When it was announced that The Criterion Collection would be releasing The Wes Anderson Archives – a 10-film box set out on September 30th – we knew it would be a pre-order for many of our readers even if it was somehow bare bones. But it’s not only spread over 20 discs, it will feature some upgrades from the original individual releases.
Wes Anderson recently appeared on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, where he gave some slight details on whether or not we can expect anything new in the Wes Anderson Criterion set. While he’s cagey on specifics, he did say, “I’m not big on, ‘Let’s make a new version.’ For me, it’s like the movie has gone out and it sort of belongs to the audience at that point…In the process of this Criterion box set, for instance, there were things that we could refine. There were things that didn’t translate quite right in the original home video versions that we corrected.”
For Wes Anderson – who is one of the most represented directors in The Criterion Collection – having a box set of this variety is exactly how he pictured his filmography being represented. “I always have thought of my films for whatever reason, as being a body of work, an ongoing thing, not just the films as one by one, but as a set of things. I used to say, I feel like the characters from one of my films could walk into another of my films and fit into that world. Eventually, I started making period pictures, where that doesn’t quite make as much sense anymore.” Anderson is just the latest director to receive a comprehensive box set from The Criterion Collection, joining the likes of Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and more.
The Wes Anderson Archives will include nearly every film the director has made spanning 1998’s Bottle Rocket to 2021’s The French Dispatch. While it would have been nice to have Asteroid City and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (along with a spot for The Phoenician Scheme, out now), it’s not designed to be complete. Even still, fans will no doubt dig the 4K remasters, 25 hours of special features and bonus illustrated books to accompany each film. The listed price is $399.96, which will put it at around $200 when Criterion holds their annual 50% off sale.
