I arrived in Internetland today to find my Internetland newspaper complaining:
"Stop making Wes Anderson parody videos!"
I have not linked to this article as it has not met my standard of merit.
Someone in Internetland, using a slightly elevated suite of the same AI tools I'm occasionally whacking about with here, made a viral video of Star Wars as directed by Wes Anderson.
I have linked to this as it does meet a minimum standard of merit.
There is also now a Lord of the Rings sequel to this and a slow spill of imitators.
The article has a whole range of problems with these Wes Andersony fripperies. They're not fresh. They're not a fair representation of the intelligence of Wes Anderson. And they're not satire.
But I don't think we have to cast quite so dour an eye on any of it.
What these little short films really serve to demonstrate is that Wes Anderson has a universe, like the Peanuts, or the Muppets. And the great universality of the components of all these creative universes is equally matched by their distinctiveness. It would work to make a version of The Matrix with Muppets and it would be The Matrix, yet it would still be appealing distinctly as A Muppet Movie, at least conceptually. Both are distinctive and yet nevertheless one could fit them together modularly.
So when we watch The "Star Wars by Wes Anderson" pretend preview, in all its imperfections, we, I want to tell the author of this "Stop making Wes Anderson parody videos!" article, are not mocking Wes Anderson, or saying what he does is small, rather we are saying that the way he makes films is actually so great and powerful that there is something appealing about seeing it expressed in endless iterations.
Are these fake Wes Anderson previews groundbreaking, deeply insightful, or adept skewering of his work? No.
Are they cute and do they make me want to see a Wes Anderson Star Wars?
Yes. If he's interested.
And for that matter, a Wes Anderson live version movie of The Muppets, or a Muppet version of a Wes Anderson movie, are of equal interest to me.
Addendum:
And who then am I to resist...
The Muppet Tenenbaums:
Owen Wilson/Kermit:
Scarlett Johansson/Miss Piggy
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