Tomorrow sees high concept sci-fi Finch arrive on AppleTV+, where it’s guaranteed to find an audience for the sole reason that it’s got Tom Hanks playing the lead role, although it helps that the early reviews have generally been strong across the board.
The two-time Academy Award winner and America’s Dad stars as the title character, an inventor and one of the last humans left alive on Earth following a cataclysmic event that brought about the apocalypse. Dwelling in an underground bunker clinging on to survival, Finch builds an android to keep his dog company in the event of his death, before the unlikely trio set out on a perilous journey across the country.
Discussing the movie at a recent press junket via ComicBook, Hanks explains what drew him to the project, and why Finch promises to put a brand new spin on the end of the world.
“All these movies haunt you and demand things of you that you’re not sure that you’re going to be able to summon up. The fact is that the movie itself, the screenplay as written, lacked a cynicism that I think a lot of other movies like this would have. Here’s what it does not have: murderous zombies, blood-thirsty bikers from hell, renegade warriors that are going to rape all the women and eat all the children.
There’s a lot of stuff that … The tropes, if I dare say so, or the commonalities that an awful lot of these movies have, is different. Finch never goes into a subterranean world and battles the Eloi. The crux of this movie, and as I’ve explained it to people, and everybody goes, ‘What is the science fiction movie you’re doing? What is it about? The end of the world? What, you’re the last guy in the planet? Who wants to see that?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s actually about a guy who is worried about the survival of his dog. And so he builds a robot so that the dog will be taken care of for the rest…” and they go, ‘Oh, well, that’s adorable.’
So this is not an optimistic movie at all, but it does lack a cynicism, and I think cynicism is a default option. It’s coin of the realm to say that, and we pay attention to the fact that society collapsed in the movie by way of some flashbacks. But after that, it takes onto itself, I think the reality is, is that the day is what you make of it. And luckily, or honestly, in the course of this movie, it starts with Finch not just surviving, but surviving for the specific purpose of making sure his dog is safe, and that’s not a cynical undertaking. He doesn’t think, ‘Oh, I’ll be able to do this fine, because we all love each other.’ There’s not that brand of optimism of it all. It’s going to be hard work and it’s going to be a hard slog, but if you have lived a life, you realize, ‘Well, with a little bit of luck and some effort, not being too disappointed when life kicks me in the teeth, we should be okay, we’ll pull through.'”
Sci-fi isn’t a genre that Hanks has dabbled in all that often, and he’s unsurprisingly said to have delivered yet another knockout performance in a career that’s absolutely full of them. Finch stands a good chance of causing a serious uptick in AppleTV+ subscribers over the coming days, given the screen legend’s sizeable fanbase and global popularity.