Wes Anderson
During the press rounds for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson described his vision of James Bond — out of work after the Cold War but with a great coffee machine — to a good amount of hype on the Internet. This got me thinking about all the other movies and franchises that could use the Anderson touch.
Batman
Both Tim Burton’s Batman and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins have explored the Dark Knight’s origins — dead parents, darkness, etc. — but what about his teenage years? Enter Wes Anderson’s Gothmore, a delightful film exploring the precocious Bruce Wayne (played by Jason Schwartzman) as he attends Gothmore Academy.
Wayne’s adolescence is just ripe for creative interpretation. Maybe Master Wayne went through a goth phase and listened to a lot of Elliott Smith. Maybe Alfred (played by Bill Murray) had an affair with one of Wayne’s teachers at Gothmore. The possibilities are endless, or at least, the possibilities are Rushmore.
Inland Empire
Wes Anderson and David Lynch are both very particular, precise auteurs with distinctive styles and tight formal control of their films. Plus, (don’t lie) nobody understands Inland Empire, much like how nobody understands most of Wes Anderson’s titles. It’s a match made in cinema heaven.
Anderson doesn’t need to do much, really. All he would need is a new soundtrack. Take out all the Polish music, replace it with some David Bowie and drop the Lynchian industrial noise filter. Heck, slather the rabbit scenes with some Beach Boys and it’s pretty much Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Paranormal Activity
Paranormal Activity is already a fantastic and wholly original franchise, but imagine what Wes Anderson could bring to this storied series. 8 millimeter cameras, tweed, a decent soundtrack, rigid compositions and Gwyneth Paltrow could all be yours for the low, low price of Wes Anderson!
The only thing holding this back from fruition is that Anderson has already made a horror movie — the horrific Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou — and Anderson would never repeat himself.
Good thing too, because if Anderson, hypothetically, was inclined to repeat genres, ideas, motifs, milieus and tones, then he’ll have wasted the last two decades making increasingly specific movies starring his various fetishes and predilections with such an aversion to different modes of storytelling that he makes Quentin Tarantino look like Stanley Kubrick.
But fortunately, we don’t live in a world where Anderson’s films have devolved beyond the point of self-parody, so a little repetition can’t hurt. And of course, Life Aquatic was a horror movie while Paranormal Activity is a found-footage horror movie, which is completely different. In this case, reusing the same tired tropes and cliches over and over to nanoscopic returns isn’t the mark of a lazy, uncreative hack.
[ READ MORE: The genius of Wes Anderson ]
