Factual error: Shortly after the crash, when Chuck is in the raft, one of the engines continues to run even though it is half submerged in water. The engine would not have exploded like it did, rather, it would have just stopped running as soon as it became disconnected from its fuel source and flooded with water.
Cast Away (2000)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Lari White, Paul Sanchez
Drifting at sea and barely alive, Chuck is rescued by a passing ship and returns home. His reunion with Kelly is bittersweet, however—she is now married and has a baby. They still love each other, but accept that she cannot abandon her family. Kelly has kept Chuck’s car and gives him the keys. He goes on a road trip to deliver the one unopened FedEx package from the island. He takes it to a small farm in the mid-west, but no one is home, and he leaves the package on the porch with a note. At a crossroads near the farm, Chuck stops to look at a map. A pretty redhead drives by and gives him directions. As she’s driving away, Chuck recognizes the logo on her truck as the same as the one that was hand painted on the package. The film ends with him looking in the direction that she’s just driven.
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Suggested correction: The aircraft seems like a Airbus A300 or 310 but it is really a MD-11 or DC-10 because you can clearly see that the front body with wing with engine attached sink leaving the tail section. So the tail has a fuel tank and the third engine. The engine normally compresses air then burns it by feeding in fuel and igniting it. But can't compress air because the turbines are in the water. The fuel would in this case would "flood" the engine then the igniter ignites it and explodes.
Fumes explode, raw fuel burns. Igniter will not ignite raw fuel nor would there be anyway to propagate the explosion that took place.
Even if the engine was flooded, and full of water, and the air couldn't, it still wouldn't explode. MD-11 engines run on a fuel that cannot be ignited.
Wrong, the tail section has fuel LINES not a fuel tank.
Chuck Noland: Aha. Look what I've created. I have made FIRE.
Trivia: Screenwriter William Broyles took survival courses and during that time a Wilson brand soccer ball washed up on shore - the inspiration for Wilson in the movie. The director Bob Zemeckis states in the feature voiceover that they changed it to a volley ball because "a soccer ball has all those black spots on it'.
Question: Does anyone know what's officially in the mystery package and why Chuck never opens it, or is it just a 'McGuffin' like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction?
Answer: No one knows what was in the package. I think Chuck doesn't open it in order to keep his sanity. The package is his only link to his life before being stranded, working for FedEx and making sure packages get delivered. He was determined to make sure it got delivered just as he was determined to survive and get back to civilization. Success in one meant success in the other. While Zemeckis has joked there was a waterproof satellite phone in it, the real answer from the script is, no joke, salsa verde. Its a care package with a note imploring Bettina's (the artist) husband (naked cowboy) to come back and spice up their life like the salsa.
Answer: The package he got had divorce papers in them. He signed them and then placed them back in the package for return to her.
Here's my spin. Bettina's husband travels and is on assignment in Moscow. He's cheating on her, she knows it, files for divorce, and sends the papers through FedEx to him in Moscow. He signs them and returns in the same box. They end up on Chuck's flight, which crashes. He recovers them but decides not to open them. They re-file for divorce. Chuck returns the box, gazes down the road, and decides to go back and tell his story to her. They laugh about the old papers and live happily ever after.
Answer: In the third draft of the movie there's a scene where Chuck opens the package and finds salsa and a note from the woman in the beginning asking her husband to come home. It's also revealed that she doesn't mind that he never got the package. Pretty unsatisfactory, probably why it was cut and left a mystery.
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