Tom Hanks outruns a climate disaster with a dog and a robot in trailer for Finch
Hanks stars in Finch alongside an intelligent robot and a dog named Goodyear
Aux News Finch
Taking place in a too-near future, Apple TV+’s new feature Finch brings us to a world destroyed by a climate catastrophe. Tom Hanks stars in Finch as Finch, one of the sole survivors after a cataclysmic solar flare wipes out the planet’s crops. He has a leg up on everyone else as a robotics engineer with access to an airtight bunker filled with science equipment, a library, and living quarters. We guess there was no one else he considered bringing into the bunker to save from a sun burned death, but that’s his decision to make.
After nearly a decade alone, Finch meets the dog (who better not die in this film) named Goodyear. As the two become best friends in the post-apocalyptic world, they develop a rapport that consists mostly of the dog cocking his head and whimpering at Finch’s jokes about bath time. During his free time in the lab, Finch makes another friend—literally—as he builds an animatronic robot (voiced by Caleb Landry Jones) with high speech and learning capabilities which it will utilize to protect Goodyear.
With a devastating storm on the horizon, Finch and his team must embark on a journey in a busted RV to a safer location, facing threats such as tornadoes, UV radiation, and fellow survivors. The robot, aptly named Jeff, learns to drive and eventually puts on a fur jacket, so it will be interesting to see what that’s about. It’s giving RV meets I Am Legend—like a chosen family road trip romp mixed with climate doom. The dog better not die.
Game of Thrones and House’s Miguel Sapochnik directed Finch from an original screenplay by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell (Blade Runner, Alien). Finch begins streaming on Apple TV+ from November 5.
71 Comments
This looks stupid.*
Only if you don’t believe in the power of friendship…
Am I the only one who just… can’t with this. End of world climate apocalypse stuff is so hard for me to watch now. The pervasive dread and human (and canine) vulnerability on display here just makes me so sad, and so, so anxious. This type of story isn’t for me any more. And I don’t think it ever will be again.
Am I the only one who just…can’t watch Tom Hanks erect another bloated, self-important monument to himself?
Wait…I thought you were contributing to my project to erect a Chuck Noland statue on the island of Monuriki! And yes, it has to be a Fat Chuck statue! Building a monument to Skinny Chuck wouldn’t make any sense!
Wait, I thought I was contributing to a Chuck Norris statue.
The dog won’t die, it’ll probably be Hanks or the robot dying to protect the dog, and the survivors carrying on in the third’s memory. Or it had damn well better be, rather than the dog dying.
Spoiler: Dog is robot (jk)
I’m looking forward to the dog’s closing narration: In the fullness of time I grew to doghood, and then I became the leader, the chief of the Great Northern Tribe. And Finch? That was the last we ever saw of him. The robot still sucks at driving, though…
If you’re going to do apocalypse by climate, at least have the balls to have it be something else than a solar flare we can’t control.Also are we sure, SURE this movie is real?
Yeah that was a red flag for me too. It’s a total cop-out and much as I hate to complain about America’s Benevolent Dad his need to play it safe and appeal to all sides all the time is really eroding his charm.
Eh, I think that this probably needs to be a fast, difficult-to-predict catastrophe for the premise of the movie to work. Hanks has just enough time to save himself, but not any friends or family to keep him company. If this were sea level change, extreme weather due to warming, or even a cataclysmic meteor strike, he’d get a whole lot more warning than he’d get from a solar flare which would only take about 8 minutes to reach us from the Sun.I’d also note that the idea that this is a cop-out is mainly due to the AV Club choosing to call it a “climate disaster” in the headline.
I don’t really care WHAT it is, post-apocalypse of any kind is just of zero interest to me at this point. Maybe Denzel will show up along the way with his sunglasses and machete and fuck some bad dudes up.
It should be noted that neither Alien nor Blade Runner have writing credits for Luck or Powell. Powell does have Producer credits for them. Their only other writing credits are another upcoming film for Luck, and a short film for Powell.
Why is Jeff an apt name for the robot?
Reference to Craig Ferguson’s robot skeleton sidekick Geoff Peterson? I dunno.
Balls.
Why does Jeff sound like Borat in the first half of that trailer?
In the not-too-distant future, On Apple+TV,
There was a God named Tom, He was NOTHING like you or me,
He lived in a bunker with some science stuff, and a little dog but it wasn’t
enough,
He had a nice beard growing on his face, but the sun didn’t like him and blew
up the human race!
– skip – a – bit –
Now keep in mind Tom can’t control when the movie begins or ends (la la la),
Because he used those special parts, to make a robot friend…
Robot Roll Call: JEFF! how apt!
that’s all, there’s only one robot!
If you’re wondering how Tom eats & breathes and other stupid facts (la la la),
Just repeat to yourself “who gives a shit, I should really just relax!”
For Finch!(please know I worked really hard on this)
“Like Castaway, but Tom Hanks builds Wilson this time. And get this, Wilson is a robot!”“Huh. Pretty good. Needs something to really to tug the audience’s heartstrings though. What’s that other Hanks movie? The one with the dog?”“Turner & Hooch?”
“That’s it? Which one’s Tom Hanks in that?”“Uh, Turner? I think?”“Right, get the dog’s agent on the phone, make him an offer, 1% net on the back end. That’s some milkbone money right there.”“Sir, that dog is by now, long dead.”
“Then get his non-union replacement!”“Done. Also, Marketing says there’s a tire manufacturer on the line, looking to branch out from NASCAR, looking to see if we have any potential opportunities for product placement for them.”“Hah, do we??? I love it when a plan comes together…..”(9 months later…..)
“Like Philadelphia but Tom Hanks builds a robot that cures AIDS and then they sue the shit out of that Susan B. Anthony Hotel…and…then he drinks vanilla extract and slaps Alex.”
Well, I think this looks pretty fun. I’d be up for watching post apocalyptic Hanks if I had Apple TV.
It’s a disaster movie, a cute dog movie, a funny robot movie, a road-trip movie with that quietly precocious character who’s always the smartest guy in the room.KA-CHING!!!
I don’t want to see it.
I’m sure they’ll explain it, but an airtight bunker that survived the first apocalypse seems like a better place to ride out the storm than an RV, even if it’s securely staked to the ground.And the UV is gonna be worse in the mountains, unless he’s got another bunker there. People go blind from taking their sunglasses off too long for selfies on Everest.
If the storm causes a flood, then being in an underground bunker that has some connection to ventilation outside might be a bad idea.
In the trailer, it looked more like a huge sand storm. Maybe he was afraid of it covering everything above ground. I guess we’ll find out if we watch it, because it was my thought too. Why leave your nice snug hidey hole for just a big storm?
Good point, but it looks like all the ice on Earth has probably melted already, so he’d already be flooded if he’s not on pretty high ground.Still though, there’s storm surge and shit that could flood him out of his bunker.
you are never going to convince me this isn’t a 30 Rock movie.also i can’t help but feel a little gross whenever i watch any concept that was made because it was easy to film over covid, i just can’t turn my brain off and not go ‘the only reason this movie exists is because of covid’. hopefully that wanes over time, but yeah.
It seems like it would be particularly hard to overlook in this one.
Wikipedia says it was filmed in New Mexico from Feb – May 2019 and originally scheduled to be released Oct 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finch_(film)
even if i’m wrong it still feels like that.
“Lemon, market research tells us Americans love only three things: dogs, robots, and Tom Hanks.”
I wasn’t even going to try
Props for using “You’re So Cool” from the True Romance soundtrack, I guess.
Ah, that’s it. Thank you for placing that for me.
The weird/sad thing for me is that as soon as the music started up, I knew exactly what movie I knew it from.Also makes me want to watch True Romance for the first time in over a decade. Makes me wonder what happened to my DVD…
I’m completely thrown by it, but that seems to be the minority reaction. It does kind of bum me out that they came to the conclusion that True Romance is now obscure enough that it doesn’t matter if you reuse it’s most distinctive theme, but I guess they were right. Eh, whatever, it’s a great piece of music. Probably better if it lives again. It’s weird to think, though, that soon anyone who watches True Romance for the first time will think, “hey, it’s the robot song!”.
Hey when you’re my age it’s Gassenhauer and True Romance ripped it off from Badlands.
true romance was even obscure 20 years ago, let alone now. being online right now can be kind of scary, when someone posts a reaction gif from eminems ‘stan’ or something and then someone pipes up “huh, whats the source for the gif ?”
Guess it was cheaper than the original Carl Orff piece:
Wow, I had no idea that existed. I’d say I hope Orff got paid but he died ten years before True Romance came out.
According to Wikipedia, Orff’s 1931 piece is a reworking of a composition from the 16th Century. I’m guessing Scott used it (or rather Hans Zimmer’s reworking of it) because of Tarantino’s clear nods to Badlands in the script.
Jesus , I never realised how much it ‘borrowed’ from that song .
For years I just thought the song in True Romance actually was the one used in Badlands, after all Tarantino has form for that sort of thing (I appreciate he didn’t direct it), especially as the films have a similar Bonnie & Clyde thing going on. Did Carl Orff get any sort of credit? I can’t see the writing credits for the True Romance soundtrack.
Recently rewatched True Romance and while it’s still fun, the score is almost entirely responsible for the emotional heavy lifting. It’s the sole thing that convinces me this is a couple worth rooting for.
How this man shot out Chet is beyond me.
We need DNA tests STAT!
Well, y’know, every sperm is sacred.
The Baby Inspector failed by not insisting that Chet be exposed at birth.
For every action there’s a reaction.
“The robot is driving. Beat that Elon.”Please don’t encourage him.
EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT:
ELON MUSK BEATS DOG TO DEATH!!!
[whispering to date while watching Finch when Finch first appears on the screen] That’s Finch
This A Boy and His Dog sequel got weird.
Finch? You mean Shit Break?
Yes. We mean Shit Break. Shit Break, who fucked Stippler’s Mom, Jennifer College, on a pale table.
HI STIFLER!
They need to lose a sidekick because three is a crowd.Preferably the dog, because this looks like two hours of Eddie from Frasier.
There’s no crying in apocalypses!
How ‘bout Tom Hanks trips over a dead possum, hits his head and dies and the dog eats his face?
The robot, aptly named Jeff, learns to drive and eventually puts on a
fur jacket, so it will be interesting to see what that’s about.
I want Tom Hanks AND the robot AND the dog to make it to the end of this movie.
Well this is just pretty much engineered to make me cry. Sad dogs and robots get me everytime, the addition of Tom Hanks just takes it over the top.
That was one of the rare trailers I’ve walked out of.
From the people who brought you Castway, Chappie and I am Legend….comes the blockbuster hit you’ve been waiting for….If you love Tom Hank’s talking to himself, Roland Emmerich movies, Dogs, and Rockem Sockem Robots…Than you’ll love…..basically all of those major plot points! Plus SOLAR FLARE!Finch. In theatres…this never.
Can’t wait for the hack-writer reason he decides to ride out a storm in an RV instead of his fortified, energized bunker full of nerd gear and a single Playboy magazine.
I could write this one: after ten years, he’s pretty sick of that one copy of Playboy, and is heading West in desperate hopes of finding a greater variety of porn.
Looks kinda neat but I’m confused as to what the plot is. Like, is he trying to magically fix the ozone layer and un-fuck the planet? Find a way to grow crops and save what’s left of the planet? Or build a rocket and leave the planet?
I mean, I’m not opposed to a show strictly about “random guy, dog, and robot adventures” but I feel like it has to be going somewhere.
This looks un-good.