Cast Away

Cast Away (2000)

36 corrected entries

(55 votes)

Corrected entry: After the plane crash, when Tom Hanks is in the raft, he falls asleep and awakes only when the raft hits a rock on the island and a section of the raft deflates. How did the raft get over all those gigantic waves on the reef without capsizing? (Especially with the high waves that would occur after a storm.) Did Tom sleep right through it all?

Correction: Both situations are entirely plausible. The boat not capsizing is because these rafts are designed to skim the top of the water, riding the highest swells. Out farther in the water, even fairly close to shore, the waves just swell for the most part, and don't break like they do on shore which could make the ride quite nauseating, but not necessarily dangerous. As for the sleep, a defense mechanism of the human psyche is to induce sleep in some very stressful situations. Even though scared and alone, the swells alone could have been enough to lull him to sleep.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Chuck is looking through the dead pilot's wallet, if you zoom in on the drivers license, the pilot's date of birth is listed as 1949. When Chuck buries the pilot, he writes 1950-1995 on the rock.

Correction: Character mistake on behalf of Chuck. He could have either chosen to write it as he did to round out the pilot's age to 45, or if he wrote it wrong, had no way to erase it.

Jazetopher

Corrected entry: After a night of rain, Chuck walks to the stack of FedEx boxes he covered with the now-deflated yellow raft. He flings the raft off and you see a bunch of water fly off with it. He then proceeds to try and drink any drops of fresh water in the coconut shells. Why didn't he try and drink from the little pools of water that had collected on the raft?

Correction: He's just been stranded on an island, so he's not exactly in his right mind. He just didn't think of it. Anyway, character mistakes are not movie mistakes.

Corrected entry: When Tom Hanks says goodbye to Helen Hunt in the Jeep Cherokee at the airport, you can see the "Jeep" emblem above the grille. When he gets the car back back five years later, the emblem is gone.

Lars Bakke

Correction: There are many reasons why an emblem could be missing from a vehicle after five years. Someone could have stolen it, or it could have been defective and fallen off. There are a million cars on the road with missing emblems.

wizard_of_gore

Corrected entry: In the beginning when the Fedex driver goes to the girl's house in Texas, considering the trucks for Fedex have no air conditioning, why would the driver wear a big winter jacket? Even on cold days in Texas, you don't need a jacket that big.

Correction: Character decision, not a movie mistake.

BocaDavie

Obviously, you've never visited or lived in the Texas Panhandle.

Corrected entry: When Chuck reaches the island and writes "HELP", the letters face the water. Later, when Chuck climbs the mountain of rocks, the letters are now sideways and facing him instead of the water.

bobthedancingdonut

Correction: He first writes the word help in the sand. Later he makes the word from tree stumps the other way around.

Correction: Agree with the other correction, but would add that Chuck would have to regularly remake or repair the "HELP" sign. Wind, weather, etc. would damage it. He may also have more than one and/or he keeps embellishing them over time.

raywest

Corrected entry: The aircraft interior is of a MD-11. (The emergency exits are the plug-type MD-11 doors) The digital cockpit is of an MD-11, not an Airbus A300 series which Chuck boards before the crash.

Jordan Hare

Correction: He is seen walking towards the security gate of the airport with an A300 parked in the background. He had to enter the airport through that ramp and just an A300 happens to be parked in the background. We never even see him walking past the gate so there is never even a hint that he boards that A300.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Chuck is floating in the water on the raft you can see that the raft is yellow. When he gets on land and puts the raft up by the trees it is orange. Throughout the whole movie you can see that the raft changes from yellow to orange.

Correction: The lighting makes it look like the raft changes colour - it's always yellow.

Corrected entry: When Chuck reaches the island and drags the life raft on shore, the bag the life raft was in is empty. Yet, he seems to be able to find a shovel when he buries the pilot. Where did the shovel come from?

cdg125

Correction: The object used to bury him was a paddle that came with the life raft. It was not actually a shovel.

Corrected entry: Tom Hanks was wearing tan pants when he was in the plane before it crashed, however, after the crash, he is wearing dark green pants.

Correction: They're not dark green, they are just wet tan pants.

Corrected entry: He is on a flight going to the Far East. All the packages have domestic airbills. If they were on international airbills it would not be necessary for him to open the package to see what was inside, a description of the contents would be clearly visible on the airbill.

Correction: Having sent many packages internationally using FedEx, I know the airbills are filled out by hand, and they are not in a water-tight seal. The seawater could have blurred or washed away the ink, making it difficult or impossible to read small handwriting.

raywest

Corrected entry: When Tom Hanks is about to bury the dead pilot, he takes the pilot's shoes off, but when he is pulling him into the grave, you can see that the pilot has his shoes back on.

Correction: What you see are his black socks.

Corrected entry: When Tom is taking a leak on the beach at night he turns away from the beach and toward the camera. The fake ship's light is viewable in the distance. Tom is squinting badly at that point and there is a large glare on his shoulder, indicating the scene was shot during bright sunlight. Even in a bright moon the squint is unlikely.

Correction: He's probably squinting because he's nearsighted. Squinting helps to focus an image.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Chuck is finally rescued by the ship and he is holding his arm out towards the ship, if you look under the raft it looks like you can see the lines on the bottom of a swimming pool.. considering he is in the ocean the water doesn't really look that deep.

Correction: If you look carefully the "lines" are actually parts of the video tape that Chuck has used to tie the raft together.

Corrected entry: When it shows that Hanks has retrieved Albert's shoes, the ends are cut off to resemble sandals. In all later scenes they are in normal condition, and they were the only shoes Hanks had access to.

cluchsinger

Correction: They are not in normal condition. The toes are always cut out of the shoes.

Corrected entry: When Chuck is going down with the plane his life boat has a small reddish bag attached. This gets attached to some metal piece and starts to pull him further underwater until it snaps off. Once on the island, he starts to drag the life boat towards the trees. As he walks further up you can see the little red bag being dragged behind the life boat.

Correction: Many inflatable liferafts have more than one of these sandbags attached to them. This is likely a different sandbag.

Jazetopher

Factual error: Shortly after the crash, when Chuck is in the raft, one of the engines continues to run even though it is half submerged in water. The engine would not have exploded like it did, rather, it would have just stopped running as soon as it became disconnected from its fuel source and flooded with water.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The aircraft seems like a Airbus A300 or 310 but it is really a MD-11 or DC-10 because you can clearly see that the front body with wing with engine attached sink leaving the tail section. So the tail has a fuel tank and the third engine. The engine normally compresses air then burns it by feeding in fuel and igniting it. But can't compress air because the turbines are in the water. The fuel would in this case would "flood" the engine then the igniter ignites it and explodes.

Fumes explode, raw fuel burns. Igniter will not ignite raw fuel nor would there be anyway to propagate the explosion that took place.

Even if the engine was flooded, and full of water, and the air couldn't, it still wouldn't explode. MD-11 engines run on a fuel that cannot be ignited.

Wrong, the tail section has fuel LINES not a fuel tank.

More mistakes in Cast Away

Chuck Noland: I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing.

More quotes from Cast Away

Trivia: Screenwriter William Broyles took survival courses and during that time a Wilson brand soccer ball washed up on shore - the inspiration for Wilson in the movie. The director Bob Zemeckis states in the feature voiceover that they changed it to a volley ball because "a soccer ball has all those black spots on it'.

More trivia for Cast Away

Question: At the end when the pick-up truck drives away, there is an angel on the back flap of it, similar to the angel in the garden of the house where Tom Hanks delivers the parcel. Are we to assume that the parcel belongs to the woman in the pick-up, and that this is significant in some way?

Answer: This is the same woman seen at the beginning of the film. It's a little complicated. The angel wings are a recurring plot device to show that the parcel Tom Hanks just delivered to the ranch belongs to the woman (who is an artist) in the truck, which also has the wings painted on the tailgate. There are also metal wing wind sculptures in her yard. The wings are her artist's "logo." As Hanks stands in the crossroads deciding where to go, his looking back in the direction that she just drove off implies he will go back to her house, probably to let her know that her package gave him hope while he was on the island that he could someday deliver it, and possibly to restart his life with her (she is pretty, after all). She was married to the guy in Russia who she was sending packages to, but he was cheating on her. If you notice the gateway over the entrance to her property where another package was delivered at the beginning of the movie, both her name and her husband's were on the overhead ironwork, as well as the angel wings. At the end, his name has since been removed, indicating she is now single.

raywest

Wow, you are extremely observant. Thank you, I was totally confused at the end.

You're welcome.

raywest

Also, the artist would have been on the island with him just like Kelly was in the watch.

Answer: The Angel wings are an important symbolic thread that run throughout the move. They appear in several scenes. They represent love/hope/salvation. We first see them in a seemingly unrelated scene at the pretty redhead artist's ranch when she is still married to the cheater dude. She sends him the wings on a package but the package is not important. Rather the Wings on the package are important. She intended the wings to go to her cheating husband but instead they went to Chuck. Chuck preserves the wings. He caresses the wings. Later we see that he has drawn dozens of the same wings on the inside of his cave wall. On the raft, he takes only Wilson and the Wings which he carefully wraps in leaves. When finally delivering them home, Chuck writes "this package saved my life" when he means hope/love/salvation have saved his life. The wings have make the exact same journey as Chuck. They have finally returned to the redhead and bought Chuck with them.

I agree with your assessment, though the wings also serve as a practical plot device. It helps the audience to recognize and track the package as it moves through the story and for Chuck to link it to the woman's truck at the end, which also had the wings painted on the tailgate.

raywest

Nailed it! My thoughts exactly I just needed confirmation that all of this was reasonable to assume. Thank you.

Answer: The package that Mrs. Peterson sends to her husband in Russia contains divorce papers. The winged package that Tom Hanks' character saves as an unfinished task represents his desire to eventually deliver. He opens all the other packages and finds a few useful items. And the package sent by Mrs. Peterson, he uses to motivate himself to make that delivery. He only took bare essentials on the raft when he leaves the island. This package is essential to him. For some reason, he does not deliver the package to the destination to which it was addressed, but instead takes it back to the original sender. It helps close the loop in a way that could not have been done if he just delivered to the original destination 5 years late.

But why would there need to be such a big box for divorce papers? On the island, he opens a document mailer.

More questions & answers from Cast Away

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