As a lifelong cinephile who’s seen my fair share of Tim Burton’s twisted brilliance, I must say that the sequel to his 1988 classic, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, left me more bewildered than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The movie starts off as a delightful dose of Burton’s macabre humor, but then it takes a sharp turn into the realms of the bizarre and the inexplicable.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
In the sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 film “Beetlejuice”, titled “Beetlejuice: Sequel”, there’s no denying its peculiarity. After all, it was the original movie that showcased Burton’s distinctive blend of dark humor and eccentricity to a wider audience. If the sequel hadn’t incorporated at least one character being attacked by a shark in a Claymation scene, I was ready to demand a refund. Fortunately, I didn’t have to.
In simpler terms, there’s a standard level of Tim Burton’s unique style and then there’s a bizarre twist that leaves you questioning the plot and characters, such as Jenna Ortega suddenly appearing pregnant. The finale of Beetlejuice is like an uninvited, intoxicated Gothic drama from another Tim Burton production that unexpectedly joins the film.
Initially, I found myself utterly puzzled. The events that unfolded left me speechless, struggling to piece together their significance. To put it simply, the climax featured a journey to a castle, a wedding, and an odd birthing sequence. However, connecting these elements with the narrative that transpired over the preceding 90 minutes (notably the Monica Bellucci subplot that seemed to lead nowhere) was a conundrum.
Later on, I returned to view the original film again – it’s available on Max – and I managed to comprehend Burton’s intention. Although I’m still unsure about the effectiveness of that ending, I must admit that it is more intriguing than I initially thought, due to a question posed by Winona Ryder’s character Lydia Deetz towards Adam and Barbara Maitlin, the ghostly duo trying to force Lydia’s family out of their new home in the movie “Beetlejuice”.
Lydia, a teen with the unique gift of seeing spirits, finds it hard to believe that she’s encountering the Maitlins, who appear to be ghostly versions of their past selves – something no YA Netflix series in 2024 would dare to portray so subtly. Lydia is now grappling with this reality.
“What if this is a dream?” she asks them. “Can you guys do any tricks to prove I’m not dreaming?”
Adam and Barbara, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, shake their heads no.
It seems that the idea from the line stayed with Burton and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and they incorporated it into the conclusion of Lydia’s following tale. The events post the climactic scene where both Lydia’s weddings – one to Beetlejuice and the other to her manipulative fiancé Rory (Justin Theroux) – are foiled, take on a strange, dream-like atmosphere. This sequence presents a hypothetical future in which Lydia and Astrid (Ortega) have made peace and spend time together first at Dracula’s castle, where Astrid spots a mysterious man who could potentially be a vampire.
Initially, the film transitions from the previous scene directly to Astrid and Hot Vamp exiting their wedding, with Lydia smiling brightly at them. However, it’s not explicitly stated how much time has elapsed since the beginning of the movie, when Astrid was still in high school.
Here’s one way to rephrase the passage while maintaining its meaning and making it more natural and easy to read:
Indeed, what happens next seems to confirm that this ending was a dream. In what has to be an homage to the finale of Newhart, Lydia wakes up gasping in bed and Beetlejuice, asleep beside her, asks her if she’s had a nightmare. Before there’s even time to take in the idea that maybe Lydia did marry Beetlejuice after all, Burton smash cuts to the sight of Lydia waking up a second time from a dream. This time she’s all by herself. And that’s the end of the movie. It elicits an: “Oh.” And then a: “What?”
In another interpretation, the finale can be seen as Tim Burton interpreting Lydia’s question from the initial film, “What if this is a dream?”, as a philosophical exploration. It’s crucial to recall that in the movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Lydia mentions her mother is still alive, and they appear to have grown apart since Lydia was a teenager. The aspiration to be a better parent seems pivotal to both the joyful aspect of her dream and the terrifying one. The wedding might symbolize the happiness she hopes to experience with Astrid in the future, while the grotesque birth of baby Beetlejuice could represent Lydia’s concerns about having unintentionally doomed her daughter to a life filled with supernatural beings, including possibly the most infamous ghost.
Instead of considering it as what if Lydia’s last moment implies that everything in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was a dream, we could ponder the idea that perhaps the entire storyline might have been a mere dream or illusion. This intriguing notion becomes even more fascinating if Tim Burton decides to create a third Beetlejuice movie that disregards the second one as though it never existed. Given the trend of Marvel movies where each installment builds upon the last, imagine Burton’s audacity in saying, “That sequel I made? It was just a fleeting fantasy, not worth remembering.” Such a move would indeed offer a refreshing sense of freedom.
Another perspective could be that the final scenes imply that the entire Beetlejuice narrative was merely a dream experienced by Lydia during her teenage years. What if Beetlejuice, the Matlins, and all events portrayed in both movies and the musical are just imaginative entries in a journal, written by a troubled teenager who had a flair for fashion that combined elements of Robert Smith’s gothic style and Bob Mackie’s glamour.
A less appealing and intriguing theory suggests that during the scripting of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton and his team may have been under the influence of something, resulting in the peculiar ending. While this is possible, I find it less convincing. Instead, I prefer the idea that Burton remains intellectually superior to us, continually pushing the boundaries of weirdness to realms we scarcely understand.
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2024-09-06 21:55