Its an interesting question.with all of the media we get exposed to today it might be much closer to impossible to be a great director. The audience wants so much and gets so much from short season shows on HBO, and Netflix and all of the other pay cable channels.
But then think about Woody Allen.who in his own way is the same as Wes.quirky.odd humorand how many great movies did woody have? Annie Hall comes to the top of anyone's list.but what would you pick as your 2nd? Woody produced lots of enjoyable quirky movies but not that many which are great.
So perhaps its that one movie Wes hasn't made yet which will define his career as a great film maker.of course he might have to stop making his type of movie which works so well as a beautiful snowglobe but might never be called "great"

I agree. You summed it up brilliantly.
He reminds me of something I once heard about directors. Most directors try to be very careful to not let their music or actors or any one thing overshadow their film, so people can enjoy the whole film. They try to balance all the talents that make up a movie, so nothing overwhelms everything else,
usually actors and actresses try to not be upstaged by their unknown colleagues and force them to under perform their roles, whilst they overact their roles, trying to take centre stage. Similarly some musicians will try to write scores, that overwhelm the film, so a lot of the time directors deliberately have the music be written to be underwhelming, to just be in the background in the subconscious.
now the best directors are able to tow this line brilliantly. They are able to manage the actors so old egos don't suppress the talents of the younger actors, they are able to manage the music so it can be brilliant and yet not overshadow the movie etc.
Wes Andersons seems to be unable to do this with his own ego. He drowns his films with his desire for quirkiness. Which overshadows everything else in the movie. A bit like Johnny Depp possibly (though he seems to be able to pull it off).
It's like a cook who use too much of one ingredient and then buries the taste and flavour of everything else in the dish. That's wes Anderson directing style. Its a bottle of quirky ketchup on a every dish, drowing everything.
Like the grand buddapest hotel, it's a nice quirky film. but he should have kept the sex hidden, and inferred as it clashed with the rest of the film. Just as he should have kept the quirkiness hidden in black humour with the final act. instead he drowned the viewer with it too much.

I do think he gets more credit than he deserves by being quirky, but I disagree that there is no depth or originality. I love The Darjeeling Limited, and Rushmore definitely has profound levels of "heart" to it.
A couple of his films do get bogged down (in my opinion) by Anderson's indulgence in "quirk," but they are usually only flawed because of this, never really ruined.
Let me put 16d0it this way: once or twice per film I find some scene or sequence, character or event, or maybe conversation or line of dialogue to be too smugly clever for its own good (hipster-style, baby!) but it only distracts me for a moment. I have never seen a film of his that I haven't ultimately enjoyed.

There's no real complexity or resonance that I can find.
Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited soundly disagree.
I think the problem is some people are so distracted by his shots and quirkiness, that they do the miss the complexity.
Can't stop the signal.

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If you had to recommend one GREAT Anderson movie for me to see him in all his glory, change my mind, and see the depth and complexity I'm missing, which would it be?
The Life Aquatic for me.
Mind you, it wasn't till the 3rd viewing that it completely won me over.

That depends on which ones you've seen. My recommendations would be The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel as those are typically the ones that win non-Anderson fans over. But if not then I guess he's just not your cup of tea. To each their own