“Live people ignore the strange and unusual. I myself am strange and unusual.”
This observation, made by Winona Ryder’s character Lydia in the original 1988 “Beetlejuice” film, sums up Tim Burton’s approach to film making. He seeks out the unusual, giving the “weirdos” a voice, a place in entertainment where they can be related to. Burton creates a niche in the film industry that joins horror and cartoon qualities, two styles that are rarely put together. But has his popularity made the creepy aesthetic a money-making trend with no depth?
It is fair to note that Burton’s films draw a crowd. “Beetlejuice 2” grossed $110 million in just the first weekend after the release. However, his style remains the same, even as his popularity has increased.
“Beetlejuice 2” displays Burton’s distinctive depictions of the eerie and grotesque, starring many of the same actors he has used before to solidify his aesthetic. He attracts an audience through his imaginative visuals and horror-themed films. Burton features weird characters, including a dead bride, a pumpkin-headed king of Halloween and a trickster ghost with a mold problem. This most recent release emphasizes the grotesque, as countless ghosts appear on screen, missing half their bodies from shark attacks or being snacked on by piranhas. The dead bride of Beetlejuice — played by Monica Bellucci — appears to be stapled back together.
Are they the heroes or the villains in Burton’s films? That is for the individual to decide. I personally empathize with Emily in “Corpse Bride” and Jack in “Nightmare Before Christmas.” The star characters are strange and unusual, but still relatable. They struggle with being ostracized because of their unique appearances or stages in life and death. Though some of these characters are not quite human or alive, the connection Burton designs between them and the audience through their human experiences and emotions encourages the idea that they are not so different.
Three days after the release, I watched “Beetlejuice 2” in theaters and was swept into the fantastical reality that houses the characters. I cringed, flinched and laughed through Lydia’s struggle with her unwanted supernatural suitor and fragile relationship with Astrid, her daughter.
As the sequel begins, Lydia, the protagonist, has created a career and gained fame for her weirdness, fulfilling the stereotype that people can make money off the appeal of the unusual. She monetizes her unusual psychic abilities to talk to ghosts on a TV show. Although Lydia is viewed as a fraud, that is part of her appeal. Where the weird is, people go to mock. Lydia is speaking to the dead, but even her exploitive boyfriend doesn’t believe she is anything more than a lunatic who can earn him money. Burton then reintroduces the bizarre reality of “Beetlejuice.” He introduces a murderous love interest in the form of a regular teenage boy that attracts and deceives Lydia’s daughter, and, well… don’t say his name three times — that is what he wants — but he is a love interest too.
“Beetlejuice 2” is not an attempt to follow a trend that makes the strange and unusual digestible for a paying audience. The supernatural is not treated delicately, and death is too common and graphic to be comfortable. The easiest ending for most audiences would be when all the characters live, but Burton ends the movie with major characters dying. He also depicts his world in film with uncomfortably explicit details of gore and decay — which is a standard for many of his films by now. The sequel surpasses the first in this, as Burton expresses his unusual but beloved style while allowing the darker aspects of reality and fantasy to be combined and shown on screen.
Halloween is around the corner and Burton’s film plays perfectly into the approaching season: vivid shades of yellow, orange and red mark the film as well as Halloween décor: ghosts, skeletons and countless dead displaying their causes of demise in horrific — yet entertaining — detail. Michael Keaton’s reprisal of the titular character — despite his grotesque appearance — has an appealing charisma. I probably wouldn’t walk down the aisle with him, but he has a roguish charm.
When the freaks become cool, you know Burton has succeeded. Ryder said it best in her dedication to Tim Burton receiving his Hollywood Walk of Fame Star: “You made being a weird girl not just ok, but something to celebrate, and even kind of cool.”
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