Unfortunately for Wes Anderson, his seven-year-old has heard about Star Wars
“Well, we have Disney+ and we don’t use it, but it’s there.”
Wes Anderson makes Wes Anderson movies. It’s why it was so easy for those A.I. generators to pump out simulations of his artistic style so quickly. Easily imitated, never equaled, his color-coded, symmetrical, and disaffected aesthetics make for easy fan art, but it’s always a poor substitute for the real thing. The same is true for Star Wars, which is another easy one for generative A.I. enthusiasts to latch onto. All this is to say, the general public seemingly believes the last type of movie Anderson would ever try and make is a Star Wars. Unfortunately for Anderson, his daughter is seven years old and recently “heard about Star Wars.”
Speaking with Letterboxd while promoting his first foray into science fiction, Anderson name checked George Lucas’ masterpiece as the “least-hidden movie” influence on Asteroid City. “It’s relevant to my life right now,” he said. “My daughter is seven, and she’d heard about Star Wars and kept asking me about it. So I said, well, we have Disney+, and we don’t use it, but it’s there.”
For his part, Anderson loves that his daughter also loves the Vincent Minelli classic Meet Me In St. Louis, but he understands her love for Star Wars. “I like that she likes Meet Me in St. Louis. But when I was her age, the most important movie of all time was Star Wars.”
Like all seven-year-olds who discover Star Wars, after she and dear dad watched the film, it was a done deal. “She became totally fixated on it. Everything is Star Wars.”
Star Wars does have that effect on people, even Anderson. “I don’t know if I would have ended up wanting to do this if I hadn’t seen Star Wars,” he said. “It’s not even the kind of movie that I became interested in doing, but it certainly made me want to go into these movies, these cinemas, and sit there.”
Asteroid City opens in theaters July 16.