98. Tim Burton
TIM BURTON
BATMAN, BEETLEJUICE, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, ED WOOD, SLEEPY HOLLOW
In the late 1980s, no new filmmaker captured moviegoers’ imaginations quite like celebrity goth-kid-done-good Tim Burton. In film after film, the ersatz Disney animator used his highly distinctive creepy/cute visual aesthetic to explore his favorite subject: the loneliness of outsiderdom. And even though his uninspired late-career output has pushed his overall batting average well below .500, Burton’s best films—Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood—more than justify his place on the list. At his best, this quirky nerd from Burbank fascinated by old Universal monster movies and German silent film does what most filmmakers only dream of: re-create the entire world as per their own specific fetishes and obsessions.
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Tim Burton is one of those directors whom I would love to see come back and just knock one out of the park. Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd showed promise, but alas were followed by Alice In Wonderland. That said, I don’t think Alice was nearly as bad as many people claimed (I didn’t see it in 3D, which I hear sucked), it just felt tired. I don’t know how Burton can manage to both reinvigorate himself and keep the “goth-kid-done-good” aesthetic we so enjoyed, but I want him to keep trying.
I’m glad you guys didn’t write him off. It has become quite fashionable to slag him lately and I think that does a disservice to the classic movies he has made.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about Tim Burton a lot lately. LACMA just had an amazing retrospective of his artwork, and I just caught a drive-in screening of Beetlejuice down here in Long Beach.
I honestly think that if Burton had died in a fiery plane crash after Ed Wood, there’d never be a best directors list he wouldn’t immediately be included on. Such are the indignities of enduring, I suppose.
I thought Sweeney Todd was awesome, and Corpse Bride was okay. But those seem to be the exception rather than the rule these days. But yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he had some sort of artistic comeback at some point.