Link to LetterBoxd review here.
“I think I have this thing where I need everybody to think I’m the greatest, the quote-unquote Fantastic Mr. Fox. And if people aren’t knocked out and dazzled and slightly intimidated by me, I don’t feel good about myself.”
Fantastic Mr. Fox
This man-fox has only but one mission: to steal chickens and live overground. Not to hunt chickens, to steal. Not to simply prowl in forests, but to be thoroughly domesticated as a small-paper journalist living in a tree house with oak, not pine, flooring.
A simple mantra, but one that allows the curtaining of self-loathe and the fear of being ordinary. What Fantastic Mr. Fox and the audience gradually come to terms with at the end of the movie is that betting on your own life doesn’t make you a hero but a gambler. When we see Mr. Fox fail his end of the promise to quit the chicken-stealing shenanigans to his wife, or when he ropes in his kid nephew, Kristofferson, to one of his heists only to have him captured and used as ransom. Mr. Fox’s chase for a better, more civilized life, jeopardizes his morals where the lesson catches up to him faster than he anticipated. The true villain of the story is not so much the sinisterism of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, but Mr. Fox himself- the deeply-rooted fear of adhering to the true nature of a wild animal.
Animated animals aren’t utilized randomly: Zootopia, Ratatouille, Finding Nemo. Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps figuring out animal-racism together, Remy chasing his Michelin Star dreams despite his rat appearance near a stove that would typically warn chefs that their restaurant was in less-than-subpar conditions, and Nemo and his dad forming a stronger bond apart than when they were together. For some reason, human flaws and error seems to be demonstrated better when they are in the form of a furry animal. Maybe because human complexity is not at all, that complex- that if we’re able to laugh at the hierarchy of the animal kingdom, we realize how ludicrous the conception of social classes are.
There’s a cognitive dissonance between Mr. Fox’s impulse to steal chickens relating to a natural fox’s mischievous disposition and residing within a basement home being an abhorrent future to Mr. Fox. By the end of the movie, we understand that Mr. Fox achieves both conclusions. But we don’t get the sense that he lost. But we don’t get the sense that he won either. That no matter how hard you work, not everything is able to go your way. That the future is volatile to not just you, but to everyone else. That the ultimate form of self-acceptance is also universal acceptance.