Released on Friday, Sept. 6, just in time for the Halloween season, the sequel to the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton classic horror/comedy “Beetlejuice” has thus far done incredibly well at the box office, despite the franchise being dormant for nearly 40 years. But after nearly four decades, is the series still good?
The film was originally conceived by a script written by Michael McDowell, whom Stephen King once referred to as “the finest writer of paperback originals in America today.” His long career saw him write classic horror novels like “The Elementals” and “The Flood,” as well as writing episodes for “Tales From The Crypt,” the Steven Spielberg-created “Amazing Stories,” the George Romero-created “Tales from the Dark Side,” “Tales from the Crypt,” and an “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode entitled “The Jar,” which was based on a Ray Bradbury short story.
The original film was much darker in tone, with the titular character being a winged demon who appears as a short Middle-Eastern man, and who intends to kill the Deetzes rather than scare them away, and his interests in Lydia are more of the carnal desire, rather than marriage. An early draft also featured Winona Ryder’s Lydia dying in a fire at the film’s end.
Needless to say, the script was lightened, making the titular character more of a wily mischievous trickster demon than a murderous creep, and it’s arguably the better for it, especially considering Michael Keaton’s iconic performance.
Although the ultimate product was far from the darker original script, the film married the German Expressionist aspects of Tim Burton’s work to date with the lighter, sometimes ironic pastel juxtaposition, something that he had done before in films like “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” but hadn’t yet become one half of his cinematic aesthetic.
The movie was obviously a hit, granting Burton the chance to take on DC’s caped crusader in 1989’s “Batman” and 1992’s “Batman Returns,” something that was far more of a gamble at the time than it is now, with “Superman” being the only successful film series based on a major comic character at that point. He also directed and produced several other iconic films of the late 80s and early 90s in “Edward Scissorhands” and “A Nightmare Before Christmas” (directed by Henry Selick, though Burton did produce), as well as my favorite Burton film, “Ed Wood,” about the famously bad film director of 1959’s “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”
That said, despite the nearly four-decade gap between “Beetlejuice” films, 2024’s sequel wasn’t the first time the series almost had a sequel, with “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian” a proposed sequel penned by playwright and eventual Burton collaborator on the screenplay for “Mars Attacks!” in Jonathan Gems.
Gems, a British playwright known for off-kilter plays with interesting titles, penned a sequel that saw the Deetzes renovating a Hawaiian resort and played off the teen beach movies of the 60s. Though some have fretted at the idea, seeing the idea as a silly, absurd idea for a sequel, the campiness of the genre it riffed on would have probably worked perfectly for a sequel to the original film, pairing Burton’s gothic aesthetic with the sunny Hawaiian landscape and surf movies much in the way he paired 60s Americana with Vincent Price-fair in “Edward Scissorhands.”
How then is the nearly 40 years in the making sequel? Well, I guess your mileage on it will depend on your expectations going in. It’s obviously not as good as the original film, but that would be hard to achieve at this point. Burton’s career has dipped in quality as time has gone by, with him producing fewer hits and even fewer critically acclaimed stone-cold classics.
Not to say that he’s fallen off to such a degree as being incapable of producing a quality film. He’s certainly made some at least decent films in the latter years of his career. He’s had successes since the heart of his heyday, but nothing quite as a part of the cultural zeitgeist as some of his earlier films. It’s also worth mentioning that it’s been 10 years since he released a film in general.
That said, although parts of the narrative seem a bit unfocused, the movie doesn’t quite have the sophisticated simplicity of the original film. At times the film feels a bit overloaded with plot, with several different plotlines running parallel, some of which don’t come into play until near the film’s end and are handled quickly and moved on from.
Nor does the film have the heart in the plight of the Maitlands to carry the film. Although these characters have problems, there doesn’t seem to be a beating heart at the film’s center to anchor the narrative around. Although the Deetzes are interesting, their detached nature doesn’t give the film the same emotional stakes of a newlywed couple fighting for their home.
It’s still not a bad film though. You still get great performances from Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara, and the rest of the cast is solid, with Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson chewing up scenery every time he’s on screen, as a dead actor who spent his life playing cops on film and TV, only to be a detective in the afterlife.
Some fans of the series may hate it for feeling like a lesser film than its predecessor, unable to capture the same warm fuzzies they get watching the original film. Others may just enjoy spending more time with the characters, basking in the glow of a lesser product, but still, one that allows for more time spent with the “ghost with the most.”
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