Beyond the Sea: Echoes of Jules Verne in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Wes Anderson's films often contain intertextual connections to literary predecessors in a relationship that's not quite adaptation but more a series of interconnected allusions. Anderson's Life Aquatic shares several common themes with Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), including spectacles of design in the Nautilus and the Belafonte that overtly connect these ships to their captains, their troubled protagonists, and competing versions of masculinity highlighted by interaction with other male characters.