Deep in the credits, Wes Anderson’s new movie Asteroid City has an unexpected name. In the “special thanks” section towards the end of the role, listed alongside Anderson friends and former collaborators such as Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, is Steven Spielberg, the most commercially successful director of all time. These two filmmakers seem to be quite far apart: Spielberg is best known for creating popular entertainment, whether it’s thrilling, fantastical adventures or sobering journeys through 20th-century horror. Anderson is known for the meticulous construction of deadpan comic worlds. Of Asteroid CityHowever, their connection becomes clearer: they both use science fiction to explore the loss and melancholy of broken families.
Anderson isn’t known as a sci-fi or fantasy director, but those are no longer Spielberg’s main genres either. Aside from any cracks about his films appearing to be set entirely on another planet, Anderson’s last overt sci-fi film was 2018’s dystopian stop-motion tale. Island of dogswhile that of 2014 The big hotel in Budapest contains elements of fantasy and alternate history, and that of 2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou features fantastic, fictional creatures. Asteroid City probably credits Spielberg for taking some inspiration from 1977 Close Encounters of the Third KindSpielberg’s first true sci-fi movie: When an alien ship makes contact with humans in the American desert Asteroid Citysomewhat mimics the event Close encounters.
Close encounters famously ends with a journey that Spielberg has since thought would have made him uncomfortable later in his career – Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) finally leaves his wife and children, enters the visiting starship and rises with his mysterious creatures ascend into space towards unknown points. (Technically, Roy’s family has left him at this point due to his obsession with the aliens, but leaving Earth feels a little more final to him.) Asteroid City, the aliens don’t wield as much physical power over the central family, led by Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman). The mother of Augie’s four children has already left, albeit not voluntarily. Weeks before their desert journey, she succumbed to a disease that sounds like cancer, and on the day of the alien visit, Augie finally breaks the news to his children.
However, the encounter with aliens changes the Steenbeck family, especially Augie’s teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan), who is both fascinated and disturbed by the idea that humanity is not alone in this universe. The evidence of our potential insignificance overwhelms him. It’s a remarkable response, because so often Anderson characters seem to pre-emptively fight that sense of smallness, obsessing over their own hobbies or worlds as a way to exert control in a messy, unpredictable world. Woodrow’s grief for his mother ties in perfectly with his crisis of faith, because few things feel as messy or destabilizing as changes in your family.
That’s something Spielberg understands very well, and something that’s almost always present in his sci-fi movies. ET the alien shows a family that has been broken up by a divorce: the father has moved away, leaving an ex-wife struggling and his son Elliott (Henry Thomas) feeling insecure and lonely. from Spielberg War of the worlds gives another absent father a (terrifying) chance to reclaim his bona fide child rearing amid a deadly alien attack. Minority Report gives a more devoted dad (played by the same actor, no less!) some form of closure after a devastating loss. AI artificial intelligencearguably Spielberg’s best and boldest sci-fi movie, follows a robot boy programmed to simulate family love, then goes adrift when the family he serves no longer needs him to fill a certain void in their lives.
Like Spielberg’s work in the genre, Anderson’s sci-fi stories often feature families that have already fallen apart by the start of the film. Atari (Koyu Rankin) has lost his parents in the beginning Island of dogs, which makes it all the more important to him that he brings his dog and best friend Spots (Liev Schreiber) back from exile on the island. (It’s similar to the protective zeal Elliott feels for ET, his own non-human friend.) Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) from Life in the waterlike Tom Cruise’s Ray War of the worldshas essentially relinquished his role as a father in favor of pursuing a life he envisioned as a carefree younger man – though Steve is further afield, in that the child (referred to as “possibly my son”) grows into an adult before Steve has anything to do with him.
The filmmakers’ characters are often drastically different. So is their technical approach as directors: Spielberg favors propulsive motion in his stories, while Anderson devises smaller gestures within frames that often look like impossibly detailed comic strips. Because of these very different forms of spectacle and their respective interest in fantastic props, both filmmakers are sometimes mistaken for childish or fake innocent.
But while they both look at fantastic images through a child’s perspective, they also use the dynamic boy-with-his-train set that Spielberg depicts in The Fables – no surprise that images of a train bookend Asteroid Cityor that The Darjeeling Limited largely takes place in one – to go beyond simple Spielberg face awe. Instead, they each convey an advanced understanding of how we process loss and how we relate it to our place in a larger world.
Spielberg’s sci-fi trappings often seem to exist to clarify the gap between family members, which can’t always be bridged. Think back to the precog in Agatha Minority Report, which describes her vision of an alternate life for the son who lost John Anderton (Cruise), her visions as heartbreakingly clear as real memories. Or to the thousands of years that little robot David (Haley Joel Osment) lives, as his programming continues beyond the waning days of humanity he is supposed to imitate.
Anderson, meanwhile, sometimes takes a more meta approach, which suits his characters’ self-awareness. In Asteroid CityFor example, the sci-fi story of the alien encounter is just one layer of the worlds within worlds Anderson creates. The story – described as a stage play, framed as a TV show – frames the scenes from a distance, as a way to grapple with the infinite nature of the universe. Sci-fi is a way of looking into the unknown, even if we have to flinch at some point.
This is the depth that imitators often lack in Anderson and Spielberg. (Another unexpected piece of common ground between them: they’ve both spawned countless copycats.) Spielberg impersonations usually come from movies that are stuck in a 80s nostalgic idea of what his films are like, but what the imitators often think of ET and some Amblin movies Spielberg produced decades ago. Anderson imitations are rather parodies and impressions of his style. (While some real feature films have been influenced by his style without really capturing his tone – watching you, Paddington!)
What the imitators miss, though, and what the genuine articles share, is the sense that loss and grief recalibrate our personal worlds, recontextualize them, and—in ways that can be strange or even terrifying—open them up.
Despite Spielberg’s reputation for uplifting, his sci-fi interventions don’t always arguably heal the family in any given story. War of the worlds is more the exception than the rule in this regard, and in that movie, the family experiences a truly horrific level of carnage (not to mention the actual murder committed by Ray) on their way to a happy ending. There is a similar effect of the baptism of fire (though on a much smaller scale). Life in the waterwhere Steve must survive more loss before a Close encounters-like moment between humans and another species.
Steve’s gut-wrenching response to the Jaguar Shark – “I wonder if he remembers me” – is more solipsistic than indicative of concern for his makeshift family. But it offers a glimpse into the panic and emptiness he feels as he realizes that those closest to him are no more permanent on this earth than he is.
Anderson does surrender a more traditional resolution Island of Dogs, with heroism and positive change for his dystopia in the near future. Atari’s quest has been fulfilled and a new form of domestication has been achieved. That’s an easier wrap up than just about all of Spielberg’s major sci-fi projects, except maybe Done player one.
Asteroid Cityimplies, on the other hand, that the Steenbecks will have to muddle through their losses as best they can, as the family does ET, minus that cathartic John Williams-scored emotional crescendo. Tellingly, despite the framing that draws attention to the artifice of the desert portion of Asteroid City‘s story still ends the movie within that play-within-a-show. Much more than the many filmmakers who try to channel Spielberg’s crowd-pleasing mojo, Anderson is able to inspire real wonder with his version of science fiction. But like Spielberg, his work resonates because it doesn’t neglect the empty spaces in our lives, no matter how much wonder we experience.