Willem Dafoe hallucination. The cameo was suggested by Dafoe, comparing it to the ghost of Hamlet's father visiting his son to ask him to avenge his death. Dafoe was next seen in the comedy-drama "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004), his first of three films with director Wes Anderson. He played the "hilariously doltish" German first mate of a research vessel owned by the eponymous lead character, who is played by Bill Murray. Dafoe then had a small role as a tabloid magazine editor in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" (2004), a biographical film about Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Also in
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou whimsy." The film has a 62/100 weighted average score on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Anthony Lane, a film reviewer for "The New Yorker", agreed with the conventional criticism of Anderson's deadpan style: that the underreaction of Anderson's characters used to be "hip" but has now become "frozen into a mannerism." He said that "some stretches of action" in the film are being "lightly held within quotation marks," with an "unmistakable air of playacting" in even the most violent scenes. He also criticized the film's deliberately "weird" set ups, which leave the viewer with "the impression of having nearly drowned