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| Courtesy Interview Magazine |
BY AARON SAGERS
They are movies where normal is not to be trusted and weird is celebrated; where quirky characters possess the heart of the story; where colorful, yet dark, settings are the delightfully freaky-deaky playground of the macabre and comedy. Everyone knows what a
Tim Burton movie looks like.
Ever since the director emerged as a feature film director with 1985’s
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, followed by
Beetlejuice,
Batman,
Edward Scissorhands,
The Nightmare Before Christmas and so on, the "Tim Burton" style has been a signature brand of moviemaking that married the mainstream with horror nerds and goths.
Meant in the most complimentary way possible, his is the kind of off-center, but mass consumable, product that Hot Topic was made for. This actually makes a lot of sense. Burton, 54, was a weird outsider of a kid who grew up in sunny Burbank, Calif. A young artist influenced by Charles Addams and Roald Dahl, he eventually went to work at the most mainstream place on Earth, The Walt Disney Company, as an animator before striking out on his own to harness his style.
Of course, the problem with having his own style is that a lot of people try to duplicate it poorly. And over time, Burton himself has been criticized for striving too hard to be Tim Burton-esque (See:
Dark Shadows,
Planet of the Apes).
But by and large, the same is not being said of
Frankenweenie, Burton’s new stop-motion animated, black-and-white 3D film opening today. Based on a 1984 live-action short about a science-minded boy who reanimates his dead dog, Burton recently told the audience in the packed Hall H of San Diego Comic-Con that the movie "stemmed from having a dead dog as a kid," and a love of
Frankenstein movies.
Originally designed to be released with an animated film like
Pinocchio, Burton revealed that Disney executives "got freaked" the short would be too scary. But he said Disney movies are actually scary movies with heart, and that half the audience of kids watching
Pinocchio ended up screaming. With that in mind, he called
Frankenweenie "the perfect Disney movie."
The updated
Frankenweenie fleshes out the story to include more characters – such as a class of weird children and a Vincent Price-inspired teacher (voiced by Martin Landau) - and a monster mash-up approach straight out of old
Universal flicks which combined several creatures. He said it also was born from a feeling that everything was strange in school – so much so that he said he still gets freaked out when he goes to a school because it "reminds me of horrible memories."
But the origins of
Frankenweenie and the Burton style extends beyond his old classroom. Tim Burton joined Paranormal Pop Culture and a group of reporters to answer questions about his work immediately following his Comic-Con panel.
and 
this week began filming their long-awaited adaptation of late '60s vampire soap
opera 
.
), the film also stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley and Chloe Moretz. Filming is taking place in England. The official Warner Bros. synopsis for the film follows: