Tom Hanks is met with criticism from the film critic's “c–ksuckers” when defending his films

Don't come for the Tom Hanks movies.

The 68-year-old Oscar winner appeared on the “Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend” podcast on Sunday and called film critics “shit” and explained how reactions to films in Hollywood have evolved over the years.

“What's happened now is that time has become a measure of how important these things are, right?” he said. “Back then it was just a fistfight. It was every movie you put out: Will you make the playoffs or not? Guess what? No, boy, you're 2 and 12 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 love it or not? That's the first thing. Yeah, okay, you've crossed the Rubicon, right? The next Rubicon you cross is when the movie is finished a year and a half later and 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 did pretty well.’ That’s Rubicon No. 2.”

Hanks continued, “Then the critics come forward, this is Rubicon No. 3, and it’s always from the top down. “We hate it, we like it.” That's the worst… Oh hey, oh hello Tom, I saw you in a movie. It was sweet.'”

“That's when you ask the woman, 'Hey, honey, could you take the gun out of the glove compartment and hide it somewhere because I'm thinking…'” Hanks joked.

The “Toy Story” star then noted that a film's performance at the box office is also important to its critical legacy.

“Then a lot of time goes by where none of it matters anymore,” he added, “and the movie just exists exactly as it is, outside of the loser-winner status.” Thumbs up, thumbs down. And then this stuff comes to the table where it seems like this thing that didn't work back then somehow works now, or quite the opposite, a thing that was huge back then is a museum piece and doesn't really speak to it anything.”

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

“Let me tell you about these idiots who write about movies,” Hanks replied, before asking O'Brien and his co-hosts, “Can I say that?”

“Someone who wrote about it said, 'Tom Hanks needs to stop hanging around TV veterans because it's just like being on TV and it's not much of anything,'” Hanks recalls. “The same person then talked about the cult classic 'That Thing You Do!' written. Exactly the same person. They said, 'From now to then you only need 20 years, and in the end some words will speak.'”

“But this is what we all decided to do,” the veteran actor remarked. “This is the carnival, this is the competition. I believed in that. That’s okay.”

In addition to those mentioned above, Hank's most famous films include A League of Their Own, Philadelphia, Saving Private Ryan, The Sleepless Man in Seattle, Apollo 13, Catch Me If You Can and Bridge of Spies,” “Sully” and “Elvis.”

He is a six-time Academy Award nominee and won two Best Actor awards for his roles in “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump.”

Hanks reunited with “Forrest Gump” director Robert Zemeckis and co-star Robin Wright for the new film “Here.” The film is based on a 2014 graphic novel and uses AI to follow Hanks and Wright as a married couple over decades.

“Here” received mostly negative reviews from critics. The critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 36%. The Post's Johnny Oleksinski gave the film two stars and called it “disgusting” in his review.

In 2023, Hanks questioned whether he would ever retire from acting, telling Variety that he had “no desire” to end his career yet.

“I don't work for the sake of working. I am in a very fortunate position. It has to be fabulous,” he said. “Rita (Wilson) and I talk about it all the time because there are only two reasons why we go to work: it's going to be good or it's going to be fun.”

“And if none of that happens, I’ll stay home until the cows come,” he added. “I don’t have to do anything.”