Do we like Wes Anderson?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a long creative life, marked down for standing by Bill Murray and for the Isle of Dogs row.
Wes Anderson grew up in Houston, the second of three brothers, and his parents divorced when he was eight. He started making Super 8 films with his brothers, staged elaborate plays at his prep school, then studied philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he met Owen Wilson. That friendship is the spine of a career built on a recurring gang of actors.
Bottle Rocket grew out of a short that impressed Sundance, and Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums turned him into a name. The Grand Budapest Hotel earned nine Oscar nominations, and Isle of Dogs had the biggest opening of his career. After years of nominations he finally won an Oscar in March 2024 for the short The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and he wasn't even in the room to collect it.
Harm check first. We found no harmful words or campaigning from him on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and no pattern of working with people who push that stuff. When Cannes asked about Donald Trump's proposed film tariffs in 2025, he joked about the idea and said he needed official details, not a rant. The thin spot is that the record is mostly his films rather than his politics, and that's honestly most of what there is.
The one real stoush is Isle of Dogs. Critics, including the LA Times' Justin Chang, accused the film of an idiosyncratic and tone-deaf take on Japan, with American-voiced dogs in a Japanese city. Anderson told Entertainment Weekly it was a fantasy and “a re-imagining of Japan through my experience of Japanese cinema.” Where you land depends on whether you read that as homage or as a white filmmaker's cartoon of another culture.
The Bill Murray bit is where the asterisk comes from. In 2023, after misconduct allegations against Murray came out, Anderson said it wouldn't change their working relationship and called him “part of my family”. Murray left Asteroid City because of Covid, not the accusations, Anderson said. Loyalty to a mate is human, but it's also a choice about whose side you stand on.
The recent news is a warm one. In July 2026 Anderson said “We will do a Western, you know,” with Owen and Luke Wilson, while Murray said he wants to star in a cowboy film. It's Anderson being Anderson: same crew, same Texas roots, nothing nasty in it.