At heart, I am a true cinephile. I despise cheap TV and horrible remakes of classics, but love storytelling in one of its purest forms, film. To me, it embodies the greatest creative outlet, combining sound, art, writing, storytelling, acting, perception, and much more. Something about it allows me to place myself in the shoes of these characters, ones that may live in a different time, place, or even plane of existence, and forget about everything else. Film is my escape, guiding me through it all, and even sometimes changing my perspective of life itself. One of the first movies that showed me that film was capable of this, is Fantastic Mr. Fox, probably my favorite film of all time.
This film, based on the Roald Dahl best-selling novel, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is in no case your traditional film. Wes Anderson, the director, known for his unique filmmaking style, forms images on the screen that captivate the eye and look as if they could be paintings hung up in art museums all across the world. His use of cinematography and color is unparalleled. Each scene features an incredible use of clothing, camera work, and emotion to enhance the images he’s putting on the silver screen. Adding to Wes Anderson’s genius, Fantastic Mr. Fox is entirely made in stop-motion claymation, one of the least popular filmmaking styles around. Every character and set piece is literally handmade and crafted to perfection so that all 125,000+ pictures used to create the movie look exactly as planned. But none of these captivating reasons embody the primary rationales for why Fantastic Mr. Fox remains my favorite movie.
In 2009, the year Fantastic Mr. Fox was released, I watched some other animated films like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Ice Age, and Monsters vs. Aliens, which were all intended for my age at the time, children. Today, few adults turn to these movies to learn substantial, worthwhile life lessons. These “blockbusters” were still enjoyable, as they include unique stories with new characters, talking animals, and visually pleasing animation, but Fantastic Mr. Fox was the most important and interesting film I saw that year.
As a child, fantastical characters were commonplace: monsters, aliens, and robots, characters that I could only dream and fantasize about. These movies all followed the same trope, I’d gain interest in the main character(s), they would make some grave mistake, I’d sympathize with them, they redeem themselves and save the day, and I’d feel a sense of joy and satisfaction. But Mr. Fox is irregular: he’s overly paranoid of wolves, he doesn’t know who he is, he’s battling an addiction to his wild animal urges, and he constantly admits these misconducts, yet pursues nothing to change them. While other recent films created characters with human-like traits, I had never seen an animated character with such human complexities as Mr. Fox.
At the climax of the action in the film, Mr. Fox sees a wolf, an animal not before seen in the film. After repeatedly pointing out his phobia of wolves throughout the movie one would expect him to flee or run in fear, but he surprisingly stops to talk to the wolf. He calls the wolf Canis lupus, the wolf’s scientific or Latin name, which is his way of relating to the wolf by connecting their “wild” names—his is Vulpes vulpes, not just Mr. Fox (or Wolf). But, unlike all the other animal characters, the wolf sports just his fur, no clothes or human accessories. In addition, the wolf can not understand the English or Latin Mr. Fox speaks. The wolf represents pure, unbridled, robust, and untamed nature: it possesses no wild or un-wild side. Here, Mr. Fox realizes that the wolf is truly wild and that he was never really afraid of wolves, he was afraid of losing his own wild nature. He now knows that he can never be like the wolf. He may act like an animal, but he has been too domesticated: he has a job, a wife, kids, and friends of different species. But as a sign of respect and of understanding, Mr. Fox raises his fist to the sky as if to say, “fight the man”, since he fails to communicate with the wolf. Mr. Fox then says, “What a beautiful creature” and drives away. Wes Anderson stated this scene is why he made the movie at all, and I can see why.
At an early age, you expect characters to live “happily ever after” because in animation especially, that’s the common theme. But Mr. Fox’s human characteristics lead the movie to a much more human ending, an imperfect one. Fantastic Mr. Fox exposes children to the journey of finding yourself and the idea of an imperfect ending, two things rarely seen in animated films. It introduces that losing (sometimes your wild side) is necessary for growth because if you never lose, you are never truly tested, and never able to improve.
Fantastic Mr. Fox became an opponent of children’s entertainment, as it gave animation more meaning and less empty joy. It offered me the idea of what life is often like; it isn’t always happily ever after, but that’s okay.
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I liked the strong verbs which were included in spots where you could have had more bland writing. Even in the first couple of sentences you used despise rather than a more common verb like hate or dislike. I also love Fantastic Mr. Fox, one of my mom’s favorite movies of all time and we would watch it constantly back home.
As a lover of Wes Anderson, I appreciate this blog post and the context it gives to the piece! Your analysis of the wolf/fox scene is especially interesting, pulling words right from the movie. Very nice blog 🙂