Tim Burton is one of the most influential directors of our time. For over four decades, his dark-dreamy (horror) fairy tales the film world. In 1989, he even directed one of the pioneers of modern blockbuster cinema with Batman, while his macabre and lovingly told stories about outsiders like Edward Scissorhands have become an integral part of the film world.
Recently, the profile of the once so prominent filmmaker has faded. Although Burton started the 2010s with the biggest financial success of his career, the billion-dollar hit Alice in Wonderland, by the end of the decade his biggest blockbuster frustrationBurton later described the filming of Dumbo as “big horrible circus” and fled into the arms of Netflix.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: Tim Burton celebrates his cinema comeback with the Wednesday hype from Netflix behind him
The Netflix encounter is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, the fantasy series Wednesday, directed and produced by Burton, became the most viewed English-language original of the streamer and laid the foundation for the collaboration with Jenna Ortega. On the other hand, the impression that Burton only moves in the shadow of his former self was confirmed.
Here you can watch the trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice:
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Trailer 2 (German) HD
Without Wednesday, Burton’s new movie, Beetlejuice, would probably not have been possible. Last but not least, the Warner Bros. studio was ready to finally bury the project, which had been languishing in production hell for years, in April 2019 before the Wednesday hype brought a breath of fresh air into the matterBut does the long-awaited sequel really mark Burton’s return to strength?
At first glance, Beetlejuice is a triumph. After its Venice premiere, the film had a strong theatrical opening and has now grossed almost three times its budget. Critics and audiences are impressed: A legacyquel that combines the charm of the original with new faces – most notably Wednesday star Jenna Ortega – and frees Burton from autopilot mode.
Tim Burton is back… or is he? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice leaves me a little torn
I also had a lot of fun with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and was especially impressed by the huge chaos in the afterlife, where Burton can play to his strengths. infinitely fascinating worlds of images. Trap doors at passport control that lead straight to hell, emergency exits that hurl you into desert worlds filled with sandworms, and of course the cheerful Soul Train on the way to eternal nirvana.
As soon as the film switches to daylight, however, it moves frighteningly close to the interchangeable aesthetic of Wednesday, which limits Burton’s stylistic will to his superficial stimuli reduced and hardly creates a moment that really sucks me into the world. But that’s exactly what I want. I want to lose myself in spiral labyrinths that are so densely staged that there is no way out of the (nightmare) dream.
With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice I caught myself far too often falling into the Empty Netflix images and wondered if this is the price of Burton’s big screen comeback. It’s great that he’s back, but why doesn’t it feel as full anymore? 17 years have passed since Burton’s last masterpiece, Sweeney Todd, and I’m starting to fear that it will forever be his last.
I really want a new Tim Burton film that will completely captivate me again
Burton no longer has anything to prove to anyone. I do not expect every one of his films to be a masterpiece. What is a masterpiece anyway? No director makes one masterpiece after another. And even if we stick with that term, Burton has made enough of them to secure his place in Hollywood’s Olympus forever. Nevertheless, I no longer so fulfilled from the cinema.
That is what makes me so melancholic. That one of my favorite directors in the time when I most of him in the cinemais no longer at the height of his art. Has Burton really already said everything? Does he lack the resources? Can he not tell stories as well with digital images as he used to with analogue ones? Or am I clinging to a nostalgic version of a Burton film that never existed?
Cinema is changing, people who make films are changing and I am changing too. It is actually a miracle that there is so many overlaps that take me from the ravines of Gotham to the depths of a chocolate factory. I haven’t found any Burton films bad in recent years. I would even defend Dumbo at any time, although Burton himself would probably never do that.
What I can’t shake off is the feeling that I have missed a film every time I could have sunk even deeperinstead of thinking about similarities to color correction on Netflix or the question of whether Burton really just tells the same thing over and over again. Because actually he’s so good that you don’t even notice it and you spend hours dancing through snowflakes and lying in blooming fields full of daffodils.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been running since 12 September 2024 in German cinemas.