An Autopsy Of Tim Burton: Is The Master Of Pop Goth Done For Good?
One of the most visually inventive filmmakers in the world has been reduced to a lazy mouse click.
A new Tim Burton film, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, came out last week. It was released on a whisper and made $28 million on opening weekend in the US (which pales compared to its budget of $110 million). In 2010, Burton’s Alice in Wonderland had a $100 million opening weekend and made a billion dollars worldwide while enduring the wrath of critics.
There was a time, not too long ago, when new Burton films were met with excitement; now there’s a collective groan at the sight of one of his now-signature twisted trees.
So excited for Tim Burton's upcoming The Utter Twistedness Of Jillian Jewel's Pernicious Macabretorium, I can barely contain my prosthetics.
— Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) October 3, 2016
The way you may have heard about Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was when it made news for Burton’s comments when asked about the film’s lack of diversity. In an interview with Bustle, he defended his predominantly white cast by saying:
“I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, okay, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that … I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, okay, there should be more white people in these movies.”
It didn’t go over well.
You can count the black people in all 35 Tim Burton movies on 2 middle fingers.
— Solomon Georgio (@solomongeorgio) October 1, 2016
Shocked that Tim Burton seems to be against diversity?
Really?
Haven't we all watched 20 of his films where Depp plays the same character?
— Noah Kinsey (@thenoahkinsey) October 4, 2016
Aside from the obvious problems with this comment, how did this general downturn in public consensus actually happen? This is not a filmmaker who has ridden on the success of a few films over the past two decades. Burton has been beloved and critically-acclaimed. He hasn’t ‘sold out’. He made his career in the mainstream studio system as Warner Brothers’ main man after completing an animator’s apprenticeship at Disney (working on The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and Tron). He’s also still as prolific as ever; his last film, Big Eyes, netted big award nominations and there’s now news of an upcoming sequel to Beetlejuice.
So why does it feel like his career is barely showing any signs of life? Let’s investigate.
–
The Light And Dark Of The Early Years
Burton’s first film, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, is nothing like the films that would follow and define his career both in aesthetic and tone. It’s a reminder that Burton didn’t arrive sulking in the shadows of the pop-gothic style for which he would later become famous.
If you’re confused by the current state of Burton’s work, a revisit of Big Adventure may bring you to tears. Driven by the lunacy of Paul Reubens’ Pee-Wee, it’s a manic live-action cartoon doubling as a road movie with a phenomenal studio back-lot chase sequence that got the attention of Warner Brothers when they were looking for someone to direct Batman.
What’s most telling about Burton’s work on Big Adventure is that it has all the vibrancy of a first-time director, working with a relatively small budget ($7 million), executing a comical vision with full creative reign.
Following Big Adventure, Burton’s films became as dark and twisted as the mop of hair sitting on his head. With Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Ed Wood, Burton established himself as a gothic auteur, while still managing to inject his films with a bizarre levity.
He also produced A Nightmare Before Christmas during this time; the film everyone forgets he didn’t direct because it’s dripping with Burton’s trademark style. Despite Henry Selick getting the directing credit, they put ‘Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas’ on the poster. Burton’s name began to loom large over film titles on movie posters for a very good reason: this guy was the real deal.
Following the release of Jurassic Park in 1993, digital effects reigned supreme in studio films and Burton, known for his impeccable production design and handle on practical effects, opted to join the movement — but only on his terms.
Burton fired back on CGI heavy blockbusters like Independence Day with a B-movie throwback and an A-list cast in Mars Attacks! The film saw the brightness of Big Adventure come back as Burton stepped out of the shadows taking jabs at the mass destruction that was becoming the norm in blockbuster filmmaking at the time.
Mars Attacks! showed Burton could work wonderfully with the new digital tools offered by the juggernaut effects studio, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), but it would soon become a virus in Burton’s system. Mars Attacks! is both a blessing and a curse; it showed the director he could do wacky things with the technology, but it would also become a tool he’d become overly reliant on.
–
The Twisted Trees Begin To Rot
Burton only basked in colour for a short period of time before returning to his comfortable shades of black, grey and black with Sleepy Hollow. There were signs that Burton was beginning to get complacent, but it wasn’t a complete disaster. There was, however, one on the way with his remake of Planet of the Apes.
Under no circumstances should you revisit this film without hard liquor and a sturdy emotional support network. The early 2000s were unkind to Burton as he tried to maintain his auteur status while wrangling with new digital effects technology the film industry was becoming reliant on. Burton fought with 20th Century Fox over using make-up to create the apes (the only thing praised in a film that was widely panned by critics); his bosses were ready to do it all in a computer.
Planet of the Apes represents a turning point for Burton as he begins to get lost in a digital wasteland. He bounced back with Big Fish — loaded with both heart and twisted trees that didn’t make you want to hurl — but then faltered with a remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which showed the filmmaker throwing everything in a pot and producing digital sludge.
Attempts were made to come back from this. Burton showed a resistance to technology by employing stop-motion animation for Corpse Bride and he tried his hand at a traditional movie adaption of a musical with Sweeny Todd. Depp was back — again and again — but he was producing more and more yawns. It seemed like Burton was trying to do something different, but he was still boxed in by his own style that began to border on self-parody.
–
Welcome To The Uncanny Valley
Burton’s ultimate surrender came in 2010 with Alice in Wonderland under the eye of Disney. The director was completely submissive in a film that’s basically run by the hard drive of a computer. There’s a practical, handcrafted aesthetic always present in Burton’s films, but it always felt like the purity of Burton’s imagination was bursting onto the screen; it was unfiltered genius. In Alice in Wonderland, the whimsy is there but it’s artificial and soulless.
The CGI-virus had lay dormant from the Mars Attack! days but it burned up a fever across a film so overblown with digital creations it would make George Lucas go, ‘damn’. Diet-Burton appeared and the stories of great films he once made now seemed like ancient myths.
Dark Shadows arrived a few years later with so much promise, the most aesthetically pleasing Burton film in years. But it landed with a thud as an irksome, supernatural soap opera.
Burton went back to his roots with Frankenweenie, a stop-motion animation re-make of a short film he made in 1984 — a grand comeback. Again, it seems like Burton excels when he bounces back to the origins of his artistry; he’s an artisan not an innovator. He then rolled into Big Eyes, which had many doubting whether their proclamations of a comeback were too premature.
Big Eyes went for an award season run and netted a Golden Globe win for Amy Adams for Best Actress (Comedy or Musical). But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association seem to be the only people who remembered Big Eyes while it disintegrated from public consciousness.
Burton represents a filmmaker who has endured the changes in the film industry but has shred a lot of himself in the process while remaining in a creative stasis. We once marvelled at the artistry of Burton’s films as something tangible and unique, but now it’s as though he orders his digital-effects team to push the ‘Tim Burton generator’ button. Our imaginations are now immune to Burton’s creations because they’re stale and synthetic; one of the most visually inventive filmmakers reduced to a lazy mouse click.
If only he’d go back and look at Big Adventure, where did that guy go?
–
Cameron Williams is a writer and film critic based in Melbourne who occasionally blabs about movies on ABC radio. Co-founder of Graffiti With Punctuation and The Popcorn Junkee. He also has a slight Twitter addiction @MrCamW.