Assignment 16- Andy

Wes Anderson is a director known for quirky and (sometimes) dramatic comedies .His unique style can been seen clearly in all his movies and has helped to earn his name in Hollywood. Some of his films include Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. In this blog I will compare his two most recent films; Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Moonrise Kingdom is a story about an adolescent first love and the events surrounding it. It is his most successful film yet. It contains all the elements that one expects from one of his films. It has eccentric characters, a few too many symmetrical camera shots, and muted colors. The reason Moonrise Kingdom has been more successful than Anderson's past films is that there was less emphasis on his now famous style. Fantastic Mr. Fox, while maintaining the same elements of the other films, introduced some new ideas. The most obvious is that the movie is not only animated, but in its own very unique way. While reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit, this medium seems to contribute to the unique atmosphere characteristic of Anderson's films. Another difference in Fantastic Mr. Fox is that it is based off the book by Roald Dahl. His past movies may have been inspired by other sources but never based directly off something else.

These two movies both exemplify Wes Anderson's unique style and were received fairly well by critics. The more successful of the two, Moonrise Kingdom, seems to have accomplished this with a more relatable subject matter but many of the same stylistic aspects of its predecessors. It is Fantastic Mr. Fox that takes more risks (It doesn't even have Owen Wilson in it) and though not by much, differentiates itself from Anderson's other films. The failure in the eyes of critics of Wes Anderson's films often come from the implementation of his eccentric and (possibly overused) style. It seems that the key to Anderon's success in the future will not be changing his formulaic method of making movies, but creating a story that will complement and live up to his now famous modus operandi.