Tim Burton names the most disturbing process of his career: “No one had ever made a movie like that”
Over the course of his 40-year directorial career, Tim Burton has made many different kinds of movies, with his signature aesthetic being the common thread that unites most of them.
Biographical drama Big Eyes is one of the very few exceptions, but for the most part, Burton has one of the most easily identifiable styles in cinema. One of the key traits any auteur needs to secure longevity is to freshen things up without sacrificing the traits that made their name in the first place, an act at which Burton has constantly succeeded.
From the romantic fantasy of Edward Scissorhands and the comedic leanings of Ed Wood to the pulpy sci-fi of Mars Attacks! and musicality of Sweeney Todd via the comic book shenanigans of his Batman duology and the unabashed whimsy of Big Fish, despite occupying vastly different narrative and thematic territory, they’re all equally Burton-esque.
That malleability was key to making him one of Hollywood’s big-name directors who became a marketable asset through their bespoke personal brand alone, even if the biggest box office hit of Burton’s career came when he partnered up with the family-friendly company that fired him two decades previously, and much of its earning power can be attributed to a shoddy post-conversion.
After James Cameron’s Avatar had single-handedly reignited interest in 3D, any blockbuster to follow in its wake was guaranteed to enjoy a post-Pandora bump, which is the only reason why the dreadful Clash of the Titans remake came close to half a billion.
Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was the first high-profile 3D film to ride the Avatar coattails, which saw it soar past a billion dollars in ticket sales. A hybrid of fantasy, gothicism, motion capture, performance capture, CGI, practical sets, and anything else that could be dumped into a mind-numbing melting pot, it was all a bit much.
It was unlike anything he’d ever made before from a technical perspective, too, which, in hindsight, wasn’t ideal. “Well, no one had ever made a movie like that, nor will anyone make a movie like that again,” Burton said to The Playlist. “Because it wasn’t motion capture, it was a combination of anything.”
Because he wasn’t a huge fan of mo-cap, Burton “wanted some things to just be pure animation,” which meant “we were designing as we went along” with no clear vision in place. “Honestly, since it was all done like puzzle pieces, I didn’t even see the movie until it was done,” he confessed, with Danny Elfman trying to compose a score based on half-completed scenes and footage that hadn’t even been shot yet.
Summing up his Disney experience as “the most backwards, disturbing process I’ve ever been through,” it’s easy to see why Burton had no interest in returning for the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass. He definitely dodged a bullet on that one, with the follow-up earning over $700million less than its predecessor to lose the Mouse House a small fortune.
