Worth Watching: Behind the Scenes of The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 2, 2009

The folks at Apple have revealed a brand new behind the scenes featurette for the upcoming Wes Anderson directed stop-motion animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox, which has caused a little bit of a stir on the web since the release of it’s first teaser trailer. By my count, onlookers from the world of the web were less than impressed with the highly recognizable voices of the cast, but were impressed with the visuals.

I’m with you friends, impressed with the visuals (to an extent) and not sold on the voices matching with the characters. Essentially, this movie is just another Wes Anderson, but with puppets. And who knows whether or not the process of stop-motion animating this thing will enhance the experience of an Anderson work or work against it. What we do know is that there is a great technical achievement here — stop-motion is an incredibly tiresome and tedious, but rewarding creative experience. Just look at what Henry Selick has done with The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. For more on that process, check out the new featurette below. It has sort of a learning channel vibe to it with narration from Jason Schwartzman, but overall it’s a cool look at how this movie was made.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is in theaters November 13, 2009.

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