23 MARCH 2024

RECORD 18

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, FIRST IMPRESSIONS


This week we finally get to see a glimpse of a long-awaited continuation of Burton’s classic Beetlejuice (1988). To say I love it is to say nothing, as I forced my boyfriend to dress up as Barbara & Adam for one of the Halloweens and DIY-ed The Book for the Recently Deceased that I still have on my bookshelf. A trailer to the new Beetlejuice (2024) was released, and it gave us at least two new clues by exposing the characters of Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara, as well as introducing Jenna Ortega’s (with whom Burton has been working for Netflix’s series Wednesday) character.

What would also be great and, although, would definitely ruin the fandom and legacy of the Beetlejuice world is a sitcom that would reflect and portray our life in 2024 anywhere in the world (since we are more globalised and united via online since the pandemic) with its mundane, strange, and quite emotional struggles that sometimes are hard to believe but have to be faced or accepted. What have changed since it was released in the 1980s? Perhaps, we accept now that our lives are way more like Beetlejuice sitcom than we would want them to be. If you are a newly-wed, there is a life after the happily-ever-after. There is no such thing as a no-line or no-wait bureaucracy, even in the afterlife world. However, there are also some heavy Sci-Fi elements: if you are rich & arty, you won’t necessarily gentrify a small village with real estate crisis on the local people and a bit of an ultimate truth that you might not solve everything with a good dance but at least it might help your mental health.





Burton’ stories as his visual language quite often pose a statement about authenticity and acceptance versus a different and normal worlds. His characters and stories question a scale of a general norm, trying to suggest that there might be no classification in status across the perfect and horrible, rather different and equally their own thing. Another animation tackles on similar issues with its own tools, Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). There, bad characters don’t stay bad, good characters are not really punished, and they are quite accepting, at least active in their new circumstances and genuine in their intentions.






Coming back to Beetlejuice, the world that the film paints is centred on the house of Barbara and Adam and its life with the way it bridges reality and supernatural, setting the rules just as in a fairytale. Another fairytale for adults (a.k.a tackling adult characters and issues with some magic dust) is Stardust (2007) and, perhaps, Shrek (2001). Although still, compared to issues brought up in the first Beetlejuice, they are not quite as relatable and serious (if we’d talk about Barbara’s fertility, the Deetz’s greediness, Lydia as a child bride and her general subdued emotional state compared to a romantic romance in Stardust (2007), i.e.). Beetlejuice doesn’t promise a better tomorrow and an epic courage, it reminds us to actively keep trying and working in order to make a change or resist a change in ourselves, if we think it is a way to lose ourselves.






To be frank with you, my vision with making this film into a TV series was already granted and created by Jack Schaefer for Marvel’s WandaVision (2021). Despite their general differences in the scale of the characters, qualities and the tones of both, they do share an element we all love sitcoms about families for. Removing the cluster of mundane and routine things, these two films focus on the relationship characters want to build in their families, and their houses as characters that reflect the happiness level. Perhaps, to ultimately remind that even in supernatural circumstances, three magic words wouldn’t do a better job than love and will of character’s own actions and dreams. Possibly, this is where it comes to the DIY production elements in Beetlejuice (1984).






The wholeness and simplicity of how genuine and relatable (or recognisable) both the characters in the first Beetlejuice (1988) and the worlds by Tim Burton, it makes me hope and eager to finally see the second part Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) (that was expected pretty much soon after the release of the first film) in the upcoming September. Not to mention the challenge to meet the expectations based on the role this film already has in the mass culture.