Respect Authority

If you’ve seen even one preview for upcoming animated feature Coraline, then you - like me - likely assumed the film was written, produced and/or directed by Tim Burton, the brains behind gems like The Nightmare Before Christmas and duds like Sweeney Todd. 

Well, your assumption would be wrong. Some very legitimate investigative reporting (thanks IMDB, and Aaron) reveals that Tim Burton wasn’t involved in the production of Coraline - the creepy story of a girl who escapes into a “perfect” fantasy world, only to discover it’s full of evil, something I personally feel she should have assumed as soon as she saw everyone had buttons for eyes. In any case, the movie is directed by Henry Selick, who also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and was a classmate of Burton’s in art school. 

So if Selick was the mind behind Nightmare, ostensibly Tim Burton’s claim to fame, what exactly has Tim Burton done lately that warrants such unwavering respect? Well, he did produce Nightmare, and wrote, produced and directed The Corpse Bride, which actually isn’t something I’d brag about. In the last decade, he also directed Sweeney Todd, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Big Fish, the last of which was phenomenal. But all of his other career-making films - Batman, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands and Beetle Juice - were at least 12 years ago, and he spent the late 1990s making enjoyable but fluffy films like Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow.

So what’s my point? Well, ever since I saw the first trailer for Coraline, I had been looking forward to it in the same way I gleefully anticipated the release of The Corpse Bride; after all, this is what Tim Burton does. The darkly themed claymation flicks have long been considered Burton’s bread and butter, and Nightmare - the genre’s reigning champion - had more than once allowed me to justify subpar movies like …well, everything he’s made recently. But now I feel disillusioned and misled. It would seem Selick is the true brains behind nearly every movie for which Burton has received accolades, and I almost guarantee no one knows who he is. He’s Paul Allen to Burton’s Bill Gates — the forgotten genius. 

My point is that Tim Burton needs to step it up. He’s been riding on Nightmare since the movie came out, which at this point was 16 years ago. Burton’s recent efforts to recapture his credibility have left me wanting, nor do I consider it anything short of a cop-out to continue remaking pre-existing dark stories (Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd and 2010’s Alice in Wonderland), or to literally never make a film that doesn’t include Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. (To be honest, I could never see Helena Bonham Carter’s busted face in another movie and be more than 100% okay with it).

I’m rooting for TIm, I really am. There was a time when my younger sister watched The Nightmare Before Christmas literally every single day, so I have faith the man is capable of making incredibly unique and watchable films (particularly now that computer animation has made it possible to just look like you spent 7.3 million hours shaping the bodies of little clay people). I’m just kind of hoping those movies come out while I’m young enough to appreciate them — and while I can still get to the movie theater without a walker.