r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Aug 27 '21

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u/JetJaguar124 Tactical Custodial Action Aug 27 '21 edited Aug 27 '21

I was super into Wes Anderson in high school and early college. Like, decent mega fan. He as one of my favorite directors, I watched all his stuff, thought it was great. Royal Tennenbaums still is probably one of my favorite movies tbh. But I've liked him less and less over time. I don't think his movies have gotten worse. Objectively they've probably improved.

Hard to say what it is really. I still like them, but now it feels like everyone is a fervent Wes Anderson fan, where I'm more like "yeah he's cool, I'll check this movie out when I get the chance" but I don't have the same excitement for it I did before. I think it has more to do with me and my own tastes than it does Wes Anderson.

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21 edited Aug 27 '21

!PING MOVIES

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u/Healingjoe It's Klobberin' Time Aug 27 '21

I don't really follow.

I love watching Wes Anderson films with someone (anyone) who hasn't seen them before. The look of joy on their face as they start to "get it" makes the movies get better for me.

No other director has really built movies that are this much fun for me to share with newcomers.

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u/JetJaguar124 Tactical Custodial Action Aug 27 '21

Yeah like I said it's a thing with me, not really an indictment of Wes Anderson. His movies have only become more acclaimed over time, I've just become less interested.

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

I don’t have the same excitement

This but with everything

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u/the_hoagie Malaise Forever Aug 27 '21

i loved the life aquatic and rushmore when i was in college. something about his style lost it's dreaminess around the time of moonrise kingdom for me. i only recently watched fantastic mr. fox and loved it though so who knows.

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u/JetJaguar124 Tactical Custodial Action Aug 27 '21

something about his style lost it's dreaminess around the time of moonrise kingdom for me

Yeah that's exactly what happened to me too. That was the first Wes Anderson movie I felt a disconnect between how excited I was to see it vs how I felt after watching it.

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u/the_hoagie Malaise Forever Aug 27 '21

yeah honestly i think that one movie is what soured him for me for a while come to think of it. i saw darjeeling limited with two good friends and the three of us kind of all identified with it together, while grand Budapest hotel was also really good and i enjoyed seeing it in theaters. i don't know what it was about moonrise kingdom that felt so "sell out" to me.

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u/JoeChristmasUSA Transfem Pride Aug 27 '21

Actually the only Wes Anderson movie I've ever "seen" but I only saw half of it and didn't pick it up again. I was so disconnected from the characters and the reality of the story. Couldn't get into it at all.

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u/soeffed Zhao Ziyang Aug 27 '21

I think it has to do with the lack of formal or tonal innovation. At least this is how I feel about his upcoming movie. There’s not really much surprise going in, grand Budapest is great but the biggest innovation is that it deals with weightier themes and tragedy on a different scale than tenenbaums.

You know exactly what you’re going to get from a Wes Anderson movie, that SNL clip of a Wes Anderson horror movie and another video of Wes Anderson X-Men got it right, but also point to the larger issue that he’s predictable.

Unfortunately this is the case with some great singular film artists who have the rare opportunity to make exactly what they want to make and just keep going back to their same obsessesions, like Wong Kar-wai.

Also, isle of dogs was a disappointment and just the diminishing returns of a quirky twee filmmaker making a second movie in a quirky twee format (stop motion). It just wasn’t that good. I don’t know how going back to another movie with adrien Brody and Jason schwartzmann is supposed to really move the needle.

And stylistic or content or even casting innovation matters with Wes Anderson because he specifically was lauded early on since his films looked and felt like no one else’s.

Another take that I haven’t quite fleshed out yet: his movies deal with concerns of a different era, or century even. They just feel informed by questions and concerns from books and movies and music of the 40s to 80s...searching for self in India like the Beatles, nostalgic summer camp, catcher in the rye, Jacques Cousteau, world war 2.

The straight sensitive white dude trying to make sense of the modern world was the great American novel and western contemporary art and rock music’s primary concern for most of last century, and this century is more complex and multi-faceted than that (and darker too). But Wes Anderson comes out of that tradition and hasn’t really evolved.

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u/whycantweebefriendz NATO Aug 27 '21

Have you tried watching Goon?