With Wednesday set to premiere in October of 2022, fans of the weird and wild Tim Burton will more than likely want to take a headlong dive into Tim Burton’s filmography in preparation. While many fans will more than likely check out old standbys like The Nightmare Before Christmas, many Burton buffs forget that this wasn’t his first tango with Walt Disney Pictures.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and Burton’s origin story began with the would-be-director working as an animator and sketch artist at Disney in the early ’80s. Before Batman, Beetlejuice, or Edward Scissorhands were ever off the ground, Burton established a permanent, and at times tumultuous, relationship with the iconic studio.
Alice Through The Looking Glass (6.1)
The primary reason for this film’s low rating is perhaps due to Burton’s level of attachment to the project. Serving only as producer and creator of the incarnations of Lewis Carrol’s characters, the sequel to Alice In Wonderland was weird, but certainly lacking in the director’s brand of strange and unusual.
Writer Linda Woolverton and director James Bobin made an effort to recreate Burton’s Wonderland, but ultimately created an outlandish otherland that lost Burton’s trademarks in the process. At least they were able to bring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter back to the game.
Hansel And Gretel (6.2)
Unless fans were tuned into the Disney Channel on Halloween of 1983, there’s a very slim chance of even knowing that this special even exists. Tim Burton’s adaptation of the Grimm’s fairytale was one of his first big projects under the Disney name, and calling it weird would be a gross understatement.
Burton was heavily influenced by Japanese movies and culture when making this film, leading to the inclusion of transforming toy robots, an all-Japanese cast, and a wicked witch that wields nunchucks and ninja stars. While it was certainly a rocky start to the director’s career, the designs and setpieces were all purely Burton.
Dumbo (6.3)
Although the film received mixed reviews, including on IMDb, the argument could be made that Burton understood the assignment and delivered exactly what could be expected from an adaptation of Disney’s Dumbo. It had the basics of the story but with the director’s trademark weirdness.
The film naturally features the titular big-eared elephant at the core, but it also features clowns, carnival freaks, a legion of pinstripes, and a phenomenal score by the legendary Danny Elfman. It might not have been what the standard Disney fan was expecting, but it was everything fans of the director’s work could have asked for, minus a Johnny Depp appearance, of course.
Alice In Wonderland (6.4)
Burton’s Alice in Wonderland wasn’t a bad movie, but it wasn’t what it could have been. It had all the right ingredients for an absolutely perfect adaptation of the Lewis Carroll novel. It had the right director, right cast, right design, right score, and right production company, but it didn’t have the right script.
That said, Burton’s touch on the piece is as heavy as anything else in the Director’s filmography. It’s dark, twisted, and delightfully strange, especially when characters like the Mad Hatter and Cheshire Cat are on-screen. It has its audience, but it could have been much better.
James And The Giant Peach (6.7)
Something of a cult film, it’s easy to forget that Tim Burton had a hand in this underrated Disney movie since he mainly served as a producer. Similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas, James And The Giant Peach was a collaboration between Tim Burton and Henry Selick that brought a wonderfully weird adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel to audiences everywhere.
A mix of live-action and stop-motion animation brings the story to life as James escapes his wicked aunts on a giant peach with a gang of enormous bugs. It’s just the kind of story Burton himself would adapt, and truly deserves more attention than it currently receives.
Frankenweenie (6.9)
A fun fact many fans might not know about the iconic director is that he was originally let go from Disney essentially for being too dark, the nail in his proverbial coffin being the original Frankenweenie. With that in mind, it’s deliciously ironic to know that Disney would eventually ask him to direct a full-length feature film based on the short that temporarily ended his career with the company.
The full-length Frankenweenie feature is Burton at his Burtonest, a stop-motion, kid-friendly horror movie loaded with winks and nods to classic monster movies, all with the director’s iconic designs and direction. Burton’s love for the genre and the project itself is present and palpable.
Frankenweenie (Short) (7.2)
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The project that essentially got Burton fired from the Disney studio was practically the spark that launched his film career. The tone was decidedly not Disney, and some members of the studio believed that the actions depicted in the movie would prompt naughty behavior from its young audience. Fortunately for Burton, Paul Ruebens and Warner Brothers were looking for a director for Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and Frankenweenie truly displayed his talents.
Burton is practically notorious for his mix of sweet and spooky, especially with a film that concerns a little boy reanimating the body of his beloved dog. Whether the director knew it or not, it set the tone and motifs for Burton’s career long before Disney would ask him to do the same thing, decades later.
Ed Wood (7.8)
An honorable mention, but since it was released under Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, Burton’s love letter to the work of Ed Wood does still technically count as an association with the house of mouse. Of course, it’s not a film that would be released under Walt Disney Pictures, but it is a very Burton production.
Burton’s biopic of the cross-dressing eccentric horror director behind Plan 9 From Outer Space is one of the weirdest comedies on the market, and that’s the selling point of the film. Of course, Johnny Depp’s maddeningly entertaining performance as the titular Ed Wood is reason enough to give this film a watch.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (7.9)
Although he’s often mistakenly credited as the director of this Halloween classic, Burton is still responsible for creating one of Disney’s most marketable characters in the form of Jack Skellington. Based on the director’s children’s book of the same name, The Nightmare Before Christmas is the film that cemented Burton’s ties with the Walt Disney Company.
To be clear, Henry Selick was the man who brought the production to life, but Burton was the creative genius who created the story, characters, and the world of the holiday lands. Since then Jack and Sally have been permanently associated with the director, and Jack himself has cameoed in Burton’s other projects.
Vincent (8.3)
Art imitates life, and that concept is nowhere better represented than in Tim Burton’s Vincent. A Halloween short film inspired by the director’s love for horror films, the gothic aesthetic, and the legendary Vincent Price, the project was as biographical as it was highly imaginative.
Though it’s surprising that something like this short would even exist under the Disney name, it laid the groundwork for other stop-motion projects like The Nightmare Before Christmas. As brief as the short film might be, it manages to convey the director’s personality, interests, and style in such a brief amount of time. Not only that, but it helped Burton establish a friendship with one of his Hollywood heroes.
