By Staff · September 8, 2017
Screenplay by: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach
Breakdown by: Megan Tambio
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) is perhaps visionary director Wes Anderson’s most lauded film. Based on the children’s book from fellow offbeat auteur Roald Dahl, the film couples existential themes with groundbreaking visuals to deliver a unique tale of what it means to be fantastic. The titular Mr. Fox (George Clooney) gets his family and community in a literal hole and must employ his old, wily ways to save them.
Despite being an animated children’s film about talking animals, Fantastic Mr. Fox still carries Wes Anderson’s idiosyncrasies: deadpan deliveries, tangential lines of conversation, specific movement.
Even within the first pages, Fox and Mrs. Fox (voiced with perfect even keel by Meryl Streep) have conversations that move as traverse as they do as they take the scenic route back home from the hospital.
Introducing the main characters:From the get- go, Anderson and Baumbach also do an excellent job introducing our main characters’ (Mr. and Mrs. Fox, and later their son Ash) senses of motivation and traits with minimal lines of action and dialogue.
Within this short exchange, we gleam the nuanced dynamic at the center of Fantastic Mr. Fox. Mrs. Fox- pragmatic, content in being so, and Mr. Fox, who really wants to be.
We also see that Ash (Anderson mainstay Jason Schwartzman) is indeed *makes hula- type gesture* different. This sense that he doesn’t belong makes him stand offish toward his parents and later his kind cousin Kristofferson. His first cape- adorned scene sets up the familial gaps that need to be bridged.
The first 10 pages of the script provide the conventional plot set up all films require but also establish the parameters of anthropomorphism specific to this story.
Kylie reaches into his bucket and hands Fox a live, wriggling minnow. Fox swallows it whole. He walks back into the living room. He looks around skeptically.
In the scene above, the characters are discussing real estate options after Mr. Fox finds himself disappointed with his fox hole, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a fox and he’ll happily swallow a minnow whole when offered one. This juxtaposition helps establish Fox’s strangely charming tone.
The emotional motivator for our protagonist is made pretty clear within the first 2 scenes. While Mr. Fox doesn’t hesitate to give up his life of bird burglary upon finding out he’s going to be a father, 2 human years later, (that’s 12 fox years) the itch for adventure hasn’t been tamed by his life of domesticity. The difference between him and Mrs. Fox is also set up- while Mr. Fox’s itch for adventure will eventually save him and his community of furry friends from Big Business Farmers, it’s also what puts them in danger in the first place. Mrs. Fox represents instead what real altruism looks like.
The opening scene echoes this nuanced conundrum as well: a wife doubtful whether her husband can calm his wild streak enough to be a father. That wife and husband also just happen to be 2 foxes robbing a squab house.
Fox crosses to the window. He stares out at three sprawling poultry compounds in the distance. Black smoke pours out of a farmhouse chimney on each property. A sign on a water tower 8. in the first compound reads Boggis Farms and has a picture of a chicken on it. A sign on a silo in the second compound reads Bunce Industries and has a picture of a goose on it. A sign on a windmill in the third compound reads Bean, inc. (since 1976) and has a picture of a turkey with an apple on it. Weasel says pointedly from across the room:
Along with the thematic elements that power the story, the literal plot ones are neatly architected too. By the tenth page our hero sees the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean- the catalysts for his latent squab- thieving desires, and, inevitably, the wrath of the Big Business farmers.
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