THE RANKING

Four Empire writers. Ten movies. Ordered definitively.

Tim Burton movies

Chris: Why do we keep being drawn to the films of Timothy Burton?

Dan: I can speak personally, having grown up as someone who considered himself something of a social outcast in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Chris: Yeah, you weirdo.

Dan: Exactly. I was called weirdo, gothic…

Chris: That’s because you’re a gothic weirdo.

Dan: Yeah. Weirdo gothic freak, all that sort of thing.

Chris: Parents can be so cruel.

Dan: But the films of Tim Burton kind of spoke to me and people like me. They felt like, these are for us. Though I confess that I kind of grew out of it. And he didn’t. So by the end of the ’90s, I was rolling my eyes at Sleepy Hollow

Nick: Shots fired.

Dan: It isn’t a bad film. But I was like, here we are again. But then I got my just desserts, because his next film was Planet Of The Apes, which is nothing like a Tim Burton.

Chris: Generic and bland.

Dan: So it was almost like, “Oh no, come back, Sleepy Hollow.”

Helen: Sleepy Hollow’s so good.

Nick: It’s my favourite Tim Burton, so you take that back, you freaky goth weirdo.

Helen: Sleepy Hollow is delightful. I feel it’s almost the last performance that Johnny Depp gave.

Nick: I love the atmosphere. It’s the most Halloweeny thing ever. It feels like it’s got some pace and some focus, which is something Tim Burton films often lack. I really like Mars Attacks!, but it doesn’t have any structure.

Helen: Mars Attacks! is weird, but a lot of fun. Just those aliens going, ACK! ACK! ACK! Chris: ACK! ACK! ACK! Helen: Every time they come proclaiming peace and immediately vaporise everyone, I find it highly amusing.

Chris: It’s a movie that ends with Tom Jones about to break into song surrounded by animals. It’s a glorious, tongue-in-cheek, wonderful parody. It’s such a fun, utterly demented film. I like the earlier Burton films which are really collections of sketches. Batman is one of those movies.

Helen: I would say that Batman Returns and Sleepy Hollow are two of his most plot-driven films.

Chris: All his movies are about outsiders and weirdo gothic

Our Critics

CHRIS HEWITT

Big fan of Burton. Even bigger fan of his clothing chain, Burton Menswear.

HELEN O’HARA

Owns the Mars Attacks! soundtrack. Slim Pickens is handy for alien invasions.

NICK DE SEMLYEN

Terrified by Beetlejuice as a child. Still can’t say his name once, let alone five times.

DAN JOLIN freaks struggling to fit into society. It’s almost this outsider wish fulfilment, in a way.

Has a baffling soft spot for Pee-wee Herman. May be Large Marge in disguise.

Bruce Wayne is a weirdo gothic freak. Edward Scissorhands is a weirdo gothic freak. All these films are deeply personal.

Dan: The thing with Edward Scissorhands, and I know I’m not normal in thinking this, but I find it a little too arch, a little too stylised. I prefer Beetlejuice to Edward Scissorhands

Helen: Nuh-huh. Absolutely no. A hundred per cent never.

Chris: Why?

Helen: I find Beetlejuice curiously uninvolving. It doesn’t settle on what it wants to be for a long time, and when it does, it rushes through it.

Nick: I find it deeply unsettling. That banana song is horrific. It really makes me want to run away. I find it unnerving.

Chris: I like it a lot. Along with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure talk about a collection of sketches masquerading as a film it really establishes that Burton template right from the off. The over-the-top visuals, the gothic references, Danny Elfman’s score, Michael Keaton being weird. It’s all there in Beetlejuice, and it’s very funny. I think we’ve said Beetlejuice enough now to conjure him.

Nick: I do not wish for that.

Chris: I think we’re all of a similar age, which is…

Helen: Very young.

Chris: So I’m guessing our first exposure to Tim Burton was Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice or Batman

Helen: Batman

Nick: Batman

Dan: Pee Wee

Nick: Batman was just huge. That was the pop-culture event of 1989. I don’t think

I was aware of Tim Burton himself, because it’s not massively Burtony.

Helen: It’s pretty Burtony in retrospect. It became fashionable, after the Chris Nolan Batman movies, to rag on the Tim Burton Batman films, but actually I think they’re in their own way really, really good. The soaring, towering Gotham with this ridiculously overstyled, gothic New York is fantastic.

Nick: It’s very visually witty. I saw it again recently and I was struck by how well designed it was. I love the bit where the Batwing goes up and it’s framed against the moon.

Chris: That’s the cover of the Danny Elfman soundtrack CD.

Nick: It’s really fun. It feels like Burton is having fun with it.

Chris: I know there’s a lot of love for Batman Returns

Helen: You’re damn right. Yes, the villains get a whole load of screen time but it’s hard to care when they’re Danny DeVito’s Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman.

Nick: I don’t like DeVito’s

Penguin, to be honest. He just upsets me.

Chris: Not least because he’s now the President of the United States of America.

Nick: The flavour of that film is a bit too strong. You’ve got too much going on.

Dan: I’m not a huge fan. Batman gets that balance right between campness and seriousness. I think Batman Returns goes too far. I can’t accept penguins with rockets strapped to their backs.

Helen: I’ve been saying for years that penguins are evil. So I felt this entire film was backing me up.

Nick: We should talk about Ed Wood

Helen: Some of Johnny Depp’s early stuff with Burton was phenomenal. He has to give Ed Wood so much heart and optimism and idealism. It’s a wonderful line he manages to walk.

Dan: Ed Wood is a proper film. It’s shot in black and white, it’s gorgeously expressionistic, but without any of the flourishes you usually get from a Tim Burton movie.

Chris: Burton idolised these people. He thought Ed Wood was a genius in a weird way, and sees a lot of himself and his story, coming up through Disney and not fitting in, in that.

Helen: That affection and love for the characters shines through. Ed Wood’s crossdressing is treated with respect and sympathy. It’s probably his most heartfelt movie. That and Edward Scissorhands Chris: Is there anything from his later years that you really liked?

Dan: I liked Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

I dismissed it without seeing it.

Helen: Someone said, “Oh, Tim Burton’s making his film again,” and that summed it up for me.

Chris: Right, enough squabbling. Let’s vote!