s the most, in fact.

This is the trip that turned out the worst for Tom Hanks.¹²