Ever since “Bottle Rocket,” Wes Anderson has earned his fair share of detractors who decry everything from the director’s trademark quirks and twee set designs, to his constant return to familiar themes of rivalry and familial dysfunction. While fans will argue whether “Rushmore” or “The Royal Tenenbaums” was the director’s peak, it’s safe to say that everyone agrees that with “The Darjeeling Limited,” Anderson was spinning his wheels.
The impending release of Anderson’s latest endeavor, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” marks a number of firsts for the director. It’s his first film adapted from a book, his first fully animated feature (not counting Henry Selick’s creatures in “The Life Aquatic”) and his first family film. But that hasn’t stopped the knives from coming out, including a rather hilariously inept screed by the Guardian film blogger Ryan Gilbey. Gilbey breathlessly takes Anderson to task for involving himself with a project that will have marketing tie-ins with McDonald’s. He writes:
Perhaps Anderson was so fixated on the process of making “Fantastic Mr. Fox” that he forgot that films have a life beyond the screen. Any director is diminished by such an association, but someone like Anderson in particular should not be getting into bed with McDonald’s, and using his work to lure young children into destructive eating habits; it’s a lose-lose situation. He looks like a chump, the film becomes tainted, and obesity levels continue to rocket.
While Gilbey is busy blaming Anderson for America’s obesity problem, he seems to ignore a few facts about how licensing deals get made. Firstly, before he sets up a queue at Anderson’s door, he might want start off in his own backyard and take up his concerns with the Roald Dahl estate, one of Britain’s national treasures, for allowing the characters to be used in such a way. Any licensing deal would certainly have to have been signed off by the family before Fox, or even Anderson got involved. Also, if he had bothered to do any cursory research, he would’ve learned that this isn’t the first time a Dahl property has been licensed to McDonald’s. Remember, “James And The Giant Peach”? Yeah, that film had a massive McDonald’s tie-in as well and the Dahl family would’ve had to sign off on that one too.
Secondly, licensing deals help secure profitability for a film. While Fox certainly chose Anderson for his inventiveness, they are taking a chance with a director who has no previous experience in delivering a blockbuster family film. These licensing deals help the film’s bottom line, particularly in the event it doesn’t perform as expected.
To bolster his argument, Gilbey trots out a quote from “Ratatouille” director Brad Bird who explains that Pixar/Disney didn’t do a licensing deal with McDonald’s for that film because, “[Disney] realized their brand really stands for something and it can only be in their best interest not to align themselves with unhealthy eating. So you won’t be finding Ratatouille merchandise at any fast-food outlets.” Of course, it surely had nothing to do with the fact that the film was about fine dining, and it certainly didn’t stop them for licensing the hell out of the film anyway and making everything from video games to action figures to cook books.
The issue of marketing of fast food and toys to children is a complicated one, but putting all that at the door of Wes Anderson — or any director — is unfair. The decision to create tie-ins with multiple companies, including McDonald’s, was probably made long before Anderson’s name dried on the contract. Is he complicit in parents shoving cheeseburgers down their kids throats? At the most, maybe peripherally, but practicing good food habits is a far more involved issue involving education, economic status and whole host of other topics we’re not going to get into here. McDonald’s is merely at the end of a long chain of issues that guides the way America eats today.
Sure, the combination of Wes Anderson and McDonald’s probably makes for a very sexy, reactionary headline (see what we did there?), but the truth, as usual, is far more complex.
“The Fantastic Mr. Fox” opens on November 25th. Happy Meal not included.