Criterion Crazy: The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Good afternoon. I hope this article finds you well.
Any fans of the Criterion Collection were either pleasantly surprised by the major revelation made today, or they expected it, given that director Wes Anderson spilled the beans to the film magazine Little White Lies in their latest issue. Regardless, it is clear that Criterion is officially releasing a massive box set to commemorate the first twenty-five years of Anderson’s career. This collection, titled The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years, is a whopper. There’s much to go through, so let us divvy this analysis in bite sized chunks.
The Conception
This box set shouldn’t come as a complete shock to anyone, given how many Wes Anderson films are already in the Collection and have been Criterion staples for many years. These include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. That is eight out of his twelve films (including The Phoenician Scheme, which only just debuted at Cannes Film Festival). Furthermore, last year saw the sale of the Criterion Collection to mogul Steven Rales, who also founded the production company Indian Paintbrush (who, no surprise, is heavily tied to Anderson). If anything, this box set was a long time coming. I’d say that it would have made more sense for this box set to have been released sooner, but when you look at what it entails, I understand the length of this journey.
The Design
The box set’s design was spearheaded by art director Beth Mathews, who has a keen eye for sharp, colourful minimalism. She seems like the perfect fit to help bring an Anderson box set to life. What I love about this clothbound release is how it looks less like the kind of collection that Anderson would design for his films as much it is an artifact that can be found within his films. I can just imagine Sam and Suzy stumbling upon this box in Moonrise Kingdom, with a medium close-up of their furrowed brows, a snap cut back to a wide shot of this box set on the grass, and a quick unveiling of the contents inside: a never-ending trove of discovery.
The inside of this beige, simplistic set is just as uniform and reticent. There’s an olive base that allows the umber contents to pop (but not too much, as to outshine the rest of the box set). I also think it is atypical for this set to not feature all of the iconic images and colours of Anderson’s feature films because that is what would be expected. Without being too contrary, this box set still feels like a celebration of Anderson without doing what has already been achieved; all of the other Criterion releases boast Anderson’s film’s artistry already, and this box set was a great opportunity to evoke the auteur’s style in a different way. You’ll notice that all of the contents within the box set are mysteriously plain in design. All of the discus and books share the same colour schemes and basic titling. To me, this allows the films and extras to speak for themselves which is a simple task for the films of Anderson which are some of the most quirky and vibrant in contemporary cinema.
Any steep expectations may come from Anderson aficionados, to whom I pose this question: could you imagine going into Anderson’s films blindly via this box set and discovering how idiosyncratic they are in this way? This is going to be the experience for some, and I am at least a little jealous as a result. Just like Anderson’s characters, humour, and photography, this box set is unassuming until you really dissect it; it is only then that the marvels of the release are obvious.
The Contents
It’s not apparent what all of the contents here will be when it comes to specifics, but a few things are clear. This release will contain Wes Anderson’s first ten feature films, available on 4K and Blu-ray. These include:
• Bottle Rocket (1996)
• Rushmore (1998)
• The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
• The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
• Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
• Isle of Dogs (2018)
• The French Dispatch (2021) — referred to here via its full name, The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
That means that the recent fan favourite, Asteroid City (2023), won’t be a part of this set, and, obviously, neither will The Phoenician Scheme (which hasn’t even been released theatrically worldwide yet). Why Asteroid City isn’t included is a little interesting, because there is a clear focus on how the films present mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Anderson’s career as an indie filmmaker; perhaps Anderson is preparing to eventually release the rest of his filmography post The French Dispatch when the time is right. There’s no way that The Phoenician Scheme could have been a part of this set given when the collection is to be released (September 30th) and how hastily prepared the film and its contents would have to be in order to make this deadline, so capping the body of work at the tenth film and twenty-fifth year marks does open up the possibility of encapsulating the latter years of Anderson’s career in another box set one day (should he even want this, mind you).
If you thought that the films alone were all that this collection had to offer, then strap in. Each film will come with its own illustrated books: a beautiful addition, considering how all of Anderson’s films feel like whimsical picture books or dioramas for adults. I cannot even imagine how these books will look, but I assume that each film will be granted its own art style (again, adding to the plainness of how these books look on the outside, just waiting to be opened up and all of the buzzing contents inside burst out). If anything, this is the part of the box set that I am the most interested in and I await the earliest signs of what these books will look like (a sneak-peak, a close-up thumbnail, anything).
The rest of the special features are a bit fuzzier on the details so far, but what they promise is quite extraordinary. What we do know is that Criterion is tallying the extent of these special features at a behemoth twenty-five hours (I’m not sure if the runtime is coincidental or intentional, given the whole quarter-century celebration being a running theme of this release). These include:
• Audio commentary (from Anderson, and I can only predict Anderson affiliates like Owen Wilson and Bill Murray, et cetera)
• Interviews (not sure with whom yet, but I think one can make similar assumptions as I have with the commentary tracks)
• Documentaries about the making-of processes
•Archival recordings
• Deleted Scenes
• Home Movies
• Auditions
• Commercials
• Visual Essays and analyses
• Storyboards, animation tests, and still photography
Additionally, there will also be short films, but I wonder what will be included since the titles aren’t specified yet. If I had to guess, I’d assume that The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and its affiliates (Poison, The Swan, and Rat Catcher) are not included, because they wouldn’t fit the criteria of having been released in the first twenty-five years of Anderson’s career. However, I do think that the original Bottle Rocket short will be paired up with its feature film counterpart, that Hotel Chevalier — the prequel short to The Darjeeling Limited (and, honestly, one of my favourite films Anderson has ever released) — will be included, and that the promotional shorts for Moonrise Kingdom — Do You Like to Read? and Cousin Ben Troop Screening — will also join the party. Finally, whether it’s considered a commercial or a short, Anderson’s Prada film, Castello Cavalcanti, ticks off all of the above boxes, leading me to believe that it will be a part of this collection as well.
Finally, it wouldn’t be a Criterion release without the token essays, and who has been selected to write on behalf of Anderson and his films is quite something. These include:
• Filmmaker Martin Scorsese
• Critic Richard Brody
• Producer, Director, and Writer James L. Brooks
• Journalist and Director Bilge Ebiri
• Author Erica Wagner
• Essayist Moeko Fujii
• Poet and Critic Geoffrey O’Brien
• Critic and Filmmaker Kent Jones
• Curator and Critic David Kehr
I did notice how there are nine contributors in this way, which isn’t an even ten, but I wonder if this means that each film will have one essay contributed to it (meaning that one of the above names wrote two essays for this collection). Either way, there is much reading material here, and I think that all of the nine contributors each have something major to offer this box set. If you never cared too much for Criterion essays before (which, I’d have to ask, why not), this could be your turning point.
The Cost
It’s five hundred USD.
The Conclusion
Now this is an all time box set! There is no way that you cannot refute this pheno— wait, it’s how much?
The Cost (Reprise)
It’s five hundred USD.
The Realization
The Conclusion: Take Two
Yes, all of the above reasons are ample enough to warrant one wanting to pick up The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years, but I think it goes without saying that the price tag is astronomical. This is true even when you compare it with other box sets, like the massive Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema which has over triple the amount of feature films plus a massive book to come with it (which is listed as three hundred USD). Then again, Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema isn’t given the same physical treatment, doesn’t have nearly as many features, and isn’t available on 4K. Regardless, in this economy (as the youths would say), The Wes Anderson Archive may be just a bit too expensive. However, the preorder discount on the Criterion Collection website has shaved off just over one hundred dollars from the total cost, but I can imagine that shipping (and import fees and bullshit tariffs for those of us who aren’t from the United States) will compound all of the deducted costs back on, leaving us back at square one.
For my dear Canadian readers (this is a Torontonian film website, after all), you’re looking at a nearly seven-hundred-dollar purchase, excluding the shipping, import, and tariff markups. Yikes.
There are always the flash sales to rely on to pick up this box set (even then, 250 USD — which is this box set when bought at half off, is a lot of money for most people). I understand why this box set would be steep given all that it offers, but this cost is a little puzzling to the point that most cinephiles will have one of two tragedies to face this upcoming September: either a broken heart (from not being able to buy this collection, economically or with good reason), or a broken wallet (from pulling off the impossible).
I think the choice is an easy one. If you love the majority of these films, you can easily buy them individually, even within the Criterion Collection (only Isle of Dogs and The French Dispatch aren’t already available in the Collection); the two newer inclusions can easily be bought outside of Criterion releases as well, should you want them outside of the box set. If you don’t already own most of these films and can actually afford this gorgeous release, I see that there are enough reasons why The Wes Anderson Archive would make a great pickup. For the uninitiated, despite my earlier sentiments as to how spellbinding it would be to discover Anderson’s films via this collection, I would suggest watching these films before jumping straight into this intense blind buy. It’s a given that Anderson’s films aren’t for everybody, and the last thing you need is to sell a kidney to find out you don’t actually vibe with the king of kooky indie cinema. On paper, this is an exquisite compilation and artifact, and I understand anyone who buys this impeccable tribute to an American cinematic master. I also won’t judge anyone who doesn’t buy this set because I’m sure many of us would like to be able to make rent. Outside of the affordability, The Wes Anderson Archive is a breathtaking release that exudes the euphoria of what it means to be a cinephile whose life has been changed by a visionary; in this case, this is the Wes Anderson experience, through and through.
Buy The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years Here
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.