BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE – Why Has Tim Burton Eaten His Own Tail and Refuses to Spit It Out?

In September, the long-awaited moment will arrive – after 36 years, the sequel to Beetlejuice, one of the most important films in Tim Burton’s career, will premiere. Beetlejuice defined his style and became an aesthetic benchmark of “Burtonness,” further developed and cemented in Batman and Edward Scissorhands. For now, you can watch the trailer online. It seems like very little and it’s hard to conclude or evaluate anything from these two minutes of specially edited clips. However, in the case of the unique Tim Burton, I argue that you can, and it won’t be positive for the history of his style. Tim Burton should have left his abstract mannerisms behind in the first decade of the 21st century and moved on. I have nothing against a Beetlejuice sequel, but from the trailer, I can see that sentimental repeated motifs are mixed with the same tricks, combining horror with black comedy, which Burton has overused over the past 20 years. This is not how it was supposed to look, not like a mere cash-in on a cult hit.

Wes Anderson comes to mind, whose aesthetic and narrative mannerism has become boring, derivative, and almost unbearably sealed by Asteroid City over the past 10 years. The same has happened with Tim Burton, as if these two creators are unable to move beyond the template they once invented to bring their cinematic dreams to life. What fun is it to watch the same scaffolding dressed in different clothes in subsequent films, increasingly recycled with each title? The Beetlejuice trailer showed me how many of these recycled motifs could fit into a two-minute sequence. I’ll start with the well-known scene featuring Beetlejuice shown from behind, and during a mock therapy session, he suddenly reveals his “insides” to Lydia and Rory. It’s an interesting, funny trick, but it’s been done before. Besides that scene, viewers will be treated to many other scenes ripped from the first film – the small-headed character will be surprised and detached as usual, Beetlejuice will take the form of a snake, Delia Deetz will sit in the waiting room among the dead and zombies like Adam and Barbara Maitland once did, there will be a new town model with a tectonic-hell rift, the familiar sculpture in front of the house, green lights in excess to create a graveyard zombie atmosphere, wedding references, sewing up mouths, and probably many other recycled motifs, because that’s the easiest thing to do, and creating something that could compete with the old version is nearly impossible. That’s why I’m eager to see the continuation, not expecting anything more than a reheated dish. I just hope it will be technically well-made and not overly inflated with Burton’s pomp, as that has also been done in too concentrated a dose, although I don’t deny that in the late 80s and early 90s, it was in a good, legendary style for cinema. Today, it can’t be repeated for a purely logical reason – there’s the original, which is over 30 years old. Attempting to create a sequel, but really just copying motifs, as seen in the trailer, won’t work due to the generational change in viewers, who view cinema differently than before. And because of the still-living ones who remember the 80s and the old Beetlejuice. The only truly new thing in this sequel is the introduction of a new generation of characters, unfortunately also based on copying.

I’m referring to Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz. Could Burton think he’s cashing in again, this time from Wednesday? This approach is truly embarrassing and repels me from this production. Not from Wednesday, but Beetlejuice – to clarify. Astrid, of course, by family tradition, must meet Beetlejuice. It will be hard for Michael Keaton to match himself from 30 years ago. I just hope he doesn’t perform on so-called autopilot. Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. So, it turns out I don’t give Beetlejuice a chance for success. It seems that this is indeed true, but I would very much like it to be otherwise. I judge what I see in the trailer, which is derivative and boring, with predictable content realized using Burton’s little innovative techniques known from the past and then played out. The original haunts every step, so if there really is no idea to make a sequel that would be innovative, it’s better not to make it. Unless aiming at the so-called average American audience – then it might succeed, especially if the age category is 12+. I still consider Burton to be more than a commercial franchise. I hope I’m wrong, but regarding self-plagiarism, I’m not. There are enough examples of it, which as a rule is not bad, but over the years it traps the creator in a known and safe world, which was once the pinnacle of innovative creativity, and now has imperceptibly turned into an inescapable tail. The problem is, it’s only visible from the outside, and production companies don’t care at all that Burton might discover he could move on, as long as his image brings in sufficient profits.

I assume, therefore, that the newest Beetlejuice will earn enough to be considered profitable and aesthetically polished, but what about artistic value, which should not be defined by sentiment, especially not by this kind of copying? I don’t think Tim Burton wants to become the Andy Warhol of the film world in his retirement. More likely, he can’t break free from his world of patterns, sentiments, and happily realized goals. The tail seems tasty until it starts to choke, and a risky sequel like Beetlejuice could be a good starting point for beginning this painful deconstruction of Burton’s schemes. As with any changes, it will be unpleasant only at the beginning, and in the overall balance, viewers can either gain the disappearance of a tiresome director from the spotlight or something new from his hand that will make everyone’s jaws drop in surprise.