"Scattered pic-tures of the smiles we left behind..."
October 26, 2016 10:55 AM   Subscribe

The police show up, they do some canvassing, they try to find some fingerprints, then that’s it. They leave her to deal with her suddenly broken life. They’re gone and Josh is gone and there’s not even any sign of the guy who broke into her home. All she knows is that when she went to bed her son was at home safe with her and when she woke up he was gone and a man was standing in her kitchen wearing Josh’s underwear. That’s where she is.
Big’ Is Secretly a Horror Movie — Just ask Tom Hanks’s terrified mom
posted by Atom Eyes (73 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Jesus Christ, Shea Serrano.
posted by Etrigan at 11:06 AM on October 26, 2016 [13 favorites]


I think about this EVERY TIME! Especially because Big came out that the height of the awareness campaign around child abduction, at least for those of us who were Josh Baskin's age.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:08 AM on October 26, 2016 [13 favorites]


See also: trying to enjoy Raising Arizona while keeping in mind that it's a comedy about kidnapping a baby.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:10 AM on October 26, 2016 [18 favorites]


Yeah, there are a lot of fridge horror moments in Big that I didn't really get until I grew up and became a parent. What the mom went through is the top; the next worst is the girlfriend. I can't recall if she has a dawning moment of horror in the movie or not; I picture it hitting her shortly after she drives away after dropping Josh off in front of his house and seeing him become a kid again.
posted by nubs at 11:11 AM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I mean, yeah, obviously. Mrs. Baskin's going to be traumatized for the rest of her life. Biff Tannen's life is rewritten so that he's a broken man forced to be a toady to his high school enemy. Walter Peck was just trying to do his job and got gallons of white-hot melted marshmallow on him. Sgt. Hulka just wanted to make sure his recruits wouldn't get killed and now he's got tinnitus and a case of PTSD. Movies of the 80s are all about the collateral damage around the heroes.
posted by aureliobuendia at 11:11 AM on October 26, 2016 [27 favorites]


Jurassic Park from the POV of that one raptor that gets eaten by the t rex is a terrible story
posted by beerperson at 11:15 AM on October 26, 2016 [29 favorites]


That said, can we talk about how Mercedes Ruehl knew about this before Shea Serrano wrote a goddamned thing? Listen to the way she delivers her lines (OFFSCREEN!) when Josh comes back. Listen to that little catch in her voice where she swore she wouldn't give up hope but maybe she had and maybe he's never coming back and ohmygod is that my baby boy? The day you become an adult is when you understand even a tenth of what she went through.

In summary, Mercedes Ruehl is a criminally underrated actress.
posted by aureliobuendia at 11:15 AM on October 26, 2016 [66 favorites]


See also: trying to enjoy Raising Arizona while keeping in mind that it's a comedy about kidnapping a baby.

Well the difference is, see, they had four little other babies, almost as good as that one.
posted by phunniemee at 11:16 AM on October 26, 2016 [52 favorites]


I don't think it's "secretly" a horror movie, it pretty clearly is a horror movie beneath all of Hanks' cute mugging. The last scene where Josh returns home and his mother screams when he walks in the door was terrifying and heartbreaking when I saw it in the theater and remains so every time I see it on TV.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:17 AM on October 26, 2016 [8 favorites]


I never for a second thought Big wasn't aware of how much this story hurt Josh's mother. That's how it was written. That's how Ruehl plays it. That's why you hire Ruehl.

It's why Big isn't escapist fantasy, but instead a terrific, heartbreaking film.
posted by maxsparber at 11:20 AM on October 26, 2016 [27 favorites]


Movies of the 80s are all about the collateral damage around the heroes.

Well, they aren't really. Not directly. It's only with the benefit of hindsight and a broader perspective that you get to see the collateral damage and the horror of those movies for the secondary or tertiary characters.

I'm quite sure that the writers of Big (and other films) weren't thinking about any of this stuff; they wanted to make a fun movie about a kid suddenly becoming an adult and grappling with that. They wanted to show, though, that there's an emotional loss to that sudden change - his mom, his friend, himself - and the movie uses those to create the need to go back both for the main character and the audience, but they aren't thinking about the bigger emotional trauma of it. The film's scope is really only about Josh. It wants us to think he had this experience and went back, and everything is ok.

It ignores the irrevocable nature of what happened - to Josh and the people around him. The trauma involved for everyone, including Josh who was placed into situations that would be difficult to emotionally process for a 12 year old, are never really touched on in the film (or this article). So yeah, lots of baggage here to unpack for everyone for a long time to come.

I'd love to see a sequel to Big that covers all the fallout.
posted by nubs at 11:22 AM on October 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


I mean if we're just going to define genre by the events depicted in a work,
posted by beerperson at 11:22 AM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


In summary, Mercedes Ruehl is a criminally underrated actress.

She's the best part of The Fisher King.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:23 AM on October 26, 2016 [18 favorites]


I'd love to see a sequel to Big that covers all the fallout.

Yes! With no light comedy or magical whimsy—just straight up blisteringly bleak drama about a group of damaged people faced with the impossible task of trying to put their broken lives back together again.

And get Mike Leigh to direct it.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:28 AM on October 26, 2016 [18 favorites]


FAN THEORY: Young Josh Baskin's time as an "adult" so mentally scarred him that when he actually did grow up, he was only able to hold down a job on the haunted-elevator ride at the local amusement park. ANY QUESTIONS?
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:30 AM on October 26, 2016 [58 favorites]


JESUS this is spot on. I watched this with my second grader recently and I noticed him wearing his anxious/upset face midway through. "What's wrong, bud?" "His mom must be so worried."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:32 AM on October 26, 2016 [21 favorites]


they aren't thinking about the bigger emotional trauma of it.

I doubt this, for reasons pointed out here and in the piece. I mean, that's what good writers and actors and directors do. The subtext of emotional trauma didn't get in the story by accident. But it's true that it might be easier to see now, nearly thirty years later. Thinking of it now, Big reminds me most of It's A Wonderful Life, another movie where the horror is easy to miss beneath the sentimentality.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:32 AM on October 26, 2016 [13 favorites]


AI Artificial Intelligence is the movie where this always stood out for for me.

David the fake child is recovered by advanced AIs long after humans are extinct. David is irreversibly imprinted on Monica, his human mother figure, and has spend thousands of years obsessing over this. The AIs decide to recreate Monica for a day just to make David happy - but what about Monica's point of view? She's been brought back to life for a day just to act as a mother figure to an obsessive and unchanging AI child, acts confused and dazed for the period, and then... dies along with it?

I found the whole last sequence here really horrible from her point of view.
posted by xiw at 11:38 AM on October 26, 2016 [8 favorites]


I doubt this, for reasons pointed out here and in the piece. I mean, that's what good writers and actors and directors do. The subtext of emotional trauma didn't get in the story by accident

You are likely right; it's been a very long time since I've seen Big. Maybe it's more fair for me to say that I doubt the studio wanted this to be a film about the emotional trauma, and instead positioned it as a romp.
posted by nubs at 11:48 AM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes! With no light comedy or magical whimsy—just straight up blisteringly bleak drama about a group of damaged people faced with the impossible task of trying to put their broken lives back together again.

"Susan, where's that boyfriend of yours? Great guy! Hope he's well! You two thinking about marriage? Kids?"
"..............."
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:50 AM on October 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


Jurassic Park from the POV of that one raptor that gets eaten by the t rex is a terrible story

That raptor went down fighting, she's the true hero!
posted by madajb at 11:50 AM on October 26, 2016


I came in to say what aureliobuendia said. The reason this piece can exist and feel so true is because that reality is grounded into this movie. There were lots of plays off of Freaky Friday around this time, and there was no reason to make the reality of the fantasy so real - it was already an expected comedy trope. And instead we have a great film. And Ruehl's - and Penny Marshall's - work, was integral to that.
posted by Mchelly at 11:51 AM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Movies of the 80s are all about the collateral damage around the heroes.

To say nothing of the wall of corpses that Ferris Bueller leaves behind.
posted by codacorolla at 11:51 AM on October 26, 2016 [18 favorites]


What if E.T. was actually an homage to Ronald Reagan? Think about it. It all makes sense.
posted by My Dad at 11:59 AM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


The creators must have at least partially considered the trauma the disappearance would cause, or they wouldn't have had that phone call scene partway through the movie. It's not played for laughs, the mother is distraught and angry and terrified and breaks down in tears at the end. And as the article notes they cut back to her several times, with none of those times being funny either.

It's kind of a weird mix when you think about it. If you're going for comedy, why even include these serious scenes?
posted by Sangermaine at 12:00 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


The film was directed by Penny Marshall (a criminally underrated director) and co-written and co-produced by Anne Spielberg, whose brother you may have heard of.

Women's feelings going unconsidered by man-children is kind of a big theme in the movie, with or without Josh.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:11 PM on October 26, 2016 [56 favorites]


Yeah, chalk up another vote for "there's nothing secret about the horror in Big". If it was a secret, they maybe wouldn't have depicted it so well or at all.
posted by destructive cactus at 12:17 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Cracked has mined this particular comedy vein a view times.

4 Movies That Are Horrifying From Another Character's POV

5 Movie Relationships that are Secretly Terrifying.

Why the Most Terrifying Movie Alien Isn't Who You Think (daniel has a disney thing)

TFA is a particularly compelling execution of the genre though. Well done.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:29 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


This reminds me of Too Like The Lightning, with the way that J.E.D.D. MASON forever ruins someone's ability to enjoy fiction by telling them, "The protagonist of every work of fiction is Humanity, and the antagonist is God."
posted by tobascodagama at 12:43 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I doubt the studio wanted this to be a film about the emotional trauma, and instead positioned it as a romp.

I think that's definitely true. The advertisements all focused on Hanks' lovable mug. The movie's taglines all played up the wish-fulfillment angle. The trailer does too. The movie's shot (as I recall) in bright colors and earth tones. Much of it is definitely a comedy. But at the same time there's this core of trauma and, frankly, body horror, all the way through it. Marketed differently or directed a little differently and it might be one of those grimly funny Terry Gilliam films.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:57 PM on October 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


Maybe it's more fair for me to say that I doubt the studio wanted this to be a film about the emotional trauma, and instead positioned it as a romp.

What's more accurate is to say this movie was always a comedy, and emotional trauma sits just under the surface of the whole film. Fox and Gracie Films absolutely understood that when they were making the movie. I mean James L. Brooks made BROADCAST NEWS for Pete's sake.

The advertisements all focused on Hanks' lovable mug. The movie's taglines all played up the wish-fulfillment angle. The trailer does too.

Please don't confuse marketing for creative intent.
posted by incessant at 1:00 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Much of it is definitely a comedy. But at the same time there's this core of trauma and, frankly, body horror, all the way through it.

Now I'm bummed that we never got to see a Penny Marshall-directed adaptation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" starring a young Tom Hanks. "Ma, it's me, Gregor—your son! Stop throwing those freaking apples at me!"
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:11 PM on October 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


The best comedies are built on emotional trauma.
posted by bq at 1:13 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


Please don't confuse marketing for creative intent.

Marketing isn't creative intent. It does bear on how the studios wanted to sell the movie they had, which was the point at discussion. Anyway, I don't disagree that Big is both a comedy and a traumatic drama—a late romance, maybe, if you wanted to be Shakespearean about it.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:24 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


James L. Brooks made BROADCAST NEWS for Pete's sake

During the month of October, he should be referred to exclusively as "James Hell Brooks".
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:29 PM on October 26, 2016 [19 favorites]


Flight Of The Navigator was in some ways similar, but I never saw it as anything less than at least partially horrifying - they clearly depicted the trauma of abduction and loss on both the kid and the family.

Were any comedies in the 80s not terrifying? I'm struggling to think of anything that was all sweetness and light.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:31 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Huh. I didn't know that Gary Ross, Big's co-writer, went on to write and direct Pleasantville and The Hunger Games.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:33 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Elizabeth Perkins does have a split-second reaction of horror when Tom Hanks is explaining how he is really a kid and just wants to go home. It's very subtle and could be interpreted as either 'omg I seduced a 13-year-old' or 'omg this man is insane'. I've always taken it as the former.
posted by Flannery Culp at 1:37 PM on October 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


When I saw this as a kid, I wanted Perkins to get a wish to be young again, too, so they could be together in an age-appropriate way.

I mean that is probably preferable to dealing with having slept with an actual minor.

Though I personally did not get why she wanted to be with Adult Josh anyway.
posted by emjaybee at 1:45 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


I knew a girl in high school who was an extra in Big. She was kind of a pain in the butt.
posted by jonmc at 1:56 PM on October 26, 2016


Was she a big pain in the butt?
posted by octobersurprise at 2:00 PM on October 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


AI Artificial Intelligence is the movie where this always stood out for for me.

Every part of AI is entirely about the artifice of presentation masking the deep-seated sociopathy and psychosis of David. I love that movie. The robot carnival where the ringleader tells everyone that the robots are emotional liars with base needs and no real grasp of humanity or pain? He is dressed like Indiana Jones and rides around in an Amblin film logo, clearly acting as the director explicitly saying 'Sympathizing with David is wrong, and here's why.' David having a complete psychotic break when running into the other droid version of him, and then murdering it to death immediately? The fact that the target of his rage was another robot wasn't even a consideration for him - he would have lashed out that way at anyone or anything who so innately threatened his position as the sole affection of his 'mother' - I'm fairly sure that if he hadn't been driven from his adopted household, he would have ended up murdering the real son (altho mayhaps in a more engineered faked-accident rather than freak-out bludgeoning).

And yeah, that ending - the most chilling part of the whole shebang! The futurebots flat out tell him that they have his mom on storage and haven't figured out how to bring her back long term yet, but they DO know if they bring her back now she's there for a day and then gone forever - there's no trying again after that. David doesn't give a shit, he wants his mom time and consequences be damned. He essentially kills his mother all over again just to satisfy his desperate need for personal fulfillment.

That entire film is ICE COLD.
posted by FatherDagon at 2:02 PM on October 26, 2016 [10 favorites]


The film was directed by Penny Marshall (a criminally underrated director)

No kidding, maybe you people forgot a little thing called THE MARSHALL PLAN?!?!
posted by beerperson at 2:03 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


Marketing isn't creative intent. It does bear on how the studios wanted to sell the movie they had, which was the point at discussion.

No, the point at discussion was originally whether the writers and director were "thinking about any of this stuff" -- meaning the emotional trauma -- when they made the movie, and then it became about what the studio "wanted" the film to be rather than what we now perceive the film as, "only with the benefit of hindsight and a broader perspective." How the film was marketed was never part of the conversation.

Marketing is about enticing someone to go see a movie. It is not about whether a complex emotional subtext was intended by the creators and studio of a film.
posted by incessant at 2:13 PM on October 26, 2016


FatherDagon, I hate that movie, but enjoy your interpretation of it, so thanks for that.
posted by emjaybee at 2:14 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Just ask Tom Hanks’s terrified mom

So the author really means Josh's mom. Reality details be dammed.

I remember one time we were talking about some friends who owned a brewery and the issues they had with abusing acohol and my SIL said "Yeah, it's just like Sam". And we're all "Whoo?" And she says "Sam, you know Sam Malone, on Cheers".
posted by humboldt32 at 2:15 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


That reminds me, I still really want to read EL-P's Steven Seagal fan fiction
El-P: I wrote a piece of fan fiction from the perspective of Sticks, who if you remember, when he went into the bar...

AVC: The guy with the pool cues.

El-P: That’s right. And they were like, “Sticks!”

El-P: I mean, the whole phenomenon of some Asian dude who’s a ninja who uses pool cues so much that they call him Sticks, that he’s just on call for any time there’s ever any beef, and this guy just waits around all day long and doesn’t do anything until someone comes in like Steven Seagal, and then they say “Sticks!” and he has to fight Steven Seagal. Of course, he doesn’t realize Steven Seagal is going to put a pool ball in a fucking sock or a fucking towel and mercilessly smash everybody’s teeth in. I just love Steven Seagal for his pure—his perspective on what being a hero is just a purely evil, cruel perspective.

AVC: I want to hear more about this Sticks fan fiction. What is your version of Sticks’ interior life like? What does he do all day?

El-P: I essentially pictured Sticks as a family man who had to take a shitty, low-level mob enforcement job, and didn’t really want to be there. He shows up every day, because he has this one particular talent set, which is that he can fight with pool sticks. And he just prays every day that he doesn’t have to do it. It’s a shitty job, but ultimately, it can be really terrible if someone like Steven Seagal shows up.

So the piece of fan fiction I wrote was him just, you know, really hoping they don’t call his name, and they do call his name. And then Steven Seagal puts him in the hospital, and I kind of follow him and his family in the hospital. I like—Steven Seagal does that thing where he walks into the room and just destroys people’s fucking bodies, like he just kills and maims motherfuckers. He doesn’t even really kill people, he just mercilessly maims them. And, as in any good action movie, you follow the protagonist out the door. You never see the guy again, and I thought it would be really cool or tragic to follow Sticks to the hospital, through his recovery, and his rehabilitation, his conversations with his wife. I just thought it was a tragic American story.

AVC: How does he end up? Does he heal over the course of the story?

El-P: Ultimately we leave Sticks in the hospital, and we don’t really know how it turns out. But we do know that his life is forever changed.
posted by mannequito at 2:34 PM on October 26, 2016 [15 favorites]


Just ask Tom Hanks’s terrified mom...

So the author really means Josh's mom.


Yeah, although I'm pretty sure if someone were to track down Tom Hanks's actual mom and show up on her doorstep being all like "Hi, Mrs. Hanks! I'm from the Internet and I was wondering about your thoughts on the 1988 film Big in which your son played Josh Baskin, a thirteen year-old whose wish to become big was granted by a magical carnival machine. Would you characterize that movie as a light comedy or more of a horror film?" she would indeed be pretty terrified.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2016 [9 favorites]


I would be. She died earlier this year.
posted by maxsparber at 2:42 PM on October 26, 2016 [12 favorites]


Happy Halloween!
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:47 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


Wow. I was always squeaked out a little by the movie, just because I could see Susan's perspective. I never really thought too closely about how the mom would feel perhaps because of the age I was at when I first saw it. I didn't relate to her, but man some of the plot holes made me insane. Like how do you get hired by a major corporation with no back story what so ever. And, even back then there was no way you could get an apartment that awesome in that short of time without references. Blah, blah, the mom's deal is soon much worse than anything else.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 2:47 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would be terrified too if I found out that my child would grow up to look like Tom Hanks.
posted by toddforbid at 2:49 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Why the Most Terrifying Movie Alien Isn't Who You Think (daniel has a disney thing)


Is it Stitch? Stitch is pretty scary when you think about it.
posted by Squeak Attack at 3:00 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Apart from certain NYC enclaves he may already have been a laughing-stock in most of the country, but in the mid-80s, Freud was still the go-to guy in Hollywood:
So imagine her horror when she realizes that a man has broken into her house and kidnapped her only son, the boy’s innocence snatched away forever.
is exactly how lots of mothers experience the advent of puberty in their 12 year old sons, often in the repellent and yet indisputable form of a spontaneous emission in bed, pajamas, or underwear.

I've lost track of the number of times I've heard or read of mothers of pubescent boys who wanted to scream 'what have you done with my little boy?' at their own sons and drive them out of the house with a butcher knife, though they didn't -- most of them didn't.

And they do get them back, eventually, and life goes on -- but they're never the same.

Big is virtually an allegory.
posted by jamjam at 3:09 PM on October 26, 2016 [14 favorites]


> some of the plot holes made me insane. Like how do you get hired by a major corporation with no back story what so ever.

Maybe the wish is still in the process of being fulfilled, and he's going to be "big" in the sense of becoming rich and famous. Probably not, but papering over plot holes is fun.
posted by lucidium at 3:52 PM on October 26, 2016


Related Reading: The Slow Fade of Tom Hanks [Buzzfeed]

For over 30 years, Tom Hanks has been one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars — the quintessential Dad. But that simple likability camouflages the political potency of Hanks and the brand of white, middle-class Dad he’s come to represent.
“To call Hanks “a classic Dad” is to speak of a specific, goofy, white middle-class Dad — a trope built on the pillars of white privilege, asexual masculinity, and nostalgia for a straightforward history of great men. It’s a place of spectacular safety, of seeming simplicity and straightforwardness. That Dad is also a Boomer Dad — who, like Hanks, came of age in the ’80s, ruled the ’90s, and who could still do little wrong in the 2000s. And today, that Dad is exhausted: Trying to keep up with multiculturalism and globalism and new understandings of what it means to be a good guy, it’s all so much. Most Dads — the trope insists again and again — are idealized, if embarrassing: Dadness might have voted for George W. Bush; maybe Dadness even put on blackface for a Sammy Davis Jr. costume in the late ’80s. Dadness stopped saying “the gays” only relatively recently. But Dadness isn’t bigoted — Dadness is nothing if not well-intentioned, though those intentions are often firmly centered on the known parameters of its own existence.
In this way, Hanks’ image, his Dadness, is much like that of whiteness: eliding its own existence as an identity, thereby camouflaging the ways it wields power and steers the status quo. And like whiteness, people seldom question Tom Hanks’ success, his dominance, his choices: It’s just the way it is.”
posted by Fizz at 5:02 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]




the quintessential Dad.

Real question: Has Tom Hanks ever even played a dad? I can't think of any movies where he did. Oh -- Road to Perdition, I guess. But anything anyone actually saw?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:37 PM on October 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


He was a dad in Sleepless in Seattle.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:53 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was wondering why no Hanks characters had yet appeared on Dad Feelings, but that could explain it. Although they have other not-technically-dads like Alan Grant.

I thought Capt. Miller from Saving Private Ryan had kids, but he doesn't actually mention them in his "reveal" scene if he does.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:57 PM on October 26, 2016


the quintessential Dad.

Real question: Has Tom Hanks ever even played a dad? I can't think of any movies where he did. Oh -- Road to Perdition, I guess. But anything anyone actually saw?


Oh man, you haven't seen The 'Burbs? It's pretty great.


Why the Most Terrifying Movie Alien Isn't Who You Think (daniel has a disney thing)

Is it Stitch? Stitch is pretty scary when you think about it.


Stitch is so terrifyingly adorable!
posted by limeonaire at 6:12 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, he does have kids in The 'Burbs, yeah. In that one kitchen scene, anyway.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:24 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Cloud Atlas (2012) was like an even more postmodern version of Total Recall

I was just wondering a day or so ago why I'd never gotten around to seeing Cloud Atlas. Tom Hanks is why. And ugh, he's going to be in The Circle?! Though given the character he's playing, that might almost be fitting.
posted by limeonaire at 6:35 PM on October 26, 2016


Jeez, if I had known this thread would turn into a referendum on how much Tom Hanks sucks I never would have posted it in the first place.

*pouts*

posted by Atom Eyes at 7:28 PM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Jeez, if I had known this thread would turn into a referendum on how much Tom Hanks sucks I never would have posted it in the first place

It is the circle of life on Metafilter; all things even slightly pop culture must be derided, snarked on, dismissed and declared to suck. From this soil favourites grow, giving us all our daily allotment.

*Unless somebody has died, in which case the thread will be full of fond remembrance with occasional people saying that they maybe didn't really like the person's body of work, but it's still sad that they are gone.

posted by nubs at 8:06 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


The best comedies are built on emotional trauma.
Weekend At Burnie's.
posted by quinndexter at 8:34 PM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wizard of Oz was about a girl who rolls into town and kills the first person she meets, then teams up with three strangers to kill again
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:31 PM on October 26, 2016 [5 favorites]


I think you meant "drops into town."
posted by wierdo at 11:49 PM on October 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


- Why the Most Terrifying Movie Alien Isn't Who You Think (daniel has a disney thing)
Is it Stitch? Stitch is pretty scary when you think about it.

It's not Stitch, but it should be. Not only is it a movie about a superpowered toddler that comes into a hapless struggling family's life and completely wrecks it, but the movie reveals both the existence of several unfathomably advanced alien civilizations and their complete disregard for human life. It's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy levels of callousness.

And then at the end, the struggling family lives not just with the (admittedly somewhat reformed) superpowerful emotionally stunted predator ragemonster, but also with his criminal insane creator (who has a personal disregard for human life on a whole other scale) and a flexile tentacled scientist who regards humans the same way a wolf biologist thinks of mice and rabbits. These things live in their house like creepy uncles, and while they might regard that particular family with some personal fondness, they're still highly dangerous to everyone around them. Just in the closing sequence, Jumba builds a functioning child-sized hovercar, presumably powered by something extremely energetic and visibly able to travel at highway speeds, and just lets the five-year-old drive off in it.

The fact that the government not only apparently knows about all of this but aids and abets in storing these entities in an unsuspecting rural community shall go unremarked.
posted by Scattercat at 12:34 AM on October 27, 2016 [6 favorites]


Real question: Has Tom Hanks ever even played a dad?

In Toy Story 4, we get to find out how Woody abandoned his little chip off the old block - Splinter. This explains his need to mother every toy he meets
posted by Myeral at 1:35 AM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Real question: Has Tom Hanks ever even played a dad?

He was (recently) a dad in "Bridge of Spies*," though that wasn't exactly a primary plot point.

*A movie I liked a lot more than I thought, but a lot of that had to do with Mark Rylance.
posted by thivaia at 6:10 AM on October 27, 2016


Tom Hanks as a dad is so embedded into his onscreen persona that they don't really even need to express it in any way in the text. Kind of like how Denzel Washington is one of the sexiest organisms in the history of life on earth, but he doesn't get real romantic plotlines very often.
posted by Etrigan at 6:29 AM on October 27, 2016 [5 favorites]


"Could Atlas was actually pretty good and I want to see it again right now", hankered Tom.
posted by Dokterrock at 12:28 AM on October 28, 2016


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