"You see, it never snowed there before he came, but it snowed after that. If he wasn't there, I don't think it would have snowed. Sometimes you'll see me dancing in the snow."
Every director has his own unique style. However, one would say that no filmmaker has the imaginative mind of Tim Burton, whose personality is so distinct that even the most casual viewer will immediately realize it when they watch one of his films. Visually and stylistically, almost all of his films can seamlessly co-exist in the same cinematic universe, all thanks to his unique visual effects and unparalleled imagination.
Impressively, Tim Burton dabbled in almost every conceivable genre of cinematic narrative. Every great director has at least one masterpiece. Tim Burton has several masterpieces in his film productions, including Ed Wood and Big Fish, as well as The Nightmare Before Christmas as a screenwriter and visual curator. All these excellent works of art embody the best of a creative genius.
No matter how good these films are, Tim Burton's greatest artistic and cinematic achievement is still that classic Christmas movie, Edward Scissorhands. The story of this movie, under the snow on Christmas Night, makes the film contradiction reach the top, and at the same time shows the unrequited love between the male and female protagonists in the movie. Tim Burton's film is not only a love story of an era, but also one of the most touching and heartbreaking on-screen love stories in the history of cinema.
The history behind Tim Burton's magical magnum opus
Tim Burton's tragic gothic fantasy films made me a fan of his films. The film had the same impact on me as it had when I saw it when I was 11 years old. I wouldn't be writing this article if Burton's childhood hadn't been watching Vincent Price's old movies at home, and this cyclical effect has energized the movie.
As a fan of Gothic horror novels, it's no secret that Burton was heavily influenced by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In 1984, he created the Disney animated short Frankenstein, a clever adaptation of a classic animated story that, 25 years later, he adapted it into a long-form film. During this time, Burton explored the most prominent themes of classic stories in Edward Scissorhands.
Tim Burton has been fascinated by scissors since childhood. As a child, he was obsessed with "simple and complex" inventions, but didn't know how to use them. This laid the groundwork for Edward's story, edward scissorhands, which was the result of Tim Burton growing up in suburban Burbank, California. This goes back to a painting by Tim Burton in his teens, an early version of the role of scissorhands, that represents Tim Burton's sense of isolation and his inability to maintain friendship and communication as normal people do.
In a biography by Helena Basil Moroso, Tim Burton: Monsters and the Masses: A Post-Jungian Perspective, Tim Burton writes, "I've never really had a problem with people, but I don't have real friends either." I have a feeling that people always want me alone for some reason, and I don't know the exact reason. It's as if I'm exuding a 'stay away from me' breath. ”
After the success of Warner Bros. 'Beetle Juice' and Batman , Tim Burton chose to bring the suburban isolated story to the big screen. After reading Carolyn Thompson's bizarre, gloomy novel The First Child, Tim Burton hired Thompson to adapt his story into a screenplay. There's a reason for that, because, as Carolyn Thompson says of Tim Burton, "He's the most expressive nonverb person I know." ”
Sadly, Warner Bros. abandoned the project, which led Tim Burton to finally choose 20th Century Fox. Compared to Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox gave him complete creative autonomy over the project. Edward Scissorhands not only cemented Tim Burton's position as a Hollywood wizard, but also kicked off Johnny Depp's career. Interestingly, Michael Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. both wanted to play Edward in the film, but Tim Burton chose Johnny Depp, whose personality was most similar to his own.
Stand out from the cast
With the help of Edward Scissorhands, Johnny Depp went beyond the mainstream and played the most perverse and endearing character in the history of cinema. Depp portrayed the transparent and innocent Edward with childlike curiosity and authenticity. Depp said he prepared for the role with a child mentality, looking at everything from the perspective of a protected child, not just the script. However, as viewers discover in the film, Edward possesses innocence and moral purity, like a child who is always protected.
Playing Edward in the film was a brave performance in American films at the time, when male characters were still masculine. The male actors at that time, they all wanted to be manly, they wanted to get the role of holding a gun. They don't want to do anything to make themselves look innocent, naïve, and vulnerable. This is also why Johnny Depp's acting skills at that time stood out among many male stars. Even in Johnny Depp's extraordinary career, looking back, Edward Scissorhands remains an immortal career and an illustrious resume. In a dialogue of just 169 words, Depp relied almost entirely on facial expressions, especially the eyes, to express emotions ranging from surprise to anger. He watched Charlie Chaplin's old films to help him master the art of expressing emotions without dialogue.
"It's weird because there's nothing that can be used as a basis for [my role]. Edward is not human, he is not a robot, he is not an alien. To me, he's like a newborn baby with that innocence, or like a dog that gives unconditional love," Johnny Depp said of his character. In fact, Thompson is partly based on an old dog in her family who portrayed the flesh-and-blood character of Edward in the film.
The film brings many positive things, one of the most important of which is the beginning of a brilliant professional relationship between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. While Danny Elfman conducts the orchestra with a baton, all three of them have their own creativity and unparalleled innovation in their respective fields, and they work together so harmoniously that they can make any subject adapted into a film compelling.
Suburbs of America with misunderstood artists
The story of Edward Scissorhands has been stripped of its artistry, which may sound a little strange on paper, but it does. As the great Vincent Price said of Tim Burton, "There is a wonderful madness in his work that no longer exists in cinema." "Edward was an inventor, but we don't know the artist who made Him.
Edward lived in an uncolored mansion on the high mountain, in stark contrast to the vibrant hues that represented the suburbs. He was "adopted" from his home by Pegg and immediately sneaked into modern society like a fish out of the water. In the American suburbs of the 1950s, it can be seen from the film's unified single-storey modern residential buildings, the old station wagons supported by neighbors and Burton's iconic top-down shots, each car driving neatly away from its own lane, representing the collective automation created by suburban society.
Tim Burton's opposition to Edward and collective society is presented in this exaggerated form, essentially, the community members in the Edward Scissorhands film represent morally corrupt people who live a life of immaturity and do not care about anything other than themselves or "Jack and Nancy" on the street.
Edward Scissorhands: A Marvel of Tim Burton's Films
Aside from Tim Burton laying the groundwork for the film through his story and superb creative skills, Edward Scissorhands is one of the few films where all aspects work perfectly together to create "cinematic magic." This classic Christmas movie, though, gives a mysterious sense of escape. In particular, the heroine Jin, stands dancing under the snow on Christmas Eve. Although that kind of romance was pursued in movies a long time ago, this kind of romance has not been forgotten to this day.
Joe Ross, the former chairman of 20th Century Fox, had high hopes for the film, so much so that he judged it would have the same emotional and cultural impact as Steven Spielberg's. In many ways, the film has the same effect. Edward Scissorhands is one of the greatest films of all time, and the originality of Tim Burton's surrealistism and the stunning performances of Johnny Depp all add a lot of magical elements to this magical Christmas movie.