Everybody Finds a Way to Shine
Why is Tim Burton hailed as such a visionary director?
I mean, all he does is make adaptations.
Granted, he's turned to a lot of different source material for his oeuvre--in the course of his career, he's directed feature films based on a sketch comedy character, a comic book character, a biography, a series of trading cards, a short story, an earlier film adapted from a novel, a more contemporary novel, a children's book, a folk tale, a Broadway musical, and now a pair of novels which have entered the public domain. In a postmodern twist, he will next be remaking his own short film before moving on to adapting a television series.
However, he hasn't directed a feature film from an original story since Edward Scissorhands, twenty years ago.
The extremely long queues at the cinema this weekend (and the resulting $116 million in North American box office revenue) show that the moviegoing public isn't too concerned with this lack of originality, and you know Alice in Wonderland will end up getting Academy Award nominations next year in the Art Direction, Costume, Makeup, and Visual Effects categories, if nothing else. I'm glad the people at CollegeHumor touched on this issue recently, nailing the degree to which Burton has become a one-trick pony, but I'm sure he'll also continue to be revered as a director regardless.
Considering the amount of stigma associated with media tie-ins, though, this double standard that somehow allows Tim Burton to get a pass for doing the same thing just strikes me as...curiouser and curiouser.
I mean, all he does is make adaptations.
Granted, he's turned to a lot of different source material for his oeuvre--in the course of his career, he's directed feature films based on a sketch comedy character, a comic book character, a biography, a series of trading cards, a short story, an earlier film adapted from a novel, a more contemporary novel, a children's book, a folk tale, a Broadway musical, and now a pair of novels which have entered the public domain. In a postmodern twist, he will next be remaking his own short film before moving on to adapting a television series.
However, he hasn't directed a feature film from an original story since Edward Scissorhands, twenty years ago.
The extremely long queues at the cinema this weekend (and the resulting $116 million in North American box office revenue) show that the moviegoing public isn't too concerned with this lack of originality, and you know Alice in Wonderland will end up getting Academy Award nominations next year in the Art Direction, Costume, Makeup, and Visual Effects categories, if nothing else. I'm glad the people at CollegeHumor touched on this issue recently, nailing the degree to which Burton has become a one-trick pony, but I'm sure he'll also continue to be revered as a director regardless.
Considering the amount of stigma associated with media tie-ins, though, this double standard that somehow allows Tim Burton to get a pass for doing the same thing just strikes me as...curiouser and curiouser.