THE RANKING

Team Empire goes for a Tim Burton.

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 deserts, 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

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