The Golden years:
Tim Burton has always been the ultimate art school nerd who hit the big time, the quiet kid in the back of the class who achieved success beyond his wildest dreams while still not betraying his outcast roots. His first six films were in order; Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns and Ed Wood. With the possible exception of Batman 2 they are all 4 star movies.
Pee Wee did not have his traditional Gothic look that would become Burton's calling card over the subsequent years but it has to be one of the most creative and strangest movies ever made, the story of a man looking for his bike is so simple that it becomes twisted and awesome. Beetlejuice is so funny and original that I jerk off to the idea of how happy it made me as a kid and it still totally stands up. Batman is not as good as the Nolan movies but hell, he was inventing the Superhero genera and can absolutely be forgiven for a few structural problems. Edward Scissorhands made me cry, yes as a 10 year old in the theater but also last year as a 30 year old in my living room. E.S. might be the greatest suburban outcast anything ever made (with the possible exception of Catcher in the Rye). Bat 2 looks nice. And while any normal Hollywood hack would want to make a movie about the greatest filmmaker off all time, Tim decided to make one about the worst, brilliant. What is especially ironic about Ed Wood is that after making it he became one of the worst filmmakers himself, an argument could be made that the rest of his career is some type of fucked up postmodern homage to Ed Wood the man, but I don't feel like giving Tim that much credit.
The Shitty Years:
Whether or not Burton spent the rest of his career trying to make a movie that is as shitty as Plan 9 From Outer Space is up to debate what is not debatable is the fact that the next movie that he made was trying to pay homage to the misguided subject of his previous film. Mars Attacks! is the big budget Hollywood alien invasion movie that Ed Wood theoretically would have dreamed to have made, the problem with this idea is that you can not go out and organically make something that is wonderfully horrible. The thing that makes truly horrible movies great is the fact that bad filmmakers think that they are great (see Troll 2), Making something that is intentionally shitty is just shitty.
Sleepy Hollow seems like the perfect Tim Burton movie, Gothic Setting, Check, Johnny Depp as sort of an outcast, Check, Witches and demons and shit, check. I can actually picture the coked out meeting between film executives talking about what a great idea this is while using words like synergy. At this point in his careen the look and feel that all Tim Burton movies have starts to restrict rather than bring it out his unique vision. Sleepy Hollow feels more like a movie by someone else trying to copy and exaggerate the Tim Burton style more than it does like a Tim Burton Movie.
Planet of the Apes might be one of the worst pieces of shit ever conceived by a human. I fucking love the Planet of the Apes movies, not just the Charlton Heston original, no, I even dig deep into the catalog, we are talking the Ricardo Montalban leading Escape and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. This new piece of crap has nothing going for it, people can talk, there is a strange and marginally offensive line from a black actor calling a white actor a "House Human" and the mind blowing ending was just really really stupid (Ape Abraham Lincoln Memorial, wow). Thank god for the new Planet movie which I do think is one of the best movies of the year, take a lesson Tim.
Big Fish was basically sentimental crap, not the worst movie ever made but certainly not good either, lets call it a safe movie. Corpses Bride is not as good as Nightmare Before Christmas and it just rips that movie off (side not, Burton did not direct N.B.C., he executive produced it). Sweeney Tod again is OK but safe, nothing original or really likable about it.
Now for the creme de la creme, Charley and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland. These movies are so shitty that they may have actually ripped the fabric of time and space creating 2 dimensions the other of which does not have versions of these movies that are so bad. Both of these "films" somehow road the coattails of better movies to become commercially popular themselves while still renaming quite horrible. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has Johnny Depp playing wacky semi parody of a music legend (sound familiar) only this time it is Micheal Jackson rather than Keith Richards. The character choice is mostly just strange and awkward, not fun and original like with Pirates. Alice had the good fortune to be in 3D at the height of the 3D craze, right after Avatar. Alice never even actually goes to Wonderland in a movie called Alice in Wonderland! You will actually be dumber for watching this film.
What Happened:
I have a few theories as to what happened to Tim beyond the ironic intentionally shitty conspiracy theory. I feel that once success is achieved by a lot of creative people they surround them selves with yes men and they fall in love with the smell of their own farts. Creative people need to be told when their shit stinks and when they are not told this, bad things happen (see the star wars prequels or matrix squeals). It is also possible that Helena Bonham Carte is in fact a witch, they met on Planet of the Apes and his progression downwards has simply continued and gotten worce. None of this would bother me so much if it was not for the fact that Tim Burton maintains his art school outcast image, he just seems like even more of a mainstream sellout while trying to maintain his outcast image. Will someone please punch this guy in his shitty face.
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