It is tough, as a lover of movies, to reconcile the fact that behind the dreamy scenarios we see on screen, the moving images that make us laugh, weep, rejoice, and recoil is a multi-billion dollar industry. In our lighter-headed moments, we can only dream that the creators of these movies are simply doing so in the name of entertaining their audience with their artistic expression. However, flick through the listings page of your local cinema, and you will see that a large chunk of the pictures on show have been thought up and delivered, all in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. Even America’s dad, Tom Hanks has a few movies in his esteemed locker.
Hanks’ career is littered with artistic endeavours. The behemoth titan of acting has been a part of some of the largest blockbusters of all time, raking in billions at the box office off the back of his work. Toy Story, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 are just a few which blew expected ticket sales out of the water. But he has also pursued art for art’s sake, with A Man Called Otto, Cloud Atlas and The Post as prime examples
It means, across Hanks’ career, there are countless reasons to hope that his pursuit of cinema was more simply constructed as a way to express himself and entertain his audience. However, tragically for the purists, he has pursued the paycheque a few times in his career, perhaps no more obviously than his run as Robert Langdon in the trilogy of movies spawned from The Da Vinci Code.
Hanks’ portrayal of Robert Langdon in the film adaptations of the Dan Brown novels has polarised fans of the source material. Although they received generally negative reviews from critics due to Ron Howard’s directorial style, the films continued to make enormous profits and were huge commercial successes. They left critics with a real headscratcher on their hands, how can movies which are so widely consumed be so far below the par of those involved. It might have had something to do with the intentions of those involved.
In an interview, Hanks claimed that the only thing that made up for his disappointing involvement in the film series was the opportunity to take off his pants in front of the Mona Lisa during the filming of The Da Vinci Code and, of course, the chance to chase down some “good commerce”. The actor launched a fairly scathing attack against the franchise and claimed it was nothing other than a money-making venture.
“God, that was a commercial enterprise,” Hanks said. “Yeah, those Robert Langdon sequels are hooey. The Da Vinci Code was hooey.” According to the actor, the films are designed to be nothing more than “delightful scavenger hunts that are about as accurate to history as the James Bond movies are to espionage.”
Hanks also criticised Brown’s novels and their general narrative structure: “I mean, Dan Brown, God bless him, says, ‘Here is a sculpture in a place in Paris! No, it’s way over there. See how a cross is formed on a map? Well, it’s sort of a cross.’ But they’re as cynical as a crossword puzzle. All we were doing is promising a diversion.”
He revealed that the only reason the film adaptations stopped coming out was that the producers realised that the project no longer had its appeal. “There’s nothing wrong with good commerce, provided it is good commerce,” Hanks added. “By the time we made the third, we proved that it wasn’t such good commerce.”
The production group decided to call it a day and not return to Brown’s work. However, one could rightly assume that it was more about the money drying up than any decision based on artistic integrity.
