Here’s your first look at Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which “reenergized” Tim Burton’s love of filmmaking
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Jenna Ortega, premieres September 6
Aux News Tim Burton
’80s nostalgia never dies, and neither does Betelgeuse, the immortal demon who terrorized the Deetz family in Tim Burton’s beloved horror comedy. According to Burton and star Michael Keaton, ideas for raising the undead have been thrown around since the first one premiered (“Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice Goes West, whatever. Lots of things came up,” says Burton), but the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will finally hit theaters on September 6. Now, more than 30 years after his original introduction, we have our first look at the ghoul himself (below), secured by Entertainment Weekly.
Burton tells Entertainment Weekly that Keaton “had no burning desire to do” a sequel “unless it felt right,” but when he got to the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice set “He just got back into it. It was kind of scary for somebody who was maybe not that overly interested in doing it. It was such a beautiful thing for me to see all the cast, but he, sort of like demon possession, just went right back into it.”
For his part, Keaton recently told People that this movie was “the most fun I’ve had on set in a long time.” Similarly, Jenna Ortega—who plays Lydia’s (Winona Ryder) daughter Astrid, seen in the other first-look image—said this movie “was probably the happiest I had ever seen Tim on a set. He’s clapping at the monitor and shouting and laughing, which was really, really endearing.”
All three agree that part of the joy of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was the craft. “It needed a back-to-basics, handmade quality,” Burton told EW. “It reenergized why I love making movies.” Keaton agreed in his own interview, “What made it fun was watching somebody in the corner actually holding something up for you, to watch everybody in the shrunken head room and say, ‘Those are people under there, operating these things, trying to get it right. It’s the most exciting thing. When you get to do that again after years of standing in front of a giant screen, pretending somebody’s across the way from you, this is just enormous fun.”
In another interview for The Jess Cagle Show, Keaton added that he’d seen a cut of the film “and I confidently say this thing is great. … The [original] was so fun and exciting visually. It’s all that but really kind of beautiful, and interestingly emotional here and there. I wasn’t ready for that. It’s great.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice stars Keaton, Ryder, Ortega, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux (as a “bio-exorcist” named Rory), Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti, and Willem Dafoe.
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Would love some Excited, Manic Keaton and not Sleepwalking, Bored Keaton like in The Flash
“You wanna get nuts. Let’s (sighs, checks phone) get nuts.”
“I’m the ghost with the most…” (begins sobbing uncontrollably)
Hey, he was the best part about that movie.*realizes what that means*
Since the article mentions 80s nostalgia, it feels like Generation X was immediately mythologizing that era, in a way similar to the way baby boomers were aggressively nostalgic about the 60s immediately after it was over. I don’t think that’s true for every generation.
I’m GenX and I remember the ‘80s: There were some cool things about it but I mostly remember being very poor and most things sucking. Even when I was a kid I realized stuff like He Man, GI Joe and Transformers were trash shows, didn’t stop me from wanting the toys though. I do always try to keep a forward looking attitude and not fall into nostalgia traps, though.
Don’t forget the suffocating weight of nuclear annihilation at any moment.
Hey, you remember the nuke drills at school? Yes, getting under your desk and putting your head between your legs would definitely help in the case of a nuclear attack. The joke was always that at least you could kiss your ass goodbye.
Oh right, living with the idea that the world might end at any moment, that was fun too.
Gen Xer here – the 80’s sucked ass. Everything cool was deemed “evil” and “Satanic” by the moral majority MFers. Popular culture was awful and the only good stuff was well outside of the mainstream.
And the whole ‘stranger danger’ thing, totally misleading people about who was most likely to kidnap or molest their kids.
definitely felt like the mythologizing was part of consuming it from the jump. people in the 60s and 70s couldn’t really ‘own’ a movie or tv show, and kids now can’t own half the shit that comes out even if they wanted to.
I never got Gen X as really mythologizing the 80s as it seems like there was an appreciation for the corniness of the era. At the risk of being meta, it strikes me as a way less rose-tinted look at the past than a lot of other nostalgia. if anything the 90s was the decade that got the hardcore nostalgic outlook almost as soon as the clocks struck midnight on 1/1/00.
appreciation for the corniness of the eraWe were having “80s parties” by 1991. Absolutely we were making fun of the decade.
The Wedding Singer was filmed in 1997, only 12 years after the narrative timeline it references, and it looks like a documentary about the War Years based on how different the eras were ($700 CD players, DeLoreans, Miami Vice and Thriller callbacks, etc.).It’s like making a movie now about 2012, and you know, Trump and COVID-19 aside, there’s no way there’s that level of delta from then to now as there as from the ‘80s to the ‘90s.
Friends, 1998
Well that’s likely because of the, I would argue biggest invention of the time, the internet. 80’s no internet, not outside of colleges and such, 90’s you could get it at home, albeit slow, we had dial up in the early 90’s, that was a game changer even in the early days. So there was a much bigger shift form 80’s to 90’s than can 2012 to 2022.
There’s less of an obvious total reset every 10 years like there was back then, but 2012 was pretty different from today. I don’t know how you can suggest putting Trump and Covid aside when a big part of the 80’s-90’s switch was the end of the Cold War. Those sorts of world events influence the pop culture of the time in ways that aren’t always obvious.2012 was right in the middle of the Obama era, and the whole vibe was completely different than today. Music seems the same, because Taylor Swift and Beyonce were popular back then, but so was Kanye, and he wasn’t a crazy person yet. Big beards and hipster style were much more prominent. peopel still cared about craft beer. Netflix had everything (and people still had DVDs and TiVo was a thing). Facebook was for young people. Nobody worked from home. You had a phone, AND an mp3 player AND and camera. People were still playing Guitar Hero. Remember Gangnam Style? iPod nanos? Vine? Blogs? Movies in 3D? I could go on, but I have to write an update to We Didn’t Start the Fire.
Weird. The 80s hadn’t even ended in 1991. The future really was bright.
Hot take. Beetlejuice wasn’t that great, it benefitted greatly from a giddy ‘WTF am I watching right now?’ feeling that quickly disappears on subsequent viewings. Burton was always a great production designer, not really much of storyteller.
I loved it, but can hear where you’re coming from. I think Beetlejuice, Scissorhands, and especially Ed Wood are the 3 times he crafted whole films and not just fetishistic dioramas. For me, at least, these were fully formed. I wanted to love Big Fish but couldn’t. His Alice is one of only 3 times I ever walked out of the theater in my life (Depp is peak nails-on-chalkboard, high-on-his-own-supply Depp in it). I didn’t hate his version of Wonka other than Depp’s Michael Jackson impersonation (which rendered the character weird, yes, but also unlikeable). All that said, and despite my antipathy towards 90% of franchises, I’m looking forward to B2.
i dunno if this a factor, but gen x was probably the last generation to experience culture as something temporal, i.e., it wasn’t (at the time) easily accessible after it was done. even dvds or reruns were things you still had to wait for.
Was going to say something like that. We are/were the last generation to grow up, mostly, pre internet/cell phone, so there is some nostalgia for being not always connected to everything.
I mean we videotaped shows and movies ..A LOT, so there was that.
yes, but it was still restrictive (by schedule) and it was mostly for personal consumption. as opposed to the instantaneous access that is available now to anyone with an internet connection.
like i said, i don’t know if it’s necessarily pertinent. i just found it interesting since (i’m assuming) this movie is supposed to be for my age group and our nostalgia, i guess.
but the only thing that interests me about it is catherine o’hara.
About 50% of media in the 80s was boomer 50s/60s nostalgia , sometimes it amazes me there was time to actually make any actual 8os set movies
It’s definitely true of every generation. Mostly for post-WWII decades. There was 50s nostalgia, now there’s 90s nostalgia. The 70s took a while, but that happened. Everyone is nostalgic for their childhood. It’s ingrained in us.
Maybe some Gen Xers, but of course no generation is a monolith.
I’m a young GenX (I think) and I remember the 90s as just wanting to hear, see and do the next new thing.
Even when the Star Wars Special Editions came out I went to see them a) because I’d never seen them in the cinema, and b) to see what the changes were and how/if they improved the originals. They didn’t, but I wasn’t seeing them out of 80s nostalgia or to relive my childhood.
Nothing wrong with that.
The Sixties were a time of genuinely radical transformation in our culture – politics, entertainment, sexuality, civil rights, etc. – especially for young people. It makes sense that there would be a tendency to carry on about that particular period. I didn’t come of age then, but it sure as shit seems more worthy of ongoing celebration than the Eighties, when I actually did come of age.
The best decade was the 90s, but the 80s were pretty nice also and surely better than now in the Western world at least.
love hearing how charged up burton was on-set and that they’re working with real stuff. we might just have something here.
Yeah, most of the time he talks about hating the movie he’s working on.
I am all in with Lydia looking like well, Lydia would probably look and of course having a gothy daughter. Should be interesting to see how the big guy sees his ‘almost’ bride.
I just dont get Jenny Ortega’s quote tho. ““was probably the happiest I had ever seen Tim on a set. “. She been in one movie of his, right?
This will get a B- and people will hate it. It’s missing most of the original cast since they couldn’t get the workplace shooter or the pedophile on board and they didn’t even ask Geena Davis. He should’ve jumped right to the Edward Scissorhands sequel and skipped this.
See I don’t think we’re missing much without Baldwin and Davis. Because you’d have to factor in how they’ve aged, which seems incongrous with ghosts, unless you give them a ghoulish look, which I’m not sure would work either.
Plus it possible they moved on to the next place. I don’t everyone gets turned into ghosts.
also like…i’d happily trade jeffrey jones, geena davis and alec baldwin for willem dafoe. good trade!
I think we will miss the connection we had with those characters, but you’re right about the physical changes the actors experienced with time. They were excellent in the first movie, though.
“He should’ve jumped right to the Edward Scissorhands sequel…”…er I have some bad news about Johnny Depps career Grandpa..
Grandpa Edgelord
between this, X-Men ‘97, and that new Alien movie my nostalgia senses are in overdrive.But I predict only X-Men will actually be good.
The griminess of the 90s was a pendulum swing reaction to the artificiality of the 80s so you’re assertion that we mythologized the 80s is baseless.
needs more LBGTQ black “women”.
I wonder if a certain congresswoman is going to be at the premiere.
She should have a lot of free time on her hands after the primary.
I read that as she should have a lot of free hands, which I think was the problem in the first place.
I dunno, how is she looking at the pol(e)s?
Don’t toy with me, Burton.
I’m fine that it’s in a Beetlejuice film, but primarily excited to see “the most fun I’ve had on set in a long time” Keaton at work. It’s been forever since he got to be nonstop gonzo funny. Long Live Bill Blazejowski.