Tom Hanks goes scorched earth on film critic ‘c-ksuckers’ as he defends his films

Don’t come for Tom Hanks’ movies.

The Oscar winner, 68, appeared on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast on Sunday and called film critics “c–ksuckers” while explaining how reactions to films in Hollywood have evolved over the years.

“What happened now is that time has become one of the measures of how these things matter, right?” he said. “During the day it was just a fist fight. It was with every movie you released: are you going to make the play-offs or not? Guess what? No, boy, you’re two and twelve and you’re not going anywhere. Or you have a chance.’

“You used to have these Rubicons that you crossed,” he continued. “First of all: do you like it or not? That’s the first thing. Yeah, okay, you crossed the Rubicon, right? The next Rubicon you encounter is when the film is completely finished a year and a half later, you see it for the first time and you might like it. It doesn’t matter if it works or not, you look at it and say, “Hey, I think we acquitted ourselves pretty well.” That is Rubicon No. 2.”

Hanks continued, “Then the critics come with their opinion, which is Rubicon No. 3, and it’s always from top to bottom. ‘We hate it, we love it. This is the worst… Oh hey, oh hi Tom, I saw you in a movie. It was cute. ”

“Then you ask your wife, ‘Hey honey, can you take the revolver out of the glove compartment and hide it somewhere, because I think…’” Hanks joked.

The ‘Toy Story’ star then noted that how a film performs at the box office is also important to its critical legacy.

“Then a lot of time goes by where none of that stuff matters anymore,” he added, “and the movie just exists exactly as it is, except for its loser-winner status. Thumbs up, thumbs down. And that’s when this stuff comes along, where it’s like this thing that didn’t work then works now, or the opposite, something that was huge at the time is a museum piece and doesn’t really speak to anything.”

O’Brien, 61, said Hanks was initially “disappointed” with his film “That Thing You Do!” 1996, which marked his directorial debut, but has since become a pop culture cult classic.

“Let me tell you something about these c-suckers who write about movies,” Hanks responded, before asking O’Brien and his co-hosts, “Can I say that?”

“Someone who wrote about it said, ‘Tom Hanks needs to stop hanging out with TV veterans because this is like the taping on TV and it’s not much,’” Hanks recalls. “That same person then wrote about the cult classic ‘That Thing You Do!’ Exactly the same person. They said, “All it takes is twenty years between now and then, and eventually you’ll speak a few words.”

“But that’s what we all signed up for,” the veteran actor noted. “That’s carnival, that’s the competition. I have confidence in that. That’s okay.”

Hanks’ most famous films, in addition to those previously mentioned, include ‘A League of Their Own’, ‘Philadelphia’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, ‘Apollo 13′, Catch Me If You Can’, “Bridge of Spies,” “Sully” and “Elvis.”

He has been nominated for an Oscar six times and won Best Actor twice for his roles in ‘Philadelphia’ and ‘Forrest Gump’.

Hanks reunites with ‘Forrest Gump’ director Robert Zemeckis and co-star Robin Wright in the new film ‘Here.’ Based on a 2014 graphic novel, the film uses AI to follow Hanks and Wright as a married couple over decades.

“Here” has received mostly negative reviews from critics. It has a critic score of 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. Johnny Oleksinski of The Post gave the film two stars, calling it “sickening” in his review.

In 2023, Hanks wondered if he will ever retire from acting, telling Variety that he has “no desire” to end his career just yet.

“I don’t work for the sake of working. I am in a very fortunate position. It must be fantastic,” he said. “Rita (Wilson) and I talk about it all the time, which is that there are only two reasons to go to work: it will be good or it will be fun.”

“And if it’s neither, I’ll stay home until the cows come,” he added. “I don’t have to do anything.”