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THE TERMINAL

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Terminal (disambiguation).

The Terminal
Theatrical release poster
Directed bySteven Spielberg
Screenplay bySacha GervasiJeff Nathanson
Story byAndrew NiccolSacha Gervasi
Produced byWalter F. ParkesLaurie MacDonaldSteven Spielberg
StarringTom HanksCatherine Zeta-JonesStanley TucciChi McBrideDiego Luna
CinematographyJanusz Kamiński
Edited byMichael Kahn
Music byJohn Williams
Production
companies		Amblin EntertainmentParkes/MacDonald Productions
Distributed byDreamWorks Pictures
Release dateJune 18, 2004
Running time128 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$60 million[1]
Box office$219 million[1]

The Terminal is a 2004 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci. The film is about an Eastern European man who is stuck in New York‘s John F. Kennedy Airport terminal when he is denied entry to the United States, but is unable to return to his native country because of a military coup.

The film is partially inspired by the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who lived in Terminal 1 of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, France, from 1988 to 2006.[2]

After finishing Catch Me If You Can (2002), Spielberg decided to direct The Terminal because he wanted to make a film “that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world”. As no suitable airport was willing to provide their facilities, an entire working set was built inside a large hangar at the LA/Palmdale Regional Airport, with the customs hall, offices and most of the film’s exterior shots filmed at the Montreal–Mirabel International Airport.[3]

The film was released in North America by DreamWorks Pictures on June 18, 2004, to generally positive reviews and was a commercial success, grossing $219 million worldwide.

Plot

Viktor Navorski, a traveler from Krakozhia, arrives at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and learns that a coup d’état has occurred in his country while he was in the air. The United States does not recognize Krakozhia’s new government, rendering Viktor’s passport invalid and leaving him unable to either enter the United States or return to Krakozhia. U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizes his passport and return ticket, pending resolution of the issue, leaving him stranded at the airport with only his luggage and a Planters peanut can in his possession.

Frank Dixon, the Acting Field Commissioner of the airport, instructs Viktor to stay in the transit lounge until the issue is resolved, but he becomes determined to make Viktor someone else’s problem. He tries to tempt Viktor to leave illegally by ordering guards away from the exit for five minutes, but it fails. Dixon then tries to persuade Viktor to claim asylum, but Viktor refuses, as he is not afraid of returning to his own country.

Viktor finds a gate under renovation and makes it his home. Being considered for a promotion, Dixon becomes increasingly obsessed with getting rid of Viktor. Meanwhile, Viktor begins reading guidebooks in order to learn English.

Viktor has repeated encounters with Gupta Rajan, a grumpy elderly janitor, with whom he slowly forms a bond. He also befriends Joe Mulroy, a baggage handler who plays poker, betting lost luggage items. Enrique Cruz, a food service truck driver, provides Viktor with free meals in exchange for helping him woo Dolores Torres, an immigration officer whom Viktor has befriended.

Viktor shows skill at construction work when he remodels a wall in a terminal undergoing renovation. The airport contractors assume he is an employee and pay him under the table. He also begins a relationship with Amelia, a flight attendant who is also entangled with a married government official.

During a visit from his superiors, Dixon enlists Viktor’s help in communicating with a Russian man who is desperately attempting to bring medicine home to his dying father. Dixon is determined to refuse the man because of a paperwork issue, which Viktor helps the young man circumvent. This humiliates Dixon, who threatens Viktor by telling him that he will never let him enter the United States. This incident is witnessed by Dixon’s superiors, who give him a look of disappointment before leaving. (Viktor becomes a legend amongst the terminal employees for helping the man and standing up to Dixon.)

Dixon detains Amelia and interrogates her about Viktor. Amelia, who realizes Viktor has not been entirely truthful, angrily confronts him at his makeshift home, where he shows her that the Planters peanut can contains a copy of the “A Great Day in Harlem” photograph. His late father was a jazz enthusiast who had discovered the picture in a Hungarian newspaper in 1958 and vowed to collect the autographs of all 57 musicians depicted in it, all of which are in the can with the photograph. He died needing only the autograph of tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, and Viktor has come to New York to obtain it. After hearing the story, Amelia kisses Viktor.

Nine months after having arrived, Viktor learns that the war in Krakozhia has ended. Amelia reveals that her married boyfriend has secured Viktor a one-day emergency visa so he can fulfill his dream, but that she has also rekindled the relationship.

When he presents the emergency visa at customs, Viktor is informed that Dixon must sign it. However, as Viktor’s passport is now valid again, Dixon is determined to deport him back to Krakozhia. He warns Viktor that if he does not go home at once, he will prosecute his friends at the airport for their illegal activities, most seriously by deporting Gupta back to India to face a charge of assaulting a corrupt police officer. Viktor finally agrees to return home, but Gupta delays the plane by running in front of it, thus being taken into custody, after initially shouting at Viktor for being a ‘coward’ because of Viktor’s departure from the airport to Krakozhia.

Emboldened by his friend’s actions, Viktor decides to leave the airport. Several airport employees rush to say goodbye, but Dixon orders his officers to intercept Viktor at the exit. In defiance of Dixon, however, they let Viktor leave. Dixon reaches the taxi stand only moments after Viktor has left, but he decides to forget it and returns to handle the incoming travelers rather than engage in pursuit. Viktor arrives at the hotel where Golson is performing and finally collects the last autograph, then takes a taxi back to the airport to go home.

Cast

Production

The gigantic airport set built for the film.

The idea for the film may have originated from the story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, also known as Sir Alfred, an Iranian refugee who lived in Terminal One of the Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris from 1988 until 2006.[2][4] In September 2003, The New York Times noted that Steven Spielberg bought the rights to Nasseri’s life story as the basis for the film; and in September 2004 The Guardian noted Nasseri received thousands of dollars from the filmmakers.[5][6] However, none of the studio’s publicity materials mention Nasseri’s story as an inspiration for the film, and the storyline bears no resemblance to Nasseri’s experiences. The 1993 French film Lost in Transit was already based on the same story. In deciding to make the film, Spielberg stated that after directing Catch Me If You Can, “I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. … This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.”[7]

Spielberg traveled around the world to find an actual airport that would let him film for the length of the production but could not find one. The Terminal set was built in a massive hangar at the LA/Palmdale Regional Airport. The hangar, part of the U.S. Air Force Plant 42 complex, was used to build the Rockwell International B-1B bomber. The set was built to full earthquake construction codes and was based on Düsseldorf Airport. The shape of both the actual terminal and the set viewed sideways is a cross-section of an aircraft wing. Because of this design, the film was one of the first to use the Spidercam. The camera, most often used for televised sports, allowed Spielberg the ability to create sweeping shots across the set. The design of the set for The Terminal, as noted by Roger Ebert in his reviews and attested by Spielberg himself in a feature by Empire magazine, was greatly inspired by Jacques Tati‘s classic film PlayTime.[8]

Tom Hanks based his characterization of Viktor Navorski on his father-in-law Allan Wilson, a Bulgarian immigrant who speaks “Russian, Turkish, Polish, Greek, little bit of Italian, little bit of French“, in addition to his native Bulgarian.[9] Hanks also had some help from a Bulgarian translator.[10]

Krakozhia

Krakozhia (Кракожия) is a fictional country, created for the film, that closely resembles a former Soviet Republic or an Eastern Bloc state.

The exact location of Krakozhia is kept intentionally vague in the film. In one scene, a map of Krakozhia is briefly displayed on one of the airport’s television screens during a news report on the ongoing conflict. Its borders are those of present-day North Macedonia (known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia at the time of the film’s production). In another scene, Viktor shows his driver’s license, which is a Belarusian license issued to a woman bearing an Uzbek name.

John Williams, the film’s composer, also wrote a national anthem for Krakozhia.[11]

Hanks’ character speaks mostly Bulgarian as his native Krakozhian. In one scene, in which he helps a Russian-speaking passenger with a customs-related issue, he speaks a constructed Slavic language resembling Bulgarian and Russian.[12][13] When Viktor buys a guide book of New York both in English and in his mother tongue to compare the two versions and improve his English, the book he studies is written in Russian.

The film presents a reasonably accurate picture of the process of naturalistic second-language acquisition, according to linguist Martha Young-Scholten.[14]

Soundtrack

Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusicStarStarStarStar[15]
EmpireStarStarStarStarStar[16]
FilmtracksStarStarStarStarStar[17]
Movie WaveStarStarStarHalf star[18]
Soundtrack.netStarStarStar[19]

Emily Bernstein played clarinet for the score, including several prominent solos, and her name is in the film’s end credits.[20] At the time, individual musicians in studio orchestras typically performed anonymously, but Spielberg insisted on highlighting Bernstein’s work; she was being treated for cancer at the time of recording, and she died less than a year later.[20]

The Terminal (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) track listing[21][22]

No.TitleLength
1.“The Tale of Viktor Navorski”4:12
2.“Dinner with Amelia”8:02
3.“A Legend is Born”3:16
4.“Viktor and his Friends”4:43
5.“The Fountain Scene”5:33
6.“The Wedding of Officer Torres”5:01
7.“Jazz Autographs”3:45
8.“Refusing to Escape”3:01
9.“Krakozhia National Anthem and Homesickness”1:49
10.“Looking for Work”3:17
11.“Gupta’s Deliverance”3:18
12.“Finding Coins and Learning to Read”4:02
13.“‘Destiny’…’Canneloni’… and The Tale of Viktor Navorski (Reprise)”5:05
14.“A Happy Navorski Ending!”2:47
Total length:57:58

Reception

Box office

The Terminal grossed $77.9 million in North America, and $141.2 million in other territories, totaling $219 million worldwide.[1]

The film grossed $19.1 million in its opening weekend, finishing in second, then made $13.1 million in its second weekend, dropping to third.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 61% based on reviews from 206 critics, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “The Terminal transcends its flaws through the sheer virtue of its crowd-pleasing message and a typically solid star turn from Tom Hanks.”[23] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating “mixed or average” reviews.[24] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “B+” on an A+ to F scale.[25]

Michael Wilmington from the Chicago Tribune said “[the film] takes Spielberg into realms he’s rarely traveled before.”[26] A. O. Scott of The New York Times said Hanks’ performance brought a lot to the film.[27]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave The Terminal three and a half out of four stars, stating that “This premise could have yielded a film of contrivance and labored invention. Spielberg, his actors and writers… weave it into a human comedy that is gentle and true, that creates sympathy for all of its characters, that finds a tone that will carry them through, that made me unreasonably happy”.[8] Martin Liebman of Blu-ray.com considers the film as “quintessential cinema”, praising it for being “a down-to-earth, honest, hopeful, funny, moving, lightly romantic, and dramatically relevant film that embodies the term ‘movie magic’ in every scene.”[28] Critic Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com considered The Terminal alongside War of the Worlds and Munich (also directed by Spielberg) as the three best films made within the studio system that comment upon the September 11 attacks.[29][30]

Home media

The Terminal was released on DVD by DreamWorks Home Entertainment on November 23, 2004.[31] In February 2006, Viacom (now known as Paramount Skydance) acquired the rights to The Terminal and all other live-action films DreamWorks had released since 1997, following its billion-dollar-acquisition of the company’s live-action film and television library.[32][33] On May 6, 2014, Paramount Home Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray.[34]

See also

References

  1.  The Terminal at Box Office Mojo
  2.  Gilsdorf, Ethan (June 21, 2004). “Behind ‘The Terminal,’ a true story”. The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on December 2, 2015. Retrieved December 5, 2010.
  3.  “The Terminal (2004) – Filming & Production”. IMDb.com. Archived from the original on February 9, 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  4.  Duncan Walker, “Life in the lounge” Archived 2009-02-21 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News Online Magazine, August 17, 2004.
  5.  Matthew Rose, “Waiting For Spielberg” Archived 2009-02-08 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, September 21, 2003. Retrieved June 12, 2008.
  6.  Berczeller, Paul (September 6, 2004). “The man who lost his past”. The Guardian. Archived from the original on May 9, 2007. Retrieved May 5, 2007.
  7.  Total Film (September 1, 2004). “The Total Film Interview – Steven Spielberg”. GamesRadar+. Future. Archived from the original on March 16, 2018. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  8.  Ebert, Roger (June 18, 2018). “The Terminal Movie Review & Film Summary (2004)”. RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC. Archived from the original on August 30, 2014. Retrieved August 19, 2018.
  9.  “Season 12 Episode 9”. Inside the Actors Studio. Bravo. 14 May 2016. Television.
  10.  Tom Hanks’ character in The Terminal speaks Bulgarian”. Archived from the original on March 13, 2021 – via YouTube.
  11.  Clemmensen, Christian (June 10, 2004). The Terminal. Archived 2021-07-25 at the Wayback Machine soundtrack review at Filmtracks.com
  12.  Learn Bulgarian with Tom Hanks. February 16, 2020. Archived from the original on December 22, 2021 – via YouTube.
  13.  “plot explanation – What does Viktor Navorski say to Milodragovich in Bulgarian?”. Movies & TV Stack Exchange. Archived from the original on November 5, 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2021.
  14.  Young-Scholten, Martha. “Hollywood: smarter than you think? Maybe”. Archived from the original on July 27, 2011. Retrieved December 25, 2007. Abstract for talk given at the University of Leeds Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, April 26, 2006.
  15.  Ruhlmann, William. “The Terminal [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] by John Williams”. AllMusic. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  16.  Graydon, Danny. “The Terminal“. Empire. Archived from the original on June 26, 2006. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  17.  “The Terminal (John Williams)”. Filmtracks. June 10, 2004. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  18.  Southall, James. “Williams: The Terminal“. Movie Wave. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  19.  Goldwasser, Dan (June 15, 2004). “The Terminal Soundtrack (2004)”. Soundtrack.net. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  20.  “Pasadena Symphony Musician, Emily Bernstein, Loses Battle With Cancer”. La Cañada Valley Sun. February 3, 2005. Archived from the original on February 18, 2022. Retrieved February 17, 2022.
  21.  “Spotify – Web Player”. Spotify. Retrieved March 21, 2026.
  22.  “The Terminal (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture) by John Williams — Apple Music Classical”. Retrieved March 21, 2026.
  23.  “The Terminal (2004)”. Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Archived from the original on June 22, 2011. Retrieved December 5, 2010.
  24.  “The Terminal reviews”. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on August 23, 2010. Retrieved December 5, 2010.
  25.  “Find CinemaScore” (Type “Terminal” in the search box). CinemaScore. Archived from the original on November 27, 1999. Retrieved November 4, 2020.
  26.  “Flight of fancy”, Chicago Tribune, June 18, 2004. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
  27.  A. O. Scott, “Movie review: An Émigré’s Paradise Lost and Found” Archived 2017-02-01 at the Wayback Machine, by The New York Times, June 18, 2004. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
  28.  Liebman, Martin (April 26, 2014). “The Terminal Blu-ray Review”. Blu-ray.com. Archived from the original on September 24, 2021. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  29.  Matt Zoller Seitz [@mattzollerseitz] (June 28, 2016). “That, WAR OF THE WORLDS and THE TERMINAL are the 3 best 9/11 films made in the studio system, all by the same guy” (Tweet). Retrieved August 19, 2018 – via Twitter.
  30.  Matt Zoller Seitz [@mattzollerseitz] (April 1, 2018). “I keep saying I’m going to write a piece about how THE TERMINAL, WoTW and MUNICH are the 3 greatest American films about 9/11 even though none of them actually mentions it until the very last shot of the last film” (Tweet). Retrieved August 19, 2018 – via Twitter.
  31.  “The Terminal DVD Release Date November 23, 2004”. Dvdsreleasedates.com. Retrieved June 15, 2026.
  32.  “Paramount-Dreamworks deal finalised”. Abc.net.au. February 2, 2006.
  33.  “Complete Library | Theatrical Library | Paramount Pictures”. Paramount.com. Archived from the original on February 22, 2012.
  34.  “The Terminal Blu-ray”. Blu-ray.com. Retrieved June 15, 2026.

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