Fantastic Mr. Fox · reception & legacy

2009 · Wes Anderson

How Fantastic Mr. Fox has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

It underperformed at the box office in 2009 and read to some as a strange detour for Wes Anderson — his first animated film — but it's since climbed to the top tier of his filmography, now routinely called one of the best stop-motion films of its era.

What's debated

The perennial fan debate is whether this — and not Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, or The Grand Budapest Hotel — is actually Anderson's best film.

Its footprint

'Cuss' as an all-purpose swear-word substitute ('What the cuss?') escaped the film entirely and lives on as shorthand online, and Mr. Fox's whistle-and-click 'trademark' is an endlessly gif-ed gesture.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd darling and a canon climber — the once-overlooked Anderson film that's now a 'you must have seen this' for both animation fans and Anderson completists.

★ Did you know? Instead of a recording booth, Anderson took his cast out to a farm and recorded much of the dialogue on location — outdoors, in fields and stables — so the performances would sound like they were really happening in the wild.

Named by the director

Influences Wes Anderson has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

King Kong (1933) — Anderson cited its handmade stop-motion texture, deliberately embracing the visibly 'boiling' fur of old animation rather than smoothing it out.