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 Darjeeling Limited last feature, the $50 million folly "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", which was an artistic and commercial flop, Anderson could only go upward." Dana Stevens of "Slate" magazine wrote, "Maybe Anderson needs to shoot someone else's screenplay, to get outside his own head for a while and into another's sensibility. It's telling that his funniest and liveliest recent work was a commercial for American Express." Kyle Smith of the "New York Post" gave the film 1 stars out of 4 and said "At a stage in Anderson’s career when he should be moving on, he is instead circling back."