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](/images/titles/0-999/246_sm.jpg)
Cast Away (2000)
Plot summary
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Lari White, Paul Sanchez
Chuck Noland, a Federal Express efficiency supervisor, jets around the world trouble-shooting problems for the company. His life is driven by the clock, and he demands the same of FedEx employees. On Christmas Eve, he's unexpectedly dispatched on an assignment. Just before leaving, he proposes to his girlfriend, Kelly, and promises her, "I'll be right back". The FedEx plane he hitches a ride on hits a severe storm and is blown hundreds of miles off course. The plane crashes into the Pacific ocean, and Chuck, the only survivor, drifts to a small deserted island. For the next four years he struggles to survive, using salvaged items from washed up FedEx packages as tools (i.e. an ice skating boot becomes an axe). He purposely leaves one package unopened. Chuck's only companion is Wilson, a volleyball, and as time passes his loneliness leads to suicidal tendencies. Knowing he must get off the island, he builds a crude raft and heads out to sea.
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: You wouldn't have a match by any chance would you?
Trivia: Production was shut down for a year, to give Tom Hanks enough time to lose weight and grow out his "castaway" beard. During that time, director Robert Zemeckis used the same crew members to help film "What Lies Beneath."
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