Bottle Rocket 10 Ways It Established Wes Andersons Style
Bottle Rocket: 10 Ways It Established Wes Anderson’s Style
Known for his quirky humor, Wes Anderson is one of indie cinema’s most loved directors. His directorial debut Bottle Rocket is full of his trademarks.
You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]
Wes Anderson has one of the most unique visual styles of any director working today. While he would go on to refine this style over the years, many of Anderson’s stylistic hallmarks were prevalent in his low-budget debut feature, Bottle Rocket.
Despite critical acclaim — with none other than Martin Scorsese naming it one of the best movies of the decade — Bottle Rocket failed to take flight at the box office. Fortunately, getting the industry’s attention was all Anderson had to do and Bottle Rocket still launched his career. The influence of Bottle Rocket can be seen throughout the rest of the filmmaker’s work.
10 Quirky Humor
The most obvious hallmark of Anderson’s filmmaking style is his quirky comic sensibility. His movies are all comedies to varying degrees, but they also deal with some harrowing dramatic subjects, like the death of a child in The Darjeeling Limited and attempted suicide in The Royal Tenenbaums.
The director’s dry, deadpan sense of humor makes the marriage of these two tones work. Bottle Rocket is still one of Anderson’s funniest movies.
9 Memorable Soundtrack
While Wes Anderson isn’t as renowned for his soundtrack choices as Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino, he’s just as adept at pairing his scenes with the perfect licensed music. From Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay” playing over Richie’s suicide attempt in The Royal Tenenbaums to the Faces’ “Ooh La La” playing over the final scene of Rushmore, Anderson’s movies are filled with unforgettable music moments.
This was established out of the gate with Bottle Rocket. Despite the limited budget, Anderson found the money to license such tracks as the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Man,” the Proclaimers’ “Over and Done With,” and Love’s “Alone Again Or.”
8 Naturalistic Cinematography
Robert Yeoman has worked as the cinematographer on all of Wes Anderson’s live-action movies. His style is marked by soft lighting, which gives his photography a naturalistic look. This has made Yeoman a go-to guy for Hollywood comedies.
In the strange worlds that Anderson has conjured up, Yeoman’s naturalistic cinematography helps to balance out the oddball situations and quirky characters with a grounding in reality.
7 Influence From French Cinema
The influence of French cinema can be seen all over Wes Anderson’s work. As the story of some wannabe criminals who plan a heist and find themselves in over their heads, Bottle Rocket owes a huge debt to Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à part.
The Royal Tenenbaums was significantly influenced by Louis Malle’s The Fire Within and Moonrise Kingdom reads like Anderson’s take on a nostalgic 400 Blows story. When it comes to world cinema influences, Anderson is often drawn to France.
6 Romantic Subplot
The main storyline in Bottle Rocket revolves around Dignan’s dim-witted attempts to plan a heist, but there’s a romantic subplot involving Anthony and Inez, a motel maid he falls in love with.
Since then, almost all of Anderson’s movies have had a love story running concurrently with the main plot, from Richie and Margot’s secret semi-incestuous affair in The Royal Tenenbaums to Zero and Agatha’s doomed relationship in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Moonrise Kingdom, of course, has a love story as its main plot.
5 Bright Color Palette
While the aesthetic of Bottle Rocket is nowhere near as heightened and stylized as some of Anderson’s later movies, it did establish that he favors a bright color palette over a dull, dreary one.
The same warm colors found in Bottle Rocket’s Texas-set criminal antics would later be seen in the nostalgic summer romance of Moonrise Kingdom.
4 Mature Children & Immature Adults
Wes Anderson’s films are filled with characters who don’t act their age. He’s created plenty of child characters with wisdom beyond their years, like Max Fischer, Sam and Suzy, and the prodigies seen in The Royal Tenenbaums, and adult characters who act like children, like the bickering brothers of The Darjeeling Limited.
In Bottle Rocket, this was established with a lead cast of slackers plotting a heist they can’t hope to pull off. After Dignan steals Anthony’s mom’s earrings, Anthony visits his whip-smart little sister Grace at school to ask her to return them. When he tells her he was hospitalized for exhaustion, she cracks, “You haven’t worked a day in your life. How could you be exhausted?”
3 Slow Motion
From Adrien Brody racing to hop on the train as it leaves the station in The Darjeeling Limited to Max carrying the bees he’s going to unleash into Blume’s hotel room, Anderson frequently uses slow motion.
In the final scene of Bottle Rocket, the shot suddenly changes from normal speed to slow motion. This is a common trick of Anderson’s, too. He used the same mid-shot speed change when Margot gets off the bus in The Royal Tenenbaums.
2 Futura Font
Many critics have noted Wes Anderson’s affinity for the Futura font. Beginning with Bottle Rocket, Anderson has used Futura for the opening titles of most of his movies.
It’s most prevalent in The Royal Tenenbaums, in which it’s used in the titles, but can also be seen all throughout the movie on posters and doors and buses and hospital signs and in-universe book jackets. Anderson clearly loves this font.
1 Owen Wilson
Owen Wilson has been one of Anderson’s closest collaborators from the beginning. They co-wrote the screenplay for Bottle Rocket and Wilson starred in the movie (in his acting debut) alongside his brothers Luke and Andrew.
Since working on Bottle Rocket, Wilson has appeared in all of Anderson’s films except for Moonrise Kingdom and Isle of Dogs. He’ll also be seen in the upcoming The French Dispatch.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/bottle-rocket-wes-anderson-directorial-debut-filmmaking-trademarks/
Movies -Every Alien Vs Predator Game Ranked
Every Gilmore Girls Holiday Episode Ranked According To IMDb
Doctor Who Peter Capaldis 15 Greatest Moments
Dawn of the Dead 2004 Credits Scene Killed The Entire Cast
Bane Masks Sell Out Online Thanks To Batman Fans
Crisis On Infinite Earths Made TWO Tom Welling Characters Arrowverse Canon
Catfish Everything To Know About Nev Schulman’s Wife & Children
