Today on things I didn’t expect to see today: a Wes Anderson TikTok challenge. With his whimsical directorial style, Wes Anderson is responsible for some of the best movies of all time. The eccentric auteur, who has directed classics like Rushmore, Isle of Dogs, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, is known for attaching a very specific visual style to his films. He might have dabbled in both live-action and animated movies, but even when the medium shifts, signature stylistic choices like pastel colour palettes, wide lens camera shots, title cards, and near-obsessive attention to symmetry always find a way to shine through.
With this in mind, it should not come as a surprise that the comedy movie director is widely popular on TikTok, with clips tagged #wesanderson on the platform amassing over half a billion cumulative views.
But Anderson’s TikTok popularity has especially spiked recently as the director’s distinctive style became the basis of a new trend, with users “romanticizing their life,” as social media journalist Zoe Crowther put it, by editing their everyday experiences in the style of a Wes Anderson movie.
The “Wes Anderson Challenge,” as it has affectionately become known, involves TikTokers capturing their everyday experiences — from eating a burger to riding on a train — through Anderson’s distinctive style. From title cards, to wide shots, and even a matching score: the only requirement for these amateur filmmakers is to emulate as many of Anderson’s stylistic quirks as possible, before pairing it with the score from his drama movie The French Dispatch.
Girl on the train 🚂 pic.twitter.com/SR25LuSzir
— Zoë Crowther (@zoenora6) April 18, 2023
With so many new movies on the way this year, we doubt this will be the last time we see directors celebrated on TikTok — but if you want to know more about some of the best filmmakers out there, check out our guides to the best Steven Spielberg movies, best James Cameron movies and the highest-grossing movies of all time.