Beetlejuice: The Weird and Wonderful World of Tim Burton’s Classic
Even if you’re no fan of Tim Burton‘s Beetlejuice, it might still command some respect. Why do I say this? Am I just some Beetlejuice fanboy? Maybe, but I also think it’s amazing that so many strange ideas were committed to film, and it’s a classic example of a major movie studio (Warner Bros. Pictures) actually having backbone enough to embrace the weirdness. Beetlejuice isn’t just some haunted house movie. It’s…well, Beetlejuice!
While Burton deserves much credit for the finished movie, obviously it would be nothing without writers Michael McDowell, Larry Wilson, and Warren Skaaren (Skaaren co-wrote the screenplay). Without getting defamatory, I wonder how they came up with some of the story ideas.
I can imagine these people sitting in a circle, with no doors or windows, challenging each other to come up with weird ideas about death and the afterlife. Sandworms? Sure! A guidebook called “Handbook for the Recently Deceased”? Sure, why not? A caseworker for a recently deceased married couple? Bing! Then you have the strange dance scenes which make us never see Harry Belafonte the same way again…
Beetlejuice: Normalizing the Strange and Unusual
As a character, Beetlejuice, or “Betelgeuse” (Michael Keaton), is sort of a movie monster, but not the kind of rises from some rickety old coffin and silently menaces people. Beetlejuice is far more of a party animal, rather than conveying the mood of some depressive funeral director. We never truly get his origin story, but we do know he likely existed before the house was built that he’s foolishly called upon to haunt. (Let that be a lesson for you: If you need to literally dig up a crazy spirit, and, upon conjuring him to the surface he wrecks your life, maybe it’s you who needs to find professional mental help).
So, what do the initial ghost protagonists, Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis), call Beetlejuice for? It’s not to fix their water heater, but to scare away the pesky Deetz family. Of course, good ol’ Beetlejuice ends up being a bigger problem, but there’s plenty of off-color, destructive fun along the way, isn’t there? There are also plenty of cool, simple ideas, such as the magic door, drawn to enter the Netherworld. Basically, any time you can use a key without necessitating a keychain, it’s a pretty cool idea.
I also like the idea that ghosts cannot leave the house, which better explains why ghosts are believed to stick around and haunt specific locations. In addition to the zaniness and special effects, these simple story elements have people pulled in as well. As another example, the story merges a wedding and a funeral together, toward the film’s end. Maybe not everyone notices that story element, but I think it’s a nice touch.
The Actual Sequel vs. the (Half-Jokingly?) Proposed Sequel
It’s been stated that Tim Burton himself was on board for a sequel with the possibly cringe-inducing title, “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.” While some still regard that as a joke, it doesn’t seem impossible that Burton could have seriously proposed the idea, or even that he could have (in an alternate universe perhaps) followed through on it and made it work. However, there is an actual sequel that has (apparently) actually wrapped filming! How cool is that?
Sure, some people have sequel fatigue, but I think many will make an exception, even if only because a Beetlejuice sequel seems like an odd idea after so much time passed. A possible problem is that, all these years later, the actors may be too old to reprise their roles with the same gusto. Michael Keaton is actually over 70 right now, for example. Not to sound too age-ist here, but people at that age are probably less quick to engage in sophisticated stunt work, and might not even like donning all that time-consuming makeup. So do I think Keaton, Catherine O’Hara, and Winona Ryder are up to the task? Absolutely!
Sure, you have Alec Baldwin’s recent legal troubles, and Jeffrey Jones, in addition to being 75, was also in some icky legal troubles. However, I doubt the new Beetlejuice flick will be bogged down too much by such things, nor will it likely feature Hawaiian ghosts or ghastly, ghostly bodies that wash ashore on some other volcanic island. That said, there are plenty of ways to die in the ocean, and there are not only living things on the beach. The sequel will also star Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, and Sofia Fernlöf.
What are your thoughts on the original Beetlejuice or the upcoming sequel? Spook us in the comments!
Episode seven of Amazon’s Fallout is the penultimate episode. This is often when a series goes off the rails and starts to mess things up. After being burned so often recently, I was apprehensive when this episode began.
Thankfully, this was a fear that did not come to pass. And so far, Fallout’s finale is doing just fine.
The story
A lot happened in this episode, so we’re just going to skim over some of the more important storylines. We’ll start with Lucy and Maximus, in Vault 4. Lucy has discovered what she believes is a secret collection of monsters. But of course, it turns out that it’s simply people that the vault dwellers discovered and are trying to help heal. But her meddling around was enough for them to kick her out of the vault. With two weeks’ worth of food and water, of course.
But Maximus assumes they’re going to do something much worse. And so he steals their power coil to fight through the perfectly innocent people and save Lucy.
Meanwhile, we dive further into The Ghoul’s past, when he was still Western star Cooper.
After attending a Communist meeting, he’s approached by Lee Moldaver. She suggests that Vault Tech is hiding something, something terrible. And she tells Cooper that his wife Barbara knows more about this than she’s letting on. Moldaver gets Cooper to bug Barbara’s Pip Boy, and listen in on an important meeting.
Poor Cooper hears far more than he wants to.
War, war never changes.
What worked
I would like to first point out that this was one of the funniest episodes so far. I mean, it got incredibly tragic and sad by the end. But it also had some great laugh-out-loud moments. This should be a surprise to no one, with such an array of comedians guest starring. Chris Parnell was in the last episode as well but is now joined by the incredibly funny Fred Armisen as DJ Carl. This is of course not his first foray into the funny and spooky world, as he also played Uncle Fester in Wednesday.
Most of what makes this episode funny is the character’s understated and deadpan responses to wild situations. When Maximus returns the energy coil and is greeted by a simple thank you. When Thaddeus gets an arrow through his neck, and slowly realizes that hey, he might be a ghoul. These were hilarious because they could have been truly dark moments. But because this world is so dark, and the characters have already been through so much, they’re simply done. They take all of this in stride because of course that’s what’s happening. It’s par for the course for them.
On the other hand, we’ve finally seen the full extent of The Ghoul/Cooper’s past. And it’s so much worse than we could have imagined. I assumed that he’d lost his beloved wife and daughter in the atomic blasts two hundred years ago, somehow not dying with them and instead turning into a literal and figurative monster. The truth is so much worse. I’ll do my best not to spoil the ending. But I will say this. There is nothing more painful than mourning someone and hating them at the same time. And it’s easy to see how Cooper turned into The Ghoul. That sort of pain could drive anyone mad.
This balance between comedy and tragedy is one of the reasons why this episode worked so well. It’s one of the reasons why the series is working so well. It manages to combine the core tenets of theater in a way that never compromises the strengths of either. The eventual downfall of Thaddeus is a great example of this because it’s both tragic and funny. We’ve seen what happens to ghouls, and it’s a horrible end. But as he’s hardly been a sympathetic character, we can all get a good laugh at his predicament as well.
The sheer amount of good old-fashioned gore doesn’t hurt either, of course.
What didn’t work
All that being said, there was one thing that bothered me about this episode. And it was the reveal of Vault 4’s big secret.
Honestly, I was expecting the Vault 4 storyline to go way darker. I wanted it to go way darker. While I’ve never played these games myself, I know enough about the story to say that these vaults are not the bastions of safety and morality that they have so far been portrayed as. And while that has certainly been alluded to, we haven’t seen it.
We haven’t seen the depravity in these vaults. And it’s there. But maybe we just haven’t gotten to it yet.
In the end, The Radio did exactly what it needed to do. It set us up to have most of our questions answered in the season finale. And I can’t wait to see how it all ends.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Amazon Prime’s Fallout has continued to be a suspenseful delight. And with the last episode’s dramatic cliffhanger, I was certainly looking forward to this one.
Thankfully, it did not disappoint.
The story
We start our story with Lucy and Maximus waking up in a decontamination room in Vault 4. They’re welcomed guests, once they’re done with decontamination.
Vault 4 at first seems very much like Vault 33 to Lucy. She’s surprised, however, to find that a lot of people who live there are actually from the surface. And the people who live in this vault are, well, a bit mutated. Their overseer, named Benjamin and played by the hilarious Chris Parnell, has just one eye in the middle of his face. Some people have extra limbs or missing ones. And yet it’s clear that everyone’s living together in peace and companionship.
At least, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. There is, after all, the matter of the weird cult the surface dwellers seem to have formed. And, the small matter of the vault level no one is supposed to go to. It should come as no surprise that, of course, that’s exactly where Lucy finds herself before the episode is over.
Of course, this episode wouldn’t be complete without checking in with the Ghoul. And his part of the story is, honestly, more compelling.
We see him apprehended by people referring to themselves as The Government. And while he appears to be a prisoner, it’s clear soon enough that he’s the one in charge.
Far more compelling are his flashbacks to his past. While his wife, Barb, is starting to be more secretive, he learns more than he wants to about Vault Tec. He also learns that the Communist party in Hollywood might know more about what Barb does for a living than he does. And it’s clear soon that she never wanted him to know.
For good reason.
What worked
I first want to draw attention to the excellent way we are learning about the Ghoul. As we learn more and more about his past, we can see how he’s become the monster he is today. It’s clear that once upon a time he had everything he could want. A lovely home, a family he lived for, and a successful career. And he lost all of that, even his dog. And with those losses, he lost his humanity in more ways than one.
But I also think we’re seeing signs that his humanity at least isn’t as lost as he thought it was.
On a lighter note, I loved Maximus’s response to the vault. While he’s apprehensive at first, he is swept away by the welcome basket. He’s lived his whole life hungry, barely surviving, and suddenly he has food. Good food. Caviar and oysters. He has a warm robe and TV and a safe place to exist. It must have been like stepping into a fairy tale for him. And while it wasn’t exactly helpful for Lucy, it’s completely relatable that he decided to sink into a chair and have a snack in front of the TV for a while.
What didn’t work
While this episode was mostly good, I do have one complaint. When Lucy is first meeting with Overseer Benjamin, we see him accidentally drinking a cup of coffee that has gotten moldy.
Now, this makes perfect sense in our world to convey someone too busy and forgetful to clean up old mugs. But it’s hard to fathom someone living in a Vault in which every resource is carefully monitored, letting something like coffee go bad. It’s a small detail, and it was funny. Also more relatable than I’d like to admit. But in this instance, in this world, it was jarring.
So far this season has been intense. There’s a lot of intrigue and mystery. There’s a lot of high emotions. And there’s a lot on the line for everyone. Maybe, for one character, more than we’ve ever realized before.
Good thing we still have two episodes to discover what’s happening.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Episode four of Amazon’s Fallout wasn’t the best-liked. Of course, that’s relative to the rest of the season. While this is the second-to-last-ranked episode, it’s still an 8.1 on IMDB.
So let’s talk about why it might have slipped a bit but was still a great episode of TV.
The story
Let’s start our discussion of this episode with Maximus.
After he and Thaddeus successfully retrieved the head from the Gulper, they’re in high spirits. Together they celebrate around a fire, giving a lovely impression of two people who have been drinking despite not seeing a bottle in sight. Thaddeus even convinces Maximus to brand him.
While having a good time, Maximus’s consciousness gets the better of him. He admits to Thaddeus that he’s not Knight Titus, but he is Thaddeus’s old punching bag.
Rather than responding to this act of honesty with an equal measure of grace and brotherhood, Thaddeus immediately disables Maximus’s suit, taking the power source and the head. He then leaves Maximus trapped in the suit that he wanted so much, doomed to die in it.
Lucy isn’t in a much better place. If you’ll recall, last episode she drank radiated water out of desperate thirst. She’s now suffering from radiation poisoning. Fortunately, before she succumbs to this poison, she finds Maximus. He has the medicine she needs, and she can free him from his suit before he’s eaten by giant cockroaches. It seems like a win/win. If that is, the two of them can trust each other. And haven’t they both learned that trusting other people might be the most dangerous thing in this very dangerous world?
What worked
The first thing I want to draw attention to is the relationship between Lucy and Maximus. A lot has happened since the last time the two saw each other when there were some sparks but no time to do anything about them. Both have been betrayed and hurt. So while they’re instinct is clearly to trust each other, it’s also to be cautious. And that makes sense. They are both good people, driven by the desire to help others. But both are cautious of being hurt again.
This was not only relatable, but it gave a much different feel to a standard will they/won’t they relationship. Will they be able to trust each other enough to let their feelings out is the real question. Which is a lot more interesting, in my opinion.
I also found the giant, mutated bugs to be fantastic. They were the perfect blend of cute and terrifying. At first glance, they seem like a larger version of Hal from Wall-E. Then, you realize how few of them it would take to eat someone trapped in place. And how little time it might take.
And how long it might feel like while it’s happening.
We don’t need to see that happen to feel the terror there. And to feel some concern about the tiny pests that sometimes share our homes.
Of course, the highlight of this episode was the political intrigue surrounding Vault 33, and how its leaders always seem to be from Vault 31. This storyline is quickly becoming my favorite part of the season. It’s a dark and creepy mystery, which is always fantastic. But it’s also fascinating to see the character of Norm blossoming into someone whose life has meaning. Because at the start of the season, he was lacking that.
All in all, while this was a slower episode it was still a good one. And its ending certainly left me excited for what was to come.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
