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It’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland but Tom Hanks plays a character named Finch Weinberg who sings “ American Pie ” and listens to Perry Como. Also, he has an adorable dog and an endearing robot. All of this makes “Finch” a comforting, cutesy sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland, more like an updated “ Pinocchio ” than a searing exploration of what it takes to cope with the direst possible circumstances. "Finch" is more of a fairy tale, about a man whose interactions and experiences with the robot he created may make him a mechanical-plus AI version of a real boy. As he showed in “ Cast Away ,” Hanks can make conversations with inanimate objects lively, engaging, and even emotional. But that film’s Wilson volleyball wisely stayed silent. “Finch” gives us a robot who not only talks, he learns and grows. 

A sun flare has wiped out the ozone layer and most human, animal, and plant life on Earth with devastating radiation. Now, even a few seconds in sunlight burns exposed skin. Finch, once an engineer and computer whiz, is a loner and a tinkerer by nature. Creating gizmos and foraging in a high-tech hazmat suit has kept him occupied and helped him stay alive for 15 years after the end of nearly everything. Goodyear the dog and a cute little robot named Dewey (like the one in “ Silent Running ”) are his only companions. But as the movie begins, Finch has to make some changes. One of them concerns a fast-approaching storm that's so devastating they can no longer stay in his home/lab in St. Louis. The other conflict becomes more apparent when we see Finch cough up blood. And so, he builds a bigger robot, scanning his entire library to upload it as memory. But the storm is getting closer very quickly. There's a moment of wry humor as the computer program Finch is using to program the robot responds with an all-too-familiar message on the screen: “Please call technical support for assistance.”

Because they have to hurry, only 72 percent of the data is uploaded to the robot, and there's only time for a just a couple of quick lessons on vital matters like walking without falling down. But Finch cannot resist investigating what his creation can do. “Tell me something interesting,” he says, and then, when the robot (voiced by Caleb Landry Jones ) responds with a fact about giraffes, he says, “Tell me something interesting about you.”

Like any good engineer, Finch has programmed the robot with Isaac Asimov’s famous directives, but he adds another, superseding directive. Instead of Asimov’s primacy of human life and welfare, Finch tells the robot that his first priority is to care for the dog. As the storm arrives, they leave in a 1984 Fleetwood RV fueled by solar panels on the roof. Finch wants to go to San Francisco and see the Golden Gate Bridge. He has never seen it, but he's had a postcard with a picture of it since he was a teenager. He has no idea whether it's safe there, but they will “head west over the mountains in search of places that haven’t been ransacked and looted.”

And so, like all road trip movies, there is a destination (1,811 miles away, the robot notes) with many opportunities for conflict with outside forces and with each other. There are also dangers along the way. Finch gets frustrated with his creation, and with his inability to program him to be everything he needs.  

The robot may only have 72 percent of the uploaded data, but it clearly has some very powerful machine learning AI. Caleb Landry Jones impressively shows the carefully calibrated voice and movements of the robot as he becomes more “human” along the way. (Given the masculine name and voice, I’m going to refer to it as “he.”) His posture straightens, he develops the ability to understand idioms and metaphors, and his speech becomes clearer and more expressive. He also shows his increased sense of personhood by asking for a name, though he also shows a still-limited understanding with the first few names he suggests. 

Hanks is wonderfully watchable as always and effortlessly holds the screen with only the briefest appearances from other human actors. The cinematography from  Jo Willems is stunning and elegiac, finding beauty in ravaged landscapes and making one brief moment of respite seem almost miraculous. But the screenplay is not up to that level—it's predictable, inconsistent, and too often heavy-handed. Hanks does his considerable best with Finch’s revelations and confrontations, but the writing lets him down.

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Film credits.

Finch (2021)

Rated PG-13 for brief violent images.

115 minutes

Tom Hanks as Finch

Caleb Landry Jones as Jeff

• Miguel Sapochnik
• Ivor Powell

Cinematographer

• Gustavo Santaolalla

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‘Finch’ Review: Three for the Road

Tom Hanks, a dog and two robots take a post-apocalyptic road trip in this unexciting drama from Apple TV+.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

The science is sparse, but the sentiment is several inches thick in “Finch,” a post-apocalyptic road movie in which Tom Hanks spends almost two hours scavenging for a plot.

Helping him is a darling mutt (played by the rescue dog Seamus, in his first acting role) and two metallic companions, Dewey and Jeff (the second voiced and performed by Caleb Landry Jones). It’s 15 years in the future and a decade since a solar flare turned Earth into an irradiated dust bowl and the ozone layer into Swiss lace. Hunkered in a below-ground laboratory is Finch Weinberg (Hanks), a former robotics engineer in St. Louis who has repurposed his old workplace into a survival bunker.

By day, Finch braves skin-searing heat and the occasional dead body to forage for supplies, encased in a self-made protective suit and accompanied by Dewey (actually a modified lunar rover). In the evenings, he works on Jeff, the android he’s building to care for the dog when he himself is gone. A painful cough and a bloody nose tell us that day may not be too far-off; on the plus side, they also signal the unlikelihood of a sequel.

The arrival of a superstorm that, with biblical specificity, is expected to last 40 days, forces Finch and his pals into a solar-powered R.V., destination San Francisco. The lengthy journey will allow Jeff to learn about trust and responsibility and human beings, especially the nasty kind that the movie teases and Finch seems to believe are lurking everywhere. If he’s right, then they’re much better at hiding than he is.

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik and written by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell, “Finch” is a facile father-son metaphor whose doomsday setting is sugarcoated with gentle comedy and jaunty music. Hanks is as relatable as ever and the cinematographer, Jo Willems, shooting mainly in New Mexico, surrounds him with a credibly arid dunescape. But the action, such as it is, is sclerotic and Finch a cipher whose previous life — aside from a brief flashback to his acquisition of the dog — remains almost entirely shrouded.

Unlike Francis Lawrence’s far superior last-man-and-his-dog thriller, “I Am Legend” (2007) , “Finch” is sweet, yet disappointingly uneventful.

“I wish I’d done more with the time I had,” Finch mourns at one point. I wouldn’t be surprised if the filmmakers were thinking exactly the same thing.

Finch Rated PG-13 for radiation in the air and lumps in the throat. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+.

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Finch Might Make You Cry Like a Baby, But Is It Any Good?

Finch is probably about as American a dystopian narrative as we’re ever likely to get: Tom Hanks plays a terminally ill man, one of the last surviving humans on a shattered Earth, who attempts to build an intelligent robot to take care of his beloved dog after he’s gone. Humanity has been mostly incinerated by a stray solar flare; almost all other plant and animal life appears to be gone; and our hero is subsisting on whatever stray bits of canned food he can find whenever he’s not coughing up blood … but so long as the pup makes it out alive, a happy ending remains possible. Therefore, seemingly all the collected knowledge of our species is channeled into the creation of an elaborate, artificially intelligent dog-sitter for the post-human world. It’s like a grim, gritty, slow-motion variation on all those disaster-movie explosions where the family pet leaps out of the enormous fireball at the last minute and everybody breathes a sigh of relief even as the entire Eastern Seaboard is wiped out.

The very idea is so tear-jerking on so many levels that a filmmaker runs the risk of turning off the audience by leaning too hard in any direction. That’s where Hanks comes in. The actor’s renaissance in recent years as an America’s Dad figure isn’t just another irrational indulgence of our social-media-addled civilization; it has to do with the particular blend of pathos and confidence he has been exuding as a performer since his middle age. Hanks is a can-do actor for a can’t-do era: In movies like Cast Away and Captain Phillips and Saving Private Ryan and last year’s Greyhound , he conveys an undercurrent of helplessness and fragility even as he gets on with it; that makes him a deeply human, relatable hero, suggesting that one needs not stoicism or expertise or muscles to succeed against insurmountable odds, but rather decency and vulnerability.

As Finch Weinberg, a lonely man living in a blasted world where holes in the sky have rendered sunlight radioactive, Hanks is basically an average guy who has found himself in an untenable situation. Puttering around an abandoned lab, he cuts up encyclopedias and other books to scan into a computer that will somehow feed all this knowledge into the soon-to-be-sentient mind of “Jeff,” a robot that (Finch hopes) can learn how to survive in this world and take care of his dog, Goodyear. Finch is apparently an engineer — he’s built a number of motorized and automated objects and doodads, including a loyal, WALL-E-like robotic shopping cart named Dewey — but as played by Hanks, he feels like he could have just walked in off the street, an ordinary man for extraordinary times.

Much of the film involves a road trip Finch and his nonhuman companions take across the country in his RV toward San Francisco, after one of the apocalyptic storms that now regularly pound the planet forces them to flee their home base of St. Louis. Finch has some hope that there might be some life out West. Along the way, they outrun tornadoes, navigate booby-trapped shopping malls, and, at one point, evade a menacing car that materializes mysteriously in the distance. There are, it seems, a few other people out there in this world, though Finch has learned the hard way never to trust them. As Jeff (voiced by Caleb Landry Jones, one of our most unpredictable actors, whose voice-casting as a robot seems like a cosmic in-joke) becomes more and more curious the smarter he gets, Finch gets a chance to open up and explain to him (and, by extension, to us) how the world came to be this way.

Despite the ticking clock of Finch’s rapidly progressing illness, the movie doesn’t build up much urgency or excitement. The script is pretty thin, almost all premise and little incident. But director Miguel Sapochnik has the eye to make this world compellingly hostile and bleak, and that counts for something. He and Hanks maintain our interest by allowing us to identify with Finch’s despair — his despair at his surroundings, at himself, at his dog, at just about everything. But the filmmakers are also walking a fine line, because the idea behind the movie is so cloying that it could become quite insufferable very quickly. It’s the great paradox of modern melodrama: We want to feel things, but we want to pretend that we’re feeling them honestly, organically, without any manipulation — despite the fact that movies are all manipulation, all the time. That’s why having Hanks at the center of a story like this is so invaluable. He evokes both our compassion and admiration through his very presence. The movie may not be much, but he’s everything.

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Finch (2021)

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‘Finch’ Review: Tom Hanks Pledges to Protect His Dog in Impressively Scaled Sci-Fi Charmer

Big-hearted and bolstered by a genuine love of dogs, Miguel Sapochnik's Post-Apocalyptic saga is the right blend of style and substance with the epic story of a man, robot and canine on a survival journey through the American West.

By Tomris Laffly

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For a post-apocalyptic saga set in a barren future of extreme temperatures and atmospheric toxicity, “ Finch ” comes with a strangely cozy premise, one that sends the universally beloved star Tom Hanks on an adventurous cross-country road trip alongside an affable homemade robot and an especially cute pooch.

The ever-paternal Hanks plays the eponymous character of Miguel Sapochnik’s impressively scaled science-fiction epic. He is one of humankind’s few survivors of a catastrophic cosmic event that wiped the earth nearly clean of its most vital resources a decade ago. Despite the bleak backdrop, “Finch” manages to stay true to the fuzzy ring of its basic idea, delivering a family-friendly movie that is big-hearted, comfortingly traditional and bolstered by a genuine love of dogs.

In its finest moments, the film even mimics the spirit of our canine companions in some respects, leaning closely into simple yet virtuous notions like hope, trust and loyalty the way pooches inherently do, demanding a big-screen treatment with the assortment of emotions it summons — feelings as grand as the visual scope that “Game of Thrones” veteran Sapochnik puts on display. (“Finch” was originally slated for a theatrical release by Universal, but was bought for streaming by Apple after pandemic-related delays.)

We first meet Hanks’s former robotics engineer Finch Weinberg humming a tune in his ramshackle radiation suit, while he scavenges derelict shops and deserted homes for food and supplies next to his cooperative lunar rover, resembling a cuddly, live-action version of WALL-E more than the authoritatively gun-toting Will Smith of “I Am Legend.” His delight is hard to miss when Finch scores a precious can of dog food before he returns home — an underground lab that he carefully equipped with handy tools and high-end technology over the years — and greets his fluffy, floppy-eared rescue mutt Goodyear with pets and belly rubs on the other side of his Home Sweet Home mat.

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Soon enough, writers Craig Luck and Ivor Powell (the latter has producing roots in sci-fi milestones like “Blade Runner” and “Alien”) introduce us to Finch’s daily routine, consisting mostly of cutting open thousands of books, scanning them page by page and loading all the data onto the robot he’s been building, just to have a backup guardian for Goodyear after he’s gone. Once the droid finally comes alive and warns Finch of a fast-approaching deadly storm — he is, after all, programmed with protective laws similar to Isaac Asimov’s, but with a fourth item added that prioritizes Goodyear’s safety over everything else — Finch decides to hit the road in his well-equipped solar-powered RV and move his ragtag family from St. Louis to a potentially more habitable San Francisco.

But don’t mistake this for another “Cast Away”-style case of Hanks carrying a film alone. In time, Caleb Landry Jones ’ unusual yet equally strong presence begins to reveal itself as Jeff, the film’s gradually evolving, orange-headed droid. Matched by a slowly maturing speaking voice, Jeff’s progression is among the movie’s numerous touching and humorous delights, as Finch tries to instill common human qualities, wisdom and decision-making skills into his robot as well as instigate a bond between him and Goodyear.

A Hooch to his Turner (only far more mellow), the movie’s furry star — played by an adorable rescue named Seamus — similarly delivers a memorable performance just being his true sweet self, establishing an organic sense of rapport with Hanks. In that regard, credit is due to the filmmakers for avoiding the pitfalls of countless dog-centric Hollywood movies that project human-like traits onto canines. Instead, they allow Goodyear to be an authentic pup that actually acts like one — lazing, playing fetch, keenly reacting to the fluctuating emotions and circumstances around him (have tissues handy for one off-camera instance toward the end) and providing calming camaraderie to his pack through it all. The screenwriters also deserve praise for teasing the idea of a dog’s autonomy here. In that sense, it feels fresh, perhaps even radical, to hear Finch reflect on this concept in one scene when he says, “He’s not my dog. He is his own dog,” confronting a house -pet culture that habitually defines the treasured bonds between animals and humans on narrow-minded ownership terms.

Elsewhere, Sapochnik supports the thematic charms of “Finch” with visual substance, conjuring up a deserted American West of varying landscapes, vistas and fading landmarks. In unison, these elements activate a sense of awe, and even environmental consciousness through Jo Willems’ expansive camerawork and Tom Meyer’s deceptively modest production design that takes the material’s innately dark concerns as seriously as its bright leanings. Save for a terrific scene where the clan gets threatened by the presence of another car, Sapochnik falls a little short on suspense. He also could have used a more leisurely first act. Even so, “Finch” offers the right kind of big-budget cinematic escape to viewers young and old, one that’s as endearingly uplifting and disarming as a devoted good boy’s unconditional company.

Reviewed online, Nov. 1, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 115 MIN.

• Production: An Apple Original Films release of a Amblin Entertainment, Reliance Entertainment, Walden Media, ImageMovers and Misher Films production. Producers: Kevin Misher, Jack Rapke, Jacqueline Levine, Ivor Powel. Executive producers: Robert Zemeckis, Miguel Sapochnik, Adam Merims, Craig Luck, Andy Berman, Jeb Brody, Frank Smith, Naia Cucukov.
• Crew: Director: Miguel Sapochnik. Screenplay: Craig Luck, Ivor Powell. Camera: Jo Willems. Editor: Tim Porter. Music: Gustavo Santaolalla.
• With: Tom Hanks, Caleb Landry Jones, Seamus.

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Finch Reviews

In addition to the technological component, this film poses a fair criticism on the little capacity human beings have to conserve this beautiful planet... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 24, 2023

With plenty of American Dream nostalgia and a great performance from Tom Hanks, AppleTV+’s Finch is ultimately a story about love in its purest form.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2023

Finch is far from being the most impressive, imaginative post-apocalyptic, survival film, but it's still a captivating, character-driven story that boasts an emotionally resonant, meaningful personal journey.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 25, 2023

Hanks proves once again why he has a tremendous eye for material, and why he is simply one of the best in the business.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | May 3, 2023

There isn’t more to the story here. You can’t write a robot who has feelings, treat them poorly, use them, and pretend it’s a heartwarming experience. This is how we teach young people about “love, friendship, and the meaning of human life”?

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 21, 2022

There’s an effortless connectability Hanks has with his audiences and he make us feel a part of any story he’s helping to tell. In this case, it’s a story of the human experience. It’s a beautiful fable about what makes us who we are.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Finch makes you believe that even in the darkest moments, there still remains something worth fighting and living for. [Full review in spanish]

Full Review | May 16, 2022

Finch isn't the most original or exciting sci-fi movie you'll ever see, but it's a charming road trip adventure anchored by yet another incredible performance from Tom Hanks.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 28, 2022

Finch has its problems, chiefly an overreliance on sentimentality and stretched movie logic. But with two fine storytellers at work, its sure to leave many in a blubbery mess.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 3, 2022

"'Finchs' relative softness makes 'A Quiet Place' look like 'The Road,' but after the year and a half weve just had theres something to appreciate about how it lets us down easy."

Full Review | Feb 21, 2022

There is not just a charming personality to the film but a deeper more poignant foundation of humanity and fatherhood.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 15, 2022

A surprisingly tender film, Finch is the kind of hopeful science fiction that the world desperately needs.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 12, 2022

At its core, Finch doesnt seem to know what it wants to be...Its a bit dark for kids, and a bit obvious for adults. It wants to be a parable but doesnt have enough to say. Ultimately, Finch would work better as a Pixar short.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

Finch simply doesn't have enough excitement to work as one-man show.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 2, 2022

While not perfect, I would recommend Finch to anyone who wants to laugh and smile during a movie in this kind of tragic setting.

Full Review | Jan 14, 2022

A post-apocalyptic road movie that, in my opinion, has noble intentions that are built slowly with good acting from Tom Hanks, but the lack of parts drags its narrative onto conventional paths. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 11, 2022

Director Miguel Sapochnik and writers Craig Luck and Ivor Powell muse on the meaning of life with a photogenic dog, a kinda creepy robot named Jeff and the singular Tom Hanks.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 9, 2022

Only Tom Hanks can make me develop an interest in a dog and a robot. A tear duct activator due to its message of purpose and survival.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 2, 2022

Despite its conventional formula, Finch finds redemption in Tom Hanks' performance and its commendable visual effects. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 30, 2021

The trouble with this kind of mix-tape moviemaking is that when your film is dominated by echoes, it's difficult to make your own voice heard.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2021

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Tom Hanks’ Finch is basically a live-action Futurama episode

Imagine ‘Jurassic Bark’ with a robot

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Tom Hanks’ career is dotted with American Everyman characters he’s transformed into iconic, fantastical figures by presenting them in naturalistic and humane ways. The teenager living out his dream adult life in Big , a dying man willing to throw himself into a volcano in Joe Versus the Volcano , the man with a million lives in Forrest Gump , the classic American cowboy in the Toy Story franchise, a gangster in Road to Perdition , an FBI agent in Catch Me If You Can , famed newspaperman Ben Bradlee in The Post . They all have something in common, as ordinary people played in extraordinary ways. Few actors exist the way Hanks does, in that space between “instantly recognizable” and “consistently malleable.” His new sci-fi movie Finch is both strengthened and hampered by that duality.

A tonally bizarre film that’s half motion-capture Pinocchio story, half live-action adaptation of Futurama ’s infamously melancholy “Jurassic Bark” episode, Finch relies on Hanks’ instant likeability and genuine warmth to drive home the devastation of a post-apocalyptic world. Movie lovers know Hanks’ expressions and intonations, his body language, and his physicality, and his familiarity is key to the immediate sympathy the character and film require. Director Miguel Sapochnik (a Game of Thrones veteran who earned attention for episodes like “Hardhome” and “Battle of the Bastards”) is betting on Hanks’ decades of accrued good will. With every one of Hanks’ aghast eye squints, bemused double looks, and easy laughs, Sapochnik is making the same gamble that the Wachowskis did with Hanks in their far superior sci-fi movie, Cloud Atlas .

What Cloud Atlas dared to do, though, that Finch does not, is complicate Hanks and make him more than just America’s Dad. Instead, Finch sets up a driving selfishness in Hanks’ character that the film mistakes for selflessness. A Good Will Hunting -style speech about the experience of living life vs. just reading about it doesn’t work so well when it’s self-importantly delivered to a robot made to do a human’s bidding. And whatever subversive questions the film could have raised about the responsibilities people carry when dealing with AI get lost in the film’s increasingly schmaltzy second half, which gestures toward an I Am Legend exploration of societal collapse, but ultimately doesn’t follow through in a compelling way.

Set in the somewhat near future, Finch follows robotics engineer Finch Weinberg (Hanks), who has carved out a life of routine for himself in a ruined version of St. Louis. Craig Luck and Ivor Powell’s script parcels out information a bit at a time: A combination of ozone destruction and an electromagnetic pulse (à la The Matrix ) have combined to leave most of the United States a hot, irradiated wasteland. Desperate people do desperate things, and both the South and East Coast have their dangers, so Finch has stayed put in the Midwest. By day, he drives around the city in a souped-up construction vehicle, wearing a slowly decaying UV suit as he ventures into buildings, collects any leftover resources and supplies, and marks his movements on a map. And by night, in his dual laboratory and home in tech company headquarters Tae Technologies, Finch plays with his dog Goodyear — for whom he’s been assembling a robot companion.

Years of exposure to the elements have destroyed Finch’s insides, and he’s slowly starving from the lack of food. Cinematographer Jo Willems emphasizes Hanks’ emaciated frame with compositions that juxtapose him as the lone man amid the metallics of his laboratory, his weatherbeaten skin and thinning hair a contrast to an expansive library and a paltry pantry. Finch’s only concern is ensuring Goodyear’s safety after he dies, and so when the robot he built comes to life, Finch devotes himself to teaching the robot how to survive.

The robot who eventually names himself Jeff is played via motion capture by Caleb Landry Jones, who contorts his body into an array of unexpected, Gumby-like poses, and whose voice and line delivery sort of sound like Borat doing a Yoda impression, or Wall-E visiting the Twin Peaks Red Room. Jeff’s youthful immaturity is captured well by Jones, and contrasts effectively with Hanks’ bristling earthiness. But their relationship and its reliance on “Who’s on first?”-style wordplay and disappointed-parent looks from Hanks is familiar to the point of generic. And when the movie dares to suggest that they are actually teaching each other how to live, the rapidity with which Finch launches into overly sincere territory might cause whiplash.

There’s inconsistency and unwieldiness throughout. On the one hand, Sapochnik ensconces his film in the accessories of eco-thrillers: bodies littered across the top of abandoned skyscrapers, an array of books about environmental despair, gigantic sandstorms and vicious tornadoes. Hanks is a steady guide throughout so much bleakness, and the film presents him as a pioneer, a survivor, and the lone voice of reason in an unreasonable time. (And also a grump: He complains about the Internet, his coworkers, and other people’s parenting styles. Finch was kind of a drag before the apocalypse, but the movie presents all these personality quirks as principled.) On the other hand, whenever Finch dares to venture into the social-responsibility aspect of bringing another living thing into a dying world, the film then backs off from engaging with that idea any further past “But Goodyear needs a friend!”

To be fair, Goodyear is very cute. So is Jeff! The movie has a whole “PG-rated Chappie ” vibe that almost makes it heartwarming. The refusal to grapple with any ethical questions relating to Finch’s actions, though, keep the film from feeling like true sci-fi, and the insistence on showing us Finch’s bloody coughs and decaying body keep it from being particularly kid-friendly. “You have a lot to learn,” Finch tells Jeff, but Finch the film doesn’t have much new or insightful to say about either living or dying.

Finch debuts on Apple TV Plus on Nov. 5, 2021.

Fi nch review : Tom Hanks plays the hits, with a dystopian sci-fi twist

Tom Hanks treads familiar ground in the new Apple TV+ original movie.

Finch, an Apple TV+ original movie, is marketed as a post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama. But you could also describe it as Tom Hanks’ Greatest Hits.

There’s a heart-warming bond between man and man’s best friend a la Turner and Hooch , albeit with a lot less slobber. Just as he did in the majority of Cast Away , Hanks has to carry the entire picture without any other human interaction; apart from a brief, tragic flashback, his grizzled, world-weary face is the only one shown. And echoing the heroes in Joe Versus the Volcano and Philadelphia , his titular character also has to deal with the knowledge he’s not long for this world. The film is even executive-produced by regular partner-in-crime Robert Zemeckis.

Hanks retreads familiar ground in Finch , and the movie’s low-key approach means it is unlikely to do better than the Best Sound Oscar nod that Hanks’ previous Apple TV+ venture, Greyhound , received earlier this year. Yet, this sci-fi drama is second only to CODA as the platform’s best original feature film to date.

Finch, Goodyear, and a robot called Jeff.

The long-delayed film – it was initially intended to hit theaters in October last year – has inevitably taken on much more prescience, too. Finch takes place in a post-apocalyptic America devastated by a radioactive solar flare which, in a vampiric kind of way, has made sunlight the number one enemy. As presumably one of the few men left on Earth, Hanks’ inventor spends his days scouring barren cities for resources, outfitted in full hazmat gear before returning to an underground bunker with only a canine and some primitive robots for company. Self-isolation to the extreme, you could say.

However, Finch has plans to upgrade to an all-seeing, all-knowing android capable of caring for his beloved pet Goodyear for when all the coughing and blood-spluttering eventually turns fatal. It’s here where the movie evolves from a relatively straight survival tale to a blend of apocalypse pic, road trip movie, and buddy comedy as the motley crew head to San Francisco — the Golden Gate Bridge, in particular — to escape an impending storm and tick off one last bucket item list.

Finch is by no means a cuddly, family-friendly caper.

Jeff, as the robot later christens himself to Finch’s amusement, is an instantly lovable creation brought to life by a man more renowned for playing creepy oddballs. Caleb Landry Jones ( Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Get Out ) provides plenty of light relief early on, not only as the often apologetic voice of the substitute dog sitter but with the gangly movements captured by the actor sporting a displacement suit on stilts.

All the pratfalls and recycling of encyclopedic details at any opportune moment (“Did you know Albert Einstein was born with an abnormally large head?”) will delight viewers awaiting that proposed Short Circuit reboot. Yet even with an adorable mutt along for the ride, too, Finch is by no means a cuddly family-friendly caper; see the decomposed bodies which litter the opening supermarket scavenge, for example. This is also a film that spends much of its second hour attempting to explain the concept of trust to a bemused Jeff, only to extol the message of “trust no one.”

A less slobbering alternative to Turner and Hooch .

That slightly contradicts Hanks’ recent claims that Finch is free of the cynicism that typically defines the end of the world genre. But showbiz’s ultimate Mr. Nice Guy is right to applaud the fact that Finch doesn’t need to rely on “bloodthirsty bikers from hell” or “murderous zombies” to heighten the sense of jeopardy.

No stranger to awe-inspiring action sequences (his credits include the “ Battle of the Bastards ” episode of Game of Thrones ), director Miguel Sapochnik throws the trio into the eye of a storm during the most perilous scene. Towering dust clouds and the unforgiving skin-blistering heat further prove that the elements are far more threatening than any Mad Max -esque renegades.

Sapochnik, whose last film was the much bloodier sci-fi Repo Men in 2010, captures the beauty of this new world, too, from the long stretches of glistening New Mexico sand that’s remained intact to the breath-taking Aurora Borealis now clearly visible in St. Louis. It’s a shame such arresting imagery cannot be experienced on the big screen.

Jeff, the substitute dog sitter.

Hanks’ performance, though, is much better suited to the small one. Craig Luck and Ivor Powell’s script doesn’t give Finch much of a tear-jerking backstory to recall – we don’t know much more about his pre-apocalyptic life at the end credits than we do the opening — nor does it ask him to answer any big universal questions.

At its heart, Finch is an intimate old-man-and-his-dog tale that just happens to be set amidst the most epic of scenarios. And Hanks’ quiet, dignified turn helps to keep things grounded. Even his most obvious awards-baiting scene, a resignation that he hasn’t lived life as fully as he’d liked, is delivered with impressive restraint.

Finch’s best moments culminate in a memorable if uneven sci-fi picture that stands out as one of Apple TV+’s best films.

Finch arrives November 5 on Apple TV+.

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Finch review: tom hanks is a one-man wonder in heartrending dystopian sci-fi.

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We're Worried About Francis Ford Coppola's New Movie After Watching The First Clip

Matt damon's controversial $334m action movie hits netflix top 10 8 years later, forget john wick 5 & the matrix 5, keanu reeves' potential return to 30-year-old franchise is way more exciting.

Post-apocalyptic dramas often make for great and arresting cinema, delving into the concepts of human perseverance, along with the beauty and terror of existence in a world bereft of hope. These notions have been explored with great depth in survival science fiction offerings such as Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later , and John Krasinski’s fairly recent installment, A Quiet Place Part II . Tom Hanks is no stranger to helming one-man survival dramas, as he brilliantly embodied the role of Chuck Noland in Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away , wowing audiences with his profound, showcased performance. Hanks recreates this magic in Miguel Sapochnik’s Finch , set in a post-apocalyptic world wherein survival is an everyday challenge, raising seminal questions about what it truly means to be human. Perfectly balancing tense drama with charming humor, Finch highlights the best and worst of humanity, and a robot-dog friendship worth remembering.

In the aftermath of a massive solar flare devastating life on Earth, humanity in Finch is driven to the extremities of survival, although most of them perish due to intense ecological damage. Covered almost entirely in sand, this post-apocalyptic wasteland is often subjected to massive dust storms, which further sever makeshift modes of electricity and communication that the survivors manage to put together. One such survivor is Finch (Hanks), a robotics engineer who has been living in an underground bunker for more than a decade, along with his dog Goodyear and a tiny, rudimentary robot, Dewey. Venturing outside to scavenge for scarce resources like food and supplies, Finch realizes that his dwindling health would soon render him unable to do so, as he has been exposed to high levels of radiation over the years. In order to ensure a safer, better future for Goodyear, his only companion, Finch starts developing a fully-functional robot that can take care of the dog after he is gone.

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The creation of the robot, later named Jeff (Caleb Landry Jones), is rather fascinating to witness, as it is pretty funny and endearing to watch him learn and mimic tasks such as walking, running, and computing his prime directives. Soon after, a deadly storm hits the area, forcing the group to keep moving in an RV, navigating the scorching heat and unforgiving climate, along with lurking threats from other survivors with not-so noble intentions. Setting the Golden Gate Bridge as their ultimate destination, Finch becomes more urgent in his goal of making Jeff adept enough to look after Goodyear, no matter what the situation calls for.

Finch is a journey into the recesses of the soul, the pitfalls of humanity, and how far one is willing to go in order to protect those they cherish. The result is a mix of beauty and terror, and a plethora of moments that brim with emotional richness, as the conversations between Jeff and Finch manage to evoke genuine sentiments without an ounce of pretense. While Hanks is wonderful as the fiercely determined, flawed, and often impatient Finch, it is Jeff who helps keep the survival drama grounded with a balance of humor and pathos.

Despite being nuts and bolts, Jeff’s natural development of empathy, and a growing curiosity into the questions of identity and self, helps pose deeper questions about life itself. Even during a global scenario of complete catastrophe, why do humans turn on each other and resort to deceit and violence, when empathy and collective strength are viable options? Why, indeed, is the human race so driven by selfishness, even at the brink of extinction? While these questions have no tangible answers, Finch chooses to ultimately focus on the miracle of a high-functioning android being unflinchingly loyal to a four-legged animal - a premise so wholesome and pristine, yet tinged with a sort of all-encompassing sadness.

Finch, and the very fabric of the film, are undoubtedly weighed down by the unbearable pain of unfulfilled promises and memory, outweighed by the dream of a future in which Goodyear can play happily in the sun, playing fetch and chasing butterflies. Is Finch able to ensure the fulfillment of this dream before his inevitable demise? This question is more than enough for audiences to want to experience Finch in all its highs, lows, terrors, and wonders - a heart-wrenching, endearing tale about man’s best friend(s), the limitless potential of hope, and the true meaning of loyal companionship.

NEXT:  Tom Hanks and His Dog Brave the Apocalypse in Finch Movie Trailer

Finch is set to be released on Friday, November 5, 2021, on Apple TV+. The film is 115 minutes long and rated PG-13 for brief, violent images.

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Finch review: Tom Hanks and his robot find the heart in the end of the world

Hollywood’s history is peppered with relatable robots capable of bridging the emotional divide between humans and androids. There’s R2-D2 in the Star Wars saga. Johnny 5 in the Short Circuit films. And the romantic trash-bot Wall-E. The Apple TV+ film Finch adds yet another sympathetic automaton to that list, thanks to its android costar, who steals more than a few scenes from one of the industry’s most celebrated actors, Tom Hanks.

Apocalypse 101

Not a solo story, hanks-ian heroism, simple and satisfying.

If there’s one thing  Finch makes clear, it’s that if you’re going to have company for the end of the world, you could do a lot worse than an android named Jeff.

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik ( Game of Thrones ) from a screenplay penned by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell,  Finch casts Hanks as brilliant engineer and inventor Finch Weinberg, who manages to survive a series of cataclysmic cosmic events that turned the planet into a solar-blasted desert of deadly UV radiation and scarce resources.

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Now sheltering in a massive underground research center with his dog, Finch leads a solitary, fearful life, avoiding other human survivors and working on projects intended to protect him and his canine pal from the threats posed by the outside world.

Finch (2021) new

Among those projects is an artificially intelligent android equipped with the knowledge of all the encyclopedias, instruction manuals, and guidebooks Finch can find during his foraging missions. Due to prolonged exposure to radiation, Finch has a terminal condition, and he hopes to train the android to care for his dog when his own life ends.

And although the premise might seem a little silly — a man and his android dog-sitter at the end of the world — Hanks, Sapochnik, and actor Caleb Landry Jones ( Get Out , Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ), who provides the motion-capture performance and dialogue for the android , give the story a sense of profound sincerity.

Although Hanks spends all but a few brief scenes as the only human character on screen,  Finch is far from a  Cast Away -esque one-man show.

Jeff the android is an endlessly entertaining co-star for Hanks, holding his own against — and occasionally upstaging — the six-time Oscar nominee with moments fun, frightening, and poignant at various points. Sapochnik and the film’s visual effects teams squeeze an impressive amount of subtlety and emotion from Jeff, whose relatively plain “face” wouldn’t normally lend itself to a wide range of expressions.

It’s often uncertain where the actor’s performance ends and the visual effects artists’ work begins. But Jeff is such a fully realized character that both Jones and the visual effects team deserve plenty of praise for the depth they’re able to create in him. From the ever-so-slight shrug of his shoulders when he sighs to the twiddling of his fingers while contemplating a problem, Jeff is a character filled with, well … character.

It seems strange to suggest that a two-time Academy Award winner might be the most relatable actor in Hollywood, but nearly every role Hanks has played features the sort of authenticity that turns him into the audience’s surrogate in all of the experiences his characters endure — whether it’s storming Omaha Beach in 1944 in Saving Private Ryan , or struggling to survive on a deserted island in Cast Away .

Finch’s experiences in the postapocalyptic world of the film are no exception, and Hanks’s portrayal of the film’s titular, dog-loving protagonist ranges from calm acceptance of humanity’s dire situation to palpable terror at the prospect of encountering other humans. His character finds serenity in his survival routine, and in giving his dog a good life, and the apocalypse has only amplified his antisocial nature and distrust of other humans.

Hanks is a master of giving quiet movie moments weight, whether it’s the minutia of his life in the underground bunker, his acceptance of his terminal condition, or his paralyzing fear at the prospect of finding other humans in the postapocalyptic wilds. With its limited cast, Finch leans heavily on Hanks and his CG costar, and the award-winning actor offers plenty of reminders that he’s more than capable of carrying his share of the load (and then some).

There’s plenty of symbolism to be found in Finch , but the film is at its best when it simply focuses on its two main characters learning from one another along their journey together.

There’s no great revelation to be had in witnessing their journey, but watching it unfold is plenty rewarding on its own. Finch  is upfront about the lessons it wants the audience to take from it and the emotions it wants to evoke, and it finds plenty of success in both areas as Finch and Jeff make their way across the country with the dog they each want to protect.

Like many films that would rather lean into their thematic and emotional cues than the science behind their sci-fi elements,  Finch doesn’t work too hard to convince you that Jeff — or the apocalyptic events that changed the world — are based in real-world physics. It opts to let the story of these two characters sweep you along instead, and as long as you don’t dive too deep into the technical and scientific weeds (how Jeff is powered, for example), it’s a thoroughly enjoyable ride.

It’s hard to imagine a film like Finch working with anyone other than Hanks or a robot any different from Jeff, as the pair have wonderful on-screen chemistry and. together, they strike the perfect balance between what we’re shown and what’s better off inferred. There’s much about both of them that we’re left not knowing at the film’s end, but the amount of information we do glean from their time together feels both satisfying and rewarding.

With a fascinating pair of lead characters, a small story that feels bigger than it should, and spectacular visual effects that add texture and warmth to its CG costar, Finch overachieves in all the right ways, and offers another compelling tale about finding light in dark times.

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, Finch is available now on the Apple TV+ streaming service.

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After five films that collectively earned more than $5 billion and a trio of Academy Awards, if there's one thing the Jurassic Park franchise should be good at by now, it's giving audiences plenty of exciting dinosaur-fueled action in each installment. After all, the dinosaurs are the real stars of the films, aren't they? It might seem like that should go without saying, but Jurassic World Dominion appears to have missed the message.

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‘finch’ director miguel sapochnik on his epic road trip with tom hanks, a dog and a robot.

What happens when a real-life global disaster strikes while you’re making a post-apocalyptic film?

By James Hibberd

James Hibberd

Writer-at-Large

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Finch is the story of a man, a dog and a robot who form an unlikely family on a dangerous cross-country trip across a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s a simple-seeming premise that was anything but simple to pull off — both technically and narratively — after the global pandemic prompted filmmakers to reevaluate the entire idea of apocalypse-as-entertainment.

The tale began as a decade-old short film by Craig Luck about an ailing-yet-resourceful tech wizard who’s quite possibly the last man on Earth after a devastating solar flare. The short evolved into a screenplay titled Bios by Luck and Ivor Powell that, in turn, caught the attention of Powell’s producing partner Miguel Sapochnik, who was making a name for himself directing standout episodes of Game of Thrones . Then Robert Zemeckis came on board as an executive producer and helped entice his Cast Away star Tom Hanks for the lead.

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Filming was always going to be tricky. Finch has an Oscar winner acting alongside a canine and an android, and the audience needs to become fully invested in all three. But then, just as postproduction was about to wrap, the pandemic shut down the industry and the filmmakers found themselves in an entirely unforeseen situation of telling a dark, post-apocalyptic tale amid a real-life global tragedy.

“There’s this line, ‘Hope is what keeps us alive,’ and it felt like we needed to lean into that,” Sapochnik says during a Zoom call from Spain, where he’s directing and co-showrunning the Thrones prequel House of the Dragon . “ The world’s been going through a lot of turmoil and we realized we didn’t want to add to it, we wanted to somehow find some meaning in all the chaos.”

The 47-year-old English director got his start in the industry as a storyboard artist (his credits include 1996’s Trainspotting ) who then began directing television ( Fringe , House , Mind Games ), as well as the 2010 feature film Repo Men . After he joined Thrones in season five, Sapochnik’s episodes immediately popped. He pulled off an acclaimed battle sequence in 2015’s “Hardhome,” then helmed what’s arguably one of the best action sequences of all time in season six’s “Battle of the Bastards.” Thrones producers and cast praised Sapochnik’s tirelessness focus amid torturous night shoots (the director famously only permitted himself one bathroom break per day while shooting). Critics noted that Sapochnik’s quiet, dramatic scenes were every bit as powerful as his staging of spectacle, and he took home two Emmys for his work on the show. After Thrones , the director turned his attention back to Finch .

“The surprising thing was that I’ve done a lot of dark stuff, and doing something that’s not dark is so much harder,” Sapochnik says. “It’s harder to do something with any sort of hope or lightness for many reasons, but when it hits, you can see how people react. People come away from Finch having really felt something, and that’s incredibly meaningful.”

Universal Pictures was originally going to release Finch — then titled Bios — in theaters in October 2020, but the pandemic interfered with that plan, as well. The studio sold the project to Apple in March (marking the company’s second acquisition of a Hanks film; the first was the 2020 World War II drama Greyhound ), and now Finch debuts on Apple TV+ on Nov. 5.

Giving his first interview about the film, Sapochnik discusses (spoiler-free) making Finch and provides an update on his return to Westeros, too.

What surprised you most about working with Tom Hanks?

That he was really collaborative and was extremely engaged from day one. During the very first meeting he said, “OK, so I really liked the movie. Can I be in it?” Then I went into this pitching this and that and it was like, “He already said he wants to be in your movie, why are you still pitching?” … Later, I couldn’t make the film for a year and a half [because of his commitment to Thrones ] and Tom said, “That’s OK, I’ll wait” — which is rare.

Then when he showed up on the first day, he never left the set. We designed [his character’s solar protection suit] to be very comfortable so Tom wouldn’t want to be constantly getting out of it; the suit had this air conditioning system and a one-way visor mirror. He would come onto set in the suit, do his scenes, then sit in a chair, close his visor, turn on the AC and go to sleep. Then when we were ready, he’d open the visor and go. That might not sound unique, but it has this cumulative effect. Everybody else was “on” as a result. So those tropes that exist when you make a movie [with a major star] disappeared, like, “Are we ready for Tom [to come back to set]”? Those tropes didn’t exist. It felt like we were making a movie with Tom Hanks instead of making a movie with Tom Hanks in it.

[Hanks came away from the production with some high praise for Sapochnik, as well, calling the director in an email to THR , “a glory to work with,” noting: “I’ve never had as specific a rehearsal as with Miguel on Finch . Not just every scene and every line, but every emotion, every intent, every emotional beat as preparation for shooting days weeks and weeks away — and he recalled every moment of our talks. I have never worked with as prepared, and as specific a director as is Miguel.”]

You also had the great Robert Zemeckis as an executive producer. Was there any specific insight that he gave that was helpful — either for the filmmaking, or working with Hanks given his history of directing him in films like Forrest Gump and Cast Away ?

Like meeting Tom, I grew up watching these people, so you’re in awe of them and slightly intimidated. But at the same time, you’ve got a job to do. He said one thing he had learned is that people go to a Tom Hanks movie because they want to see Tom Hanks in it. At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant. But the character of Finch has a dark aspect to him and we explored that in the making of the film. Tom was absolutely willing to explore the dark side. But we pulled back on that in the final cut. There was a lot of back and forth between myself and Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and others on how the movie should end. You don’t want to go completely off the beaten track.

The film was shot before a global pandemic, and before its star became one of the first major stars to get COVID-19 — and there are scenes in the film where Finch gets ill and coughs. Did real-world events result in any creative tweaks to the film?

There was. We were just two days away from locking picture when we had to shut down for three months. The script had a different ending and there was a darkness to the ending that shifted as we went deeper into the pandemic. We became aware that hope is a really important thing. There’s only so much you can club an audience with emotionally before you risk losing them or it becomes the resonating aspect of the experience they have. That’s the part from real-life events that we took into the movie. We never set out to make a postapocalyptic film, the idea was to make a family drama that was a road trip. The sci-fi is incidental. We realized you didn’t need the world turned completely upside down for it to feel very close to home. The problem with making post-apocalyptic movies is we’re getting closer and closer to the truth and that’s kind of terrifying, you know?

How do you feel about Finch going direct-to-streaming? It’s so clearly a big-screen film and you can imagine just how certain jokes and moments would play before an audience. I’m sure as a filmmaker, you must have wanted viewers to experience that.

There are many things that have happened as a result of the pandemic that you didn’t see coming. Some are minor and some are massive. I never thought the film industry would be brought to its knees. I’ve grown up with movies all my life and so the idea of no one going to the cinema just seems completely alien to me. We made this movie for lots of people to see together and, more specifically, for families to watch together because it’s about them. I lament that they won’t be able to experience it the way it was intended. I also think the film industry, if nothing else, is adaptable and filmmakers are adaptable and hopefully we’ll find a way through this. So thank God for the streamers because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to show films to anyone.

I enjoyed your directorial style in this, which is hugely cinematic without being “look at me” — it all felt like it was in service of the story and characters. Given we’ve seen so many post-apocalyptic films before, what look-feel were you trying to achieve?

Because we were thinking of the film as a family drama, we wanted to shoot it on those terms. So we agreed we were going to find a way to use as little greenscreen as possible, and were thinking about how to get past the technical issue of having a character (the robot, Jeff) that doesn’t actually exist. Initially we had conversations about having one guy do the physical movements and then having somebody else do the voice, or maybe have an animatronic puppet. Then Caleb Landry Jones auditioned and he was really unique. I’ve also never heard of a Texan robot. So that galvanized us and we put him in a displacement suit where we make him look half like the robot — he’s wearing a mask — and put him on stilts. Then he was Jeff.

What was the trickiest part about bringing Jeff to life?

We built a fully animatronic Jeff, but we only ended up using the Jeff puppet for one scene. The rest was Caleb and our CG character based on his performance. I would say 98 percent of everything that that robot does is all directly lifted from Caleb’s performance, whereas we thought what we’ll do is have Caleb perform and then we will make these adjustments — everything from the voice development to his movement. He did so much research he came so prepared and was a robot. We would get to the animation process and they would make it slightly more robotic and I’d say, “No, you’ve got to go back to the performance.”

Watching the film, I was convinced at least some of the shots of Goodyear the dog were CG given his spot-on reactive performance amid so many complex scenes. There’s the famous W.C. Fields quote, “Never work with children or animals.” How maddening was it to have an Oscar winner giving his level of performance along with a canine that surely had to have blown some of Hanks’ amazing takes in nearly every scene in the film?

There are no visual effects at all with the dog. I can’t tell you how amazing he was. His name is Seamus and he was a rescue dog with an amazing trainer, Mark Forbes, who was super calm. Mark never got angry with the dog — which was super important. If in the process of making this film we’ve harmed this dog, then we’ve failed completely. We were trying to not anthropomorphize the dog either — we wanted to let the dog be a dog. [Others] kept asking, “Can we find a dog that can do this, or that?” and I was like, “I don’t care [about the dog’s training history], let’s just find a dog to be a dog then we’ll use editing wizardry to make it work.” So I just wanted to find a dog with a good rapport with Tom. Seamus was so nonchalant about being there. He was never that interested when we were shooting the scenes, then we’d do a shot directly on him and he would start doing these weird crazy reactions, which was the kind of things we’d end up using.

So wait, Tom Hanks auditioned a dog?

Yes. What happens is you’re shown a bunch of dogs, you choose the kind you like, then you go to a dog park. There were like six dogs and we narrowed it down to three. Then Tom came out and they would let the dogs go to him, one at a time, for Tom to play with. Then Seamus came and when he walked away, Tom’s like, “That’s the dog.”

Why the name change from Bios to Finch ?

I always loved Bios . It was felt that it was hard to understand. If you say to somebody, “What do you think Bios means?” it will take them a beat. The working title was Goodyear , which I also really liked — you don’t know the dog’s name until late in the film and then that would mean what the movie means. But there was a brand issue with that one.

And, of course, there’s your other current project. What’s it been like for you to shift from directing to co-showrunning for the first time on House of the Dragon ? I got the impression on Thrones you often had your own creative ideas about how things should go, and now you’re in the driver’s seat along with co-creator Ryan Condal.

It’s a lot of work! It’s a pretty interesting shift. I’m producing other directors and getting involved in a lot of the minutiae. Directing feels really simple by comparison. I feel vaguely elated on my directing days because I don’t have to think about anything other than directing. I’ve also learned, as I learned on Finch , that’s it’s becoming more and more important to me as I’m getting older to work with people I like. The journey is the destination, and if you can’t enjoy the journey then the destination has so much less meaning. I’ve got a group of filmmakers on House of the Dragon I have a lot of fun working with. I’ve never had that level of repeat business of working with the same people again and again. The way I work with [ GoT veterans] Fabian Wagner, my DP, and Tim Porter, my editor, we have fun and make jokes and we never used to have that. I can’t tell you how important that is. Because there’s not a lot of funny stuff going on in the world of Thrones , so it’s quite nice to spend time with people you enjoy spending time with.

And what’s been the look feel and tone like on Dragon compared to the original series?

I think we were very respectful of what the original show is. It wasn’t broken, so we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. House of the Dragon has its own tone that will evolve and emerge over the course of the show. But first, it’s very important to pay respects and homage to the original series, which was pretty groundbreaking. We’re standing on the shoulders of that show and we’re only here because of that show. So the most important thing for us to do is to respect that show as much as possible and try and complement it rather than reinvent it. And I was involved in making the original show, so I feel like that’s been useful. Like, I’m not arriving going, “Let’s change everything! Let’s do a different color palette!” No, I quite like the color palette.

That said, we can’t say, “Well, when we did Thrones , we did it this way …” If you start every sentence with that, you’ve lost. This is something else, and should be something else. It’s a different crew, different people, different tone. Hopefully it will be seen as something else. But it will have to earn that — it won’t happen overnight. Hopefully fans will enjoy it for the thing that it is. We’ll be lucky if we ever come close to what the original show was, so we’re just putting our heads down and getting on with it and hoping what we come up with is worthy of having a Game of Thrones title.

Finch streams on Apple TV+ starting Nov. 5.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Finch review – Tom Hanks takes his dog and robot out on the road

An adorable trio pootle around a post-apocalyptic world in this sentimental sci-fi that curiously lacks any sense of danger

W hat would post-apocalyptic chiller The Road look like if it starred Tom Hanks opposite an adorable robot? A bit like this strange, sentimental sci-fi on Apple TV+ – co-written by veteran British producer Ivor Powell (who worked on Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner) and directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Well, it undoubtedly boasts some amazing visual effects work.

Tom Hanks plays Finch, an ageing, unwell inventor, who is perhaps the only person left alive on Earth after a human-made environmental catastrophe destroyed the ozone layer and left cities eerily half-buried in heat and dust. Now Finch scavenges for canned food by day and spends his evenings building an android called Jeff (a motion-captured Caleb Landry Jones) which has a Borat-slash-Stephen-Hawking electronic voice. Jeff goofily learns how to walk, to drive Finch’s RV and to understand the world – and his main task will be to look after Finch’s other special friend, a dog called Goodyear, when Finch is dead.

So the character dynamic in this film is odd: it’s basically a three-way cute-off between Finch, Jeff and Goodyear and there are no other humans in the movie, except for the ones Finch remembers in harrowing flashbacks. And weirdly, the menace and danger that you might expect – the people or things that would actually threaten our lovable trio – are simply not there. While in their RV, Finch, Jeff and Goodyear appear at one stage to be pursued by someone in a car, and then … well, these people, whoever they are, seem to just to go away. There is a curious lack of jeopardy. Our heroes don’t run out of water or food and there are no battery-life issues with Jeff.

At the very end, there is the crucial question of whether Goodyear can learn to love and trust Jeff the way he loves Finch, and it is Jeff who we are supposed to find sympathetic and relatable: he is not like the creepy robots from 2001: A Space Odyssey or Dark Star, and the film even sneakily changes the way Jeff speaks from the ironically affectless robot voice to a more human tone. There is something anticlimactic and bland in it.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Heart, humor, hope in sci-fi road dramedy; peril, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Themes of survival, service, companionship, humani

Finch is an an aeronautics engineer who uses his i

Cataclysmic natural disasters and potentially dead

Finch is completely naked from the side in one sce

A few instances of profanity: "hell," "damn," "s--

Goodyear tires are included in a positive manner.

Adut lead character enjoys drinking whiskey.

Parents need to know that Finch is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi buddy road dramedy in which the titular character (Tom Hanks), his dog, and an android travel across the remains of the United States. The plot is pretty somber: It looks like the end for the human race, so, before he dies, Finch wants to create a…

Positive Messages

Themes of survival, service, companionship, humanity, and hope.

Positive Role Models

Finch is an an aeronautics engineer who uses his intelligence and STEM skills to outlast a catastrophic weather event. He creates a robot to ensure that his pet dog will be cared for once he's no longer able, offering a lot of life lessons essential to survival. And robot Jeff may be all wires, but he has feelings and cares for others.

Violence & Scariness

Cataclysmic natural disasters and potentially deadly storms. Brief gun violence in the background. Several instances of peril and loss; it's accepted knowledge that people might kill each other for individual survival. A burn. Harsh tone/hurtful words spoken to a robot ("shut up," "you're a disappointment").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Finch is completely naked from the side in one scene (non-sexual), but no sensitive parts are exposed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few instances of profanity: "hell," "damn," "s--t. Also "shut up." "Jesus" used as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Goodyear tires are included in a positive manner. Jameson whiskey.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Finch is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi buddy road dramedy in which the titular character ( Tom Hanks ), his dog, and an android travel across the remains of the United States. The plot is pretty somber: It looks like the end for the human race, so, before he dies, Finch wants to create a robot to care for his dog. The movie's dystopian world is scary; devastating storms come on quickly, and it's accepted knowledge that people might kill each other for individual survival. Offsetting the bleak situations is Finch's creation. "Jeff" ( Caleb Landry Jones ) isn't just mechanical, he's an AI miracle, full of optimism, hope, and humor. As Jeff learns about the world, he behaves like a kid, making "human" mistakes and experiencing big feelings. A frustrated Finch occasionally yells at Jeff and says mean things ("shut up," "you're a disappointment"); the harshness helps viewers understand how deeply words like this can cut. Other language includes "hell" and "s--t." Finch is seen nude from the side, with no sensitive parts exposed, and he likes to drink whiskey. A flashback shows a brief moment of gun violence in the background. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (4)
• Kids say (12)

Based on 4 parent reviews

Excellent but extremely tense and suspenseful

Futurist boomsday 'cast away', what's the story.

FINCH ( Tom Hanks ) is an inventor who's been living with his dog in an underground bunker for 10 years following a catastrophic solar event that left the United States a desolate wasteland. Knowing that he's dying from a terminal illness, Finch constructs an android named Jeff ( Caleb Landry Jones ) to care for the dog after he dies. Within hours of Jeff powering on for the first time, the group must flee Finch's bunker to find safe shelter -- so they hit the road in a solar-paneled RV. As the three companions embark on their epic journey, they confront head-on the joys and sorrows of how it feels to be human.

Is It Any Good?

The end of the world is as terrifying as ideas come, but this stormy dramedy softens the blow with a robot, a dog, and the always appealing Hanks. Steven Spielberg 's production company, Amblin, and Walden are both leaders in creating exceptional entertainment for families, and director Miguel Sapochnik follows the path they've forged. Sitting smack in the middle of a four-way genre stop, Finch is a sci-fi dystopian special effects drama, a buddy road comedy, and, unexpectedly, a robot's coming-of-age story. Android Jeff, who is a newborn of sorts, takes on the traits and attitudes of an intelligent child, providing an avenue for relatability for tweens and teens. And as the inventor who crafted Jeff, Finch is somewhat of a father; parents will connect with his moments of frustration, amazement, and pride in his creation.

Casting Hanks as the last known human is a stroke of brilliance. Part of the actor's talent is the ability to craft entirely new characters while retaining enough of his Hanksian familiarity that viewers start off already caring about him. He's proven himself the master of singular solitude, playing solo characters who must rely on their own skills to survive -- whether facing down pirates in Captain Phillips , regaining control over a careening plane in Sully , or literally surviving alone on an island in Cast Away . Hanks doesn't need no stinkin' fellow human actors: He's a one-man show. Like Hanks, aerospace engineer Finch is self-reliant. He trusts no one but must rely on someone -- or something -- else so that his progeny (in this case, his dog), can survive. The greater takeaway here is that he's leaving a legacy, teaching the next generation how to rebuild. Which really means that this entertaining spectacle is a roadmap for adults to understand how to cultivate and educate those who come after them, and for young people to understand that if they listen to the lessons of those who've come before and learn from mistakes (both theirs and adults'), they'll have the tools they need to build a better future.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the parent-child dynamic between Finch and Jeff. How does making the "child" a robot work better for this story than if Jeff was actually a kid?

How does Finch compare with other dystopian films you've seen? Other road films?

While Jeff has intellectual knowledge that could be uploaded, how does Finch teach him ethics, rules of survival, and common sense? Is Finch an effective communicator? Why is communication an important life skill?

Finch tries to teach Jeff teamwork , although he doesn't believe in it. Is this a film about teamwork, self-reliance, or both? Why are both important life skills?

Does Finch have a message? What will you take away from watching?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : November 5, 2021
• Cast : Tom Hanks , Caleb Landry Jones , Skeet Ulrich
• Director : Miguel Sapochnik
• Inclusion Information : Latino directors
• Studio : Apple TV+
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Cats, Dogs, and Mice , Robots , Science and Nature
• Character Strengths : Communication
• Run time : 115 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : brief violent images
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

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Review: Tom Hanks and A.I. are no match for ‘Finch’s’ artificial giggles and tears

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As movies about the apocalypse get more and more relatable (gulp) to audiences — I mean, just the word “audience” feels in danger — the onus for filmmakers becomes turning the 21st century’s most popular new genre (yes, I include superheroes) into something less like unbridled fantasy and more like a reliable mirror on real-world concerns.

But even without zombies or aliens, the post-doomsday companionship drama “Finch” starring Tom Hanks and a childlike droid is a tiring, cloying misfire. A mishmash of star power, bleakness, CGI and the cutes, it will on the one hand remind you of how charmingly adaptive Hanks can be, while the same time proving just how problematic the end of the world is as a scenario for schematic heart-tugging.

Which is a shame, because Hanks is no stranger to being the only human around, having been a memorably convincing scene partner opposite a destructive mastiff (“Turner & Hooch”) and an anthropomorphized volleyball ( “Cast Away” ). The two-time Oscar winner has always had a special knack with the light touch and powerful depth of meaningful social interaction, so even the prospect of him as the post-apocalypse’s Sad Max, making his way through a barren United States with only a mutt and a robot to talk to, carries a kind of repeat-performance allure.

But as directed by “Game of Thrones” alum Miguel Sapochnik and written by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell, “Finch” is all concept, no movie, like something Pixar would have discarded in an early brainstorming session or what a Terminator would invent as a psy-ops campaign before the takeover.

It’s a resource-depleted, climate-cooked world we’re dropped into 10 years after Something Bad Happened. (Which, we all should surmise, is actually Happening Now.) When he’s not foraging grocery stores in a decimated, deserted St. Louis, wearing a cooling-controlled UV suit so he doesn’t fry, Finch Weinberg (Hanks) holes up in the subterranean lab of the tech conglomerate where he worked as a robotics whiz, taking care of his dog, Goodyear, and tinkering on what’s become his life’s work: a trainable, two-legged A.I. robot that will look after Goodyear when he can’t anymore.

Climate nastiness waits for no one, however. When Jeff (the name Finch’s creation gives itself) identifies an impending superstorm — 40 days long, we’re told unwinkingly — Finch decides it’s time for him and his non-human posse to vacate for the West Coast in his solar-powered RV. (An Ark-V?)

There’s something almost quaint about a man-teaches-robot/man-befriends-robot movie whose soul is stuck in the time of “Short Circuit.” But that’s the family-friendly level of simplistic wisdom at which “Finch” operates. It quickly grows annoying too, with the chance to appreciate Hanks’ professionalism playing a broken loner being taxed at every turn by the screenplay’s preference for what will spark a giggle or trigger a tear. And all of it feels like a missed opportunity to explore what is already a complicated reality — our relationship to technology. There’s certainly no indication from the perfunctory handling of the storytelling and sentiment that Sapochnik even thinks that theme is interesting.

As Jeff, Caleb Landry Jones’ motion capture portrayal of boyish enthusiasm is fine, although it seems to toggle uneasily among student, child and pet, and the grating Borat-via-Stephen-Hawking voice is certainly a choice. Jeff sounds more human as it “learns,” but also more precociously childlike and, therefore, just as cartoonishly off-putting.

Technically, there’s admirable attention in Jo Willems’ cinematography to how the light changes as the road trip progresses. But caring about what happens in “Finch” is an obstacle course that you eventually give up on. If there’s an unintended sadness, it’s that we are indeed watching an apocalyptic future, one in which the skills of a Tom Hanks are increasingly being sidelined by the algorithms of a moviemaking machinery that wants to see a dog grow to love a robot. That’s a scary weather report, indeed.

'Finch'

Rated: PG-13, for brief violent images Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes Playing: Available Nov. 5 on Apple TV+

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Finch Parent Guide

Oddly enough, this post-apocalyptic film manages to be both sweet and heartfelt..

Apple TV+: Having survived the apocalypse in an underground bunker, an engineer (played by Tom Hanks) creates a robot to look after his dog once he's gone.

Release date November 5, 2021

Run Time: 115 minutes

Get Content Details

The guide to our grades, parent movie review by keith hawkes.

The future is bleak: A massive solar flare has destroyed the planet’s ozone layer, leaving much of the world severely irradiated and uninhabitable. Finch Weinberg (Tom Hanks), one of the few survivors, must wear a UV protection suit to scavenge food and supplies for himself and his dog, Goodyear. He’s also been working on an incredible invention, an android with the capability to learn, develop, and most importantly, take care of Goodyear if anything happens to Finch. Now Finch will have to accelerate his plans. Five major storm cells are converging on the major tech factory where Finch has been living, and once the storms hit, he’ll be unable to go outside for a month. That kind of isolation would be a death sentence, cutting him off from all sources of food, so it’s time to pack up the dog and robot into a modified RV and make for the mountains. As the android, who has chosen the name Jeff (Caleb Landry Jones), learns more about the world and Finch’s expectations, Finch learns a few lessons about himself.

This production makes excellent use of setting to tell the story. We first see Finch shambling through the swirling dust, wearing a full protective suit and a helmet which would seem more at home on Mars…until he comes to an abandoned grocery store, and you realize we are, in fact, in St. Louis (or at least, New Mexico pretending to be St. Louis). The desolate atmosphere is not only critical for the plot, but it serves as a constant visual reminder of how fragile Finch’s position is. The blowing sand functions very much as an hourglass for the film and the character’s journey – and a chilling echo of a terrible disaster.

Parents have very little to worry about with Finch . There is no significant on-screen violence, no sexual content or even crude jokes, and only a single incident of on-screen drinking. That makes profanity the biggest concern, but even that tops out at five scatological curses. Despite that, and a few clichés, this is a sweet, heartfelt little film. It’s difficult not to empathize with Finch, and impossible not to bond with Jeff, from his first faltering steps until the credits roll. And if that’s not enough to get you to give the film a shot, remember: There’s a very cute dog in the movie.

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Keith hawkes, watch the trailer for finch.

Finch Rating & Content Info

Why is Finch rated PG-13? Finch is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for brief violent images.

Violence: Dried out corpses are seen. An individual is seen bleeding and coughing blood. A character burns their hand. Several individuals are shot off-screen. Sexual Content: A man is seen in the shower. Profanity: There are five scatological profanities and infrequent use of mild curses and terms of deity. Alcohol / Drug Use: An adult character is briefly seen drinking in moderation.

Page last updated February 24, 2022

Finch Parents' Guide

Post-apocalyptic movies are enduringly popular. Why do you think people enjoy them? Do you think movies like this have particular resonance in our time?

Related home video titles:

This film has some similarities with Wall-E , I, Robot , The Midnight Sky , and The Iron Giant .

Films about the end of the world tend to carry an R rating, including The Book of Eli , The Road , I Am Legend , Mad Max: Fury Road , and Children of Men . A truly awful alternative about robots learning to be humans is Chappie , a movie so dreadful I hesitate even to mention it.