In the movie, Finch is a robotics engineer who believes that he's one of the few survivors of a cataclysmic solar event that seems to have made the world unlivable.

He keeps to himself and have deep trust issues. His only companions his dog, Goodyear, and later the robot, Jeff that he builds to take care of his dog when he no longer can.

If you've watched any Tom Hanks movies, especially "Cast Away", you know he is one of the few actors who could pull off being the only actor seen on the screen for most of the movie and he sure does it well in 'Finch'.

Rojak Daily joined a media roundtable with the actor to speak about the new movie, shooting a post-apocalyptical movie before COVID-19 was even a known thing and more.

The dog makes all the difference

Reading the synopsis of the movie, it sounds like any other end-of-the-world science fiction but what made Hanks accept the role?

"It's an immediately precarious position he is in from the get go. There's all sorts of mystery; 'who was this guy?' 'where are we?' And very quickly realize he's the only guy left in St. Louis, at least.

"And his his daily struggle is one between life and death, between survival and loss.

"And when I was first reading it, I thought, 'Okay, all right, there's this there's a familiar science fiction sort of trope. It's going to be the new version of what what this story is'. And as soon as, as soon as the dog comes along, as soon as Goodyear makes his appearance, it becomes a different sort of film.

"I began to think of it immediately as a guy who's worried about his dog, never mind everything else. The dog been in the great love of his life.

"So as a very selfish actor, you know, this is the one guy in a movie with nothing but a dog to play off of and then the robot that he creates almost of his own blood. It's just a fabulous part," Hank said.

Similarities and dissimilarites to COVID-19

The world has been living in a pandemic for almost two years now. Despite the pandemic not being as severe an impact as the solar event in the movie, viewers would perhaps be more able to relate to the isolation that Finch experiences in the movie.

It was shot way before COVID-19 was even a thing, and Hanks said that it was great to see that the team managed to hit the "behavioural science" part of the movie on it's head.

"Let's imagine that the virus was even stronger and more deadly than it was. It's interesting. There's a scene (in the movie) where he explains to Jeff what happened, how society broke down, and it goes back to something almost as benign as a solar flare was like 'Oh, well, that's an apple', it was almost like reassuring.

"That's not a slow moving contagion that goes about and kills everybody. And yet at the at the same time, there was the issue about how the recollections of how society broke down.

"And I think that ends up being perhaps a little closer to scientific behavioral theory than science fiction is that that we have seen elements in which ignorance and irrationality and passions and opinion have held more sway in you know, in popular in pulper, popular behavior current. There is evidence of, 'Hey, I'm going to take care of myself, and I don't care what anybody else says or thinks, or does'.

"We carry it to a far murderous extreme in the movie and by way of our flashbacks, but it's not hard to see somehow that we might be a little accurate in the study of human behavior under such circumstances.

"This from a movie that we started long before there was the idea of a worldwide lockdown and as many as many morbidities that have come along with COVID-19.

"If you had told us when we were in, when we were on the set shooting this film that during the post production, people would be in lockdown be in masks, and people wouldn't be able to travel across borders, we we would have thought, well, let's make that movie. Glad we didn't," the actor said.

While there are some similarities in Finch's isolation in the movie with isolation faced by those of us who've experienced lockdown during COVID-19, the experience is different in major ways, Hanks explained.

"I actually think Finch does an awfully good job of being isolated, but of course, he's not missing anything.

"During the course of COVID-19, the rest of the world was out there we had a very real yearning in order to return to these places that give us the great common pleasures, company and shops and stores and coffee shops and being able to get together with friends.

"Knowing that we were separated from those types of things during all of our various lock downs might have caused a bit of a, of a more of a, you know, a mental stirring and a yearning for to get out of here in order to get back in order to live the way we did just a few short months ago.

"Finch doesn't have that luxury, of course, because he's been alone now for years, since all of all of creation shut down and all of a society imploded.

"So I think that in one way, you can look at the film and just say, oh, in that way, this guy Finch has an easy, at least he's got a dog and he can create a friend that he can talk to.

"I don't get to leave this small apartment. He does get to put on like a neat suit and then walk around outside, he can. But there's nobody to walk around with.

"In the course of the COVID-19 crisis. We knew that there was going to be a time where Yes, under certain certain circumstances, we'd be able to return to our quote unquote, normal lives," Hanks said.

'Finch' available on Apple TV+ beginning 5 November

If you're a fan of Tom Hanks or post-apocalyptical movies, you wouldn't want to miss 'Finch'. While Hanks is clearly the star of the movie, we also loved Jeff. Landry Jones did a great job adding character to the robot and humour to the movie.

Catch 'Finch' on Apple TV+ beginning this Friday, 5 November.