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Obviously the plot is not the only thing the producers of the movie had to change - in fact, some of the new
ideas originate in the change of the outward appearance of Forrest Gump himself.
The reader of the novel has the image of a six foot six giant weighing \"two hundrit forty-two pounds\" (comp.
p. 10, l. 12), whereas Tom Hanks portrays a completely different stature of Forrest Gump. Therefore it was
necessary to refit some details of Gump's life.
It seems that the filmmakers intended to keep Forrest playing football, but since his giant-like appearance was
the true reason for him to do so in the novel a different explanation had to be found. Finally then, the creators
of the movie had Forrest run \"as fast as wind blows\", and for a movie this explanation as a reason for playing
football is even better. It is simply something new, something the audience is not used to - it is one of the
miracles the people want to see rather than an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Silvester Stallone blowing the other
football players away (as Groom intended to show).
This need for someone special partly answers the basic question that arises when discussing the actor of the
title role: Why did the filmmakers use a completely contradictory person to the novel at all, why did they not
use an actor that fitted Winston Grooms' descriptions?
Among the many changes the action of the novel had to sustain the \"visual transformation\" of the main
character has its true cause in one fact: The Forrest Gump of the novel would not have looked very good on
the big movie screen. Since the novel of Winston Groom was different from \"normal\", the filmmakers wanted
to make a different type of movie as well, and so they had to use a different kind of actor. In the case of this
movie the chosen actor was Tom Hanks.
He has shown his talents in many different films. Among others, Hanks played a boy who fell in love with a
fish (Splash, 1984), a child that virtually grew up over night in BIG (1988), a man who lost his wife (Sleepless
in Seattle, 1993) and before that one Hanks had his best performance as a gay HIV-positive who fights
against prejudice and misunderstanding from people who are afraid of AIDS (Philadelphia, 1993). All those
films belong to a group of movies that are just different. Many of the sooner films are funny, whereas shortly
before Forrest Gump, Hanks showed that he can play very serious roles as well. Therefore, Tom Hanks was
chosen to portray the title character; he proved that he could play funny and tragic parts very convincingly.
It was exactly the choice for this actor that made the movie capable of that much success. As a celebrated
Oscar winner of the year before the audience expected to see Tom Hanks on the screen again, his face was
known and there were no doubts about his acting abilities.
In Forrest Gump Hanks was able to show his talents once more. His portray of a mentally handicapped,
therefore naive and innocent man seems in no way unrealistic or unprofessional. Tom Hanks even does
justice to the novel with his way of acting: Apart from his stature the presentation of the story as both
narrator and actor would have worked even with a one-to-one adaptation of the novel. Even the way Tom
Hanks speaks matches with the language used by the Forrest of the novel.
When searching for one of the best possible actors for the film Hanks was certainly the right choice, but
under the aspect of authenticity towards the novel the role was not cast properly. It is an error that here and
in many other examples the adapted screenplay is not accurate to the novel's plot, even though Tom Hanks'
performance in this movie is undoubtedly outstanding.
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