If you've been hoping that Tim Burton would eventually go back to his dark and weird roots, it's hard to ask for more than Frankenweenie, an animated feature-length version of his 1984 short, in which a dead dog is brought back to life. As you can see in the film's first trailer, which debuted today at Yahoo!, the Frankenstein parody is still in place, but transferred to a young boy who just wants to bring his beloved pet back. Check out how it happens in the trailer below.
With the black-and-white color and the rounded, odd creature design, this looks more like the Tim Burton we knew from Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas than anything we've seen in, well, ages. And while there's no sense of what happens when the kid brings Sparky back to life-- though you can imagine the consequences-- the story seems a little more contained than something like Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Burton and his imagination were running wild. Adapting one of his earliest short films is the most obvious way for Burton to "return to his roots," but it really does seem to be happening here regardless-- it feels like Frankenweenie could have been made in 1992, and for once, that's a good thing.
Burton fans have a lot to look forward to this year, with the vampire soap opera adaptation Dark Shadows coming May 11 and Frankenweenie coming later in the fall, on October 5. The movies look completely and totally different from each other, but let's compare them for now anyway-- which of Tim Burton's new movies are you looking forward to most?
