Ever since Tim Burton’s feature film debut as a director with 1985’s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, he’s been one of Hollywood’s top filmmakers. The best Tim Burton movies, from either a critical or commercial standpoint, include two Batman movies that arguably paved the way for modern superhero franchises, and his live-action remake of Alice in Wonderland, which spawned a franchise of Disney remakes that are still going on today.
However, over the past few years, Tim Burton says he has become disillusioned with Hollywood and making movies. It sounds like perhaps his last few projects haven’t been movies that he enjoyed making, but that changed when he decided to make the upcoming sequel to Beetlejuice. Speaking at the Venice Film Festival (via THR) Burton said…
Over the past few years I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry, [I sort] of lost myself. For me I realized the only way to be a success is that I have to love doing it. For this one, I just enjoyed and loved making it.
While Burton doesn’t go into detail, it’s not necessarily surprising to hear him say that the movie industry has left him disillusioned. If Burton draws a connection between his own enjoyment of the process and ultimate success for the picture, we can work backward and assume the lack of success means he wasn’t having much fun.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is Burton’s first theatrical release in five years. The last movie he directed was Disney’s live-action Dumbo remake which, despite taking some big swings, was not one of the blockbuster successes that Disney has seen from those films. Burton’s movies before that included the drama Big Eyes and the family fantasy Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children. Both films were largely overlooked by audiences.
But things have seemingly changed with the new Beetlejuice movie. Burton says a Beetlejuice sequel took so long in part because he didn’t really understand why the original film was as big a hit as it was. However, it sounds like he ultimately decided he didn’t care. Burton says the movie was put together quickly and the ending was never actually written down, leading to a film that he enjoyed making a great deal more. He explained…
We did everything quickly. the things that usually take months we did quickly. We’d go buy a doll from a toy story and rip it up and put rods on it and do some stuff. That was the spirit, and it doesn’t always happen in films. It have it [sic] an energy and a personal nature to it that everybody contributed to. Even the ending wasn’t written. We were playing with everything.
Burton says making Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was “never about” making a big sequel to make money, but that doesn’t mean the sequel isn’t going to be a massive hit. Even if it isn’t, it seems Burton is happy with it, and when the movie comes out next week we’ll find out if critics and audiences feel the same way.
