Cast Away Totally Explained

Everything about Cast Away totally explained

ť 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 an uninhabited island after his plane goes down over the South Pacific. It is unusual in Hollywood cinema in that during most of the movie there's only one human character. Tom Hanks was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his performance.

Plot

Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is a highly efficient FedEx executive. He is in a relationship with Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt). Both of them seem to want to get married but Chuck's busy schedule is an obstacle.
   Chuck is home in Tennessee for Christmas after returning from a trip to Moscow, Russia. As he and Kelly discuss their plans for marriage, Chuck is called away on a business trip. He gives Kelly a box containing an engagement ring and tells her not to open it until he returns and Kelly gives Chuck a pocket watch containing a picture of herself.
   While flying through a thunderstorm somewhere over the southern Pacific Ocean, the FedEx jet crashes into the night time sea in flames. Saved by an inflatable life-raft, Chuck floats helplessly on the ocean until he's brought to a deserted island.
   Chuck quickly ascertains that the island is uninhabited and sets out doing what he can to survive: he drinks coconut water and later stores rain water in the discarded husks, he creates shelter by draping his raft over palmtree trunks and, later, by discovering caves in the island rock, he attempts to fish and catch crab.
   The body of one of the flight crew washes up on the island along with several dozen FedEx packages. Chuck buries the pilot and neatly piles away all of the washed up packages. After a failed attempt to leave the island by the inflatable raft (the same one upon which he floated to the island) due to the powerful surf around the island, Chuck realizes that his stay on the island might be prolonged and he sets out opening all of the packages, finding a practical use for whatever is inside. One of the items he finds is a Wilson volleyball which Chuck appropriately names "Wilson", draws a face upon the ball and starts speaking with it. He develops a deep friendship with this volleyball and his conversations with it are almost exclusively the only instances during which he talks while on the island. One of the FedEx packages bears an angels' wings logo. For some reason, even though he doesn't know what the package is or who it belongs to, this is the only package Chuck doesn't open.
   Through the crash, Chuck was able to retain the pocket watch with Kelly's picture. He often gazes upon this picture for comfort in lonely times and motivation to go on.
   Four years later, a dramatically thinner Chuck is seen expertly tossing a spear into the water, killing a fish. The cave in which Chuck now sleeps contains myriad pictures of Kelly on the cave walls and a box holding his possessions.
   One morning, Chuck finds a large piece of a plastic from a portable toilet that washed up on the island. He uses the plastic as a sail for a new raft to help him escape from the island. During an imagined conversation with Wilson, Chuck is reminded of a noose knot he prepared that shows that Chuck considered hanging himself during his stay on the island. With construction of the raft complete, Chuck sets out to sea. After breaking through the island surf, Chuck takes one last look at the island and becomes visibly emotional for leaving.
   Chuck spends days drifting out in the open sea, still doing whatever necessary to stay alive until he can be rescued. After a few days of drifting at sea, Wilson gets loose from the raft and the current carries him away. Chuck desperately tries to get Wilson back, but is unsuccessful. Alone on the raft, Chuck sobs over the loss of his friend. After drifting for an unknown period of time, he's rescued by a passing cargo ship.
   On returning home, Chuck must come to terms with the fact that everyone he was close to has given him up for dead long ago and moved on with their lives. Kelly has married and had a child with another man, Jerry Lovett (Christopher Noth). Chuck reunites with Kelly and they profess their love for each other, but she realizes that she's responsibilities to Jerry and her daughter and says goodbye to Chuck. Chuck feels like he lost Kelly all over again and decides to let go and move on with his life.
   He sets out to deliver the one package he never opened on the island and he finds a ranch with the angels' wings sculpture over the main entrance. He leaves the package at the front door of the residence with an attached note that says "This package saved my life". Chuck then drives out to a remote crossroads. In his car, he keeps a new Wilson volleyball. As he's studying a map at the intersection, a woman drives up and tries to help him by describing where all the roads from the intersection lead. As she drives away Chuck notices the angels' wings painted on the back of her truck. A long close up of Chuck smiling in the direction the truck had left closes the film.

Cast Away island

Cast Away was filmed on Monuriki, a member of the Mamanuca Islands. It is in a subgroup of the Mamanuca archipelago, which is sited off the coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. It has become a tourist attraction following the film's release.
A satellite image of the island is available to be seen here

.
Upon Chuck's return, Kelly explained to Chuck that when he was found, he'd "drifted 500 miles", and the island was "about 600 miles south of the Cook Islands." There is no land between Antarctica and the southern-most Cook Islands of Mangaia.

Wilson

One of Cast Away's notable "characters" is "Wilson," a volleyball from Wilson Sporting Goods. 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. The blood from his wound makes the hand-shaped mark that forms the ball's "face". 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. 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 single-person situation. 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. Toward the end of the film, Chuck is seen driving with a brand new volleyball sitting in the passenger seat. After the film, Wilson's final resting place is in a display cabinet in FedEx Kinko's CEO Ken May's office in Dallas, Texas.

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 didn't 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 centred around the fact that one of its products was "co-starring" with Tom Hanks.
   The plane crash scene caused FedEx Corporation to have "a heart attack at first", according to Gayle Christensen, director of global brand management for the company. However, FedEx decided the movie was a "risk worth taking because the story of the brand was very positive," she said, adding that the movie helped increase FedEx's brand awareness in Asia and Europe. FedEx cooperated closely with the film makers 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. The CEO at the end of the movie is actually Fred Smith, the real-life CEO of FedEx at the time.
   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 or a form of marketing benefit.
   Another product placed in the film is the soft drink Dr Pepper, which Chuck is shown drinking on the plane before the crash, and again after his return to civilization. This was also a nod to a previous film starring Hanks, Forrest Gump. In this film Forrest proclaims, "I musta drunk me about 15 Doctor Peppers!"

Film notes

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, rope, etc.
In a panel discussing the movie, Director Robert Zemeckis joked that the final unopened package at the end contained a waterproof, solar-powered satellite phone. This led to a Super Bowl commercial that spoofed the movie, which shows Hanks' character (not played by Hanks in the commercial) making the final delivery of an unopened package to a suburban residence. As he delivers the FedEx box, he says to the recipient "by the way, what was in the box?" to which the female recipient says "nothing much, just a satellite phone, GPS locater, fishing rod, water purifier, and some seeds."
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 and direct What Lies Beneath. The film makers actually burned down several trees on the island for the movie. In return they were required to plant three new trees for each one they burned down. Wilson Sporting Goods manufactured a volleyball with a parody of the hand print face on one side. It was sold for a limited time during the movie's initial release. Lloyd Braun of ABC Studios pitched the idea of a television series based on the movie, 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. It cost between $10 and $14 million.

Movie score

The film's minimal score was composed by Alan Silvestri for which he won a Grammy in 2002. The film's soundtrack is most notable for its lack of score while Chuck is on the island. There is no music at all until he escapes, which is used to resemble the lack of civilization on the island. 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. The tracks for the score are as follows:

"Cast Away" - 3.44
"Wilson, I'm Sorry" - 1.39
"Drive to Kelly's" - 3.54
"Love of My Life" - 1.47
"What the Tide Could Bring" - 3.39
"Crossroads" - 2.08
"End Credits" - 7.29

Cast

Tom Hanks – Hanks' performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Helen Hunt

Wilson the Volleyball

Lari White

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)

58th Golden Globe Awards: 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)

2001 MTV Movie Awards: Best On-screen Team (Tom Hanks and Wilson)Further Information

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