Is Hanks really that dumb?
Tom Hanks has admonished critics of his new movie The Da Vinci Code of making "a very big mistake." The actor hit out at the Catholic backlash the film has received ahead of its worldwide release next week, insisting it is much more than a religious rant. He told London's Evening Standard newspaper, "We always knew there would be a segment of society that would not want this movie to be shown. But the story we tell is loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense. If you are going to take any sort of movie at face value, particularly a huge-budget motion picture like this, you'd be making a very big mistake. It's a damn good story and a lot of fun... all it is is dialogue. That never hurts."
Hanks is either being naive or purposefully deceptive when he brushes off criticism of the DVC story. Ultimately, he's right...it's just a story. But he can't honestly think that any popular portrayal of history will not shape the public's view of the events it portrays. Stone's JFK helped make people more skeptical of conventional assassination interpretations even though many scholars dismissed Stone's portrayal.
posted by Eric at Monday, May 15, 2006
2 Comments:
I think you have to take what he says with a grain of salt. A publicist or someone working for the distributor probably told him what to say. It's his job as a star to help promote the movie and his line sounds like a good attempt at not being too offensive to religious critics while not really putting off people who are looking forward to the movie. The question is how stupid would he be if he started really worrying about truth in advertising? I doubt that would endear him to the studio.
It's funny because in the movie his character is standing up for the church in all the discussions. I'm guessing that's the only way Tom Hanks would take the role. He knew this movie would piss off Christians so he wanted to be able to say "Well, my character didn't believe all that crap they were saying about the church. Whenever Sir Ian McKellen started to rant my character would always say "That's just speculation! You don't know what you're talking about!" I would NEVER be a character in a movie that was so offensive to the Catholic Church!"
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