There aren't many directors with a more prominent visual sensibility than Tim Burton. His work, more than any other contemporary director, is probably responsible for ensuring that each new generation of children understands the idea of signature films. This is all the more impressive considering that Burton doesn't write his own material. In addition to working on scripts by other authors, most of his films adapt characters from a wide variety of sources: comics, Broadway musicals, trading cards, eccentrics from real life, the mind of Paul Rubens. Beyond it animated filmsonly one of his films is based on a created character, which makes Edward Scissorhands remains his most revealing film, even 35 years after its release on December 7, 1990.
Edward started life as sketch Burton did this as a teenager, reflecting the alienation he felt growing up, feeling like an outsider in sunny Burbank, California. He hired Caroline Thompson (who also subsequently wrote The Nightmare Before Christmas And Corpse Bride) to write a complete character story, halfway between a fairy tale and a satire. Edward (Johnny Depp) lives in a dilapidated Gothic mansion overlooking a pastel-colored suburban enclave. He is the creation of a strange scientist (briefly played by Burton's character Vincent Price), a Dr. Frankenstein figure who dies before he can replace the thunder of sharp and long blades with real hands and fingers. Edward is introduced to life in the suburbs when he receives a call from a neighbor who sells Avon chips (Dianne Wiest). Soon he lives with her family and slowly falls in love with her daughter Kim (Winona Ryder).
Edward's sweeping storyline, set in a world he doesn't understand, a mad scientist accidentally causing pain and being pursued by angry townspeople, is reminiscent of the most famous film adaptation FrankensteinJames Whale's 1931 version. However, Burton's sympathy for Edward is more in line with Guillermo del Toro's recent statement. Frankensteinonly Burton goes even further. While both Keith and del Toro's versions of the creature are sympathetic, they are also inevitably (if that's understandable) monstrous. Perhaps this is not their fault, but their entire existence is due to the violation of the natural boundaries of life. This is made clear through the use of a damaged “criminal” brain in the film The Whale. the cursed nature of the creature's inability to die at del Toro's.
Edward, however, is not presented as the result of grave robbing, resurrection, or anything else that seems downright wicked. He's treated more like an automaton, all the better to serve as a foil to the technically human but tragically conformist suburbanites he encounters. The scientist who created him may have been delusional to some extent, but the fact that he attached blades instead of arms to this poor creature is, if anything, a mild parody of the fairly good approach to brain transplants used in the old Frankenstein films.
In the hands of Burton Edward Scissorhands is a film inspired by Universal's monster movies, where the main monster isn't one of them – it's just made to feel like one. As cute as Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon are, they ultimately have a more animalistic, murderous side. However, Edward remains the most gentle character in the film. Every wrongdoing he commits, he does under the influence of man; while Frankenstein's Monster doesn't understand how to interact with a little girl and accidentally kills her while playing, Edward's misdeeds are only actively provoked. When he is attacked at the end of the film, he does not defend his life and only takes action when bully Jim (Anthony Michael Hall) hits Kim. The only death in the film is caused by Jim literally bringing a gun to a knife fight.
Considering Burton's painstaking efforts to keep Edward's scissorhands relatively clean, it would be easy enough to accuse the director of neutering horrific imagery into something both more palatable and self-pitying. These two qualities even coincide with Edward's inability to properly touch Kim: “Hold me,” she begs the young man, who bears a strong resemblance to then-heartthrob Johnny Depp. “I can’t,” he replies with as much teenage angst as a quiet, mechanical man can muster. In other words, he doesn't fend off accusations of mall goth. And it's true that, as creepy as he can be, Burton rarely makes straight-up horror films. Most of his forays into the genre involve comedy or a dark form of cuteness; some of them are designed specifically for children. Even a real horror movie rated R Sleepy Hollow has a dreamlike beauty enveloping the story of beheadings and bloodshed.
However, by making his version of Frankenstein almost entirely free of scary (non-human) monsters, Burton expresses with extraordinary purity the child's connection to imaginary creatures. Many children are attracted to movie monsters, whether generic, kaiju, or Pokemon; Burton's films embody a charm that can be considered, as Lydia Deetz says, “strange and unusual.” Del Toro isn't shy about believing that the real monster is Dr. Frankenstein rather than his creation, but his Creature still kills, albeit mostly in self-defense. Burton doesn't just tell his audience that one can look at a monstrous figure with some horror and end up feeling sympathy. He almost outright states that Edward is good and most other people, well, maybe not bad, but are at best misguided, at worst cruel bigots and easily fooled by those in the middle.
For a horror movie it's bland. For a self-portrait, it's ultimately pretty great – and that's without even getting into the weirdness of watching Johnny Depp, who currently seems most proud of his most ridiculous foibles as a person, play such an innocent soul. But in the realm of both bittersweet tales and provincial satire, Burton maintains the courage of his convictions. Over the past 35 years, some Burton fans have longed for a return to his heartfelt original story rather than his constant stream of reimaginings and actually a remake. But part of what's special about Edward Scissorhands it's the ironically fleeting nature of a character who could very well live forever in his castle. Burton put his heart and soul into many other films, some even better than this one. But how many times can a director make a heart from scratch?
