The success of a film is purely subjective. Some say it’s down to the money it makes at the box office, while others will say it’s how it connects with them emotionally. When it comes to a Tim Burton film, many can be sure that by name alone, it will pull in massive dividends. But what truly makes a Tim Burton film so great isn’t just the name alone, but the characters that span from such great stories.
With Tim Burton, no character is unrelatable, evolving from emotions that cause suffering to ones that bring joy and happiness. The best stories come from those that can create characters based on the principle that everyone can learn from the inner turmoil and darkness that lies inside them, turning that darkness into light. Tim Burton’s characters are this.They honor our tenebrous nature, the lightthat resides within us, and the peculiar glint of originality that inspires each of us to be unique. Because of this, Tim Burton’s characters will always be relevant in film and even outside the context of movies.
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When looking at Tim Burton’s characters, there is a sense of eerie and bold otherworldliness that emanates from his characters. Hovering between the physical and animated worlds, Burton finds a way to plant them both in the same existence. Characters like Edward inEdward Scissorhandsare perfect examples of this. While the design is beautifully strange and daring, underneath the gothic mystique is a talented individual that longs to be understood by the people around him. Other characters as The Joker, carry the same gravitas but are extroverted and fearless in their demeanor.Due to Burton’s willingness to explore both sidesof a character, these dualities not only help Tim Burton’s characters become relatable but also enable them to travel through time as their sense of uniqueness is never dated and often impossible to categorize.
Part of what makes Burton’s characters so appealing and immortal is his push to evolve from one creation to the next. What his characters start as is not what they end up being. Like ghosts, they slip through genre boundaries, becoming something else entirely. His characters can straddle the lines between being sad without being tragic and funny without being comedic.Corpse Bride’sVictor Von Dort is one of those personalities. Someone who comes across as shy and easily startled, it’s these characteristics that make him endearing, albeit even funny to watch at times,yet underneath is a character who strugglesto find himself because those around him doubt his worth.
However, near the end, he realizes that the man he is more than enough, thanks to another character named Emily, a bride whose life was tragically cut short by someone’s selfish greed to rise to the top. She sees that Victor wants to be happy with Victoria. Despite having fallen in love with him, she bravely sacrifices herself so that Victor can experience the joy she was deprived of while she was alive. Burton understands the worlds in which these characters live because no matter how animated or distinctive they appear, they live in the same world we live in. Victor Von Dort and Emily are characters shaped by a world in which evil, class injustice, and narrow-mindedness are never far away, but somewhere within this disorganized mess of life, there are people who are aware of what it means to be alone and different.While the story takes place during the Victorian Age, the characters remain timeless because of the ageless ideals they represent.
When Tim Burton makes a character, he strives to speak to all of us. To Burton, the term monster has a layered meaning. In many works of horror, they are something to be feared. In Burton’s work, monsters are greatly misunderstood and frequently have the biggest hearts. Movies like Frankenstein would teach him that not every monster is inherently bad, they just wanted desperately to fit in with others. He would take this basic approach and fit this into the creation of his characters, that behind every “monster”, is a person deep down. Characters like Lydia inBeetlejuiceunderstood that there is life after death, and her sentimentality for the dead makes her so endearing. More importantly, she remains an influential and timeless character because she is loyal and not afraid to be herself, no matter how weird people may think she is.Her subdued intelligence and dramatic flair challengethe idea of what society deems appropriate, making Burton’s characters the forerunners of timeless characters personified.
While there are characters within Tim Burton’s arsenal that speak to unique dualities that challenge society’s norms, Victor Frankenstein inFrankenweenieinstead deals with the pain of obsession, grief, and loss, and how each emotion rears consequences if taken too far. While Sparky is brought back thanks to his scientific intelligence, the idea of bringing something back from the dead is not without its repercussions. Because so many people have experienced the heartbreak of losing a loved one or a pet, Victor’s character is timeless.While everyone can relate to Victor’s grief, he also embodies the youthful verve and eccentricity that drives us to accomplish the seemingly impossible when others doubt our abilities.
Tim Burton has always had a beautiful relationship with the darkness entwined within characters, always finding a way to bring out a more augmented meaning behind each one. This is no different from the case of characters like Oswald Cobblepot inBatman Returns. While not traditionally a Burton creation, Tim Burton found a way to bring his timeless quality to one of the DC universe’s saddest villains. Even as a young child, Oswald is depicted as fierce and evil, but Tim Burton treats the villain in a way that is both malevolent and sentimental. His deformity is what causes him to be rejected by everyone around him, including his parents, yet he finds solace and comfort from other animals that treat him like family. While viewers should despise him as the villain, he’s admired for his courage somewhat to rise above such challenges.Behind this deformity and threatening personalityis a person who is deeply troubled and depressed by his own past. Tim Burton finds a way for viewers to find common ground with someone one is supposed to hate.
Many timeless characters have been created by Tim Burton, but what binds them together is their ongoing desire to fill the creative gaps in the world. The characters of Tim Burton serve as the bridge point for creating an understanding between the imaginative and the unusual. There is a sense of originality and audacious truth behind such characters that makes them believable even within worlds that don’t quite exist in ours. These Burtonesque ideas not only demonstrate to us the relatability of being imaginative and daring, but also the fact that the best way to foster creative development is to be oneself.Maybe that is the very secretto the timeless qualities of Burton’s characters. Shakespeare had it right many years ago inHamlet. “If we are true to ourselves, we cannot be false to anyone.” Simply put, that idea would be realized visually by someone like Tim Burton.
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