After several years of seemingly nothing but borrowed properties, Tim Burton has at last returned to original ideas—albeit, original ideas that he first had back in 1984, and which were themselves based on borrowed properties. But Frankenweenie isn’t an adaptation of a familiar children’s tale or classic TV show, and thus it is exciting. Plus, it returns Burton to the charming stop-motion animation of The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride, telling a similarly spooky-yet-adorable story of a boy who brings his beloved dog back from the dead with spooky-yet-adorable consequences. It’s also a Burton reunion in more ways than one, bringing back past Burton players like Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Martin Landau, and more notably, putting Frankenweenie once again proudly under the Disney banner—which is funny, considering the original Frankenweenie is what got Burton fired from Disney, who felt that he had wasted the company’s resources. But of course, time and billions of dollars heal all wounds.