But then again, if you look at the rest of his films, he doesn't make movies like, say, Del Toro or Burton, or even Peter Jackson, for example. It's the artist as a whole, so the fact that his sensibilities lend themselves better to this more 'realistically-grounded' approach isn't trivial if it's that consistent. What leads him, or any good director, to take that stylistic approach is indeed an essential part of their visions and being an artist, and hopefully they're also adept as their craft to put together a good story. So it's a bit unfair to underestimate the 'realism' (I prefer 'anchored by realistic sensibilities') as happenstance or something that could easily change with the flip of a comic whilst maintaining the harmony of everything else involved. That wouldn't be art.
As an (albeit) extreme example on the flip side, if someone were to say that they wished that Matisse would paint his people to look more realistic, or a famous realist painter would make his characters more charicature-like....then they're really asking for different painters overall.
