Hollywood being a star-making machine above all else, it was not surprising that the buzz on 2000's release of Cast Away was all about the weight Tom Hanks gained and then dropped to give life to his character's years of privation. The real magic behind the film wasn't revealed until much later-that the island peak over which the hero clambered was a mud pile overlooking a California parking lot, and that much of the tropical environment seen on screen, from breakers to mountaintop, had been fashioned inside a computer.

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