How to do a proper sequel? Used to be a silly question but in this age of endless remakes, reboots, recycling in one form or another it's almost become a major artistic question, if art can or has ever been considered major (was there a time in the '60s and '70s, or were we just fooling ourselves?).
Do you do the same film again but with a bigger budget, perhaps more elaborate setpieces, on occasion turning expectations against an audience in an effective 'gotcha!' moment? Robert Rodriguez did that to El Mariachi, though Desperado for all its energy was less gritty and less compact hence less satisfying; Sam Raimi triumphed with Evil Dead 2 by adding more overt humor, sometimes straying into the surreal (the new element), then tying it all into a neat narrative knot using time travel (and much as I love maybe eighty percent of Army of Darkness including the final punchline the director really should have stopped with the second film). Perversely I'm of the school of thought that Gus Van Sant hit a home run with his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho-- if you're going to do an unembarrassed cash grab don't go halfhearted, go all the way (actually I suspect Van Sant had a particular reason for doing this and if you're curious, check out Jorge Luis Borge's "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote").
Do you strike out in an entirely different direction the way Exorcist 2: The Heretic did, turning the intimate near-documentary realism of the first film into soaring theological science fiction (I'm also of the school of thought that Boorman's sequel improved on Friedkin, so-- go ahead sue me and everyone else who thinks so, all five of us?)? Or what James Whale did, hold out for years for a bigger budget so he can pivot Bride of Frankenstein into tongue-in-cheek horror comedy? I cannot lie, I'm partial to the second camp-- seize the chance to draw audiences into theaters expecting more of the same, then blindside them with something crazy.
But Burton isn't exactly a skilled storyteller; he works in spurts and on inspiration and when the spurts are frequent enough and the inspiration inspired enough he can give us the finale in Batman Returns where Catwoman improvises on a 19th century children's poem while cracking a whip on a cowering billionaire, or when Delia Deetz's dinner audience waits for her to say something witty and Harry Belafonte's Day-O booms from her mouth. You don't come to a Burton film looking for consistent characterization or realistic emotional development (tho I submit Burton and screenwriter Daniel Waters did a fair job with Danny DeVito's Penguin and above all Michelle Peiffer's Catwoman), you come for the unspoken pleasure of trying to guess when the gliding overhead shots of Winter River, CT has turned into a mindbendingly detailed tabletop model, or suss out how each afterlife character meets his often violent end from the hilariously gruesome prosthetics (Willem Dafoe's Det. Wolf Jackson looks as if he had an unfortunate encounter with a deli meat slicer), or revel in the gloriously low-tech special effects (brace yourself when Beetlejuice announces he's going to spill his guts). Day-O shouldn't have worked when Burton used it in the first film; moving the callback to that moment to its proper place in the sequel-- the finale-- shouldn't work either, especially when we're expecting it, but listening to Richard Harris' otherworldly vocal stylings rebound throughout that chapel and you realize what a perfect fit it is with Burton's vision of Beetlejuice's notion of a shotgun wedding.
So Burton takes the first approach-- but pause for a digression. Popular thinking is that after a string of hits-- Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman (Batman Returns made money but was deemed so bizarre and inappropriate for children that Warner Studios backed out of their deal with the filmmaker to continue the franchise)-- Burton peaked with his biopic Ed Wood (featuring an oddly winning performance by Johnny Depp) and has been only occasionally interesting since. I disagree; thought Mars Attacks! was a brilliant subversion of apocalyptic alien-invasion movies, thought Planet of the Apes a triumph because Burton managed to make then-girlfriend Helena Bonham-Carter totally desirable in full ape makeup; thought Alice in Wonderland was an improvement on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (for one the actors play up the absurdity inherent in the fantasy genre); thought Dark Shadows was a droll family comedy; thought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory pushed too many buttons because Johnny Depp was channeling Michael Jackson at his most pedo; thought Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was a visually interesting sendup of the X-Men and Harry Potter movies. Even preferred Burton's remake of Dumbo to the Disney original (a moment before you light your tiki torches and pull out your pitchforks: the film was less sentimental, the amusement park looked more fun than Disneyland (tho I'd take out a life insurance policy first before visiting), and Burton's staging of 'Baby Mine' was in my view superior).
Always thought Justin Theroux was never properly credited for the comedy he injected into The Leftovers; as Lydia's oily boyfriend Rory he shifts that comic dexterity into high gear, manipulating events (and Lydia) into a massive celebrity wedding that promptly skids sideways (not a fan of the cellphone effect though-- one of the instances where Burton went full digital that I don't appreciate). Catherine O'Hara is as always sui generis, her bright blue eyes radiating a self-absorbed insanity maybe only Gene Wilder can match. Jeffrey Jones understandably can't return as Charles Deetz in person, but Burton's solution is inventive enough to become the film's best running (and gurgling, and spurting) gag. Willem Dafoe, Burn Gorman, Danny Devito shine in their respective deceptively brief roles (y'know what they say about small parts-- in this picture I'd add there are no small actors neither). Jenna Ortega cleverly piggybacks off her characterization of Wednesday in the Netflix show-- to paraphrase what someone once said, most of acting is in the casting.
Winona Ryder is somehow moving as Lydia Deetz. I thought she was lovely but shallow in the first film; here she looks exhausted, uncertain, totally dried out-- and I wanted to weep for what the years have done to her, as a character and as a real-life person. But Ryder wins me over; somehow she manages to scramble up on her feet and make some hard decisions and is even willing to live with the consequences (be damned and all). And by film's end when she flashes us a brief smile, suddenly we see the beautiful young Lydia we remember all those years ago. We love her, we were in love with her, but didn't really believe in her as a person; Ryder this time around helps us discover that belief.
As Dolores, Monica Bellucci is a comic force of nature, both hilarious and horrifying as she stalks the hallways of the afterlife seeking her lost beloved (can you imagine her in a Dario Argento giallo?); as the lost beloved, Michael Keaton proves that at the ripe old age of 73 he still has the most-- in The Flash he put on his batsuit and showed us how the years have passed and what it cost him; here he takes up a role he hasn't played in decades and gives us unbelievable energy, without hesitation or visible drain. It's as if in between films he'd only stepped out for a bathroom break then went right back to work.
This is easily Burton's best work in years-- not that his storytelling skills are any sharper or his powers of characterization any more consistent, but the eccentric comic timing and demented setpieces are back (the visual texture has always been there, but this time thank goodness with minimal digital manipulation). More, there's a tone-- an unflinching look at body mutilation and bloodletting, with ax or knife or shark bite-- that Burton seemed to have picked up somewhere amongst the intervening years (Sweeney Todd, maybe?); Burton may have made Helena Bonham Carter's ape sexy but here he manages to make Monica Bellucci's session with a staple gun unabashedly erotic, the body-assembling equivalent of a strip-tease (a piece tease?). This is darker Burton, a more macabre Burton, but for all that a no less enjoyable-- when Keaton after maybe fifty minutes of audience anticipation finally rises up from out of the split-open model tabletop in full ghoul getup (pallid skin mold-green neck rotting teeth and all) looks at the camera and declares: "The 'Juice is loose!"-- you know exactly how he feels, and wonder if Burton feels the same way.
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