The Decline of Tim Burton
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- čas přidán 28. 10. 2022
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SOURCES
Tom Breihan, “Batman changed how blockbusters look - and how Hollywood sold them”, The AV Club (2022).
Burton, Tim. Burton on Burton. Edited by Mark Salisbury, 2nd ed., Faber and Faber (2006).
Michael Goldman, “Down the Rabbit Hole” American Cinematographer (2010).
San Kashner, “The Class That Roared”, Vanity Fair (2014).
Tom McNichol, “Hollywood Knights” Monthly Portland (2009).
Scott Mendelson, “How Tim Burton Became Uncool,” Forbes (2019).
Christopher Ryder, "Alice in Wonderland - Press Conference with Tim Burton" Collider (2009). - Zábava
Hello! My friend Hannah and I started a podcast :) it's called Rehash, and it's all about social media phenomenons that once took the world by storm, only to be quickly forgotten! We're releasing episodes weekly, which you can find here (and wherever you get your podcasts): anchor.fm/rehashpodcast
Are you going to make a video discussing Wednesday?
👍👍👍👍
Your trippen people just restrict him from his amazing work Disney is good at that
Can you talk about Guillermo del Toro?
@Broey Deschanel where did you get your information? because it sounds like you just read it off of Wikipedia. just to let you know that they are not a reliable source because anyone can just go on there and write whatever they want.
I was a HUGE Burton fan, but as a Black person, I was VERY offended that he would never want a person who looks like me to soil his image of a perfect world. He goes out of his way to exclude anyone of color from his films. That turned me off real quick. Now, I rarely watch his films that I actually liked, and I have no interest in any of his new works. I’m not saying that a Black person needs to star in every film, but to not even have any as side characters or in the background takes a determination of exclusivity. (I acknowledge the exception of Mars Attacks, and that’s actually my favorite of his.) And, yes Tim has the right to create his art how he wants, I have the right not to support him anymore.
Same. Grew up watching and re-watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetle Juice, Batman… so disheartened by his statements😢
OOF
Bigggg same!
And his reasoning was just insane (his aesthetic doesn’t generally “call for” people of color), made me feel like in private he’s one of those racist goths I’ve spent 15 years arguing with online who says goth isn’t for Black people
It was disappointing...like black people will mess with your aesthetic?
All these movies about the "othering" of individuals based on group expectations and he didn't catch the irony of what he was saying there 🤦🏻♀️
He just never outgrew his "not like other girls"/"I'm more special because I am UNIQUE unlike the popular, well-adjusted kids" phase.
I hate that lollll as someone who has been fed those lines by males, my peers, etc. my whole life it IRKS me. There are billions of girls in the world, there is STATISTICALLY no way that I am that special.
@@reesafield7401 i think most of us went through that phase, I certainly did haha
It does seem that way. Everyone has the usual angst about school usually peaking within the first year of leaving. But then people tend to have a life to get on with beyond all that. It’s weird to me that he seems so stuck there. Surely in all the years since he went to school, he has had enough other experiences in life to move on or at least focus some of his art on them occasionally. I can’t tell if he just needs a massive amount of therapy or if it’s just, I hate to say it but, a bit pathetic really.
@@hollyro4665 He said at his class reunion how popular kids peaked in high school. Ironically he did not see how he did too as most outcasts eventually realize that popular kids are just as complex too.
@@kissarococo2459 yeah! His entire ideal of peaking and outcasts is built around Highschool. So when he says they’ve peaked it says more about his ideals than it does theirs. To him being on top in high school is as good as it gets so whatever their lives are now were never gonna live up to his standards of peaking. He also puts the outcast thing on a huge pedestal. His own personal ideal. And as a result he’s gonna think they failed in life unless they went on to reject societal norms and become just like him. He has no concept of them having their own dreams and ideals outside of his very rigid view of popular in Highschool or social outcast being all there is.
I read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. And I tried finding a comment mentioning it. But he erased all the gloom that the book really gave, all the color made it a weird fantasy world instead of the dreadful reality that has monsters and children who weren’t normal. The main love interest Emma is replaced to have the levitating ability even though her fire ability was significant through the books especially since it showed how fiery she is :/ ruin the whole fucking book for me. i was so hyped only for it to the opposite of everything i expected and there was so much potential for a trilogy movie that really went to the dark world of the peculiar children.
You'd think a source material with literal, official accompanying images would give him a good enough idea of the visual style to go for at least a little bit...
Honestly!! I remember when I saw the trailer, there was so many wrongs just by the trailer alone and the characters were either changed or scrapped.
For an artist whose aesthetic is goth and dark, this was a disappointment, and I lost my respect for him as an artist
Ah same, but my bias here is that I was never big into Burton. But I loved the Miss Peregrine's series, and was excited to see it on the big screen. But it was unfamiliar on screen, I didn't recognize many of the characters (especially Emma!) and the ending is....not for me, I guess. I decided then, his work isn't for me at all.
His adaptation of Big Fish was such a terrible version of that book as well.
I agree, expect for me it made be enjoy the books more. Probably because I wasn't previously a fan. After Miss P I also ended up doing a lot of research into Burton as a person and realised how awful he was. Might be biased though since my Autistic ass had Miss P turn into my biggest SpIn ever lol.
Edit: The books are my SpIn, not the movie :,))
I'm awful at explanations but to confirm, I hate the movie lol
Tim Burton's career reminds me of The Simpsons...counter-cultural and edgy for a while until the culture changes around them and they become the culture, whether they know it or not. The dog lost his teeth a long time ago and still thinks he's the toughest on the block, while anyone who's been around a while humors him out of affection because they still remember how he could bite.
I seriously love this comment.
That’s all I wanted to say, I just love the way you phrased this.
You deserve a pat in the back for this comment.
Yes, this is what I've been thinking, too.
wtf dont insult dogs out of your own ignorance what a shitty comparison
I've been thinking a lot lately about whether or not success is the death of creativity. Especially you initially started out making art really centered in the "common experience", if you will. That then the more successful you become, the more privileged your life will inevitably get, and can you fight your perspective changing for the worst.
@@kevinw712I think the terms artistic success, commercial success, and specifically Hollywood success need to be handled deftly in parsing that out
Danny Elfman helped Burton more than people are aware. Much of his best work was immortalized through the sound.
He practically wrote the script to Nightmare too. Well technically it was his girlfriend Caroline Thompson but her script was based largely on Elfman’s lyrics from the songs which were the first part of the movie that got made. And it’s clear if you compare the original poem to the song lyrics how much he influenced Burton’s characters, in particular Jack Skellington. Elfman wrote some movie scripts that he planned on directing and even got so far as to recording the demos (look up “Little Demons” and “The World of Jimmy Callicut” if you want to hear) before Disney scrapped his projects.
Take Elfman, Depp and Helena out of his movies and you don't really have much left tbh
Batman is carried almost entirely by the music
Just like Spielberg and John Williams.
I think they all bounce off each other they all use one another and it ultimately works
Fewer things annoy me more than when people credit Henry Selick's work directing Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline to Burton. The man has made good movies but those two aren't his
Thank you! I’m so tired of seeing TNBC be credited solely to Burton. Yes he created the original poem but literally every good thing about the movie was implemented by Selick. I love Selick’s work and he just created a movie that was released a few days ago, and I recommend it heavily.
same
@@jonathanlgill yea!
Burton did create the concept of Nightmare Before Christmas; the story, the world, and characters are mostly his ideas. Selick's technical mastery in stop-motion was vital in helping him realize these ideas, but I don't think he deserves all the credit either. All films are collaborations, and that film would not be what it is without the great work of Burton, Selick, Caroline Thompson, Danny Elfman, and many others.
Burton had nothing to do with Coraline though so anyone who says that is just confused.
To me when thinking about the creative team behind The Nightmare before Christmas, multiple names come to mind but the first one is Danny Elfman. I just feel so much of his soul in the work, especially in his performance of Jack.
I think there is a larger issue that he ties into well. In the 80s there were tons of movies about nerds, especially about them being outsiders that were picked on and bullied but in reality were the best people in the film (according to the film's logic I mean). But today the nerds and geeks won the pop culture wars which is why things like comic book movies dominate. The outsiders became the mainstream and it turns out they aren't any better than the "normies" they replaced. Burton saw himself as an outsider but now people like him are the ones running the show and who content is made for. He just doesn't realize it.
... and this (false) feeling of still being an outsider that "normies" want to erase leads into things like gamer gate where "gamers" attribute women and POC getting into video games as something malicious rather than video games just being a very mainstream thing in the 2010s.
@@MCDrenggamergate was actually about conflics of interest in videogame media.
And btw: the "nerd community" of today is 90% filled with "normies" who are in just because it went mainstream, the "real nerds" are the ones pissed off because the franchises they loved were butchered in order to appeal a bigger audience (and bullied for this).
@@scaccuthe "toxic fans" and "gatekeepers"
"You don't like us changing the thing that made the thing you like so special? Have you considered that you're racist or sexist?" -Corporate Media
@scaccu
If you want to pretend that harassing Dragon Age 2's writer and lying about a Depression Quest review that doesn't exist is journalistic ethics?
That's a reflection on you. Gamer Gate was as pathetic as the Comic Gate crew screaming about diversity in X-men.
@@scaccu
Gamergate was started because of a fake article that does not exist. It was a wholly fraudulent harassment campaign.
This is just speculation, but I think Burton is largely a visual arts and spectacle kind of director, but that most of his better films when it comes to storytelling can be largely attributed to the people he worked with. He’s not a good director, he’s a good art director, and him trying to fill the shoes of a director has its pitfalls and inconsistencies.
I feel the same way about Baz Luhmann
I think you’re both correct!
This makes total sense!
@fernandomaron87 good song though.
That and he never grew out of the goth pozer faze. He likes an aesthetic and thinks it makes him an outsider but it just makes him like every other artist with a quirky sense of style. He likes the feeling of being the outcast but doesn't actually have anything to say. And from all accounts if he ever does figure out what he really thinks he'll probably be a fascist. I get Rodger Water vibes from him, it might be a mental disease actually, artist that goes with the outsider approach always seems to get fascist in old age. I mean Hitler never got to be the artist he wanted to be originally.
He never was counter culture, he just was counter imagery. He’s adopting the aesthetic and nothing more.
Eggs-fucking-actually
I would say he was counter culture but without being in-your-face or political about it. You just had to notice it.
He was counterculture. Counter white-christian culture.
@@darnellmajor8895 You can't be counter culture without being either of those things, the first is making yourself palatable to the culture you intend to counter, which inevitably makes you a part of that culture by ensuring your ability to be accepted by it, and the latter is literally what counter culture is. You cannot be counter culture without knowing the culture you are countering, and that includes the political landscape!!! That's why counter culture movements see resurgences during times of political unrest, because politics shape society and society shapes culture and counter culture attacks all three of those. If you are not doing both of those things, then as the OC said, you are just taking the aesthetic and nothing more. Counter culture is literally "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, and I will not shut up about it" (affectionate)
@@someperson2159 Was he??? Because if he were counter white-christian culture, why is everyone white and american or british (two cultures with dominant christian religions)? Like the number of nonwhite characters in tim burton movies can be counted on one hand; 1. So idk, seems pretty pro-white christian culture to me, it's just moreso that he doesn't like certain individuals. He's not against a culture, he's against the people who made fun of him in school.
EDIT: Sorry I did not realize that this comment was sarcasm.
"Do you think being a father will influence your film making?"
"No, but I do think my films will be darker because of it."
My dude. Tim. Timmy. Timothy. _That means being a father is influencing your film making._
My dude. My man. Tim. Timmy. Timothy. Timster. Timothy jimothy. The big J. J man. *That means being a father is influencing your film making*
@@offsewingdragons9142 Thank you this made me smile the biggest smile.
So you figured out the joke, good job😐👍
I think this line actually illustrates his pubescent-like overall meaningless rebelliousness very well. "Am I going to make more innocent movies because I'm a father now? No... Actually, since you asked, I'll make them *darker* out of spite. That's what you people get for assuming things about *me*, the utterly unpredictable."
@@chicka-boom7540 Peak contrarian: Dies of asphyxiation after someone told him he needs to breathe air and he held his breath in a fit of pique to prove them wrong.
I remember there was a time when Tim Burton wasn't a brand. I mean, sure, he had his favourite actors and he had a distinctive style that he used a lot, but you never really knew what to expect from him. I can't imagine modern Burton doing something like Mars Attacks! or Ed Wood.
Edward scissor hands will always be a favourite of mine. The score, the sets, the aesthetics, the story. There's so many of his earlier films that are just wonderful. Beetlejuice, The original Frakenweenie (never saw the full length) Edward scissor hands, I like sleepy hollow, corpse bride, nightmare was his producing and story not his directing so idk if it counts here. Mars attacks! Is so funny.
In RedLetterMedia’s video on Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, they compare scenes from the original (Burton’s debut!!) with what they imagine he’d do now. Even though they’re only describing what they imagine it would look like now, it feels soooo spot on since his visual style has evolved into almost a parody itself. The ‘Burton’ aesthetic (which honestly with the rise of CG I think has gotten pretty ugly lol) is so recognizable that I think it takes away from the films where it once added character. It doesn’t feel like there’s any intention or care in any of his aesthetic choices now.
I think Wendell & Wild was a big “screw you” to Tim Burton from Henry Selick and Jordan Peele. His exclusion of people of color contradicts the core beliefs he supposedly holds. Peele and Selick show you that not only does diversity fit into that world of the “whimsical outcast” - people of color have been involved in alternative subcultures always. The soundtrack featuring many black punk artists - newer like Big Joanie, or older like the nod to Pure Hell - really solidified that point too.
How ironic your complaining about Burtons exclusion of non whites (which he doesn’t even do btw have you never seen Wednesday?) while celebrating Peele who openly doesn’t cast white people as any kind of lead or non villain role, the only difference is your delusional views consider it fine to exclude whites people but never poc. Such lines of thinking will only ensure racism continues. Jordan Peele fans HATE white people, Burtons fans don’t hate anyone
Well there's no such thing as black goths. Sorry. Goth is a European thing.
@@Uncle_Ruckus_Wow what to expect from this account
@@COrraThereal0ne where does goth come from? Europe.
@@COrraThereal0ne trying to mix hip-hop culture with tim burtony goth is a dumb combination. For as much as a one trick pony tim Burton has become Jordan Peele is a hack for windell and wild. Trying to rip off tim Burton but make a black version.
As soon as I got to the part where Tim is talking about his high school reunion, I knew where this was going. Some people just never grow up past 18 and it’s not always the jocks and cheerleaders.
Yeah, the way he described feels icky to me, idk how to explain it well
Dude became a multimillion dollar Hollywood director and he still held grudges over high school. Is it safe to say he might be a tad insecure?
@@DC_let_the_Waynes_be_happy Nah, I understand. He comes off as smug and petty. “Oh looks at these people now; they’re not as successful as me. They only peaked in high school.” Like ffs, you’re all adults now. You’ve had time to mature and develop, so let bygones be bygones.
@@parkchimmin7913 all he did was prove that they still live in his mind rent-free even decades after they graduated
@@edithputhy4948 EXACTLY
This video went hard. I’ve had trouble figuring out why I find him so conflicting, but this laid it out perfectly.
I thought you were a bot for a hot second, but it’s actually the man himself!
Wahey! I love your content man
Hey dude, are you still stuck in that cave?
@@djdreampunk7885 He's out bro he's lost on brown mountain rn
Yeah, I totally agree
Sleepy Hollow is actually brilliant. It’s a tribute to the Hammer horror films, who took classic stories like Dracula and Frankenstein and loosely adapted them. It’s a great tribute.
This also explains the stellar character actor cast who clearly 100% got what sort of film they were in. 😂
It's in my top 5, along with Edward Scissorhand. 🖤 They can try to trash him but he's mega successful, talented & creative visionary and that's precisely WHY channels such as this try to horn in on his reputation. They have an agenda and are desperate to tear him down. He's still loved by many and his films speak for themselves. They've made substantial profit and are still a lot better than most other Hollywood garbage. They just want those they can dictate to, satisfy their race obsessed agenda, political agenda, or they are gonna try to attack and defame you. It's laughable because Tim Burton will forever be in people's conscious & hearts, for one film or another.
Yeah I actually disagree with her take on Sleepy Hollow; also is it just me.. or did she edit the scenes with Johnny Depp & Cristina Ricci, to make look more awkward than what it actually is? 🧐
Agree 100% Sleepy Hollow is a masterpiece It is our Halloween go to movie & the only thing wrong is that there was never a sequel to it as suggested (?) at the end 🤔😃😎
I liked it,but the criticism is valid, Burton turned the villain into the hero successfully and made a hit movie we enjoyed, but it showed he doesn't like the source material and fucks with it and sometimes that doesn't work
Excellent analysis. I think seeing Alice in Wonderland was what triggered my plummeting opinion of Tim Burton. The 1951 cartoon always evoked such strong feelings of alienation and disorientation for me, with every new character encountered (even the relatively friendly ones) making Alice feel like more and more of an unwelcome outsider. Wonderland was a world without any clear order or direction to it, so Alice's (and by extension our own) presence there builds tension. I'm not typically a purist when it comes to retelling stories, but when you strip all that away, then what's the point of it? There are countless ways to compellingly present a "Mad" hatter, but reimagining him as a "Very Understandably Aggrieved" Hatter just isn't one of them.
agreed, i feel like giving a backstory/explanation to anything in wonderland kinda ruins the whole thing. i don't watch an alice in wonderland movie to hear about how the mad hatter is secretly the sad hatter, i'm there to watch weird stuff happen and have fun with it
I watched another live action Alice in wonderland and I felt the same way.
@@AoiUsagiOtokoIt wasn't backstory more like sequel because Alice is to remind herself that she was there and who she was there. But it didn't have charm of the first book. It really felt like Burton only read summary of these books and thought let's make a movie.
Well the original was written by a pedophile so it could use a little deconstructing.
Same, Burton's Alice rips off both his own Chocolate Factory and American McGee's Alice
I'm a massive Alice in Wonderland nerd and was kind of saddened by how much Burton's adaptation ignored all of the interesting, potentially deep or dark elements of the original novel, and went for a weirdly generic hero's journey/girlboss story. It made me start to reanalyze the films he made that I adored growing up, and I'm just so glad to see someone voice my criticisms of his work and so much more with way more depth and clarity than I could pull off. You put words to how empty his more recent films, especially his adaptations feel. Thanks for this, it helps give a bit of closure.
While I do like his work, I always found that bizarre too. To be frank, I think American McGee’s Alice games have a more Burton feel than Burton’s Alice in Wonderland adaptation itself. They delve into just how twisted the source material could be, all the while offering a mystery within our world outside that of Wonderland. If you want a darker take on the tale, I’d recommend giving Alice in Wonderland: Madness Returns a look. I will say it handles the like of SA and other touchy subjects, but it’s a really good game and story to boot.
I'm glad American McGee's Alice games exist because what Burton did didn't satisfy me as HUGE alice in wonderland fan (of the book, and i also loved disney’s animated version of it as a kid and as a teen too!)
That's how I felt about his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film. I know people say Roald Dahl would've like his interpretation (especially over the 1971version, which Dahl hated), but even so it isn't as faithful to the book as people say. It's way more Burton than Dahl.
I think it needed a better screenwriter who understood the material
Alice in Wonderland was ridiculous because like, he absolutely managed to make a saccharine, moralistic, by the books and uninteresting tale out of a book that is fundamentally about not that. Carol wrote with a lot of religious metaphor and a desire to teach actual lessons, but had an idea that children needed to have lessons taught in a more indirect fashion to open up their mind to things in a non-patronizing way.
Comically, Burton turned a book obsessed with not patronizing children into one that patronizes everyone that watches it.
I rewatched Beetlejuice recently and was struck by how sweet and family oriented it is at its core. The Maitlands are a childless couple hounded by their nosy local realtor into selling their gorgeous home because "it's too big for just the two of them," and when they die, said home is sold to a couple of neurotic New Yorkers who seriously neglect their teen daughter. By the end of the film, the Maitlands and Deetzes become a kind of blended family to co-parent Lydia. It's all very cute and I love it.
I think that's one of the reasons why it holds up better, like Big Fish, it has a more meaningful emotional core to it.
Beetlejuice is the only Tim Burton film I've continued to enjoy into adulthood. Nightmare Before Christmas interested me as a kid briefly mainly for the aesthetic. Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow I grew out of by my early teens. Big fish was interesting but by then I noticed that he stuck to his style so much his movies seemed repetitive. And it annoyed me that his main characters and their love interests were mostly the same types of personalities and relationship dynamic.
@Anti SJW I adored the cartoon. Loved how he took Lydia to the underworld where he was from. It feels like a fever dream now.
@@blackdiopside5261 There needs to be billboards across the world telling people that Nightmare Before Christmas was WRITTEN by Tim Burton, but DIRECTED by Henry Selick! There's a reason why that movie was so good and I guarantee that it wasn't because of Tim Burton, he just got all the credit.
I’ve heard “they peaked In high school” argument so often. Not only from Burton. And as a looser I’m gonna go out and say it’s usually NOT TRUE. Yeah, maybe some jocks are stuck in their suburbias town. Maybe some mean girls got accidentally pregnant and stuck there also.
But most popular kids (even bullies) are able to use their social skill to go further in life. They adapt well in any company, they party, they make useful connections, they land a great job positions because they are energetic and charismatic and pretty.
I was a looser and a loner in high school I’m still a loner and a looser. But I don’t want to be pathetic and try to make myself feel better at expense of someone else’s misery. Bully from my class became alcoholic? That sucks. Mean girl became teen mom? I hope she’s doing fine.
And if a bully from my high school became crazy rich and successful I’m not gonna curse them. There’s a lot of unpleasant rich people. That’s how capitalism usually is.
Tim is childish in that regard. He’s not a outsider anymore. He’s a crazy rich guy with hot wife and nice kid. He’s respected in industry. And so far I haven’t seen him doing anything THAT controversial??
If anything at all.
Loser
Exactly. I'm so tired of this narrative. Most popular kids become successful in their life. People like Tim Burton are usually the exception to the rule. It's extremely difficult to make it in Hollywood. Many talented artists are struggling to make a decent salary to survive.
31:49 "You can't just have a funny guy in a bow tie who's whimsical."
The 11th doctor: ceases to exist.
One of the problems with Burton is he became someone who stuck to his comfort zone and never tried to grow or challenge himself. His stuff was novel at first but over time, as people grew used to his style, his shortcomings became clear. He made the same film over and over again.
The constant focus on feeling like an outsider feels tiresome and immature after a point, particularly when he makes big-budget films that have obviously commercial leanings.
He's ultimately someone that comes across as self-indulgent.
That's my feeling too. He's got himself locked into his "weird, misunderstood outsider" schtick in a way that probably isn't psychologically healthy and prevents his work from developing.
He’s a one trick pony just like Sam Levinson.
Paused the vid at the halfway mark to comment on this. To connect this with the point made about Burton being uncomfortable with Big Fish's emotional scenes set in reality: if he learned how to sit with the discomfort of raw emotional honesty, I think he might still have a shot at breaking through the box he's made for himself. Imo there will always be a need to tackle topics of how people are othered and become outsiders, but as you've highlighted, he keeps on making the same film. Surely there are other ways, angles, and perspectives available for that particular theme that can make it interesting?
Tim Burton... Aesthetic is indeed a curse for him... :(
Misunderstood outsiders need representation, too.
It's hilarious to me that he mentioned LOTR when talking about over-using tech... Those movies have so many minute, practical details that, unless you watch the special features, you'd never have noticed but in the end it made the films SO incredible.
Yeah a very strange franchise to pick as an example of high tech films
@@whalesharko4465 Seriously, Star Wars was right there, even if many of its practical effects in the prequel trilogy are very understated compared to the oversaturated CG effects
@@LeoMidori Yeah exactly, star wars prequels and sequels are very high tech
Although the OG is mostly puppets from what I know, I don't know that much tbh
@@LeoMidori as a star wars fan since i was 3 , when i hear that "overuse cgi" arguement it makes me chuckle....because the prequels actually had less digital effects than the original trilogy
Tim Burton kinda reminds me Shyamalan, started put solid with good premises and a solid style, got praised for it, and just. Kept. Doing. It. While believing himself to be some fantastic and misunderstood autuer. His early work was solid and fun, but his inability to change and evolve throughout the years and his teenage mentality of "no one understands me I'm an outsider" that's continued well into his life has caused his work to stagnate and become predictable.
Also, I personally love Sleepy Hollow simply because it's so campy and goofy and over the top, it's a so bad it's good movie for me.
The difference is, Burton made a wealth of good movies during his early success in the 80s and 90s, Where Shyamalan made 2 good movies during that early success. The cracks were already showing for Shyamalan by the time of his 3rd movie, where for Tim, the cracks only started to appear around the late 90s and early 2000s, when Tim had already made a wealth of critically acclaimed hits. and by the 2000s, his output had become much more sparse, and the films that were produced were more inconsistent. from a decent film like Sweeney Todd, to a great film like Big Fish, to a mediocre film like Charlie and the Chocolate factory, and a bad film like planet of the apes. It's only around the 2010s were his output became consistently bad, in no-small-part due to Disney whipping out boat-loads of money for him to churn out their soulless remakes. kind of ironic he started as an animator at Disney, and the fact that that he complained about the factory-worker mentality. In other words, he became another cog in the system, all in all, he's just another Brick in the Wall.
Agreed.
Most people outlive their talent if they live long enough.
Tim had a very good run before he ran dry.
Actually really like Sleepy Hollow. The art direction and setting were great and I actually like Depp's performance.
I don't think it's top tier Burton but I like it too. That exact thing Broey said about the tone - that it's too scary for kids but too goofy for adults - is what I like about it. I'm not a huge fan of horror movies but this one gives me good atmosphere without being unpleasantly scary for my tastes and some good chuckles as well (every moment Christopher Walken is onscreen is hilarious, campy gold).
It really doesn’t capture the feeling of the novella whatsoever and basically makes up its own plot.
@@charlestonson2200 I didn't read it so I wouldn't know plus at this stage in Burton's career it was well established that if he takes on a project, it would be "a Burton film" TM.
@@charlestonson2200that’s why it’s called a “retelling” or “adaptation”. A movie exactly like the story would be a bore to watch as that story has been beaten with a stick for over one hundred years.
@@HabitualJoker True but it’s an extremely loose adaptation, hence why I said it doesn’t capture the feeling. I don’t think a more faithful adaptation would have necessarily been a bore, there’s still a lot of wiggle room to make it unique. I don’t hate Tim Burton’s version but it certainly isn’t one of his strongest films. I do enjoy the over-the-top Hammer style and I’d say its one of the films greatest strengths.
The way he lost his touch really hurts my inner child. Sleepy Hollow was elite to me growing up.
I remember watching that movie solely for my crush Christina Ricci.
omg hi king
HARD same.
You, Wendigoon and Broey should collab!
Sleepy Hollow will always have a place in my heart, because the art direction is immaculate. I don't care that the story doesn't make sense, the costuming and sets are right at the perfect edge of historical peppered with fantasy. I wish that he had done Sweeney Todd exactly like that and not in the stripey-sock mall goth style we got.
i always accredited his downfall to del toro becoming a household name as well. someone who almost has the same identity of being outcasted for who they were, but del toro writes it better because he’s not afraid of being emotional like burton was. del toro made macabre beautiful & heartbreaking & comforting all at once which i always felt burton really failed at
I think Del Toro's success is caused by his empathy: he greatly emphasizes with all his characters, even the villains. In "Pan's Labyrinth," he could've written the General as heartless and cold and with no purpose but that of being a villain, but he didn't: the General has his personality, his malice and evilness is not something innate, but rather, something that his traumatic past gave him. This doesn't excuse him, but it makes him a far more rounded out character than any other villain. The same can be said about the Sharpe Siblings in "Crimson Peak."
NO> BURTON got way tooooooooooooooooooooo mixed up with the organization that "WALT" created. MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!
DEL TORO IS A FABULOUS DIRECTOR.
@@myrtaleellery nicely put
And Guillermo has this personal trait of not demeaning others people work just because it's popular. He appreciates every form of art and entertainment. He always talks about the otherness as he calls it but in a very philosophical and respectful way and not just in a superficial manner which is what I think Burton. When you watch an interview with Guillermo you feel like you're understanding the world in a magical way, like if he was giving you a hug, when I watch an interview with Burton I just feel like he's mad.
A lot of people dislike Burton's work nowadays and although I understand why I personally can't help but appreciate his work for being essentially 'goth camp'. Sure, there have been some flops, but even the 'flops' I have enjoyed, mainly because he is absolutely excellent with kooky visuals, that's something I love.
Of course a story that evokes strong emotions or is layered in a profound way would be ideal but to me Burton has always in a way been the Disney of spooky and freaky themes.
Honestly some of my favorite films of his are not at all universally liked, I still enjoy them though purely for the visual appeal and as an artist (illustration specifically) that really does matter to me.
And Sleepy Hollow in particular I greatly enjoy precisely because it is a marriage between dark visuals/horror and a certain level of kookiness, it is 100% goth camp.
I agree with this. ^.^
Where is goth camp? I would like to go there
@@Watdotsright next to band camp😉👌
Loved the analysis. But shocked you didn’t bring up Sweeney Todd. Arguably his best and one that perfectly encapsulates the tale and themes of the original source material. That film was made with so much love and understanding by Burton and is often overlooked. It is also incredibly filmed and crafted. Hauntingly beautiful.
No one on earth argues that Sweeney Todd is his best, no one. It's 100% awful.
@@alittlebitgone clearly not everybody has your opinion
@@alittlebitgone Your opinion is wrong and my opinion is right.
Also remember that Stephen Sondheim was there guiding Tim on what to do.
@@alittlebitgone Mate, you can hold your opinion, but just know that you're on a very, very empty boat with it.
Burtons feeling of being an outsider and outcast is interesting since throughout his career he has admited on not wanting to improve on the lack of diversity in his films (which is a shame because it’s not even his movie extras are any different from the main cast.) Which is interesting because he’s now become the person that casts outcasts aside when he is so vocal on how that has affected him.
@@treborkroy5280 sorry, poor choice of words. I mean “improve on the lack of diversity” fix in a sense
@@treborkroy5280 People bruh
@@treborkroy5280 calm down trebor
@@treborkroy5280 not reading allat
@@treborkroy5280 stfu 🙄 omg other people exist and it isn't to much to ask for us to be represented in popular film.
so funny how he claimed that all of his peers seemed to peak in high school, and yet here he is, all these years later, reliving the same traumas and themes that he hasn't been able to let go of since his adolescence. truly a full circle moment, although he doesn't appear to have realized it
That’s what I was thinking! It’s seems like he’s barely grown at all from his teenage self.
That's what happens when you self-isolate. You don't really grow or learn as a person. It's unfortunate but I still support him because you can tell he's a good person at heart, just doesn't seem to realize his anger and bitterness doesn’t comes from being an outcast(He's a lot more accepted than he realizes). It comes from other aspects of life. I think he is depressed. I used to think a similar way. And he's not a role model but he definitely inspired younger me to be more myself and realize that not everything is black and white.
@@Bard420 Could you define just a bit what you mean by self-isolation?
I ask because I think that people can grow when they are alone IF they do not shut the world out and remain critical of themselves to a reasonable extent - would that be classified as someone who "self-isolates" or is that something different in your opinion?
@@Arcaryon By self-isolating, I mean someone who shuts the world out and remains critical. When I got really depressed, I became angry at the world because of some things I experienced that were out of my control as a child. Obviously I’ve grown a lot since then, but I wasn’t able to start until I accepted that sometimes bad things happen in life for no reason other than being at the right place, at the wrong time. And also that it wasn’t other people making my life miserable. It was a mixture of lots of various things.
I see Tim Burton as being kind of stuck in this mentality that he’s an “outsider” who will never be accepted, and when you feel like an outsider, you’re naturally going to wonder why you are so different from everyone else. If you have a poor self image or poor self esteem, this can turn into a negative thought pattern about yourself.
If your self esteem/self image is alright(like you don’t feel bad about yourself), it may turn into resentment because “Why can’t they see that I’m just like them?” Which can escalate into, “Fine, I don’t need you guys anyway.”
I imagine Tim Burton as being the latter. A guy who feels like an outsider, and is probably, to some extent, maybe a little depressed. But I’m not saying that as if it is fact, that’s just my personal observation based on what I know and what I have seen.
So I kind of see it as, Tim Burton is a guy who self-isolated, and became a little resentful of those who didn’t accept him and/or bullied him. Nothing wrong with that. The only thing is, to me it looks like dude never accepted that people do accept him these days because he made it cool to be an outsider, so he’s still carrying around that same resentment, with nowhere for it to go but into his movies and such.
Because he can’t move forward, he isn’t able to grow from his experiences. He hasn’t learned anything. He can’t improve because he hasn’t accepted that there is a problem in the first place, or he doesn’t know how to deal with negative feelings. Or maybe he’s just content. But he isn’t opening himself up to new ideas.
Mental health wasn’t prioritized as much when he was up and coming, at least as far as I’m aware, so it’s not a diss at him at all. I don’t really expect him to be educated in those areas.
@@lujorom9172 i am still a fan of his....i actually read the superman script kevin smith wrote for tim burton, and saw storyboards.....as a superman and tim burton fan i loved it, he didnt shy away from making brainic (my fave superman villian) a dark and scary villian that he was in the comics and lex was going to merge with him that shit was badass and definatley would of scared people (think the superman 3 robot morphing scene but more graphic)
....i even dug nicholas cage as superman with the silver age longer hair superman arc look and he was still gonna be the small town farm boy who was akward as clark...which nicholas was perfect for ...
but warner bros threw him under the bus
Looking at him and his work. Only this comes to mind.
It's ok to be Daria at the adolescences stage of your life. Being Daria at 30-50 is a whole other thing.
Kinda like Kevin Smithee: still with the Jay and Silent Bob thing in his 50s...
I'm very confused by this comment. What is Daria supposed to become in her 30s-50s? Of course everyone changes over time, but what aspects of Daria's life/behavior would be so unacceptable in a middle aged person?
@@lashermayfair0 Daria, as much as I love and relate to her, is definitely not always a good person and it's definitely her own doing half the time. And that's the point of the show. If you watch the show, there are many times when Daria insults someone harshly to their face and makes quick judgements for really no good reason. She's done it to Jodie and Brittany pretty consistently throughout the series despite the fact that, for the most part, they're often approaching her positively and passively. I don't think the person that commented before meant she's some soul-sucking piece of shit character, the whole point of the show is that Daria has to learn that even if she doesn't care about conforming to a society she deems shallow that people are more complex than she gives them credit for and that SHE herself is more complex than she even understands (ex: her feelings for Tom and Trent, the episode where she gets contact lenses, the many times she's assumes that just because she feels like something is shallow that it doesn't mean Jane thinks it's shallow, her relationship with Quinn and her parents, etc). What the commenter means is that in order to make meaningful relationships and experiences, you have to let yourself grow and change the way you look at the world. Otherwise, you're just stuck and frozen in time by your own flaws and limits.
@@kateseegar1100one scene in Daria really stuck out to me, its where they watch childhood tapes and little Daria starts screaming all upset about Quinn getting all the cake or whatever. It really put it into perspective: we're not really meant to think Daria is always cool and right. She can be deeply petty and mean for no good reason. But theres also a good part of her: she's actually deeply moral and a good person underneath all those sarcasm quotes. She has good reasons to dislike the System, but a lot of the time people who really mean no harm to anyone is also a target of her anger. I always liked this nuanced approach - in the future, i think she'll learn to recognize when people are just kind of dim witted followers without any sort of ulterior motive to harm anyone, and when they're actually malicious.
I fell in love with alice in wonderland after reading the book and watching the 1951 movie adaptation of it. When burton announced his take on the story, I was excited but after actually seeing it… it wasn’t bad BAD but it lacked a lot.. to say the least. It‘s a shame because the actors were amazing but the overall movie just wasn‘t..
also Henry Selick is a legend - Coraline set this fact in stone.
great video!
Tim Burton's version was an antythesis of these books. It was like someone just read summary of these books and decided to make a movie. But the rest of the video I don't know what she complains about
I realized about halfway through Alice and Wonderland that Burton lost his magic.
And honestly, Coraline and James and the Giant Peach compared to Frankenweenie and Corpse Bride made me realize that Henry Selick was the stopmotion magician. I love Burtons OG characters, but Selick's taste is IMPECCABLE.
Hearing Burton say that POC's don't have a place in his work was actually heartbreaking. But then Selick responded by making Wendell and Wild with Jordan Peele. Further cementing his status as an absolute legend 🖤🖤
Tim Burton had nothing to do with Coraline, it is a book written by Neil Gaiman. The film was directed by Henry Selick.
I LOVE Coraline
I think there's actually a common point of division here. It appears Laika were technically involved in Corpse Bride but they also were involved in Paranorman and Coraline. They proved that when it came to stopmotion, the people Burton had worked with took those lessons and ran with them while Burton made Frankenweenie which felt like self-parody at times and took a turn on its moral in the last few minutes.
I had a sort of similar experience in the theater, however it didn’t make me question if he lost his magic, it made question if it was ever there in the first place.
Well said!
When creator Maxwell Atoms (of Billy and Mandy fame) criticized Burton's live-action Alice as "robo-dreck" and the embodiment of "story math" that he hates about the "Save the Cat" formula, I can clearly see why. Unlike Burton, he seems to have been emotionally invested in Alice, enough to be personally worked up after watching the new film. As for Burton, the difference between Alice and Edward is that the former is a girl, the latter is a "loner guy" like him and "loner guys" like him cannot see women as anything other than the alien, unattainable cheerleader from high school.
Ugh and its hollow, superficial attempt to be… I wouldn’t even say feminist, more like “girl-power-y” just falls so, so flat for that very reason
On a similar note, that last sentence made me realize why a lot of male film critics love Hocus Pocus and hate Halloweentown. They can relate to Hocus Pocus’s awkward virgin teen boy protagonist, but doubt Marnie’s status as a weirdo. Heck, even the Nostalgia Critic called Marnie “the cheerleader from American Beauty”, which makes your statement on Tim Burton ring even more true. Also, do you have a link showing Maxwell’s criticisms?
I have to agree. I loved Burton's Alice on a first watch, and I can credit it with helping grow my genuine love for the book. However, as time has passed and I have read and watched more adaptations of Wonderland, I realized I have a lot of problems with the portrayal of Alice's character in many of them. Especially Burton's. I think directors and writers assume that Alice must be boring to make everyone else stand out. As a result, Alice ends up being a footnote in a world that she created. I know everyone compares Burton's Alice to American McGee's Alice, but I think it's worth pointing out the portrayal of Alice herself. Alice in the video game gets angry, is allowed to make jokes and banter, and has a very dark world revolving entirely around her recovery from survivor's guilt. Alice in Burton's movie starts vaguely rebellious (in the most anachronistic and shallow ways), is dragged through the plot by other characters with minimal opinion, and ends up with somehow less personality than she had at the beginning. I don't blame the actress for this, because I know she is wonderful in other films. Burton's direction seemed to boil down to looking wide eyed and mildly perturbed at everything. Even the animated film by Disney gave her more to do than that.
@@Snips.Snails.Fairytales That's so true ! Burton's Alice doesn't emote at all, no shock, no surprise, no anger or anything... That was so bizarre and really doesn't make anyone watching this movie invested with her story or her struggles, it feels mostly like a tour of Wonderland. I also really couldn't get past how Burton's Alice in Wonderland made the main outcast, who happens to be a woman, the villain of Wonderland and how the Queen of Heart's head size was the butt of the joke throughout the movie and brought up by every "good guy"... I couldn't believe the irony of this coming from a so-called "outcast" who has always shown nothing but great compassion for his male outcast characters...
@@camilletorres-kelly628 it is well known that Doug does not hold a particularly well informed opinion on women
A lot of people miss the point of Alice and Wonderland. There is no point. It's just a girl traveling and learning how to grow up. It doesn't need to be darker and it doesn't need to be explained. Wonderland is unexplainable and people are just weird. You don't need a reason to be odd just as Alice in Wonderland doesn't need to be any deeper than it already was
Also I would like to add that Alice in Wonderland isn't an adaptation, It's a sequel.
I have to say Sleepy Hollow is actually one of my most favorite of his movies - but it always left me wishing it was better executed. I liked the new take on the entire story but I wish it was a little more succinct in execution and I wish the editing was less sloppy. also, yeah, the backstories...we could really have done with less tragic backstories for everyone in it. it really does feel like the beginning of the long spiral downward for him.
the "Wonka's a complicated character" quote is so ridiculous, I almost thought it was sarcastic. Wonka is apart of the spectacle. why *shouldn't* he be "just a weird guy"???
Imagine a version of Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure with an extra 20 minutes tacked on at the end where Pee Wee reconciles with the abusive father who wouldn't let him say silly words as a child.
You hit the nail on the head, this is exactly what I said, down to you thinking that the quote was nearly sarcastic. "Wonka is just this whimsical guy with no background". . . . well YEAH, the movie isn't about him, we're not thinking about his back story.
I think Mr Burton was catching up on another trend here, which is taking beloved characters and trying to give them depth via an unnecessary tragic backstory. Didn't that become a staple of disney movies very soon?
@@kseniav586 oh so its his fault. I can't say I'm not surprised
UPDATE: Burton announced a few days ago that he likely won't continue to work with Disney, expressing his dislike with how homogenized their output has become and stating, ""I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus and I needed to escape." So that's a hopeful turn :)
Also - I'm considering doing a video in the future on Henry Selick and his influence on children's films, because I rewatched Coraline recently and, wow, that man is a treasure. He is first and foremost the man who brought Nightmare to life, so he really deserves a video all on his own.
Lastly - this video is a bit different from many of my other videos in that it's much more opinion heavy, and rooted in my own personal relationship to Burton's work. I am not trying to tell anyone they aren't allowed to like the films I criticize, only to draw attention to a trend that myself and others I've spoken to have noticed with him.
CORRECTION: Charlie returns an everlasting gobstopper not a fizzy lifting drink (something I realized way too late into editing in a tight deadline and could not fix unfortunately).
I knew while making this what Sleepy Hollow was a fan favourite. Again, why I say this video is based on personal opinion. I watched it for the first time this year with some friends, and maybe there was no nostalgic connection, we really didn't like it at all! We also all found Ichabod's mom to be bizarrely s*xualized considering all of the scenes she occupies are with a child who is meant to be her son. The camera focuses on her exposed chest for very long amounts of time, intercut with shots of Ichabod's smiling face looking up at her. The subtext was pretty easy to draw for all of us - and I'm not someone who typically reads into things so crudely. I don't think our initial reaction was so far a reach - I'm sure it's not what Burton intended, but due to the fact that he and Lisa Marie had an intimate relationship at the time it appears he let that influence his depiction of her rather than the character she was supposed to play. IMO!
Would love a video on Henry Selick! Nightmare before Christmas and Coraline are two of my favorite movies ever😄
YES PLS Please can we have some time to give Henry Selick some praise? His works are so clever and from the BTS stuff he seems like such a collaborative person. Giving kudos to the craftspeople who bring the whole project to life.
I love hearing your personal take on work, more of this please! Loved it!
Especially now that he's made a new film I think more people need to hear the name Henry Selick
I had no idea Nightmare wasn't Burton's work, so I'd love a deep dive on selick.
I watched Alice in worderland when i was 8 and as a self-proclaimed weird kid, the quote about best people being crazy really spoke to me (and then it came back when i was 11 in a Melanie Martinez song) I even wrote it in my diary and even though it sound goofy now that i read that again, i was a kid who felt like an outsider and Tim Burton really spoke to me. But i think that movie never got beyond that, Ttat age and that quote. After i turned 13 the only feeling that it bringed me was nostalgia for the asthetics of the film but nothing of the rest made me reflect either on my current self or my 8 year old self.
On the other side, i watched A nightmare before christmas SO MANY TIMES, i loved it so much as a kid and i still love it now and i still feel and emocional connection to it now. And i think that is what is missing on Alice in worderland and later works of his.
AMAZING VIDEO this is exactly the kind of tim burton analysis i was waiting for.
Sleepy Hollow the film was made for me as a very troubled 11-year-old. My daily horror show was a bloodless psychological thriller with no end in sight, so the gore and whimsical warmth in a bleak, depressing little village was a welcome relief. I still love Edward Scissorhands.
In Wednesday, Burton has once again rejected the source material in order to tell 'his version' of the story, ignoring the actual core reason as to why people love The Addams Family.
Actually Burton was the director of four of the eight episodes of Wednesday, the people behind the show, were the producers of Smallville, and they keep close to the source material, Gomez being like in the comics, Wednesday and Morticia being like the Addams Family movies from the 90', Raul Julia did a very good job as Gomez, but he is based on the 60' version of him, in the comic version he was a little more overweight, what Burton contributed to the story was giving the atmosphere, the creepy aesthetic, the design of the Hyde (based on Gollum), and the premise that is based on Addams Family Values, between the conflict between Wednesday and the Pilgrims.
Wednesday wasn’t really his work and it shows, so I don’t know why they labeled it that way.
@@bellacigne Maybe because he directed four of the eight episodes, and even that the last four try to copy his style, is not the same, and it shows.
Great detail!
@@TheKeyser94 Even if he did only 4 episodes, those 4 don't really have the "Burton" essence the video talked about.
People really don't talk enough about how at least 40% of everything Burton movies have to offer is a beautiful soundtrack. I honestly thought i loved his Alice movies, then rewatched them recently and realized... I just love the music. Honestly. The music in Edward Scissorhands??? Absolutely MAGICAL!! In Corpse Bride? Amazing!!!! The movies? Yeah, they're good too, but there's really something special about Danny Elfman's soundtracks.
danny elfman has to be my favorite composer of all time, the music itself feels like it has its own life if that makes sense
Seriously, I haven't watched his Alice in Wonderland since it came out in 2010, but I *own* that score album. And Burton and Elfman's best collaborations-- Batman! Edward Scissorhands!-- are stunning.
Corpse bride music is TOP. TIER. But I also just really love the whole thing.
I had the DVD (still do, somewhere), and I used to play the movie with Danny Elfman’s commentary. Obviously he talks during it, but you get a lot of the movie with just the score turned up and it is beautiful
Didn’t Danny Elfman compose the original Simpsons theme as well? I love his work so much!
I am so dead. The use of the avril clip at the end was PERFECT. LMAO.
Long story short:
Because Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Helena Bonham Carter aren't working with him anymore, he lost his mojo. Even his new lead, Eva Green isn't enough.
The reason i think Burton loves recasting Johnny Depp is because he literally sees himself as Depp, a cool and angsty outsider that he can use to project himself through in his films. Depp is always Burtons POV character like in Edward Scissorhand. Maybe that's why his wife always plays opposite of him too 😂 (this isn't a serious take btw, mostly a fun joke that I think aligns with Burtons teenager-angsty side)
Wife? You mean Helena Bonham Carter? They were never married
@Kewliope Jones Rough
@@tsuumee4545 Helena and Tim have been together for 13 years. They recently broke up because Tim cheated with a blonde. So much inverting the norm
it's a good take
They’re both INFP’s it makes sense. I am as well but because of certain things that Burton has said I completely disown him as an INFP.
It's almost baffling to me, because when you look at his earlier work (like Edward Scissorhands, for example) it is popping with colour, which only makes the dark costume or home of the 'outsider' more effective, but his later stuff is just muddy, not to speak of the stories he goes with lately compared to what he used to go with
And the color usage in Corpse Bride is amazing as well, with the living world being intentionally desaturated and the land of the dead being very bright and colorful. Makes me wonder how much of this genius was Burton and how much of it was his colleagues'.
I love the quote of Burton saying the Charlie was overshadowed by Wonka, and then he proceeds to solely focus on and develop Wonka as a character.
The truth is there's no one else in the story.
All the other characters are Wonka's foils.
I really liked Charlie and the Chocolate factory as a kid and I even liked it better than the first movie and I also really liked alice and wonderland but I think that’s mostly just because of the visuals, I love art and usually appreciate it even more than story telling so being a kid and so mesmerized by the visuals I fell in love I also liked the creepy undertones
Plot was so generic and just bad. But visuals, music and actors were captivating
@@karolinakuc4783Blame the book💀
the line about the dangers of the mall goth pipeline rings especially true when you consider that, despite of what burton might say about being an outcast, you can sense how desperately he wants to fit in and any message about being an outcast is just sour grapes. i mean, this is the guy who was afraid musical theater might turn his son gay
Haaaa, I would love to read about that.
He actually thought that about musical theatre? Woww 😅
Yeah I was surprised he turned out to be such a bigot, for about 5 seconds. Then I realized I know at least a dozen racist and/or homophobic elder goths just like him. He’s literally just that one guy at goth night that everyone hates, the one who everyone knows has a collection of German WWII memorabilia at his house, he says it’s because he’s “a history buff” but when he gets drunk he complains about the scene being “polluted” by People Who Don’t Belong There.
@@zauberholz8357 helena bonham carter made an off comment about that in an interview for sweeney todd
@@JC-yy8iv wtf that's fucked up
Also worth mentioning that he used to work with scriptwriter Caroline Thompson but they fought while working on the Corpse Bride and never worked together since. Goes to show how important the script is as well.
not only that, but caroline thompson was also instrumental, along with danny elfman, in making nightmare before christmas work on an emotional level with the character of sally and her relationship with jack. tim burton came up with the base concept, henry selick oversaw and directed the great animation, but caroline thompson and danny elfman shaped the fairytale-like story to make it the classic it has become
Yeah, I used to love Tim Burton movies as a kid, so I wondered why his films kept getting tedious and unrelatable. Much later I found out that the Tim Burton movies I liked were all written by Caroline Thompson. It made me realize that we often forget the obvious fact that movies require multiple talents to be made, and that non-directoral staff need way more spotlight than they usually get.
His best film is the one that isn’t written by her
@@themasterbaetor3719 which one is that?
@@casir.7407 Time and time again we get to see why auteur theory doesn't really apply, because most of these great films wouldn't be the way they were without the collaborations of other people working on the film. The director may be the one overseeing the entire thing, but it requires good people working on the script, the lighting, the music, the editing etc for it to really come together and become something truly special
Corpse Bride is a very underated treasure.
I love how the world of the living was dark and grey well the land of the dead had a pluse! And was so colorful 🫠
Tim Burton deciding to collaborate with Disney (especially after everything he said about them), is yet another example of proof that anything Disney gets it's grubby little Mickey Mouse hands on these days, inevitably turns out to be devoid of any kind of soul, whimsy, colour or heart in favour of pushing messages that nobody needed or wanted. Particularly in their live action films, which continues to baffle me how a studio can so badly mess up films that they literally have the blueprints to.
Guess that doesn't matter when millions of dollars are involved though.
As a child I ADORED tim burton, all because i was obsessed with coraline. All to find out that actually Henry Selick did coraline. Which sort of answered the long time question I had as to why there was people of color in coraline, but not within any other tim burton films?
@@user-n9090 same
Which characters in Coraline would that be? It's been over ten years that I saw the film.
@@camelopardalis84 Whybie and his grandma and his grandma's sister, who was one of the victims of the Other Mother.
@@hydevanhelsing5063 Thanks!
dude i just found out from this video that i’m a Henry Selick fan, i’ve loved his work my entire life but had no clue he was the one responsible lol James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and Nightmare Before Christmas are three of my favorite movies of all time. makes me feel better about how hard Burton fell off
There’s a lot of irony in him criticising his former peers who “peaked” in high-school. In a way, his work peaked in the ‘90s and his identity is built on the acceptance and praise by the societal hieararchy of that time period deterring him from evolving his art.
Always thought this and 100% agree. By Sleepy Hollow and def Planet of the Apes, he was done. A caricature of himself thereforeard
😶🌫👀
I feel like a lot of autistic nerds from poor families peak in high school. While football players and cheerleaders from rich families get to be successful by cheating in everything including college so that people think they’re scientific geniuses.
@@mitchell7309 True. Sleepy Hollow was his last spark. An artist refusing to evolve is an artist dead.
38:25 the whole reason Disney wanted Alice released in 3D was because James Cameron’s “Avatar” had just been released 5 months earlier. Despite all the memes claiming it left no cultural impact, it cannot be understated how much Avatar impacted movies. It didn’t just shatter box office records, it also cemented the switch to CGI by tanking Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog”, it created a renewed hype for 3D movies, and it permanently raised the price of movie tickets. Before Avatar, I remember going to see movies with my family and the price of adult admission was like $5 - nowadays a movie for 3 ends up costing like $30+
Tim Burton has completely lost his way nowadays. He's "lost his edge" so to speak. I have and always will be a big fan of his older works because they were a breath of fresh air and weirdness amongst other movies I would watch. They also featured outcast characters at the forefront which I and many others could relate to. Tim Burton truly put his all into these older movies. I feel like many of the characters portrayed in his works, Tim is an outcast from society himself and it has taken a toll on how he makes his movies. In his odd sort of way maybe he has always wanted to fit in amongst everyone else but at the same time still tries to hold on to the "be weird don't conform" mentality. But you can't have both. Tim Burton movies nowadays follow the exact same formula every other hollywood movie follows. He doesn't take risks anymore. Which was his whole thing back in the day. Just look at how weird and offbeat Beetlejuice was! There's a reason that movie became such a classic, you will NEVER see a movie like that made again and for the time it was completely different than anything else. I hope Tim Burton can pull off one last movie that actually feels like a Tim Burton movie rather than just another regurgitated hollywood cash grab.
Also completely unrelated, I'm good with everyone's individual opinion on movies, but I LOVE Sleepy Hollow so much despite your critiques of it. It's slowly becoming one of my favorite Halloween movies.
I'm so glad someone else acknowledged the weird tension between Alice and the Mad Hatter in the movies, it was so bizarre and no one else would comment on it
I would say “icky” instead of bizarre (which, to me can have positive connotations). The sexualizing of any relationship in Alice’s adventures is distasteful.
@@ruthbennett7563 I think you have a very good point there.
What? Literally everyone and their grandmother talked about it. To me what's weird is that you think no one realized that.
Also isn’t Alice like stated to be 16-17 in the movie while he is a grown ass man 💀? and he met her while she was a CHILD mind you, it’s super creepy
@@whiteasparagus4331 he met her when she was definitely single digits and she can't be older than 16-17
Let’s not forget when he completely isolated his BIPOC fan base because we dont “fit” his aesthetics. Also his past racially tone def comments. Super disappointing as a black creative who always felt safe in his work. There’s no way I can look at him/his work the same anymore. Not without knowing there’s no place for me or those who look like me truly at all. Which is crazy being that his works are whimsigothic fantastical fiction pieces. I think that’s what makes it even worse. There’s no reason why he can’t be inclusive, he just chooses not to be.
So 🤬 disappointing, as a 40 yr old who grew up on his classic, earlier work... his career from _Chocolate Factory,_ in particular, went downhill long ago, but it'd be nice to be able to enjoy the early films. This makes it hard...
Especially for someone who pegs himself the outsider/outcast to have those sentiments is just deplorable.
Based Burton
I think Maggie Mae Fish made a really good video that talked about this and some other weird backwards shit in Burton's work
@@leppardman4779 racism doesn’t automatically mean based dumbass you don’t even know what it means
I didn't notice the lack of diversity when I was younger. But I recently watched Edward again bc it was up on here for free, and I thought "hang on why do I only see one non-white person in this entire movie?" Then I chalked it up to being an exaggerated depiction of mid-century suburbia. In that context it actually makes a bit of sense, since the setting is painted as being very homogeneous and fake. The suburbs were originally a product of racial segregation. I didn't realize until now that he actually has made racist comments. Speaking as a mixed person it is super disappointing, childhood ruined.
Blockbuster: was a word describing films that had such large audiences that the wait lines would span entire blocks of the city...
I can’t believe you didn’t mention Ed Wood. It’s his best film, all about being an outsider in Hollywood. Landau won an Oscar for it. I remember it being critically acclaimed and his claim to mainstream fame. Without Ed Wood there is no Sleepy Hollow.
"if everyone's an outsider, then no one is" thank you so much for putting my feelings about him for a long time this way, at some point I just realized he's not actually weird, just a type of quirky and arrogant that's socially acceptable and bankable and his critiques of society and suburbia from the Edward Scissiorhands era have gotten stale as he's aged and just become a part of that society
That’s exactly it. It’s not that he’s not weird. It’s that he’s the sort of weird thats sellable and acceptable to a mainstream audience. You see it a lot in music like with the experimental years of The Beatles. The Pet Sounds album by The Beach Boys or in more recent times Billie Eilish. All very unique and experimental in style but in a way that is just enough of the standard stuff to give to the masses.
@@hollyro4665 I'd have a lot more respect for Burton's alleged "weirdness" if he cast a wider variety of actors. As has been made abundantly clear by his refusal to cast POC, he has a very narrow view of beauty. Even as a teenager I hated how in his movies, the good-hearted, thoughtful, sensitive protagonists are always slim, pale, and ethereally beautiful, while the "ugly" characters (especially fat ones) are stupid, brutish, lazy, and shallow. That's not at all provocative; it's as mundane and small-minded as you can get.
@@Anna-yy9so I agree completely. It’s why I said I think it’s smart he hasn’t touched it but I wish it was for completely different reasons. His weirdness is entirely built on his own life and narrow perspective that doesn’t reach beyond himself. I’ve already mentioned the pros and cons of that one.
@@hollyro4665 "Doesn't reach beyond himself" sums it up perfectly. If he really wanted to, he could follow Rick Riordan's example and put his clout behind creators with different lives than his own. There's a huge difference between acknowledging your own limitations and simply not caring to broaden your perspective.
@@Anna-yy9so exactly that! Just because he can’t do it doesn’t me others can’t. And surely someone in his position has the power to make that happen
I feel like saying Burton misses the themes/points of things he remakes is kind of a given and not really the problem - because he never sets out to retell the original story or its themes. He takes inspiration from an existing property to retell his own story again. This is not bad in and of itself - Miyazaki does this really well. The problem isn’t that Burton is telling his own story, it’s that his own story isn’t actually that good. He picks a character he identifies with, and then tells how they’re a tragic hero in a terrible world which is just kind of childish. You can always tell which character this is, because it’s the one who gets no criticism from the story’s framework, has a tragic backstory that’s superfluous to the plot, and is probably played by Depp.
I think this really hits the nail on the head. Miyazaki succeeds where Burton fails because his films still have something to say. Burton, on the other hand, seems to abandon the source material only to make something aesthetically interesting but ultimately shallow.
Very true, I think. Among the few Burton movies I've seen, the one I liked best at the time was Ed Wood. I still love Martin Landau's portrayal of Bela Lugosi, but the more I dug into the actual history of Wood, the more I saw tragedy, not a band of lovable misfits carving out a niche together making B movies.
@@Catfish3rs i was about to say this comment nailed it as well!
Tim Burton is that one kid who got a good grade on a creative writing paper when he was a kid and proceeds to think that he is a genius for the rest of his life.
Objectively, his portfolio, specially from early years, is quite impressive from a creative standpoint. I seriously doubt the "got a good grade on a creative wirting paper" because schools do a terrible job at promoting children's creativity.
@@somerandomdude5380 interesting?
@@orangeslash1667 I guess.
@@somerandomdude5380 Big news there is going to be a Beetlejuice 2.
And you are?
Wednesday came out, and i actually really like it. But at the same time hearing Jenna Ortega talk about her problems with the writing, maybe it was in some part good in spite of his direction and not purely because of it. There's more writers than just him of course though.
I think in this case he just has trouble understanding characters and especially young characters
I also think that he started having a major age crisis, specially after his divorce, he just stopped trying and chose to believe that his superficial adaptations were masterpieces, because he was still talking about being different, but by this time everyone else was already doing those kind of themes. He just got stuck with his childhood traumas and chose to never deal with his adult ones. it would have been interesting to see how he dealt with aging in his 40s, 50s, with his divorce, with the broken expectations from his persona; instead he chose to keep talking about how superficial the adult world is, the fakeness of the society, the bullied outsider. By that time he was very far from all of that, he was accepted by the entire Hollywood crew and his films became a mere banal product, a nice paradox I guess.
Also I find weird that he made a connection between Willy Wonka and Citizen Kane because they are this business titans, but he failed to see that in 2005/2006 Burton himself was going through an age crisis, just the same as Charles Kane, he could’ve attributed this characteristics to Willy Wonka, but again he chose to talk about his childhood traumas and the fact that he was a ‘different and unique” child. He just refuses to acknowledge his present.
He did liken himself to Willy Wonka in interviews. One of the reasons Burton goes into Wonka’s frayed relationship with his father is because Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the first movie he made after both of his parents died.
@@ethanhart129 still is about his childhood experience that he never got over with
Oooh YES
Yeah Burton playing the "I'm an outcast card" these days is like Trump playing the "I'm one of you pesants" card
I think it’s important to mention that the story of the corpse bride isn’t just based in Eastern European folklore but specifically in Jewish folklore. This was taken out of the movie to make it more of a fairytale- setting it in England with Christian wedding traditions
THANK YOU for pointing this out!!! Christians have historically stolen from us and the pagan’s traditions an appropriated them to make them more palatable for their chaste bs.
Yes, this is important. My eyebrows raised at the vague "Eastern European" credit.
Also, batman returns is Exodus... except Moses is evil and awful and the villain. So... there's that.
Also Ms Peregrines Home for peculiar children. The books references to the "hollowgast" and a Jewish protagonist were erased from the film adaptation for "marketability"
@morborb literally his exclusion of poc and jewish people esp in this context of an adaptation of a jewish story to exclude the jewish heritage of the story is so shit and terrible esp towards fans of those communities and for someone who talked abt being an outsider he's now the man who's creating outsiders esp cuz he doesnt take outsiders into his world its very ironic
@@melissamargolese8782 wtf that's just terrible, so much for someone who's always like outsiders outsider
Can we also smack Burton upside the head for calling the jabberwock a jabberwocky? The POEM was called "Jabberwocky." The MONSTER was the jabberwock:
"Beware the jabberwock, my son." "And, as in uffish thought he stood, the jabberwock, with eyes of flame...." "And hast thou slain the jabberwock?"
I didn't realise that this mistake was Burton's.
Definitely imperceptive or lazy.
Dude, I only just discovered your channel but I’m already in love. Your videos are all super intelligent and refined. Keep it up!
The worst thing about Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland is that a refutation of the nihilism, present in both the book and any the animated movie, would be interesting. Lewis Carrol was a decidedly conservative mathmatician. His fears that abstract forms of mathematics would undermine both the field and meaning itself have proven hollow. An Alice adaptation that engages with the weird and seemingly contradictory elements of wonderland and finds meaning in it would be interesting. Instead Burton eliminates the absurd within wonderland to create a stereotypical hero's journey with an extra bland helping of "rightful" monarch and chosen one tapioca.
That's why American McGee's Alice will always be a superior "burtonesque" version of the story
I would like to point out that Corpse Bride is not just an eastern european story but specifically a Jewish story. I found this out a few years ago but thankfully tons of articles, blog posts, tiktoks and twitter threads point this out to new people every day! Burton made a conscious choice to remove all Jewish elements to try to make it more "relatable" but therein robbed it of its very meaning. I implore you to read about this - two Jewish folktales that Corpse Bride take from are called The Finger and The Devil in the Tree. Burton has dismissed the Jewish origins of the story and actively sought to erase ethnic origin and place in favor of just "fable". this erasure of Jewish story has been further noted in at least one of Burton's other movies, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
Considering Burton is also markedly anti-Black when it comes to his cinematic universe I'm not surprised to learn this was a conscious effort on his part to scrub Jewishness from his films as well. I'm not bummed about his decline to be perfectly honest.
thank you for listing the names of the stories!
hope his show is a flop
+
Yeah really removed all cultural context: the Jewish and Eastern European
OY VEY
Tim Burtons' Alice film oddly reminded me of Frank Beddor's Wonderland novels. They do a similar thing where Hatter is a badass that does all the things and Alice's arc is "shut up about what you want and grow a spine and do what we tell you to."
Thankfully no one's made an adaption of those books. They are pretty insufferable.
Tim Burton's seems a walking embodiment of that 'Normal People Scare Me' t-shirt that all the 'quirky' kids wore in the mid-2010s.
Tim's reading of the original Alice as "a girl wandering from one crazy character to another" without any emotional connection, while proceeding to make a big budget Alice movie anyway, reminds me of a certain fellow named Doug whose thoughts on the film The Wall amounted to "a little full of itself, but good visuals and imagination" and then proceeded to make an entire parody album as a "love letter" to the original. 🤔
The way you worded '''a certain fellow named Doug''' is so funny 😂
@@octangula1212more like a certain bum.
at least he admited it was bad and it wished it was better, something that tim burton will never do with his stupid alice in underland
Ironic because that fellow Doug criticize Burton for doing the exact same thing.
“Rarely does he clearly express what’s wrong society around him other than he doesn’t have to conform to it”
Very insightful take
You brought up Willy Wonka as Howard Hughes and Citizen Kane, I'm surprised people don't bring up Micheal Jackson more. That's clearly the main inspiration. They're both men with immense talent that helped amass a personal fortune, then used it to build an artificial ecosystem of whimsy to block out the outside world. You talk about being insulted with that therapy scene, but the joke is how he hasn't gone to therapy at all. He never left the factory, and I'm not certain that Oomp-Loompa is certified. He keeps on trying to process the world using only his private property and his employees.
As for what Charlie learns in Burton's version? The same thing people learned from Micheal Jackson, and tons of other celebrities. That just because someone is an adult, doesn't mean they're grown up. (And of course the pedo vibes are going to come in with MJ as an inspiration).
I feel like Tim Burton would adapt The Elephant Man simply because he was entranced by the idea of a “man with a grotesque face”. And then he’d claim to be intellectual by saying it’s a story about fitting in/not fitting in.
He has a severe case of ‘getting rid of the themes of stories to push “I’m a social outcast” as the main personality trait of a film.’
He has the vibes of a cishet abled white man who’s biggest life struggle was not getting asked to prom. He absolutely refuses to see or tell anybody’s story but his own and that’s what makes him an unfit director.
“cishet abled white man”
Psssh…. GTFO here with that crap.
To be honest, I can’t dislike Sleepy Hollow, it’s a movie where Christopher Walken does nothing but ride a horse, have crazy teeth and hair, and yell “AGH!” while brandishing a sword. That’s just awesome. Also, Christopher Lee is there, and any reason to have Christophers Lee and Walken in the same film is good enough.
It's my favorite Burton movie. It's just so Halloween-y and violent and goofy and fun. It broke my heart when she said she hated it :(
I love sleepy hollow just for how over the top and goofy it is, I love how ridiculous it is that Ichabod is a police inspector but even the slightest bit of blood is enough to make him sick, the silly witch angle, the over the top gore, Christopher Walken. It's far from the best Tim Burton movie, but it's one of my favorite "bad" movies just cause it's so fun to watch.
@@elimidd6626 i wanted crane to be like he is in the novel a arrogant prick who thinks he knows it all and only wants to find the headless horseman because he thinks he'll get rich from it....thats literally the archtype antagonist in most of his films ...how did he mess THAT up???
Same! I love how camp it is! And it's really unique.
I still don't undestard how the dude who made Pee-Wee's Big Adventure didn't like Alice in Wonderland because "The plot doesn't make sense"
I know right
In regards to the Chocolate Factory movies, I actually like the irony that “Willy Wonka” is more about Charlie, and “Charlie” is more about Willy Wonka.
I just think it’s neat!
I used to really like Charlie and the chocolate factory as a kid, but I only saw it dubbed in Hungarian. I think it improved a lot on Johnny's performance, as he sounded more normal.
One of my friends saw Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in theaters when it came out. She was eating those Harry Potter jelly beans during the scene where Willie Wonka reunites with his dentist dad and accidentally bit down on a black pepper jelly bean or something like that, and had a gagging, trying not to puke reaction much to the disdain of nearby people that thought she was just besmirching the movie's emotional climax. I like to think she was just ahead of the curve in critiquing Burton.
I can literally only remember the Oompa Loompas in that movie doing a dance, I didn't realise he even had a dad lmao
@@Jane-oz7pp I didn’t even realize it was a movie 💀💀💀
@@Jane-oz7ppI remember him having a dad because his dad was played by Count Dooku 🤣🤣🤣
I've always thought that Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro have similar approaches in terms of cinematography, but the huge difference is that Guillermo has proven to learn and grow as a person and an artist, and Tim has only shown is true boring self.
Guillermo has also included a wide variety of characters in his stories without whinning about inclusion, he just knows it is important.
And Henry Selick deserves more attention too.
I agree. While Del Toro is best known for gothic horror, he can also branch out to other genres like romance, thrillers, and even action movies like Pacific Rim. He is also meticulous with his works, which has allowed him to get the recognition he deserves. Tim burton on the other hand in into grim and somewhat macabe art styles that seemed very unique and interesting back then, but the problem is that he kept making movies in the same genre without ever taking a risk that would let him experiment with new and original ideas.
Please respect ✊🏼 9/11 victims, families and witnesses.
I could not possibly in any conceivable sense give less of a damn about inclusion. I don't even view it as important. Literally everything else is more important than that. If a story is compelling then it is compelling. If characters are well-written, then that ought to be sufficient, and it shouldn't matter how many other socio-ethnic checkboxes they fill. How boring.
I view Burton as someone who has lost his inspiration. Like any artist, he seems to be tired, treading familiar paths, feeling less than he used to when he's walked them before. I think he needs a major break. It was a baffling idea that Disney wanted him to direct Dumbo. I will never actually pay to see any of the live action remakes and, I confess, am scarcely more interested in seeing them in syndication on TV, so I can't speak to that movie directly, but knowing how bleeding-edge woke Disney has become, I cannot fathom why they thought hiring Burton would be the right choice. I enjoyed Alice in Wonderland quite a bit, but after that, no - he really does seem to have become tired of his own movies. As have we. It's sad. I hope that he can find his way again. I really like him. I'll never be able to watch Edward Scissorhands again though. I cried until I made myself sick.
One thing Burton has over del Toro is at least he didn’t sign the Roman Polanski petition
@cinamonrollcutie 2 in 2009 there was a petition to free Roman Polanski (who raped a 13 year old) when he was arrested and del Toro was one of those who signed it
Your writing for this video is so beautiful and discusses this topic in such rich nuance. Thanks for this video!!
We have seen this happen with so many artists and my guess would be it is a result of getting jaded. In the beginning, they are hungry and so they work hard, experiment and take risks. The pee wee movie for example is full of very impressive camera work and editing that is devoid in his modern films. Later on, at some point these creators become jaded, they see their art as unappreciated, the audience as goons that prefer lowbrow work and they decide that they may as well serve up slop and cash the check for their trip to the bahamas because why bother anymore. The money becomes more important than the art and they arent hungry anymore.
A great example is conan obrien who put so much work into his late night talk show sketches. So many characters and costumes and so on. But once he took over the tonight show it became much safer and basic, the skits something that could have been thrown together five minutes beforehand. There was some sense to it that maybe he felt he needed to hit a new audience on the tonight show but when his ratings didnt land and he was replaced he went to another network that was glad to have him and let him do whatever he wanted. But instead of return to his old edgy style that made him a success he inexplicably stuck to the new watered down version.
We saw very similar things with stephen colbert and jimmy kimmel other late night hosts that made their name doing edgy creative humor and became extremely watered down and wedged into politics. Both hosts have a larger audience and prob make more money than they ever did before but they are noticeably less happy and they didnt have to give it all up. They could have just stuck with the gold plated private jet instead of selling their soul to buy the diamond encrusted private jet. How much money do you need ffs. Isnt harrison ford rich enough by now to not need to take on a script for indiana jones that spits on and destroys the character? Does he have no respect for himself and the art he created that touched so many people? If hundreds of millions of dollars still doesnt feel like enough than let it go because you are trying to fill a bottomless hole at that point.
There is nothing more dangerous to the soul then bitterness, becoming jaded and selling out. A lesson for all of us. Dont let them steal your joy. You can do the projects to pay the bills but do the passion projects too.
the decline was consolidated in alice in wonderland, I remember during production it seemed like the perfect fit, and I was a big fan of his at the time (I was 13-14). When the trailer and then movie came out my sense of admiration was so deflated because it was all style (and in my opinion, not even much of it), with an uninspired script that was borderline cringe at times, probably starting the trend of Tim Burton's school of directing where actresses are told to behave very expressionless. from there onward it seems that all of his movies took that turn, even the seemingly more personal movie Dark Shadows is too polished, with a lousy script. Also I think its weird when people are obssessed with nostalgia for the 50s-80s dont want to engage with the racial tensions of the time in question. I'm not saying Tim Burton has to make a movie about racism, he doesnt have to do anything, but for someone who's got a penchant for 'outsiders', 'dark themes', 'wrongdoings of society', the palpable refusal to engage with a topic thats rich in all of these seems cowardly and small minded to say the least
I think he just wants to have the aesthetic and also cuz he only knows outsiderness in his terms and not in the real systematic way which excludes people that arent like him. Cuz he was the outcast but now he's the insider who outcasts people, he's only pro putsider if its similar to him not when he's not the subject.
VERY well said.
@@espeon871 agreed. I think a way to better visualize what im trying to get at with he doesnt even attempt to touch on these subjects is by watching the scene in Addams Family Values where Wednesday actually talks about native american genocide and we see the outcasts of the camp take revenge on the more yuppie, cookie cutter kids, let's say. Its one scene yet its an effective way of actually integrating real life issues in the world building and humor of your movie.
He actually goes out of his way to avoid them. The folktale of Corpse Bride is Jewish but that's not his aesthetic so the movie is about good ol Christian folks and their Christian weddings. Miss Perigrine's is pretty mucj completely missing its major Jewish character who pushed the plot (Jacob's grandfather). I don't even think Thomas being Jewish is mentioned in tbe movie. Not to mention he goes out of his way to avoid casting POC when he can help it.
@@unclewiley1986 I don’t think he goes out of his way to avoid other races in his work, he just doesn’t write them in. A lot of his art takes direct inspiration from European tales, which is just fine. It’s just that he’s weirdly exclusionary of certain people, even when they would fit the story and world very well. For such a dark director/artist, he seems weirdly and childishly ignorant of real world darkness, which makes his films seem more naive than intended.
I'm convinced that Burton is shockingly great at being a creative lead for musicals because they allow the characters to directly express feelings that he would probably struggle to include in diegetic dialogue, and the heightened visuals pair well with stories where characters are allowed to break out into song or dance. In Beetlejuice, its use of The Banana Boat Song and Jump in the Line as musical numbers are probably the most iconic things from it, and it's no surprise its story and aesthetic felt like a natural transfer when converted to a stage musical. Even in the most recent thing he directed (Wednesday), the best scene is a dance number.
If him and Danny Elfman just spent the rest of their careers together making musical movies, I’d be happy.
Maybe just not movie versions of musicals that already exist. See: Sweeney Todd, where none of the dark humor translates at all 😅
@@watchcloudspassmeby Big news there is going to be a Beetlejuice 2.
Same, my 18 yr old daughter and I are huge fans and nobody will persuade us to change our opinion.☺️
@@orangeslash1667Yay!!!
Fantastic video! Great analysis. I loved his movies growing up, but haven't as much with the newer ones. the new ones feel like disposable products instead of soulfully done masterpieces like his previous work.
He returns the Everlasting Gobstopper not the Fizzy Lifting Drink.
I could relate to Burton on being on outsider. But unlike Burton, I learned to have empathy for others.
Empathy is a thing most humans have forgotten because they have become so myopic and solipsistic of their own pain.
That note about empathy is super interesting. I actually noticed when watching his stuff that he tends to punish his antagonists very severely in almost every movie. And since almost all of them are meant to represent the "bully" or the "establishment", it comes across like he's getting revenge on them in every film instead of ever taking a moment think about how they could be empathetic/3-dimensional.
Yeah, I think that's really WHAT the problem is - he's deeply unempathetic.
He wants to have this message about how conformity is bad and nonconformity is good, but he's entirely uninterested in what causes otherness to begin with. He treats them like innate characteristics and paints his protagonists as inherently better than his antagonists. And as a result it's kind of weak, because he almost doesn't even define the two - honestly, a lot of his depictions of "conformity" kind of manifest as misogyny, like his "conformist" characters are often just women who fit traditional gender roles.
That's one of the reasons his lack of diversity really rubs me the wrong way - I mean, obviously diversity is always good, but specifically if you're painting yourself as a voice for outsiders but don't understand that minorities ARE outsiders, then you're kind of misunderstanding your own message.
Overall, he's extremely stuck in his own worldview.
I agree, but would like to add that there seems to be a divide happening in society. You now have people who wish to connect with their emotions and live with them, and people who wish to get rid of them and lose their connection to others.
@Charisma Musician and that's why you balance it with discernment.
We have so much knowledge today and little to no wisdom.
Ooo, those are some words.
I am ashamed to admit that one of my favorite films ever is Burton's Ed Wood, but over time I've come to understand why. It simply was this really unique film in its era that actively paid tribute to its inspiration's B movie work, while also telling a purposefully obtuse version of what really happened because, unlike other biopics, it really wanted to boil down why Wood was such a fascinating figure in Hollywood history by putting us down in that sort of movie with him as the center. And it's not really something I think Burton would make now, even when he produced the same writers' script about Margaret Keane.
It's pretty much a perfect movie.
I appreciate the essay, but I strongly disagree agree with your thoughts on Sleepy Hollow. It's a comedy/horror, it's campy and bloody, and fun. The scene where he's freaking out about the horseman, is hilarious, the blood splatter when he's doing an autopsy makes me giggle every time. I feel like you really missed the humor. And I never got any sort of Oedipus vibes from his mom memories, just magic/whimsy.
Also, this is a nitpick, but it's important to the story: Charlie returns the everlasting gobstopper (which he has been tempted to sell for money that could have helped his family), not fizzy lifting drink which he drank/stole.
"Once everybody is an outsider then nobody is."
Yes and in my opinion that is the beauty behind his old films.
Many people grew a liking to his films and style of art because of it being just different and from a misfit for other misfits and that way it provided a feeling of being welcomed and accepted the way you are.
In my opinion that's what he wanted to create along his visions. A type of fantasy universe where every outsider could find themselves in.
That quote sums up the early 2010’s perfectly
@@guyferrari8124 yup the edgelords took over in the mid 2000s especially in the horror genre and it took near a decade to get good horror with actual characters you legit cared about when they died ...
they'd make every person in a horror film a "know it all" "im deep" edgelore type of jerk and think if they have them have one heroic "Save" and die brutally, it enhances the character...audiences arent that stupid you got to earn the sacrificial death
My favorites Tim Burtons films are from Beetlejuice till Big Fish. Everything that came after that, I wasn’t a fan.
One point I want to add is that artists often become unrelateable when they become too rich or famous.
They lose touch with their audience and what a normal life even looks like. Rocks stars eventually have nothing to sing about but being on tour in first class and having the finest of everything but that is just alien to most people's experience. Musicians call it the 3rd album curse. The same can be said of filmmakers and writers. Sometimes when you remove the struggle of an ordinary life, you also remove the emotional truth in their artworks that drew their fans in the first place.
Add to that that the more powerful and respected they become, the more people don't debate their creative choices or put the breaks on their worst ideas.
Society will usually either starve or spoil it's creators; it rarely makes art an easy career to hold in a healthy way in the long-term.
An extremely important thing about Sleepy Hollow is that he was making his version of a Hammer horror film and most of the element you mention are integral to that: the deliberately stilted dialogue, the gore, the overstuffed plot, and the scooby doo ending. If you look at it through that lens, it’s the most perfect operatic beautiful Hammer horror film ever.
Most of those arent hammer horror elements. Specially not the judgemental ones.
Honestly Nightmare was the beginning of the end. He seemed to lose his last bit of pushback against story elements he didnt like and realised his job was just to "Burtonize" the feel and photography, instead of the story itself. I think the money and fame really socially isolated him after that, further hurting the overt human feel of his work.
The idea that a character who's weird or villainous has to have a detailed backstory to make sense or resonate with an audience really couldn't be more wrong. My favorite villains and weirdo characters are the ones with no explanation given. They are the way they are and because it's coming from a place of creative truth, we instantly get it. You would think that Burton, who's obsessed with this idea of himself as an outsider or oddball, would understand that a character simply being their weird self is enough. I think that's the whole hypocrisy inherent to his work, though. He claims to be all about "non-conformity" but then flat out says that he's just trying to give his audience what they want to see.
Disagree. That was always my gripe growing up and now that antagonists have backstory I feel much more at ease. I guess my ease came at your expense. Fortunately there are still entertainment out there that meets the people who have your needs and now more entertainment out there that means the needs of people like mine.
That's a good point - Heath Ledger's Joker offers virtually ZERO clues as to who he was before turning in a psychopathic masterminded criminal murderer. Sure sure, there are plenty of fan theories. But the facts remain, Nolan chose not to explicitly reveal any clue. And it's one of the greatest movie villains of all time. Agent Smith in the Matrix, he's just a computer program with a quirk, nothing more. The Terminator - it's just a robot sent through time with instructions to kill. Nothing more. Maybe you're onto something.
Right? When I read that, I immediately though of Palpatine from the star wars prequels. Dude has zero backstory or character context, but the actor is clearly having a fantastic time with the role. Un-limited pow-ah! Like sure, you can have villains with complex and detailed backstories. It can be done well. But the notion that they _need_ to have that detail to be good is just wrong.
Okay but maybe that idea is supposed to resonate with a larger audience, which very clearly does, and not with you especifically.
@@Despair505 "Which it clearly does" If you're going to make a sweeping claim like that it'd be nice of you to back it up. Also, even if it is true that doesn't make it good writing, or correct. Just because the majority like or believe something doesn't make it good or true.
tl;dr- plz stop with the argumentum ad populum.
It wasn't the fizzy lifting drinks (they stole that by just drinking it, not an actual item) it was the everlasting gobstopper, that each child was given to keep so long as they didn't tell Slugworth (or however you spell it)
Since it was given free, he had no reason to return it at all, which makes him giving it back to Wonka an even bigger gesture, considering he could have gotten a lot of money for the gobstopper.
yeah and at 32:43 it literally shows the everlasting gobstopper. as soon I heard it, I started scrolling through the comments for it lol.
I'm really surprised they got this wrong; maybe she's never seen the movie?
(other than that I really liked the video)
@@3-meo-2-oxo-pce You'd be surprised how easily people miss details.
When I watch people react to things they miss half the detail half the time.
this is a really great video. while i don't agree with some of it, i really liked to be able to see all this from a new perspective and you made it genuinely easy to listen to even if i couldn't relate to everything. good job :D
This is a nicely put together video that goes into depth to where Tim's decline started and what he became and as a video essay it's very good. But I just feel that the movie where he really shows off his chops as a talented director, and which I think might be his "best"(?) film, is almost totally omitted here and that is Ed Wood. As a young Burton enthusiast I was disappointed when I initially saw it, but later I realised that he is at his best here. It's a stripped down, no fancy stuff, honest depiction of a hopeless outsider(who ultimately became a "failure"). And the acting, cinematography and score is just phenomenal! Such a great film. And through it's theme of hopelessness it manages to be completely inspirational.