The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025)

[Never Cursed]

I had about the same reaction here as I did with Asteroid City: I don't think this came together at all in spite of the incredible craft, technical acumen, and actorly effort on display, and I found the situation of the film within its various real-life inspirations kind of irritating no matter how seriously I was supposed to take them. Obviously the film is heavily inspired by various forms of neocolonialism and Western meddling in the Middle East (the principal drawing points being the construction of the Suez Canal and inter-power arms dealing), but the flippant aesthetic borrowing of terms and events feels VERY different now than I presume it did when the script was written in early 2023. I could neither convince myself that Anderson thought of his film as a serious political statement (everything is too sanded-down and glossed-over) or that the caper was fun or detailed enough to paper over the hollowness of the approach. (To be clear, I'm not, like, accusing Anderson of racism or orientalism or whatever, I just think his treatment of the Middle East here is equally as glib and shallow as his work with the 1950s and the atomic/television age culture in Asteroid City). I certainly wonder if, had this movie been written post-October 2023, there would have been a surface-level spoof of kibbutzim complete with a flighty and pseudo-fascist German-Jewish overseer character with an Israeli accent. I would have liked to see a more complete exploration of this character and milieu, or indeed more of any of the characters or milieus that Anderson visits and then discards, but clearly I am not viewing life through his proprietary lenses.

I'll concede that this is a better film than Asteroid City, and that everything that Anderson does to streamline his florid aesthetic obsessions serves it well: the condensed list of supporting players generally make more of an impact, the wondrous contraptions are largely absent, and Michael Cera (obviously subbing in for an unavailable Timothee Chalamet) and Mia Threapleton are delightful co-leads whose barely-palpable B-plot romance is more compelling than the giant yet offstage central narrative. The other side of this coin is that, as ever with his recent work (Isle of Dogs and the Dahl shorts excluded), the larger narrative or thematic devices Anderson insists on including are mostly ponderous distractions from the main caper (indeed, indications that it does not matter and that the titular enterprise will never for our purposes advance past a stage of rich scumbags talking to each other in small rooms). I'm not sure, for instance, why this film felt the need to stop dead in its tracks every twenty or so minutes to flirt with becoming the poor man's Mighty Aphrodite, with F. Murray Abraham even included among the hallucinatory chorus. Either a greater or lesser implementation of this device would have been beneficial (either turning it into a conversation with the "real" film, as Allen did, or getting rid of it and using the time better/turning it into a series of indelible and haunting images), but as it exists it only makes the film less focused. Its highlights fly by and the viewer is left with a colorful, tasty, but insubstantial amuse-bouche of a movie. I really wish I found the depths that either Black Hat or Yakushima did in this film.

On a side note, trailers for M3GAN 2.0 and Honey Don't! were fun. I'll definitely be watching both in a theater when they are out.

Woof, I liked the Honey Don't! trailer a lot, as I would anything that is mostly shots of Margaret Qualley walking around and looking determined, but the M3GAN 2.0 trailer was one of the worst ones I've seen in a very long time. If it makes you feel better, though, the audience of centenarians that watched The Phoenician Scheme with me thought it was a riot.

[Walter Kurtz]

Screening in 70mm at the Vista in Los Angeles. The first Anderson film to get a blow-up

Someone should blow-up Blow-Up.

[Mr.DarjeelingLimited]

I think this was easily my favorite of the past ten years outside of French Dispatch. Isle of Dogs, Henry Sugar (and 3 more), and Astetoid City were good but definitely not anything new. This has some crazy new turns in his style (especially that one scene near the end with Nubar)

[therewillbeblus]

This is near the bottom of Anderson's work amongst all post-Isle of Dogs features, but I still enjoy his small charms, even when not at the top of his game. I thought the Cranston/Hanks bit was alright, though not one of the better ones. I never thought of it before, but they're such a perfectly matched duo that you could stick them doing just about anything ridiculous and it'd somewhat work. I liked Mathieu Amalric's role - he gets to do his best Gustave H. impression, and Wright is a lot of fun with the little he's given. It was definitely uneven. The Scarlett Johansson micro-arc felt there simply to give her a role in the movie because Anderson likes working with her, and I wasn't crazy about the On Death's Bed moments either - they were tonally and materially clunky. All three leads are good-not-great, and even the score is uneven.. but at times it hits certain dramatic heights Anderson hasn't ventured to before, and I greatly appreciated the film when operating at that tone. He's just not able to manage a variety of tones as well as he used to

[Yakushima]

I had about the same reaction here as I did with Asteroid City: I don't think this came together at all in spite of the incredible craft, technical acumen, and actorly effort on display, and I found the situation of the film within its various real-life inspirations kind of irritating no matter how seriously I was supposed to take them. Its highlights fly by and the viewer is left with a colorful, tasty, but insubstantial amuse-bouche of a movie. I really wish I found the depths that either Black Hat or Yakushima did in this film.

Never Cursed, I agree with most of your points, but I don't think I wrote anything about finding much depth there. The whole scheme and the politics surrounding it from the get-go seemed one giant MacGuffin, and I thought of them as such, without digging for deeper meanings. Even the central theme of the father-daughter relationship was not very compelling. Still, I was happy to see Anderson returning to competent filmmaking, even if the film felt rather shallow compared to his best works. Had this come out right after The Grand Budapest Hotel, I would think less of it.

Re: M3GAN 2.0 trailer - I suppose this makes me a centenarian!

For me, the worst of the bunch was one for the reboot of The Naked Gun with Liam Neeson - I want to unsee it, but I can't.

[therewillbeblus]

That M3GAN 2.0 trailer felt as long as the movie

[nicolas]

Spoiler

This is near the bottom of Anderson's work amongst all post-Isle of Dogs features, but I still enjoy his small charms, even when not at the top of his game. I thought the Cranston/Hanks bit was alright, though not one of the better ones. I never thought of it before, but they're such a perfectly matched duo that you could stick them doing just about anything ridiculous and it'd somewhat work. I liked Mathieu Amalric's role - he gets to do his best Gustave H. impression, and Wright is a lot of fun with the little he's given. It was definitely uneven. The Scarlett Johansson micro-arc felt there simply to give her a role in the movie because Anderson likes working with her, and I wasn't crazy about the On Death's Bed moments either - they were tonally and materially clunky. All three leads are good-not-great, and even the score is uneven.. but at times it hits certain dramatic heights Anderson hasn't ventured to before, and I greatly appreciated the film when operating at that tone. He's just not able to manage a variety of tones as well as he used to

After reading everyone’s reviews, I’m still not entirely convinced whether I actually want to see his new film. I disliked Asteroid City, the Netflix shorts and The French Dispatch but found everything he did before much better. Is there something to appreciate in the film for those who feel like that?

[therewillbeblus]

It’s definitely more narratively linear and less ‘busy’ than those films - minus the shorts

[Yakushima]

After reading everyone’s reviews, I’m still not entirely convinced whether I actually want to see his new film. I disliked Asteroid City, the Netflix shorts and The French Dispatch but found everything he did before much better. Is there something to appreciate in the film for those who feel like that?

Nicolas, my perception of Anderson's work is similar to yours, and I did not regret watching The Phoenician Scheme in a theater. It is a stunningly beautiful film, perfect for the big screen viewing. Just don't expect too much in terms of emotional payoff, like in those Anderson's films of old.

[nicolas]

Nicolas, my perception of Anderson's work is similar to yours, and I did not regret watching The Phoenician Scheme in a theater. It is a stunningly beautiful film, perfect for the big screen viewing. Just don't expect too much in terms of emotional payoff, like in those Anderson's films of old.

It’s definitely more narratively linear and less ‘busy’ than those films - minus the shorts

Thanks, twbb and Yakushima, for your answers! I’m happy to hear that. I’ll definitely give the film a chance with an open mind and hope that it marks a turnaround for Anderson back towards more clarity and directness in the stories. You’re right, Yakushima, his films are visually stunning and so accomplished across the entire crafts that it bothered me much more when the context around the images failed to keep up as I always hope that particularly gifted and unique directors like Anderson have recurring artistic successes.

[Brian C]

It's always been easy for me to see how Anderson is able to recruit such large casts, with big names even in very small roles; his actors always have so much room to inhabit their characters, which I think is often overshadowed by Anderson's (obviously deserved) reputation for exacting detail.

That's something I wrote in my comments about The French Dispatch, but this is now the second straight Anderson film to flatten all the performances to the point where it hardly matters which actor is playing which role. Benecio Del Toro has the lead here, but would it have been a very different film if the role had gone to Mathieu Amalric instead (and vice versa)? Or if Mia Threapleton had been swapped out with Scarlett Johansson? Anderson's films used to have performances of amazing wit from actors across a spectrum of styles, but now he strips all the performances of everything except for the ennui.

Overall, I thought this was slightly more enjoyable than Asteroid City, but only slightly. Anderson (and Coppola, I guess) has inexplicably lost his ability to write a joke, so we get a lot of dead-ends like the business with the crossbow, with no setup and no payoff - it seems like it's supposed to be funny just because it's there. Or the hand grenades. Or whatever was going on with the basketball game. Or I think about Suzy's books in Moonrise Kingdom and how much they meant to her character, versus how many shots we get of Korda reading in this film and how extraneous the titles are.

And I suppose that sums up my feelings about these last two films - all the details, which used to feel vital in Anderson's films even at their most fanciful, now simply seem extraneous. Adrien Brody's character buys a cobra and brings in on the train in The Darjeeling Limited (which over time has become a favorite Anderson for me) - spoke volumes about who that character was. Michael Cera's character in The Phoenician Scheme likes bugs - amounts to nothing.

Kind of a bummer for me. It feels like Anderson could have made a terrific film with this same basic premise a dozen years ago. In fact, in some ways, he wasn't a million miles away with The Grand Budapest Hotel. But now it's hard for me to escape the feeling that he's a little bored with his own movies.

[mfunk9786]

First Anderson film that I just didn't like, which is a pretty nice streak on his part (nearly three decades of strong films... this is not one of them). It's a shame, too, because this is the first time in a while that he slows things down a bit, but despite being packed with jokes, the screenplay isn't funny. Brian addresses this well above, but nearly every joke becomes a running gag, and so often (hand grenades being a good example), those gags don't create much of an audience response. Compare to a running bit like the mental illness that Bill Murray is studying in The Royal Tenenbaums - the times it comes up again it's both unexpected and very witty, disarming the viewer. There are really successful repeat jokes in Asteroid City, too (particularly involving the Jeffrey Wright character). The Phoenician Scheme makes the fatal error of being a comedy that isn't particularly funny, a family drama that is too shrill to be touching, and it just doesn't work. Considering that Asteroid City was/is pretty excellent, I don't think this is some kind of death knell for Anderson, but I do think that maybe these projects could spend a little more time in the oven, and instead of following his own "keep telling the story" advice from his previous film, he could think about why he's going to the effort before doing so.

Spoiler

Also, I may have audibly groaned at the Bill Murray cameo as God. Exhausting.

[Black Hat]

See, now I thought that was funny. I have some defenses/responses, but want to see it again before I chime in again.

[therewillbeblus]

And I suppose that sums up my feelings about these last two films - all the details, which used to feel vital in Anderson's films even at their most fanciful, now simply seem extraneous. Adrien Brody's character buys a cobra and brings in on the train in The Darjeeling Limited (which over time has become a favorite Anderson for me) - spoke volumes about who that character was. Michael Cera's character in The Phoenician Scheme likes bugs - amounts to nothing.

This is a great point, and highlights how underdeveloped Benicio's lead is

Spoiler

Early on, they briefly try to give him layers with hints at a neglected childhood.. but then his stoic defense mechanism wall goes up (with the 'babysitter had to be dealt with' and bootstraps individualism philosophy, etc.) and stays there for the entire movie. Even the "I feel safe" running joke could've hinted at vulnerability, but instead it's just kept on the surface. Either that, or buried too deep to 'trust the audience' to dig it up.

After seeing this a second time, I still enjoy it as a lark, but I don't think the father-daughter bonding is fluid or obvious. It just kind of happens, due to elisions in the story. The daughter's prayer in the basketball game probably comes from some hidden drive for connection, as does a lot of the activity, but it's never defined, even faintly.

[dvakman]

I'm disappointed to state that I was as underwhelmed by this latest venture as I was by Henry Sugar and Asteroid City. I doubt that I'll revisit this again until it's up for a physical Criterion release in the not so near future, at which time I'll reevaluate for potential purchase. Although I've no issues with the actors individually, so far I haven't really cottoned to Cumberbatch, Hanks, or Johansson as recent additions to the "Anderson ensemble".

[mfunk9786]

After seeing this a second time, I still enjoy it as a lark, but I don't think the father-daughter bonding is fluid or obvious. It just kind of happens, due to elisions in the story. The daughter's prayer in the basketball game probably comes from some hidden drive for connection, as does a lot of the activity, but it's never defined, even faintly.

A lot of this is not so great acting - turns out Del Toro, for all of his appealing qualities, does not have quite the same high level prickly sentimentality in his tool bag that Gene Hackman had. And Mia Threapleton is genuinely just not good in the film outside of a few nice moments. Hard not to judge all of these films side-by-side if you'll allow me the indulgence; but compare to a character like Margot Tenenbaum or Jane Winslett-Richardson or Agatha and it's just such a flat and deflated characterization which isn't all Threapleton's fault.

[jd9760]

This might sound counterintuitive given how airless and schematic The Phoenician Scheme often feels, but I wonder if the problem is that Wes Anderson doesn’t believe in fiction anymore?

That’s not meant as some barbed philosophical dig, just a practical one: over the past decade, his films have increasingly taken place inside some kind of overt narrative wrapper — stories within stories within footnotes, etc. — as if he’s pathologically unable to just tell a story without disclaiming it. There’s always a puppet stage or a magazine or a nuclear test town to remind us that we’re watching something artificial. It doesn't mean it can't be endearing, but it also doesn't mean it isn't evasive.

This film in particular — drenched in real-world references to Suez, arms dealing, and Middle East power vacuums — seems terrified of saying anything about those things. It gestures at politics, then instantly shrinks back into a flippant caper where everyone talks like they’re in a dinner theatre production of Mission: Improbable. And yet, paradoxically, it also refuses to let the narrative fully commit to absurdity either. The political trappings are just hanging there, unexamined, like Easter eggs in a shooter map.

You can feel the impulse to hedge baked into the structure: a Greek chorus of dusty hallucinations, title cards interrupting momentum, characters introduced with gusto then forgotten two scenes later. It’s not just that the jokes don’t land, it’s that everything is buffered from consequence or investment. Nobody in the film ever really wants anything.

Which is maybe the most honest thing about it? The Phoenician Scheme feels like a movie made by someone who’s stopped believing that stories matter on their own terms. Everything’s a reference, a quotation, a formal exercise. Which is fine, I guess, if you’re building a diorama. But (and don't worry, I'm cringing, too, as I write this) stories need stakes. Wes used to treat the artifice as a way in to feeling, to character, to a glimpse of something emotionally real inside all the fussiness. TPS in particular feels like a very elaborate way around.

[Mr Sausage]

I wonder if the problem is that Wes Anderson doesn’t believe in fiction anymore?

[...]

The Phoenician Scheme feels like a movie made by someone who’s stopped believing that stories matter on their own terms. Everything’s a reference, a quotation, a formal exercise.

It sounds like it could easily be the opposite: only stories in themselves matter. The most narrative fixated of the big American post modernists, John Barth, was doing what you describe above, nesting stories within stories within stories, each layer carefully revealing its own storytelling devices. Storytelling in itself became the overriding subject. Barth was fixated on the character of Scheherazade in the 1001 Nights, a women who had to fend off death by forever telling stories. Storytelling as a matter of life and death.

Your description makes Anderson sound like a cinematic John Barth, in which case it's the opposite of what you fear: Anderson increasingly feels stories are the only thing that matter. Not as an evasion, but a refusal to subordinate art, ie. what is it about art as art that's important? I mean, if you demand that art try to be like life, aren't you just saying that art is only meaningful if it attempts to escape itself? Anderson is just turning his stories back on themselves to show that art is foremost a form and not merely a reflection, and that we should pay attention to that form.

[jd9760]

Absolutely — a great point. If I framed Anderson’s recursive nesting as a kind of evasion, your Barth comparison reframes it as a kind of urgency. Not a retreat from meaning, but a doubling down: the belief that storytelling is meaning. And that art, to matter at all, must commit unapologetically to its own artifice.

That’s a compelling angle — especially the Scheherazade bit — and it’s especially interesting when you put it next to the historical/political content that The Phoenician Scheme flirts with. Maybe the tension I’m feeling isn’t that Anderson doesn’t believe in fiction anymore, full stop, but that he does only believe in fiction, and that fiction is being asked here to stand in for something it can’t quite carry. That the Middle East stuff, the arms dealing, the Suez-like intrigue — these aren’t metaphors, they’re props. That feels slippery.

To go back to your Barth comparison: Scheherazade’s storytelling was about survival. The stories didn’t save the world, they just kept her alive. But Anderson’s framework isn’t one of desperation; it’s of elegance, taste, composition. Which might be where the unease comes from. It’s not the structure I object to, it’s the lack of stakes within that structure. If storytelling is life or death, it has to feel like it.

Barth’s artifice crackled because there was always a real pulse beneath it. With Anderson lately, I sometimes feel like I’m admiring the skeleton of a story — the design, the symmetry — without ever being let into the bloodstream.

[Mr Sausage]

If storytelling is life or death, it has to feel like it.

Only if you take the Scheherazade thing literally. Not every story needs to be an individual life or death struggle. Scheherazade is a symbol for the place of storytelling in our lives in general.

Also you read my post and wrote your response in exactly 6 minutes. Pretty sure you're using AI.

[diamonds]

It boggles my mind that someone could question Anderson's belief in fiction after Asteroid City, probably the most direct and unequivocal affirmation of faith in fiction/fictional forms he could possibly have made.

climactic Asteroid City spoiler

Scheherazade indeed.

[jd9760]

If storytelling is life or death, it has to feel like it.

Only if you take the Scheherazade thing literally. Not every story needs to be an individual life or death struggle. Scheherazade is a symbol for the place of storytelling in our lives in general.

Also you read my post and wrote your response in exactly 6 minutes. Pretty sure you're using AI.

Point taken — I often tap the “post” button before the thought’s had time to properly gel.

I also take your point about Scheherazade as a symbol. I’m not arguing every story requires literal mortal stakes to matter, or that WA needs to slap a pulse monitor on each plot point to prove sincerity. But I do think there’s a difference between storytelling as a vital cultural mechanism — something that structures how we understand and endure the world — and storytelling as a kind of stylized recursion, an aesthetic echo chamber. The Phoenician Scheme, to me, leans hard into the latter. It loves the texture of fiction, the performance of it, but seems less interested in what fiction can do beyond itself.

It boggles my mind that someone could question Anderson's belief in fiction after Asteroid City, probably the most direct and unequivocal affirmation of faith in fiction/fictional forms he could possibly have made.

climactic Asteroid City spoiler

Scheherazade indeed.

As for Asteroid City, yes. Certainly the most explicit declaration of faith in form Anderson’s ever made. But for that same reason, I think it sort of underlines the issue in TPS: Asteroid is reflexive in a way that feels raw and strangely personal. The nesting dolls there collapse inward, toward something. With TPS, I feel the opposite: the stories open outward, but into voids. Each character, each subplot, each geopolitical allusion is treated with the same flat, ornamental interest. No one, and nothing, seems to push back against the story. The stakes feel simulated. That’s not disbelief in fiction, maybe, but it is a kind of detachment from consequence.

To be clear: I don’t think The Phoenician Scheme is lazy or cynical. It’s finely wrought and formally rigorous. But I do think it’s a film where form wins against itself — where fiction exists for its own self-curation, rather than as a way of probing anything messier, riskier, or more alive.

[domino harvey]

If you make another AI post we’re banning your account. Use — your — own — mind — pls

[tehthomas]

Watched a matinee yesterday at the Tara. Good day to spend in a cold theater when it's 90 degrees outside. Yet.

This was such a letdown - especially after the wonder I found 'Asteroid City' to be. My friend and I both found this boring, flat and long despite the runtime.

Also, Del Toro's role should've been played by Hanks, he could've injected the zany animated spark to the tycoon that was sorely needed. Del Toro was playing it like 'Sicario' and it just did not work. While the film does look exquisite as any Wes Anderson film, some of the frames are very zoomed out and I found disorientating coupled with the aspect ratio.

Cera and Mia Threapleton give wonderful performances though. The basketball scene is killer.

[knives]

This perhaps has the best precedent in the del Toro segment of The French Dispatch, but I don’t think Anderson could have made this before the recent Dahl adaptations. His extreme aesthetic experiment of Cocteau dead pan or maybe it’s just Bresson while clearly of his style also seems like a major break working purely through implications similar to how the Dahl shorts made narration so important that movement became incidental.

I was especially struck by the acting which is so limited in its actorly allowances in a way that I don’t recall ever appearing in Anderson before. Throughout I was thinking of my favorite Anderson performances and how they even within the confines of stylization show traditional expressions of humanity. Those Owen Wilson performances, I was focused on Darjeeling, aren’t removed from what Wilson does in other films for example. That did make this difficult to connect with at first and gives some credence to complaints even if I wound up in the positive column. It wasn’t until Jeffrey Wright’s scene that I finally gelled with the emotional tenor here and could appreciate how through elision Anderson was developing an emotional arc even as it’s beholden to its themes.

Those themes though. As hard as it was to parse the emotional expression of the film its themes are dealt out so finely I imagine everyone can at least appreciate the effort there. Anderson’s become increasingly political over the years, but here’s his explicit go at eating the rich while also pushing forward his religious concerns which have been slowly bubbling to the surface sonde GBH. del Toro is a real nasty character at first who is a joy to root against, but it’s fascinating how a type of Catholicism seems to be the impediment for his defeat by which I mean change. Though Anderson isn’t so simplistic as capitalism bad while religion good. The compromise present in the business arena is looked at fondly here while the main villain is described as biblical. In relation, the daughter finds her piece outside the cloth and is using her religiously developed ethics to succeed outside of that sphere. I believe, instead Anderson is saying something like extreme wealth is isolating and dangerous for people with capitalism in the classic sense of accumulation of wealth being bad because of how it perpetuates that which leads to callousness such as the use of slaves. Instead people need communal centers to talk and debate through which allows one to process themselves in a healthy way. Religion is a way of accomplishing that alongside a system of morals, but when placed in isolation it is just as dangerous and greedy.

Speaking of systems, something that helped me appreciate just what is happening here is realizing the obsessive degree by which Anderson is creating systems and cataloging. So much of the film is made of people reciting and presenting lists. It eventually becomes its own narrative shorthand by which the story moves. For example, these a short single shot of one of these catalogs which functions as exposition for a rather major plot point. The shot could only really work with an audience inoculated to Anderson’s strange language. In that way I suppose this is also the first American Hou Hsiao Hsien film though it’s actually the more fantastically minded Hong Sang Soo that this film reminds me of.