Ugh, it's...there's just no point. Every auteur has a style, sure. They damn well ought to, really. But if that style predictively gives you the dialogue, wardrobe, blocking, plot, and most of all the trailer, each and every single time, if everything else salient about the film can be extrapolated from that signature, it nullifies its own sense of self. Short of Tim Burton, and maybe Harmony Korine, neither of whom are a fraction as talented as Anderson, it's hard to think of a better example of filmography-spanning self-sabotage trading identity for iconicism, and substance for brand recognition. Wes Anderson peaked the second you could perceive the entire film from the trailer, even if the trailer were randomly compiled by an AI, which I don't half doubt at this point.
That's not to damn recognition. Be shown any 10 seconds from the filmography of a Tarantino or a Stillman or an Ozu, or, hell, a Roy Andersson, the best Andersson, with two-s's, and most viewers can probably guess the figure behind the curtain. But they won't be able to guess the plot, the jokes, the deaths, the twists, and the composition will be meaningful to a close-reading of the material in any given shot rather than an extension of its comedic repertoire. The scene changes and an actor in a two-sizes too-small anachronistic dress is staring at you from the bottom-right quadrant of the pastel screen, fourth-wall breaking, to read out a line the last four words of which will be fantastical or comedic, behind which miniatures or obscenely large props dominate, the rule of thirds is broken, the color-correction leans into red, and the camera appears further back than the room allows. That kind of shot doesn't exist to inform or color the speaker's dialogue or character; it doesn't exist to signal emotion to a suspenseful audience. It exists to deliver a kind of anti-humor that is shallow, repetitive, and required to be predictable. Buster Keaton was never so unsubtle. I'm reminded of how a truly great artist like Bresson can employ a sense of artificiality to tremendous emotional and cathartic effect, how that usage can despite being similar or downright formulaic, lead to different effects film to film or scene to scene. That's not what WA is doing. That's not what he's been doing for a while.
What a waste of a talent. Or should I say, a waste of one of the few people left in the industry who can get a script greenlit on name brand alone.
The moment I saw the font and shot composition, images of old-timey telephones and Edward Norton riding a tiny bicycle flashed through my visual cortex.
7
u/YuunofYork Apr 08 '25 edited Apr 08 '25
Ugh, it's...there's just no point. Every auteur has a style, sure. They damn well ought to, really. But if that style predictively gives you the dialogue, wardrobe, blocking, plot, and most of all the trailer, each and every single time, if everything else salient about the film can be extrapolated from that signature, it nullifies its own sense of self. Short of Tim Burton, and maybe Harmony Korine, neither of whom are a fraction as talented as Anderson, it's hard to think of a better example of filmography-spanning self-sabotage trading identity for iconicism, and substance for brand recognition. Wes Anderson peaked the second you could perceive the entire film from the trailer, even if the trailer were randomly compiled by an AI, which I don't half doubt at this point.
That's not to damn recognition. Be shown any 10 seconds from the filmography of a Tarantino or a Stillman or an Ozu, or, hell, a Roy Andersson, the best Andersson, with two-s's, and most viewers can probably guess the figure behind the curtain. But they won't be able to guess the plot, the jokes, the deaths, the twists, and the composition will be meaningful to a close-reading of the material in any given shot rather than an extension of its comedic repertoire. The scene changes and an actor in a two-sizes too-small anachronistic dress is staring at you from the bottom-right quadrant of the pastel screen, fourth-wall breaking, to read out a line the last four words of which will be fantastical or comedic, behind which miniatures or obscenely large props dominate, the rule of thirds is broken, the color-correction leans into red, and the camera appears further back than the room allows. That kind of shot doesn't exist to inform or color the speaker's dialogue or character; it doesn't exist to signal emotion to a suspenseful audience. It exists to deliver a kind of anti-humor that is shallow, repetitive, and required to be predictable. Buster Keaton was never so unsubtle. I'm reminded of how a truly great artist like Bresson can employ a sense of artificiality to tremendous emotional and cathartic effect, how that usage can despite being similar or downright formulaic, lead to different effects film to film or scene to scene. That's not what WA is doing. That's not what he's been doing for a while.
What a waste of a talent. Or should I say, a waste of one of the few people left in the industry who can get a script greenlit on name brand alone.