Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009): Favourite Films Series

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009): Favourite Films Series

 

I’ve been a big fan of stop motion animation ever since I was a child. One of the earliest examples that I’m sure many others can relate to as far as being memorable and charming was Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, the Rankin/Bass Christmas special that has aired on TV every year since it came out. As far as feature-length theatrically-released stop motion films, one of the most popular is The Nightmare Before Christmas, but that one never really clicked with me. Surprisingly, my favourite in this sub-genre is not one I saw for the first time when I was a child, though. It’s not from Aardman (Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit are both great, though) and it’s not from Laika Studios (famous for multiple features as well, like Coraline and Missing Link), it’s by one of the quirkiest directors working today, Wes Anderson, and it completely swept me off my feet the first time I watched it.

I had never seen a Wes Anderson movie before Fantastic Mr. Fox, so all the Wes Anderson-isms were new to me, but after you’ve seen a few of his movies, you start to notice similarities in the way he tells a story, visually and narratively. Everything is framed in a very particular way, lit in an interesting way, acted in a particular way, and I could go on and on about his directing style alone, but I’m here to focus on his first stop motion film (as of writing this he has made one other, Isle Of Dogs) and why Fantastic Mr. Fox is not just my favourite stop motion film, but my favourite Wes Anderson film, and one of my favourite films of all-time.

I loved Roald Dahl’s books throughout elementary school, but for some reason Fantastic Mr. Fox wasn’t one I read, so I was unfamiliar with the source material going into the movie, which it adapts somewhat loosely. The story follows Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney), a thief who is caught stealing chickens with his wife (Meryl Streep). She tells him if they get out of this they are going to have a cub and he has to retire. This comes to pass, but two human years/12 fox years later, Foxy has moved his family out of their hole and into a tree near three farms owned by Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, which inspires him to pull one last job and steal from all three. The heists get him in trouble with the trio of farmers. They team up and try to dig Foxy and his family out. It leads to all the woodland creatures becoming jeopardized, so he has to hatch a new plan to outfox the farmers and save his family and friends.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is rated PG “for action, smoking, and slang humour” which is a rating I find funny, mainly for the smoking part. It’s definitely not purely a kid’s film, but feels like something the whole family can watch, with some humour that’s for the adults only and a storyline that will appeal to anyone who likes a good story. It deals with some bigger issues around being a responsible husband and parent, as well as just featuring some very unique characters in some funny situations. The characters are all charming in their own ways, but if I had to pick my top three, it would be Foxy, who is a fun main character, perfectly voiced by George Clooney, with a great trademark of a whistle and a click and a salute (words can’t do it justice, you see it and you get it), and Kylie, an opossum who packs around a bucket of minnows and goes blank when Foxy talks to him (his eyes shown to be vacant spirals, and after this happens more than once Foxy tells him he needs to give him a signal or something so he knows if anything is getting through to him, and his action is just as vacant and hilarious), and Foxy’s nephew Kristofferson, who unintentionally upstages his cousin Ash left and right. He’s one of the quieter characters, but no less great because of it. 

The humour is simultaneously accessible and inaccessible, and the first time I saw the movie I had no idea what to expect, so I almost wasn’t even sure if I liked it, but it has not only held up with every re-watch, it has gotten funnier for me. Some of the jokes come out of nowhere which makes them even funnier, but the humour never feels forced or undercuts any important moment, it’s all well balanced. When Foxy declares the only way to escape the farmers is to “Dig!” it switches to a hilarious visual gag of them burrowing into the earth in a cartoony way, and it works as well as it does because of Anderson’s perfect framing.

Visually, every shot is a work of art. The way characters sometimes seem to teleport around adds another layer to the humour and adds to the aesthetic. The foreground and background are often extremely distinct and when characters move from one to another it’s interesting to see—and that’s something I doubt you would say about many other films. It sounds like a minor detail, but no minor detail is without Anderson putting careful thought and consideration into it.

Beyond all the visuals (from the gags to the designs of the characters and settings to the framing and editing), the way the movie sounds is also perfectly calibrated. The music by Alexandre Desplat is understated but extremely effective and fits perfectly with the tone. It’s funny to think he would go on to score Godzilla (2014) only five years later and create such a grand, bombastic new theme for the King of the Monsters when you hear the simple, quiet guitar filling the background of scenes with stop motion foxes trotting around. I already commented on George Clooney being the perfect voice for Foxy, but every voice is perfect, from Bill Murray as the grumpy badger lawyer to Willem Dafoe as a southern-accented mean old rat.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the quintessential example of why stop motion animation is such a great moviemaking technique, and it can be argued whether or not this is Wes Anderson’s best film (many would disagree that it is) but I think it lends particularly well to his style. There is a huge number of characters in this film to love—sometimes a movie can feel like it has too many characters, but in this case it does not, and every one of them gets a moment to stand out. If you have never seen a Wes Anderson film, this isn’t a bad one to start out with, and if you like stop motion, it is absolutely essential viewing.

 

Part Three: The "Long Neck" Dinosaurs: A Complete Cinematic History

Dinosaurs in Film: The Long Neck

 

The Return of Brontosaurus (2000’s-present)

 

It comes full circle! One of the best nonfiction books I’ve read in the past few years was My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs by Brian Switek. He goes into detail about the whole Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus confusion, and towards the end, discusses how the name Brontosaurus might not be a dead name after all. Sure, the dinosaur might still be dead, but in 2015 paleontologists reclassified the remains that had reverted to Apatosaurus and determined it was distinct enough from Apatosaurus to be its own species. And so it came to be that Brontosaurus was brought back into the fold. The skull of the original was still wrong, but the name was back in action, still referring to a large long-necked sauropod—so, yeah, now it’s even more confusing. Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are different dinosaurs, but both are long necks, and neither have rounded heads. They held their necks more or less horizontal (they aren’t all bendy like early depictions made it seem), their tails were held off the ground, and they walked the prehistoric landscape without the need to float around in swamps or lakes. Armed with new knowledge, filmmakers began changing the public’s perception of these giants, and would continue to do so.

The 21^st century was a new age for sauropods on the big screen, and the made-for-TV remake of The Lost World (2001) included a Diplodocus this time instead of Brontosaurus—although, really, you could call this sauropod any one of the three names. The cgi model was based on the Diplodocus design from the BBC miniseries Walking With Dinosaurs, so I guess we’ll go with that one. Brachiosaurus came back in a different TV movie, Dinotopia (2002), and worked as a bus in the prehistoric utopia—not as a bus driver, as the actual vehicle. The old Brontosaurus wasn’t done yet, though: it appeared in Anonymous Rex (2004) and again in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005), the latter being the one worth noting. This species, which is technically a fictional one (Brontosaurus baxteri), was specifically designed to be evocative of the now-outdated designs from The Age of Brontosaurus, and the original Kong’s Bronto in particular, of course. They feature in a sequence that’s very different from the 1933 film: a whole herd are chased by the fictional Venatosaurus (raptor-like predators) and they really go through hell, crashing into valley walls, tumbling over cliffs (likely a reference to the 1925 Lost World), and, finally, tripping and falling into a massive pile at the bottom of a hill.  

I have a few questions. First, how can such a giant creature run so fast and so easily? This has to be the fastest live-action long neck ever. Second, Skull Island isn’t that big, so I can’t imagine there are many other herds of Brontosaurus left alive other than the one the rescue party stumbles upon. Does that mean the species is effectively extinct after this stampede? Because I don’t think the number that survive both the crumbling cliff and the dog pile at the end would be enough for a breeding population. And finally, how did any of the rescuers survive this? There are literally millions of tons of flesh running and falling among them, and only a few guys get squished! Truly a miracle. This whole sequence is totally over-the-top, but still very entertaining.

The legend of Mokele-mbembe was the subject of another dinosaur adventure film, The Dinosaur Project (2012), but this time around the cryptid is thought to be a plesiosaur (long-necked marine reptile) rather than a brontosaur. We do get a glimpse of a generic sauropod, though. Maybe it’s a Brontosaurus, who knows anymore? Jurassic World (2015) neglected to bring back Brachiosaurus again but did include Apatosaurus. The full-body creature was created using cgi and an animatronic neck and head played into one of the film’s more emotional scenes, where the main characters comfort the animal before it dies, having been fatally wounded by the Indominus Rex. It’s interesting an Apatosaurus was chosen over the Brach for this scene, since audiences would’ve already been familiar with it from the original movie and likely found it more emotional (plus make the Indominus even more detestable) but I guess they were saving the Brach for an even more emotionally devastating scene in the sequel.

Before we get to that Brach scene, there’s another long neck from Disney Pixar that took the leading role in The Good Dinosaur (2015). The story was a little different than previous films to mix cavemen and dinos; in this alternate history, the asteroid impact didn’t occur 65 million years ago, so no mass extinction meant continued evolution. The youthful Apatosaurus named Arlo was designed to look distinct, and he is—he doesn’t look or act like Little Foot or Paula or Dino, but he also feels like an outdated depiction, and not in the same appealing way Peter Jackson’s long necks were in his Kong remake. The filmmakers tried to make Arlo tug at the heartstrings of viewers young and old, but it wasn’t a huge success.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) brought back a whole bunch of dinosaurs, plus introduced a few new ones, most of them shown as the island explodes into an angry volcano and the resurrected creatures flee for their lives. Before that scene, we get to see Brachiosaurus again, and even though the cgi somehow doesn’t seem as good as it did in 1993, it’s still a joy to see the old girl again. As the characters take off with their ship full of surviving creatures, the remains of Jurassic World burn up in a cloud of volcanic dust—along with the poor Brachiosaurus! They milk it for all its worth. The Brach cries out and disappears in a smoky silhouette, symbolizing the true death of the original Jurassic Park. It’s even been confirmed that this particular individual is supposed to be the same Brachiosaurus from the original film. What a tragic, heartbreaking end for the first dinosaur ever seen in the franchise.

Palm Springs (2020) stars Brachiosaurus too, for some reason. That’s all I’ve got.

So what’s next for the long neck dinosaurs? Is it time for the beginning of a new age? With Brontosaurus back from the dead, Brachiosaurus back to being dead in the Jurassic Park franchise, and Apatosaurus returning for Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), who knows what Hollywood will have up their sleeve. As evidenced by the variety of stories and roles they have appeared in so far, we could see new species make cinema debuts, like the sail-back Amargasaurus, the armored Saltasaurus, or Argentinosaurus: one of the largest animals to ever walk the earth, estimated to measure over one hundred feet long. Whenever we do see another long neck live again on the big screen, hopefully it makes for an awe-inspiring experience.

Part Two: The "Long Neck" Dinosaurs: A Complete Cinematic History

Dinosaurs in Film: The Long Neck 

 

For part two, we'll look at two different ages defined by two different sauropods.

 

The Age of Apatosaurus (1960’s-1980’s)

 

Pop culture has been very slow with catching up to current scientific theories and evidence when it comes to prehistoric life forms. Even today there is still a big gap to close, and sometimes it’s just about artists wanting to have the freedom to create their own fictional dinosaurs instead of adhering to reality, but I think sometimes it’s this warped understanding of the truth that gets perpetuated by creators looking at previous cinematic examples instead of at bones in a museum for inspiration. The Apatosaurus (not Brontosaurus) was becoming more understood by paleontologists, but not by moviegoers.

Dinosaurus! (1960) added to the confusion by featuring a frozen T. rex and frozen Brontosaurus dredged up from the bottom of the ocean in modern day. Both of them come back to life, and Rex is described as being Bronto’s arch nemesis. I know they weren’t going for factual accuracy here (they come back to life Frankenstein-style with bolts of lightning), but Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus lived in the Jurassic period, millions of years before the first T. rex evolved in the Cretaceous. This Bronto also has a taste for bananas, and bananas didn’t evolve in the Jurassic period either, so they must have been a newfound delicacy for him.

Meanwhile, over on the small screen, a cartoon dinosaur was becoming a household name, and would debut in cinemas a few years later, further cementing the long neck as one of the most recognizable dinosaurs of all. The Man Called Flintstone (1966) was made as a feature-length finale to the TV sitcom The Flintstones. This ahistorical world mixed cavemen and dinosaurs together. Fred Flintstone uses a long neck like a piece of earth-moving equipment when he’s at work, and the Flintstone’s family pet, Dino, is recognized as being a prosauropod. In real life the prosauropods were the precursors to the Jurassic sauropods (Apatosaurus and their kin), but in the show Dino is identified as a fictional species of Snorkasaurus, and acts more like a dog than a prosauropod.

That same year, Brontosaurus made a cameo in another ahistorical film, One Million Years B.C. (1966). I know I called this the Apatosaurus age and it’s been dominated by Brontosaurus thus far, but it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the long neck identification started to change. Like I said, Hollywood was slow to catch up. The Land That Time Forgot (1974) showed a different species of sauropod, the Diplodocus. What makes this one different? Well, it has a much longer neck and tail, but that’s about it. The most unique example from this age wasn’t a Brontosaurus or Apatosaurus or Diplodocus, but rather one of Godzilla’s strangest enemies. Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) introduces the sea monster Titanosaurus, which has the same name as a species of sauropod, but that’s pretty much where the similarities between them end. Titanosaurus has fins, walks on two legs, and swims, making it more like a Spinosaurus than the long neck Titan Lizard.

Another Brontosaurus cameo occurs in Planet of Dinosaurs (1977). Then, its biggest role since Dinosaurus came in the Disney family film Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985), but this Bronto was unlike any before it. The creature was realized mainly through robotic and puppet effects, which were bold for the time, and somewhat charming, but also flawed. The titular Baby is cute, but the massive adults are a bit clunky. Many kids were traumatized by this film, which was less family friendly than expected. An adult Brontosaurus is gunned down in a bloody execution scene, and Baby is told to mind its own business while the two lead characters have sex in the middle of the jungle. The African cryptid Mokele-mbembe is said to be some kind of sauropod dinosaur that lives in the jungle to this day, which formed the basis for this story, and makes it a pretty unique movie dinosaur.

Finally, we arrive at the big debut of Apatosaurus…sort of. Baby was kind of traumatizing for kids, but so was The Land Before Time (1988), an animated adventure about six infant dinos trying to find their families. At least this one was clearly meant for kids, and only traumatized them emotionally, when the main infant, a “long neck” named Little Foot, sits with his dying mother in the rainy darkness. This is where that name LOOOOONG NECK was popularized. They never explicitly say what species any of the dinosaurs are, but by this time people other than paleontologists and science nerds were finally catching on to the whole Brontosaurus-is-actually-Apatosaurus thing. So, as far as I’m concerned, Little Foot and his mother/grandparents are the first big Apatosaurus movie stars…even if their designs are still basically the same as the out-of-date-depictions of Brontosaurus.  

 

The Age of Brachiosaurus (1990’s-2000’s)

 

We have arrived at the Dinosaur Renaissance. The time of every long neck in a movie being a Brontosaurus was finally over. A number of new species had been identified since the initial discovery of the Thunder Lizard, and this idea that none of them were restricted to swamps was finally understood. Steven Spielberg was inspired by the realistic depiction of the Brontosaurus in Journey to the Beginning of Time, but his dinosaur movie featured a different long neck. Brachiosaurus made its big-screen debut in Jurassic Park (1993), but this wasn’t just another cinematic sauropod. This wasn’t even just another dinosaur…the first time audiences saw the Brachiosaurus stride across that field and feed on the tops of those trees, it was like the first time anyone had actually seen a dinosaur.

Brachiosaurus didn’t have the bendy neck of past Brontosauruses or the floppy, dragging tail. Usually the Bronto was depicted with an S-shaped neck snaking up from a horizontal or arched spine, but the difference with the Brach was its front legs were longer than its back legs, giving it a higher posture. Its neck stretched straight up like a giraffe, and when it reared up on its back legs, it became the tallest living creature ever seen. The cgi to bring it to life looks a teeny bit questionable in a couple of those closer shots, but the wide shots of it still look as real today as they did the day the movie came out. It’s more than just the sheer awe of seeing such a big animal look so real. The way Spielberg directed the scene, building up to the reveal, welcoming us to Jurassic Park in the most spectacular way possible, makes the Brachiosaurus intro one of the best moments in the entire history of cinema.

Not long after the biggest dinosaur in Hollywood appeared, one of the smallest came along: another Brachiosaurus in Prehysteria! (1993), accompanied by four other miniature prehistoric friends. This little Brach named Paula (after pop singer Paula Abdul) was brought to life through a combination of stop motion and puppetry. I like her design, but even though she came back for two sequels, she isn’t nearly as impressive or as memorable as some of the previous long necks—not even compared to Little Foot, who continued to lead the charge for every Land Before Time sequel. Dino returned for The Flintstones (1994), a live-action adaptation of the TV show, so now there was a bonanza of different long necks in movies. Fun bonus fact: Apatosaurus was featured in the Discovery Channel documentary When Dinosaurs Roamed America, and the narrator declares “This is Dino, from The Flinstones, in the flesh, all thirty tons.” The narrator? John Goodman, who played live-action Fred Flintstone!

This age may be defined by Brachiosaurus, but the diversity of long necks continued as the Dinosaur Renaissance kept building, mainly thanks to the success of Jurassic Park. The sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), didn’t bring back Brachiosaurus, surprisingly, but there were so many other dinosaurs to include that I guess they just didn’t have room. They did manage to give a Mamenchisaurus a brief appearance, with a motorcyclist riding right between its pillar-like legs. In the actual Jurassic period, Mamenchisaurus was like the Diplodocus of China, and to my knowledge, it has been in no other film except the second Jurassic Park. Despite playing such a large and memorable part in the 1925 original Lost World, a sauropod wasn’t included in a remake until The Lost World (1998), and it’s nowhere near as impressive. Dino returned in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000), and Brachiosaurus returned briefly in Jurassic Park III (2001), although with a slightly different design. I prefer the simpler look and colour scheme from the original.

The last big role for the Brach in this age was in Dinosaur (2000): Disney’s first dino-pic since Baby and technically their 39^th animated feature, even though it used computer generated imagery mixed with real-world locations. An elderly Brachiosaurus by the name of Baylene is friends with an equally old Styracosaurus named Eema and her pet ankylosaur Url, and she is the second-best long neck of this modern age, behind only Jurassic Park’s Brach. She’s soft-spoken (oh yeah, the dinosaurs talk in this movie—just imagine Jurassic Park and Land Before Time were tossed in a blender), with a posh British accent and careful demeanor, but able to use her devastating amount of strength when she needs to. The cgi is excellent, and despite having human-like eyes and expressions, she still looks and moves like a real creature.  

We’ll finish off this extensive long neck movie history in part three!