People Are Realising Who Tom Hanks Played In The Polar Express, And We Need To Sit Down

5 Dec 2023

If you haven't been living in complete isolation without access to any technology for the past twenty years, it's highly likely that you would easily recognize Tom Hanks in the majority of his movies.

The famous actor has received two Academy Awards for his outstanding acting in movies such as Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and Big among others. Additionally, he played a role in the movie The Polar Express back in 2004, which you may or may not be familiar with.

Tom acted in the movie alongside renowned actors, Eddie Dezeen and Josh Hutcherson (who played Peeta in Hunger Games, but let's save that topic for later discussion).

I only became aware of the extent of his presence in the movie after stumbling upon a popular TikTok video made by user @thepopculturejuan.

The caption states that Tom Hanks plays all the characters in this movie.

In the video, Tom is seen portraying various characters more than you can imagine. He plays the roles of Santa, The Conductor, and even the Hero Boy’s father.

Actually, he acted in six different parts for the cheerful film, including The Conductor, Santa, The Hero Boy, The Hero Boy’s Father, The Ebenezer Scrooge Puppet, The Ghost on the Train, and The Narrator (whew).

At first, according to what producer Steve Starkey disclosed in the video, Tom only had interest in portraying the role of the conductor. However, after discovering the advancing CGI technology during that period, they recognised the possibility of generating fresh characters spontaneously and assigning them to any actor for performance.

As it happens, Tom Hanks was the actor most commonly mentioned as "any performer."

In the video, Robert Zemeckis, who is a director, writer, and producer, mentioned that the story was like a dream. The characters that accompanied the Hero Boy in the story were like memories from his real life. Therefore, it makes sense to have some overlap in voices. However, it's important to note that he doesn't provide the voice for all the roles. For example, he doesn't voice The Hero Boy.

"It was extremely difficult, but in a positive manner," Tom confessed.