Brow Beat

The first trailer for Moonrise Kingdom has hit the web, and, in case you were wondering, the next movie by Wes Anderson will definitely look like a movie by Wes Anderson. The golden hues recall The Darjeeling Limited and (especially) Fantastic Mr. Fox, while the precocious kids are reminiscent of the young Tenenbaums and, to a lesser extent, Jason Schwartzman’s lead role in Rushmore. Schwartzman himself appears (briefly) in the trailer, joining fellow Anderson mainstay Bill Murray and a bevy of excellent thespians, including Ed Norton, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Bruce Willis.

Even though Anderson has never made a period picture (this one is set in the 1960s), and has never made a movie focused so squarely on children (though it is not a children’s movie: note the PG-13 rating), somehow it still feels as though we have taken one step closer to the Platonic ideal of a Wes Anderson Movie. (This is partly a matter of visual style: The shots in this trailer are relentlessly symmetrical, with one character after another shown in the center of the frame.) For that reason, I suspect his detractors will hate this. But I’m excited.