Six definitive films: The ultimate beginner’s guide to Tim Burton
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Credit: Gage Skidmore
The classic horror movie Tim Burton watches with his daughter
The world of Tim Burton has always been riddled with gothic creativity, with his very first filmmaking efforts showing off a style that he would foster and master in the coming decades. Having worked with the likes of Ewan McGregor, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Danny DeVito, Michael Keaton, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter, Albert Finney and Christopher Walken, among many others, Burton has the ability to magnetise almost any Hollywood actor.
His feature film success came back in the late 1980s, a time when he released his impressive back-to-back movies Beetlejuice in 1988 and the impressive comic-book adaptation of Batman in 1989. Setting new standards for superhero filmmaking, Burton’s camp yet gothic take on the caped crusader would help to broaden the appeal of comic-book filmmaking, laying the groundwork for the success of such films in modern society.
Success followed for Burton in the form of a Batman sequel alongside his original efforts Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow and Mars Attacks. Having amassed an impressive legion of super fans across the world, these days, Burton lends his creativity to multiple projects on the big and small screen, most recently helming the Disney live-action remake of Dumbo.
In a conversation with Rotten Tomatoes back in 2010, Burton gave his fans a treat by naming his five favourite movies of all time, choosing a selection of cult movies that largely operated in the genre of horror.
Included in his selection were such movies as Dracula A.D. 1972, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and The Omega Man, with the 1974 movie The Wicker Man being the most significant choice. Robin Hardy’s film about a catholic police sergeant who travels to a Scottish island to solve the mystery of a missing girl, starring Christopher Lee in the lead role, is a chiller that speaks to the very core of the human condition.
None of these aforementioned movies Burton would dare to his children, however, that is except for his final choice in his top five favourites, the low-budget monster flick The War of the Gargantuas from 1970.
Speaking about the movie, Burton announces that it is “one of my favourites. It’s my two-year-old daughter’s favourite movie. She’s the green gargantua and my other son is the brown one, and she loves being the bad green gargantua”.
Continuing, the director adds: “She’s obsessed with it, as I was”.
Delighted that his daughter is in love with similar films as he was, Burton further explains, “I grew up watching Japanese science fiction movies and I particularly, unlike most hard core film people, like dubbed movies — there’s something about that language and the translation that somehow fits into the movie; it’s like a weird poetry. There’s a beauty to these films, the Japanese character designs — there’s a human kind of quality to these things, which I love”.
Take a look at the trailer for the cult monster movie, below.
