You Need to See These Wes Anderson Vacation TikToks
It was only a matter of time before the viral trend took over travel TikTok, too.
Aesthetic-core is one of the pillars of social media fandom, and on TikTok, a platform that gives a lot of space and agency to creative visions of any kind, it assumes just so many different shapes. One of them, which quickly became a trend, has to do with a fun revisitation of vacation sum-ups under the inspirational lens of the oh-so-aesthetic Wes Anderson movies. And we just. Can't. Stop. Watching. Them.
Maybe it's the soothing color palette, or maybe it's the whimsical Anderson-esque soundtrack choices. Whatever it is, the trend gave birth to a slew of visually pleasing videos recapping the users' recent trips. Think of ASMR (another huge TikTok trend), but make it visual.
For those who are not familiar with Wes Anderson movies right off the bat, you might have seen one without even knowing it—and you only really just need to see one of his movies to get the gist of it all (and to understand why the TikTok community recently decided to incorporate it into their trends). Timothée Chalamet fans might remember him playing a revolt leader on the quest to write his manifesto in a quirky movie largely about journalism. That, for example, was Anderson's The French Dispatch, which came out in 2021. You might also have vague recollections of a pink hotel and its young bellboy, and if that's the case, you have probably seen The Grand Budapest Hotel, another one of Anderson's most iconic movies, which won four Oscars and was nominated for Best Picture in 2015.
After two years from his latest success, Anderson has another movie slated to come out in theaters on June 16, dubbed Asteroid City. It is safe to say that the anticipation buildup together with the release of trailer and official dates has likely influenced the TikTok community, which was quick to rediscover Anderson's creative vision and praise it through their own social media-friendly interpretation of it. Hence the Wes Anderson vacation trend.
One of the most recurring traits of the trend, besides trying to recreate Anderson's signature symmetry and color scheme, is adding an overtext at the beginning of the video, reading "You better not be acting like you're in a Wes Anderson movie when I get there," or a sentence along these lines.
In a TikTok that already flaunts more than 2 million likes, TikToker @avawillyums shares her journey aboard the first train to NYC's Grand Central Station along the Shoreline East. In a very iconic Anderson fashion, still symmetrical videos of her standing outside of the train are followed by symmetrical shots of the train itself, and playful videos depicting the TikToker sitting in her seat from different angles make an appearance, too. To nobody's surprise, the comment section is flooded with virtual pats on the videomaker's shoulder. "What scene in [The Grand Budapest Hotel] is this from??" asked one user. "This is art," added another one. And the list goes on.
Other social media savvy travelers are opting for a wider approach, and are sharing highlights of the cities and places they are visiting through the trend. TikTok user @irinahp decided to bring her followers on a short trip to Lisbon, Portugal with her video, at the beginning of which big colorful letters read "a weekend in Lisbon, Portugal but accidentally Wes Anderson" as three different Lisbon shots move rapidly underneath. Still videos of oranges, a bakery, and even blush pink sheets hung out to dry follow one another following the trend soundtrack beat. The result makes it, as one user put it, "so far the best I've seen." They continue, "The colour grading and the cinematography is chef's kiss." And more than 2,500 users agreed with the comment, the like button shows.
Lisbon seems to be one of the most popular destinations highlighted as part of the trend, as @danclemt recently posted a vibrantly colorful Wes Anderson-inspired video to the platform.
Meanwhile, @twolostkids documented their recent trip to Paris in an Anderson-inspired style.
But as social media often does, it can blow up a trend and make it a million-view sensation before one can even absorb the context of it all. It's not difficult to pick up patterns when you have thousands of quick examples of content available to you, so it shouldn't come as a shocker that some TikTokers successfully hopped on the trend without admittingly knowing who the hell Wes Anderson is.
One user, who goes by @been.ian on TikTok did just that. They presumably carefully (or maybe, even casually) watched a good amount of Wes Anderson-inspired TikToks, studied them for a bit, and came up with their own playful version of the trend, featuring just a glass of water and a bowl of pasta. And funnily enough, they nailed it. "'Idk who Wes Anderson is' *proceeds to do the trend better than 75% of the people doing it," commented one user under the TikToker’s video, which racked up almost 300,000 likes.
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