“Different Yet Fantastic” – Fantastic Mr. Fox and the Theme of Identity Written by Faisal Hay1,2 1 Department of English 2 Third-year undergraduate of St. Michaels College, University of Toronto One of many new additions made by Wes Anderson in his adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl novel Fantastic Mr. Fox can be found in a scene almost halfway through the film (roughly after the first quarter of the novel), when the titular Mr. Fox is questioned about his decision to steal food from the infamous farmers Boggis, Bunce & Bean (or “B, B & B”). His response: “Because I’m a wild animal.” (00:34:10 – 00:34:12) The irony behind this line is that neither Mr. Fox nor any of the other animal characters, as anthropomorphs endowed with the power of human speech and inhabiting their own human-like society, can be described as merely “wild animals”. Yet animals they are indeed, with their conflict with the humans being a stark reminder of that fact, and whether these characters lean more toward one side or the other is a question that plays into the greater theme of identity; this movie is about characters like Mr. Fox confronting their own identities and those of each other as they struggle to survive within the whimsical world of Dahl and Anderson.
A Very Existential Fox Naturally, the character through which the theme of identity is mainly expressed would be the main character and “wild animal” himself: Mr. Foxy F. Fox. Unlike Dahl’s original Mr. Fox, who is essentially a flat character both inside and out, Foxy is given the luxury of an arc; a former squab thief turned newspaper columnist, Foxy’s desire to relive the glory days (as well as his more desperate need to put food on the table) drives him and his opossum friend Kylie to pull off his “Master Plan”: a string of robberies targeting the farms of B, B & B. This surface-level midlife crisis is underwritten by a deeper identity crisis resulting from Foxy’s self-consciousness (undoubtedly a by-product of his human-like intelligence), which he exhibits throughout the film to an extreme degree; in a line of rhetorical questioning, he asks his friend: “Who am I, Kylie?... Why a fox? Why not a horse or a beetle or a bald eagle? I’m saying this more as, like, existentialism... Who am I, and how can a fox ever be happy without… you forgive the expression, a chicken in its teeth?” (00:12:36 –00:12:53) According to Foxy, one’s identity is directly tied to one’s purpose in life, and for a fox that purpose is to “court danger, hunt prey and outsmart predators” as he claims to be good at (00:52:50 – 00:52:53). Contrarily, the life of an anthropomorphic fox — not unlike that of a human being — is one with no clear purpose and, therefore, no clear sense of identity; in the face of his complex human-like responsibilities as a husband and father, Foxy yearns for a return to simplicity — the simple life of a sly fox, just like his novel counterpart. However, this yearning causes Foxy to lose sight of the bigger picture, creating devastating consequences for more than just him and his family. Screenwriters’ Perspectives Vol. 3 No. 1 2022
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