Is Knuttel Really Talking About Tim Burton?

So Tim Burton has another re-make coming out soon. And it stars his usual cast, and I'm also going to presume Elfman is doing the score.

What should one make of his career?

He's spent virtually all of his career doing re-makes of one sort or another, and almost all of them are incredibly stylistically similar. So stylistically similar I often make the bad joke "I liked Edward Scissorhands the first time I saw it."

Basically every film he's done has either had a mid-20th century (50s-ish) or cheapened Victorian feel. Adding the 50s bit really makes it to include all of his films. The Victorian imagery style he uses is so gaudy and while stylistically true, so uncharacteristically Victorian, it just seems to cheapen the whole 19th century. I'd imagine many a steampunk enthusiast to abhor the coming of a Tim Burton film.

It's like he caught in some sort of permanent suburban mailaise, imagining up places he's never been, in a time he never will be a part of, with all the money Hollywood can throw at him.

I always thought it was a demand we have of our "artists" (something I'd always assume a good filmmaker to be) to progress with their work, or at the very least to not stand still. One must move about and explore. What can the medium do, what can it not do, where should we go, are there places we should refrain from going? These are questions one must ask. And no, "but it's in 3D" does not yet fully count unless one is really planning on exploring the medium (I heard Cameron did this in Avatar, but I don't have much interest in seeing it). As of now, I still see it as an expensive Hollywood excercise in survival.

Another note, something with which I disagree with him almost unequivocally -- Just because something is strange, bizarre, or even trippy does not mean that it is dark and possibly brooding. This trait of his has seemingly gotten worse in recent years, possibly due to the rise of emo music mid decade.

Even so, how can one say the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the original Planet of the Apes were not dark. Darkness is very much often hid amongst the light. In fact, the early music of Black Sabbath pretty much defined that sentance. Everyone remembers "Iron Man" and "Paranoid", but what about "Planet Caravan", "Laguna Sunrise", "Changes", and even "NIB" (which has a very positive message actually).



Maybe I'm just angry he lacks the proper respect one should have for an audience. He never challenges it, he simply expects them to show up when the time comes, hand over money to see his movie and possibly buy paraphanelia, and until then drool over press releases from the set.

-- Knuttel