Beetlejuice 2: What If This Movie Was About Tim Burton Himself?

Warning – The article below contains some spoilers for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” as it revisits elements of its plot. So please go ahead if you haven’t seen it.

Not a good idea (or even a bad idea at all)? Admitted failure on the part of the director once at the helm, and who only signed on for five years for a remake ordered by Disney (Dumbo) and episodes of the Netflix series about the Addams family (Wednesday)?

To say that the announcement of a Beetlejuice sequel raised a few eyebrows is an understatement. Admittedly, the filmmaker has only returned once so far: for Batman’s Needs , a challenge, with great success and enough to tell several stories with DC’s catalog. Which was not the case with the 1988 film, which was turned into an animated series a few years later.

Another source of concern for fans desperate to find a pre-Alice in Wonderland Burton: He could have made this sequel as soon as the first opus came out. The scenario is called Beetlejuice goes Hawaiian Warner ordered, but the director preferred to leave Winter River on the streets of Gotham City and Michael Keaton to become Bruce Wayne.

The project resurfaced in 2011, but collapsed in 2019 and was resurrected four years later as one of the many ghosts that populate his universe. Today, the anxiety has given way to relief: the 9/11 feature film certainly has too many characters and subplots, but Tim Burton is having fun (and so are we) and occasionally finding the spirit of his original.

And this is one of the challenges of this story, in the background of mourning and returning to the past, in which the director seems to talk about himself several times.

A subtext that is not new without his work: he shares more than a haircut with his Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood is a self-portrait barely disguised as biographical, Big Fish allows him to “evoke a relationship with his father, who died shortly before.” And the idea of ​​Big Eyes that the artist was deprived of his work. And the attacks on Disney in Dumbo show that his relationship with the studio is still as fresh as ever.

In this new film, the filmmaker seems to be talking about himself through the character of Lydia Dietz (Winona Ryder) as an extension. In 1988, he was already his alter ego, this teenager with sick ideas who, like him when he was younger, thrives more in the society of the dead (or horror movies) than the living. And Beetlejuice represented the awkward side that was expressed in Pee Wee Big Adventure’s chaotic chase scene, but which he tried to control.

Thirty-six years later, Lydia has transferred her ability to communicate with the dead to a TV show she hosts on autopilot, bored. “I Denied Myself for Fame”he says later, in a line that sounds like a confession from the director, who admits he made the choice for the wrong reasons (and no doubt takes aim at Planet of the Apes , Alice in Wonderland , and/or Dumbo ).

Find the “goth chick” in Tim Burton

“Where is the goth uncle who tormented me so many years ago?”Delia (Kathryn O’Hara) asks Lydia. “You must find him!” We wouldn’t necessarily use that image to describe Tim Burton, but one of the main points of the film is: reconnecting “Gothic Beach” That was in 1988.

When he dynamited from within the studios to shoot his shiny and unsettling monsters and scenery. And that he humored everything between the semi-macabre and the poetic, with the spirit of a dirty child, to finally express to the general public what had labeled him marginal until now, both in his own and in the first period. A visit to Disney.

The evolution of the relationship between Lydia and Betlejuice is then interesting to analyse: the demon first returns to her life in tumultuous flashes and shows her haunted, as it might have been, according to the rumors that accompanied her all these years. . Reluctant at first, when he shows up forever, she eventually agrees to bond with him (and thus her past), save her daughter, and that’s where she ends up.

As well as Tim Burton, who for a long time does not leave the impression of such fun as in the second part of the film, and in particular, this ending in the form of a musical sequence. And it’s probably not just a matter of imbalance in the script.

At the film’s press conference at the Venice Film Festival, the director admitted that he was considering leaving the industry in which he plays. “I don’t love you either” After the box office failure of Dumbo ($353.3 million worldwide). But that Wednesday, and above all, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice gave him that boost of energy. Which is felt here, both in Lydia and in its staging, and the abundance of ideas, sets, costumes and old-fashioned tricks.

Which brings up the question of the ending. So Lydia and Tim Burton discover Beetlejuice, a symbol of the spirit of their past. But the first still managed to get out of marriage with the demon. A sign for him, as a filmmaker, that it is not about connecting life to the world and its characters, and that it was necessary to return to the world of the dead to reconnect with the living and members. family.

Acknowledgment and farewell?

So what should we make of this excerpt from his latest show, in which he admits to losing his mind for a few years and announces that he’s going to end it? A way for Tim Burton to say that his retirement is imminent and that we may be facing his last film?

In addition to Wednesday’s Season 2 episodes, he’s got the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman remake attached, but we can’t count any more projects he didn’t end up directing, and this — this could be part of it. Making Beetlejuice Beetlejuice could be a way to close the loop by returning to his real-life origins on film (Pee Wee was a commission related to a pre-existing character) while also addressing this past he was trying to escape. move on to something else.

Although with great sincerity he makes a mea culpa and admits that he will never truly be free of Beetlejuice, who will pursue him like Lydia in the epilogue. Does he really want to stop or not, and while he says he has no plans for what’s next, how long will he be able to resist saying his name three times given the good he’s doing in the artistic and artistic side of his cinema. On a financial level? And can you tell us about yourself after that?