You can have all of the AI you want, but no matter how many prompts you give it, can it ever truly replicate what the human mind can create? Maybe in some cases, but let’s face it, only Tim Burton can come up with a Tim Burton idea. This is not a guy that relies on what he finds on the web — in fact, it petrifies him.
Speaking with BBC, Tim Burton admitted, “Anybody who knows me knows I’m a bit of a technophobe. But I look at the internet, I found that I got quite depressed. It scared me because I started to go down a dark hole. So I try to avoid it, because it doesn’t make me feel good…I get depressed very quickly, maybe more quickly than other people. But it doesn’t take me much to start to click and start to short circuit.” We take it Tim Burton has yet to check out our episode of “WTF Happened to This Celebrity?!” But just in case…
As far as what entertains Tim Burton otherwise, he turns to the clouds and his backyard, where he keeps nearly a dozen dinosaur statues, including a 20-foot-tall T-Rex, perhaps a nod to Edward Scissorhands.
It seemed like Tim Burton had his head in the clouds for the better part of two decades, with adaptations of Disney classics that nobody needed the Burton twist on (or that he needed the studio headaches from) and TV shows that didn’t need an update and couldn’t capitalize on the hot vampire craze (Dark Shadows). There were some strong works like Sweeney Todd, but these were too few. But Tim Burton has had one of the biggest successes of his career this year with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, showing he’s still got it and can never fully be counted out.
For Tim Burton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice offered the chance to bring back fan favorite characters while also genuinely expanded on the story. And just as a third Beetlejuice is highly unlikely, he, too, is done with the superhero universe. As he also told BBC, “It felt new at the time. There was pressure because it was a big movie and it was a different interpretation of comic books. So that was a pressure, but it wasn’t the pressure that you would experience now.”
What stands as your favorite Tim Burton movie? Drop your pick in the comments below.