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From Wild to Lord of the Rings: Who’s Walked the Farthest in Movies?

Photo: See-Saw Films, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers

Every so often, in a bizarre coincidence of release-date timing, two movies that seem remarkably similar will arrive in theaters in the same season. Remember how Paul Blart and Observe and Report turned early 2009 into the year of the mall cop? It’s happened again with Tracks, in which Mia Wasikowska treks 1,700 miles across the Australian outback, and Wild, in which Reese Witherspoon treks 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail. These, of course, are not the first films to tag along with those traveling on foot. Nor are they the most ambitious. Even with an average distance walked of 1,400 miles, Wasikowska and Witherspoon aren’t among film history’s top five when it comes to distance traveled using nothing but legs and feet. Here’s our list of Hollywood’s longest walkers:

The Day After Tomorrow (2004): 225 miles, from Washington, D.C., to New York City

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006): 497 miles, from Paris to Grasse, France

The Way (2011): 500 miles, across the Camino de Santiago

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012): 950 miles, from the Shire to Lonely Mountain

Wild (2014): 1,100 miles, along the Pacific Crest Trail

The Lucky One (2012): 1,150 miles, from Colorado to Louisiana

Seven Years in Tibet (1997): 1,250 miles, from Dehradun, India to Lhasa, Tibet

A Far Off Place (1993): 1,250 miles, across the Kalahari desert

Rabbit Proof Fence (2002): 1,500 miles, across the Australian outback

Tracks (2014): 1,700 miles, from Alice Spring, Australia, to the Indian Ocean

Lord of the Rings: 1,800 miles, from the Shire to Mount Doom

Africa United (2010): 3,000 miles, from Rwanda to South Africa

The Book of Eli (2010): 3,000 miles, across the United States

The Way Back (2010): 4,000 miles, from Siberia to India

Forrest Gump (1994): 12,000 miles, back and forth across the United States. (Okay, fine, he’s running, but 12,000 miles is so long. Give the man credit.)

Who’s Walked the Farthest in Movies?