The Decline of Tim Burton

in 2006 Tim Burton was asked by his biographer Mark Salisbury whether becoming a father had changed the way he made films after all Burton's partner and collaborator Helena Bonham Carter had given birth to their son just three years before this for Burton the answer was easy some people asked the question now that you're a father is this why you made Charlie in the Chocolate Factory are you gonna make films for children and the feeling I have now is absolutely not obviously becoming a parent is an emotional experience and an amazing experience but I don't foresee it changing in any way shape or form the kind of movies I'd want to make in fact they might get harsher in some ways now this answer raises an eyebrow for a couple of reasons firstly while Burton's films are dark in tone and can often be quite violent their Whimsical Nature has always been appealing to kids I myself was a massive fan of Burton when I was younger something I've actually grown out of a bit with age but who can say they didn't enjoy watching The Nightmare Before Christmas or Beetlejuice every year around Halloween or staring open mouths at the stop mode ocean marvels of corpse bride or whimpering in the arms of their parents while watching Big Fish so for him to dismiss his role in children's filmmaking is a bit odd and second in 2019 burden came out with Dumbo the second live-action remake he made for Disney like most other Disney Live Action remakes Dumbo is to put it nicely devoid of Joy the palette is Bleak and desaturated the acting is lifeless do something mom would have done something mom wasn't out of here this is my room this is all our rooms I want to make scientific discoveries I want to be noticed for my mind the CGI sets are glossy and weightless making you feel like none of the action has any real impact and it does that classically Disney thing of slapping on a really Hollow contemporary Progressive message that insults the intelligence of its audience welcome to the Medici Fest circus where we believe no wild animals you'll be held in captivity essentially Burton took all the Whimsy and wonder of the original 1941 film and made it not that but anyone who knows Tim Burton's filmmaking can attest that if you're looking for Whimsy and wonder he's your man the master of all things strange and unusual I myself am strange and unusual I mean this is the guy that gave us offbeat Classics like Edward Scissorhands and peewee's big adventure so how do we get from that to this it's hard to trace a clear trajectory in Burton's work since he has a really big portfolio that actually varies a lot more than he would think but if we take a step back and look at it from afar there's been a noticeable decline in Burton's work an illness let's say attacking the very soul of his filmmaking let's find a diagnosis shall we [Music] this video is sponsored by care of care of is a subscription service that ships high quality personalized vitamins supplements and powders to your 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products are really personalized which is great because I love to feel special so take care of this quiz and see what vitamins and supplements they recommend for you click on the link below and use my code bro e50 for 50 off your first order with care of born Timothy Walter Burton in 1958 to parents Jean and Will Burton spent his childhood in the sunny valleys of Burbank California only a few miles from Hollywood it goes without saying that a love for filmmaking was almost native to this upbringing burden was a quiet kid and with two rather disinterested parents he had a lot of time to throw himself to his wins creating roughly hewn's stop-motion films in his backyard whenever he could never the popular guy burden had a difficult time in school and thus developed a growing resentment towards what he perceived to be a very cold society around him this resentment carried with him into adulthood he remarks on his high school reunion the presidents the jocks they had truly peaked in high school and it was so shocking to see that it confirmed your suspicions about things because those who were tortured were forced to be their own people they couldn't rely on society they couldn't rely on the culture or the hierarchy to take care of them so to speak so they had to make themselves acceptable the sentiment of feeling like an outsider would very much bleed into Burton's body of work and it's crucial to understanding the trends in his career After High School Burton put his artistic talents to practice and pursued a degree at Cal Arts co-founded by Walt Disney himself calart sought to groom talented animators to work at Disney straight out of school Burton was part of these early cohorts and his five years at Disney highlighted the generational differences between the Golden Age animators and the fresh new hires what's odd about Disney he reflects in his biography is that they want you to be an artist but at the same time they want you to be a zombie factory worker and have no personality it takes a very special person to make those two sides of your brain coexist Burton's time at Disney was not a great one the concept art he made for their animated films was never used and the first two films he made for them barely saw the light of day this all came to a head when in 1984 he came out with Frank and weenie a satirical take on the classic Frankenstein tale about a scientist boy who brings his beloved family dog back to life after it's hit by a car here we get themes of otherness mob societies and a generally dark atmosphere that would later become characteristic of Burton's work but despite the involvement of Heavy Hitters like Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern the film did not fare well and Burton was fired from Disney for using their resources to make a film that was allegedly too dark for the company's child audiences but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise with new connections and a host of important people who had seen and appreciated the Artistry of Frankenweenie Burton was asked to adapt a feature of peewee's playhouse after catching the attention of famous Oddball children's Creator Paul Rubens again burden was drawn to the project because he saw Peewee as an outcast stuck in permanent adolescence much like him self Peewee went on to be a box office hits and although it was not well received by critics as most children's material isn't it went on to be a cult classic in the decades to come his success as a bankable director allowed him to make Beetlejuice a dark comedy about a self-proclaimed freelance bio Exorcist demon who terrorized as a nubarish family that's recently moved into a drafty New England Home formerly owned by a newlywed couple who died in a car crash just months before the film is macabre weirdly raunchy and genuinely really funny it was a critical and Commercial Success and has an enduring Legacy as yet another Camp classic and what's notable here is that only one million dollars of the film's 15 million dollar budget was dedicated to VFX with the rest of the art being dedicated to practical effects giving the movie A distinctly b-style aesthetic this was when Burton began playing around with expressionistic almost zeusian style art Direction you can really see this taking center stage in Beetlejuice imbuing it with a very unique and memorable tone since Burton has such an expansive filmography I won't be going through each and every one of his films just for the sake of time instead I think it would be more fruitful to do an inventory of the films of his that I think exemplify the best of his work and the films that exemplify the worst the SE films jumped the course of many years but again if we look at it from afar we can see that the decline begins somewhere around the mid to late 2000s and early 2010s I think Beetlejuice is a good jumping off point because with its Rye tone and expressionistic design it's the first of his films that really contributed to his very distinctive foreign [Music] the projects of burdens that I find to be the strongest are ones that are created either from his own ideas or from a pre-existing IP that isn't well known to the general public and thus ones that seem to be quite personal and unique to him Edward Scissorhands his 1990 film about a boy with long sharp scissors for hands who desperately wants to touch but can't was born from Burton's teenage subconscious I just felt I couldn't communicate it was the feeling that your image and how people perceive you are at odds with what is inside of you which is a fairly common feeling I think a lot of people feel that way to some degree because it's frustrating and sad to feel a certain way but for it not to come through so the idea had to do with image and perception and you can tell when watching this project that more than any before it seems deeply personal to Burton there's such a care and attention here it feels like every inch and second of every scene was carefully thought out it shares themes of social isolation and appearance versus reality and MOB societies with Frank and weenie but with a more useful emotional sensibility to it the same goes for his 2003 film Big Fish probably the most notable departure from Burton's typical Style this film is an adaptation of a book by Daniel Wallace called Big Fish a novel of Mythic proportions which was unpublished when it first arrived in the hands of screenwriter John August Burton received the script after making Planet of the Apes which was both critically and commercially panned and was in the mood to make a smaller film again and one that wasn't yet a known entity he and August were drawn to the story after having both lost their fathers quite recently Burton found that the story articulated complicated feelings about his father's death that he hadn't yet been able to articulate and found the filming process to be very cathartic in reading the script I thought this is it exactly this puts an image to the uncommunicable so I liked that very much I wouldn't normally do something like that except it hit me on that level it's like having a baby you can't really prepare for your emotions being the child of an eccentric father myself who's known for telling long elaborate stories about his past this one hit very close to home this is the first of Burton's movies that brought me to tears and I mean a lot of tears I think this is because it's one of the only ones to deal in small subtle emotions the magical Melancholy of it actually reminds me a lot of ingmar bergman's wild strawberries a movie I'm very fond of the idea of the uncommunicable that he expresses in regards to Edward and big fish is very reflective of how his films are kind of like moving paintings that Express the pathos of the story through ART Direction color palettes and costume design the art direction of Edward Scissorhands gives life to the complex emotions behind the film which allows for the story itself to be quite simple everything in the film is practical burden and his production designer Beau Welch found a generic suburb and painted every house in it one of four colors seafoam green dirty flesh butter and sturdy blue to strip them of individual character they also reduce the window sizes to give the neighborhood a more claustrophobic and paranoid feel Edward's makeup which calls back to Cesar from the cabinet of Dr Caligari is visibly unsubtle giving it a kind of painterly feel there are a lot of really interesting POV shots that situate the viewer in the eyes of Edward a fish out of water looking out at his new surroundings and also in the eyes of the townsfolk who watch Edward with grotesque Fascination Burton is able to take his frustration out on his Suburban upbringing here the film plays a bit like a Suburban Gothic where something sinister is always bubbling under the Lysol surfaces of this colorful neighborhood while big fish is a less visually expressionistic film than Edward Scissorhands it weaves a lot of Fantastical elements into its more grounded story and groundedness aside it still has a familiar birtonian touch incorporating elements of the Southern Gothic throughout Burton seems to have really enjoyed making big fish it was one of the first times he felt that the studio completely butt out of the process despite its big budget he didn't have to submit to script rewrites and big branding like he did with something like Batman and ended up being quite proud of the result although he did have some emotional difficulty with the more realistic scenes especially because this was one of his first experiences dealing with the real world in his art it was very intense doing the hospital and bedside scenes I never went through that with my father so it wasn't like I was replicating something I was in Hawaii scouting locations for Apes when I got the news that he had died the final few times I saw my father he looked ill but he wasn't bedridden the only side of it was the emotional side that I had gone through to alleviate this they shot the real life stuff first and quickly and then Focus as much as possible on the fantasy flashbacks allowing burden to return to more comfortable territory this discomfort with intricate personal emotions would become a great hindrance for Burton's films later down the line but when he's able to overcome this barrier and use his art as a means of release it results in something really wonderful Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas are my favorite examples of the evocativeness in Tim Burton's Artistry it's commonplace now to dismiss Burton's role in the making of nightmare since despite the fact that the movie was billed with his name in front of the title it was actually directed by Henry Selleck who would later go on to make stop-motion Classics like Coraline and James and the Giant Peach but the idea for nightmare was initially conceived by Burton who wanted to make a film about a character who was isolated because he appears to be scary but really isn't kind of like Edward since he was working on the Batman sequel he was unable to commit to the project as a director but selik was determined to be as faithful to Burton's wishes as possible The Nightmare Before Christmas released in 1993 is a delay from beginning to end with visuals and Melodies that exude a powerful Melancholy it's no surprise the films as cherished as it is but Corpse Bride a 2005 animated film about a repressed Victorian man who accidentally proposes to a dead woman is when Burton got to actually direct stop motion this time along with co-director Mike Johnson the idea kind of fell into his lap by way of his former classmate the late Joe ranft to whom the film is dedicated back in the early 90s ranf had brought to Burton a 19th century Eastern European folktale which would serve as the basis for the film's story Burton opted to tell it in stop motion which he felt would be a much needed contribution to a film industry that was heading rapidly into total CGI territory really what I find most resonant and enduring about Corpse Bride is like I said the art selik once said of his own 2009 stop-motion film Coraline is a huge risk but these days in animation the safest bet is to take a risk there's something really special about star motion animation I think the labor and time required of it make for a very intimate viewing experience and that's something we're really missing with mainstream filmmaking today you can see the artists pouring their hearts into every single movement of the characters and everything feels very intentional and careful it evokes the same kind of feeling that old 2D Disney films do where you're watching a release simple stripped down story that allows you space to Marvel at the art and let it really speak for itself both Nightmare and Corpse Bride are Whimsical Gothic fantasy films that can be enjoyed by both adults and children alike and are thus I think most emblematic of Burton's style none of these films I've mentioned can be considered the biggest box office draws of Burton's filmography while they were all critically and publicly well received they're by no means his biggest money makers but for me and I'm sure many other people they are the films that cemented Burton as a household name and I think there are some very notable reasons why they are the films to Define his legacy their original in concept and therefore completely true to burden and his belief system they're also simple Parables that's not to say they aren't multifaceted and gray but they're digestible enough for young people to make sense of and those kinds of simple messages are the ones that stick lastly they led the art to the talking Burton is first and foremost an artist after all he came to Disney in their Dark Age and saw firsthand what the the collapse of the art Department did for the company nurturing art is what's most important to these kinds of Otherworldly films especially when their creator is someone who is admittedly a bit distant from his emotions gives me unique powerful visuals a Danny Elfman score a simple story and I'm a happy Burton viewer but as we'll see in his later directorial Pursuits this artistic emotional Focus would begin to wane in favor of well other things [Music] in a 2019 article for Forbes about the Flop that was Dumbo titled how Tim Burton became uncool writer Scott Mendelson locates the decline of Burton's status as a sort of lost edginess he observes the kind of larger-than-life fantasy spectacles that were once uniquely bertonian are now almost conventional Hollywood output for Mendelson the days where Burton was at his most provocative his most threatening to public sensibility was when he made Batman and Batman Returns both of which alarmed parents with their morbidity and dark subject matter while making Beetlejuice Burton was also in the process of developing a script for a new Batman film with screenwriter Sam ham unlike today the 80s were a low period for the superhero genre major Studios saw superheroes as campy and childish and therefore not bankable but Burton and ham in typical fashion wanted to depart from Batman's Camp year iterations to make something darker and more serious returning to the original Noir style of the 1940s Comics Warner Brothers sat on the pitch and only signed on to it after the success of Beetlejuice this was Burton's first big budget film and well I'm not super well acquainted with superhero movies but it seems to be pretty good for the most part the film does have a Noir quality to it borrowing expressionistic lighting and sets to invoke Gotham with the decidedly dreary and otherworldly atmosphere like Peewee Burton Saw Batman and the Joker as freakish outcasts except where Batman is repressed by the social conventions of his double life The Joker is able to enjoy the freedoms that his freakishness affords to him to their fullest extent Batman went on to be a massive success and is cited by some as the first true major Blockbuster in the way it developed a brand awareness with audience familiarity big stars built-in mythology and Sensational imagery but in spite of its unprecedented success Burton does not like Batman in fact he finds it really boring luckily for him the success of the first demanded a second and with the sequel Batman Returns he chose to go even darker this one is much more violent and graphic than its predecessor and focuses much more on the moral ambiguity of Batman as a figure Burton likes this one a lot more I think the culture is much more Disturbed and disturbing than this movie a lot more but they just fixate on things and they choose targets I like the movie and I don't feel bad about it and in some ways it's a pure form of what the Batman material is all about which is that the line between villain and hero is blurred and it seems that people agreed with him Batman Returns would shatter the record set by the first film grossing 268 million dollars worldwide proving that the public was not only ready for dark adaptations of famous stories they were hungry for it while Batman and its sequel are generally great films memorable and well-liked they Mark the beginning of a long Trend in Burton's filmography of adapting pre-existing popular IP to make it darker and grittier or rather to make it the Tim Burton version of like everything this was almost inevitable when I think of a weirdo I usually think of somebody who is an individual and free and it's something that everybody should strive for as I've driven home over and over again burden fancies himself a bit of an industry Outsider some people are really good at narrative and some people are really good at action I'm not that sort of person so if I'm gonna do something just let me do my thing and hope for the best if you don't want me to do it then don't have me do it but if I do it then don't make me conform but there are two opposing sides to Burton's brain the first is the sad Outsider one and the second is the money making one I care about money which is why I get so intense when people are on my casing I don't make commercial movies because I've always felt very responsible to the people who put up the money and as we would later come to realize as much as he fancies himself the dark innovator Outsider of Hollywood this is the side he fancies much much more honestly when he talks about really anything in his biography he does it with a kind of arbitrary rebelliousness that a teenager would rarely does he clearly Express just what exactly is wrong with the society around him or the industry he works in other than that he doesn't want to have to conform to it but for a man whose films have seen massive Commercial Success since the beginning and he was worked exclusively with major production and distribution Studios this rebelliousness seems a bit Hollow and as the years go on and burden becomes more and more popular this sentiment starts to feel less provocative active and more like being different for different sake in case you haven't noticed I'm weird I'm a weirdo I don't fit in and I don't want to fit in this is something we can see most clearly when he decides to adapt to well-known stories which he does almost exclusively these days the film that really signifies for me the beginning of the end for Burton's work is one that was actually both commercially and critically well received that film is Sleepy Hollow Sleepy Hollow is a 1999 supernatural horror film this one based on Washington Irving's famous 1820 Gothic story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow the original tale is a bit of superstitious Schoolmaster named Ichabod Crane who goes to stay in the Dutch town of Sleepy Hollow after hearing about mysterious happenings in the region especially stories about a ghostly headless soldier who wanders around at night in search of his head aimed The Headless Horseman Ichabod develops a particular liking to the 18 year old Katrina Van Hessel who most appeals to him because of her family's vast wealth but Katrina is already engaged to prom bones who plays a series of pranks on Ichabod in an effort to scare him out of town one night Ichabod heads home through the wood and crosses the path of a large shadowy traveler whose head seems to be resting on his hip in an attempt to flee he falls off his horse never to be seen again the legend has it that Ichabod may have either run away forever or died of fright and that the horsemen was actually just Brawn bones playing another harmless prank simple right a nice fun spooky Tale the 1999 Sleepy Hollow is a completely different story literally it seems here the burden either completely misunderstands or just like doesn't really care about the core themes of the source material other than that it's spooky listen I'm not some sort of Puritan I know directors have full license to alter Source material to make it more compatible with the medium or to play around with it to make something fresh and new but it's the way you burn and does it that I take issue with in this Sleepy Hollow Ichabod Crane is a police Constable from New York who has been dispatched to the town after a series of mysterious beheadings the superstitious Town Elders believe the suspect to be of Supernatural origins The Headless Horseman that is Ichabod who is apprehensive about this Theory then embarks on a winding investigation with many red herrings all the while developing a romance with Katrina Van Hessel until he finally discovers that the true culprit is Katrina's stepmother a Satan worshiping witch who seeks revenge on the town's wealthy inhabitants after one of them left her and her family impoverished as a child in her elaborate plot she reanimates The Headless Hessian Soldier to do her bloody bidding a long fight ensues Mrs Van Hessel is defeated as The Horseman now freed drags her down to Hell and Iqbal and Katrina live happily ever after the film is also very violent with all of the gratuitous Gore and bloodshed echoing Burton's favorite Hammer horror films Sleepy Hollow was met with generally positive reviews when it came out praised mostly for its Rich World building and unique art Direction but frankly I really don't like it my main reason being that it's the first instance where Burton does that thing of overstuffing a story packing in long action sequences and giving well-known characters unnecessary shallow backstories for no reason other than to be bigger than the source material but say it with me bigger is not always better when it comes to filmmaking Batman was already a very complex expansive IP when Burton got his hands on it with tons of avenues for mythology and World building that isn't really the case with Irving's short story the plot is so convoluted it's almost impossible to follow and because of this half of the scenes are dedicated just to Exposition at the expense of any emotional resonance the scenes between Ichabod and Katrina suffer mostly for this which are so lifeless and awkward they were my mother's books my father believes Tales of romance cause the brain fever that killed my mother she died two years ago come in winter these are strange these markings what are they I've had them since I can remember this brings us to the elephant in the room that I've been trying to avoid honestly Johnny Depp who I will only be discussing as he pertains to the subject at hand they try hard to instill the dorkiness inherent to ichabod's character but I don't know with Depp it comes across very forced here was it hit this Horseman you must not excite yourself but it was a headless horseman of course it was that's why you were here no you must believe me it was a Horseman a dead one headless which takes you out of what's supposed to be a pretty serious and adult atmosphere I kept asking who was this film made for it was too graphic to be targeted towards children but two inexplicably goofy to be taken seriously by adults one of the greatest criticisms of Burton today is that he reuses the same actors over and over again to the extent that they become exhausting to watch Depp who stars in a whopping eight of Burton's films is the actor he does this with the most this is the first time it's really apparent burton foregoes all of ichabod's greediness for the sake of making him an empathetic protagonist and then shoves in in this Freudian backstory here it's mommy issues ichabod's mom Lisa Marie is a beautiful witch who is brutally murdered by ichabod's fanatical dad and attempts to save her from her sins Ichabod Witnesses the murder and is obviously traumatized and does he want to sleep with his mom what the [ __ ] okay Depp has suggested that this version of Ichabod is meant to represent Burton's quote battle with the Hollywood studio system even the world which Burton doesn't deny but like do we even know what we're fighting against what does Ichabod defeating Mrs Van Hessel represent the majority of Sleepy Hollow was shot on sound stages intricate sets were built for the exterior shots to effectively execute Burton's Vision to get that natural expressionism he's so famous for but they also desaturate the palate a lot which means a lot of the painstaking art direction is lost in the drabness of the visuals Sleepy Hollow is fun enough but it's missing that magical Whimsical quality that we love about Tim Burton movies it actually indicates an early sign of what was to come Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is another case where Burton does not have a great deal of respect or admiration for the original property by this I mean the original 1971 film and as much as Burton would deny it the book true Roald Dahl himself hate did the original 1971 Gene Wilder adaptation but I mean Roald Dahl also famously kind of sucked I personally think the movie is great so going into it Burton who sights doll as one of his greatest Inspirations and to also detests quote the odd and disturbing qualities of the original film wanted to make a more faithful adaptation of the work I don't think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a bad film almost all of the acting performances are wonderful almost good morning stars shine the Earth says hello the child actors are particularly outstanding in their roles I also appreciate that the film has a distinct aesthetic Direction which feels very inspired but the art Direction mostly feels so strong to me because Burton did not over rely on the green screen using real sets and practical effects wherever possible of this he says and this will become quite ironic later it just felt like in the age of Lord of the Rings and those kind of grand high-tech movies this isn't that kind of a movie it's an expensive movie but it's not an action movie it doesn't really satisfy on that level so it just didn't feel right to over rely on the technology these good elements give the film enough inertia to push it into passable territory but for me especially re-watching it as an adult the bad outweighs the good here and passable just isn't enough if burden thought the 1971 film was odd and disturbing it doesn't appear to me that he made an effort to make this one any less unsettling than its predecessor he describes Wonka as the Citizen Cane of candy this is relatively true to the characterization but he used it as a reason to trade in his usual art direction for what he describes as fascist imagery a decision which given Dole's history with anti-Semitism is an odd one to say the least well it's that Citizen Kane or Howard Hughes of candy obsessives there's something sad and slightly Sinister about them but not bad there are many different sides to that but it just seems like a nice look for the factory especially with all the intricacy and busyness of the candy also I kind of relate to that because as a film director you tend towards those fascist movements somehow you relate on a personal level or something uh okay slightly sidestepping that last part because I don't even know what to make of that is it like because directors like power anyways it appears that burden evokes the spirit of fascism in this children's film for no reason other than the fact that he liked the look and there can certainly be a fascist reading of Willy Wonka in his Factory if you want to go there but it's just a very strange thing to lean into in a celebratory way especially without much intellectual reasoning behind it and especially since Burton's always boasting his own self-proclaimed anti-establishment identity one of doll's biggest critiques of the 1971 film is that it places too much emphasis on Willy Wonka shrinking Charlie's role in the process yet in this Charlie barely gets to do anything in the film other than gape at his peers and answer questions matter-of-factly of course Charlie is a blank canvas for The Virtuous child and this is how Burton defended his decision to keep Charlie as Bland a character as possible but if you're going into your film to do it better and more Faithfully than the original Channel then maybe do that I really do think Johnny Depp is miscast as Willy Wonka I also think his acting really isn't giving much Beyond a bad Pee-wee Herman impression wow my mistake I always thought of Veruca was a type of War he got on the bottom of your foot one that he sticks to in spite of the fact the character is born and raised in England it makes for this really disconcerting performance where Wonka comes across more like a stereotype of a pedo than a Whimsical fantasy man Vernon screenwriter John August also give Depp another Freudian backstory this time it's daddy issues and it's so heavy-handed it's almost insulting at one point they actually have him lying in a therapy chair Wonka's dad is a strict dentist played by Christopher Lee who forces him to wear some really exaggerated headgear that inhibits him from being able to eat candy so he runs away from home K is a complicated character he has to be and that's why we tried to give him a little context there is none in the book it's a fable but in this day and age you have to because you don't show any of that or feel any of that he's just a weird guy he can't just have a funny guy in a bow tie who Whimsical I don't know how as a director as an actor you'd latch onto it unless you found some psychological foundation for the character he's got arrested development I would say yeah it's a fable but the Fable isn't about Willy Wonka it's about the children materially Charlie has nothing but he has more power in him more altruism than the rest of the children because he's learned humility but to bulk up the story burden and August deviate far from this message yes we watch all the children get their Just Desserts but the entire final 20 minutes of the film are dedicated to Charlie forcing Wonka to reconcile with his father and then adopting him into his own family the final line is this in the end Charlie Bucket want a chocolate factory [Music] but Willy Wonka has something even better a family but what did Charlie learn in the end of the 1971 version Charlie passes a final secret test where he returns the fizzy lifting drinks that he and Grandpa Joe stole early on proving that he is capable of doing the moral thing even when it doesn't benefit him this is why he's a ward at the factory in this version Charlie is invited to live and work at the factory because I guess he's just docile enough to make a good roommate this doesn't give him the opportunity to demonstrate any moral fortitude other than when he says he won't leave his family behind which isn't even presented as a test it just looks like Wonka wanted some company this is a rather confusing moral lesson for the audience and it certainly isn't more faithful to the book since it renders most of the lessons earlier on completely useless from a storytelling perspective in his biography Burton says something to Salisbury that I think plays out like a famous last words CGI needs to be in a framework it needs to be held in check with other elements so that you're still feeling something that's much more present for me there's no such thing as unlimited resources in movies you need boundaries right Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a 2010 spiritual sequel of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel of the same name it takes place ahead of the book where Alice now 19 years old is currently facing an arranged marriage at her engagement party she runs away and chases a white rabbit down a hole and finds herself back in Wonderland except it's been inexplicably changed to underland here but now finds it very different she discovers that not only has she been here before as a child when the original story took place but she is also a Chosen One destined to fight a mythical monster called the Jabberwocky by defeating the Beast Alice will depose the incumbent Red Queen who has been reigning Terror on the land she's then thrust into a series of adventures with familiar faces from the original story which eventually leads to a battle sequence where Alice sporting Knight's armor beheads the Jabberwocky and restores order to underland she is then allowed to go back home where she promptly turns down the proposal and chooses to become a colonizer girl boss okay Carol's Alice in Wonderland and even the 1951 adaptation even though it isn't very faithful to the source material itself are predicated on the idea of nonsensical nihilism the idea that our world can often be random and meaningless we're thus situated in Alice's point of view a child trying to make sense of an adult's world when she goes to Wonderland not only does she feel out of place but also that she is more capable of reason than her bizarre surroundings in the process she grows up a little and exits more prepared than before to tackle the real world in all its randomness you would think Burton who frequently discusses feeling misunderstood and unable to communicate as a child would relate to this but in a press conference for the film he explains it was always a girl wandering around from One Crazy Character to another and I never really felt any real emotional connection like that's the whole point and this really underscores the disparity between Alice in a movie like Edward Scissorhands why would you choose to direct something you have no emotional connection to so when adapting it Burton's goal was quote to try to make it an engaging movie where you get some of the psychology and kind of bring a freshness but also keep the classic nature of Alice again with the dark adult remake and what we get is a by the Numbers Heroes Journey that completely betrays the objective of the book just like the case with Charlie once again we run into the problem of over-inflating Johnny Depp's character at the expense of the protagonist this time it's even more egregious because the Mad Hatter is originally nothing but a goofy side character here the hatter is a bitter traumatized man who's got a whole lot of screen time and weird sexual tension with Alice since we spend so much time with the hatter Alice is reduced to this one note character who gets thrown from event to event even though this is what burden disliked about the original Alice's father tells her something at the beginning that's meant to carry throughout the film you're all the best it's something that gets repeated multiple times throughout my God you're entirely bonkers tell you a secret all the best people are the whole idea being that similar to almost all of Burton's other films there is freedom indifference but when you realize that Alice ends up doing all the routine things that were predetermined for her this message Rings false when she slays the Jabberwocky at the end of the film I kept asking myself why what does the Jabberwocky represent to Alice in the real world Alice is being forced into a predetermined marriage something she chooses to reject after her experience in underland but this choice is made right after she slays a beast to fulfill a prophecy that was predetermined for her that's pretty contradictory lastly the film is genuinely hideous Burton's over Reliance on CGI really destroys any Whimsy that was built into the story this does not go to say that VFX isn't an art it is and a ton of human labor goes into it but many directors as in the case with Burton underestimate this labor and expect these artists to operate on whims as burden quoted an American cinematographer it often felt like we were making it up as we went along which is not the best way to do it but because we were mixing Technologies heavily and dealing with a short shooting schedule 50 days of principal photography it was inevitable the visuals are all very glossy flat and weightless which makes the world really boring to look at they're also like Sleepy Hollow very desaturated this is such a missed opportunity for Burton he also released the film in 3D as part of his contract with Disney despite filming it in 2D I guess because Disney wanted to enhance the spectacle and it is all spectacle littered with a ton of ardu with action scenes where Alice has to get out of everything based on physical strength rather than waiter reason ultimately though the spectacle paid off the film made an insane 1.025 billion and is credited as having kicked off the much maligned trend of Disney Live Action remix so again Burton proved his success as a bankable director through a movie where he had essentially forsaken all of his core values as a director and artist and it's what I think led us to where we are now with Dumbo burden is at his weakest when he forsakes his Source material and goes too big Sleepy Hollow Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland are all based on beloved works of fiction fables with clear morals and lessons that burden injecting the same tired and shallowly dark and adult themes of Misfits Freud and anti-conformism completely betrays they're bloated with overwrought backstories and unnecessarily inflated characters and ultimately lacking in heart these are first and foremost High budget spectacles generating an incredible amount of revenue for their Studios when asked about this Burton said when there is a large amount of money involved I attempt without pretending to know what audiences are all about to try and do something that people would like to see without going too crazy I think when you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one and whatever happened to you if you don't want me to do it then don't have me do it but if I do it then don't make me conform [Music] as I said earlier I agree with Mendelson when he argues that the Batman movies were an example of Burton at his most provocative but where I disagree is when He suggests that Larger than Life spectacles are something that's uniquely bertonian like I addressed Burton's most defining films are actually ones that did not generate the most money at all sure he's been making Blockbusters since his early days but what we associate as uniquely bertonian isn't big budget spectacle it's all the other things art Whimsy folktale films that pulse with sorrowful yearning this desperate melancholic Beauty but somewhere down the line I think catalyzed by Batman and cemented by Sleepy Hollow there was a shift from the bertonian to the overwrought convoluted flaccid surface level CGI humdrum the kind of conventional Hollywood output that Mendelssohn speaks of and he is right that it's conventional right now you can't hop on a streaming service without being confronted with a barrage of dark remakes of your favorite childhood media it's genuinely plaguing the world of mainstream film and TV especially because Disney who are attempting with all their might to monopolize the film industry at whatever means necessary are completely caught up with churning out the safest most sanitized uninspired and honestly insulting remakes of their original films films that artists slaved over for years poured everything they had into making this is all for the sake of money and Burton is right there at the center of it he talks a big talk about being the little guy in a world full of bullies but at this point he's a pawn for one of the biggest corporate bullies out there Burton did such an incredible job of developing a distinctive style that defined a generation one that Mendelssohn argues provided a learning tool for young people to understand all tour theory in utilizing the same composers actors and visual influences he created a sense of audience familiarity that was clear enough for even children to be literate in and it's what made him so beloved Among Us I think every kid at some point or another experiences feelings of isolation and difference of not being understood by their parents or Society his films allowed them to be seen an outlet to escape into and feel nurtured but I really think that once everyone is an outsider no one is and this is something burden who pushed this Outsider image well into late adulthood despite being embraced by just about everyone Studios audiences everyone still doesn't seem to understand by the way he dismisses his child's audience in the quote at the beginning of the video it seems he doesn't much respect why the films resonate with them but it's funny because he approaches these adult remakes from a very childish perspective of rebelling against the establishment and his unchanging view of this as his popularity and wealth has grown has led to very Hollow filmmaking morphing from parodies of his own style to completely unrecognizable from mainstream fare I am cautiously optimistic about his upcoming Adams Family spin-off for Netflix optimistic because The Adams Family already Macabre is well suited to Burton cautious because from the trailer alone it's clear that he's going for spectacle again and truly I just really want to see some original material from him I will forever love my favorite Tim Burton films which truly contributed to the development of who I am today but I do think he's a cautionary Tale in living long enough to see herself become a villain or at least to see your work reduced to a 40 t-shirt at Hot Topic learn from it kids the mall goth pipeline is a dangerous one but I don't walk around calling myself Punk it's more Punk to tell people you're not Punk than to sit there and say that you are Punk and whatever I if you if you want to know what I think that I am I think that I'm just a rock chick and I like to rock out I like to throw [ __ ] around I like to go nuts I like to lose myself on stage I like to scream I like to holler I like to break things I like to yell special thank you to Louis yosta sayarassan malpur toy Morgan Cooper stimpson Nina Nina e Nadia C Nick Jenny Eller J Frost mcfinnigan Gabriel M The Wiz Daniel d h Klein Pete Holland Carrie Gavin and Kelly wolf for 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Channel: Broey Deschanel

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Length: 44min 14sec (2654 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022