Summary
This article contains a reference to suicide.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuicelooks like it’ll be a ton of fun, but it seems to be throwing the established lore of Tim Burton’s original movie out the window. TheBeetlejuicesequel will pick up 36 years after the events of the first film (the same number of years that have passed in real time). Following Charles Deetz’s untimely passing, Lydia returns to Winter River with her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid. When Astrid finds the model town in the attic of the family home, she unwittingly opens a portal to the Afterlife and invites pesky poltergeist Betelgeuse back into her mother’s life.
Everything about this sequel is cause for excitement. Burton is back in the director’s chair, Michael Keaton is back in the role that made him a star, andWednesday’s Jenna Ortega is joining the ensemble. Willem Dafoe is playing a ghost detective, Monica Bellucci is playing Betelgeuse’s scorned ex-wife, and Burton used practical effects over CGI wherever possible.Beetlejuice Beetlejuiceis shaping up to be an awesome movie – exactly the freaky, laugh-out-loud sequel that fans have been waiting for – butthe trailers have me slightly confused, because they don’t adhere to the original movie’s mythology at all.
In the original movie, having a shrunken head is treated as something of an oddity – it doesn’t happen to everyone. Harry the Hunter is seen sitting in the Afterlife’s waiting room with a shrunken head, and it’s assumed that his head was shrunken by a witch doctor. At the end of the movie, Betelgeuse irritates the same witch doctor and ends up with a similarly shrunken head. But the sequel seems to be doubling down on that gag and then some by giving everyone in the Afterlife’s waiting room a shrunken head.
In touting the practical effects being used inBeetlejuice Beetlejuice,Keaton referred to the shrunken head room. If the Afterlife’s waiting room is now a room full of people with shrunken heads – and not just a bureaucratic office where one guy with a shrunken head once ended up – then it’ll change the lore surrounding the Afterlife’s civil servants.The original movie’s dark mythology claims that people who take their own lives end up as civil servants in the Afterlife, working at the cosmic equivalent of the DMV.
Now, it seems like they’re all people who crossed a witch doctor. And if that’s the case,does that mean the Afterlife is controlled by a witch doctor?Did a witch doctor take over the world?
Charles Deetz’s Absence Already Seems To Break Some Major Beetlejuice Rules
Death isn’t usually the end in this franchise
Obviously,the cast ofBeetlejuice Beetlejuicecouldn’t bring back Jeffrey Jones as Charles Deetz. Jones is still alive and takes occasional acting roles, but in 2003, he was charged with soliciting child pornography. So, naturally, the team behindBeetlejuice Beetlejuicehad to figure out a way to write out his character, so they killed him off. But in the case of this particular franchise, using death to write out a character just creates plot holes. This entire franchise revolves around the Afterlife. In the first film, death was the inciting incident in the main characters’ journey.
Killing off Charles just begs more questions. If he’s dead, why is he not in the Afterlife? And if he is in the Afterlife, why is he not shown on-screen? Obviously, they had to find a way to remove Charles from the story and keep Jones out of the ensemble, but killing off the character wasn’t the best way to go about it.This is a rare case – perhaps the only case – where it would’ve created fewer plot holes if he just moved awayand was never heard from again.
How Can The Living Go To Saturn & The Afterlife’s Realm?
It seems as though anyone can hang out with the sandworms, living or dead
One of the most tantalizing, but also most baffling moments in theBeetlejuice Beetlejuicetrailers, is when Lydia and Astrid are transported to the gonzo wasteland of Saturn, where they’re chased by a stripey stop-motion sandworm.Beetlejuice’s Saturn is designed like an even more surreal take onDune’s Arrakis: it’s a vast, empty desert landscape full of sandworms lurking underground. In theBeetlejuiceuniverse, Saturn is used to represent limbo – the space between life and death – andit’s a place where dead people who step out of line are sent.
In the first movie, Adam and Barbara were first transported to Saturn when they tried to step outside their house after they’d died. It seemed pretty clear that only dead people could be transported to Saturn. Live people are allowed to step outside their house whenever they want; only dead people are tormented by limbo. But intheBeetlejuice Beetlejuicetrailer, Lydia and Astrid – who, as far as we know, are both alive and well in the movie – are taken to Saturn.I get using that setting to evoke nostalgia, but the living can’t go to Saturn.
And going beyond that, Lydia and Astrid are seen hanging out in the Afterlife. I thought only dead people could access the realm of the Afterlife. But inBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, the living can apparently go to the Afterlife for a vacation.
Was Lydia Seeing & Speaking To Ghosts In Beetlejuice Really A Unique “Gift”?
It seems like a common ability in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
In the firstBeetlejuicemovie, Lydia’s ability to see and speak to ghosts is treated as a unique supernatural gift. Her ability to communicate with Adam and Barbara is supposed to make her special. But inBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, it seems like most people can communicate with the dead. Perhaps the truly unique gift was Lydia’s parents’ ability to not see the ghosts.Maybe anyone who believes in ghosts can see themand anyone who doesn’t can’t. It would make sense that Lydia’s daughter would inherit her ability to speak to ghosts (although Lydia didn’t inherit it from her mother).
I’m Still Extremely Excited For How Beetlejuice 2 Is Expanding On Tim Burton’s Fantasy World
Inconsistent lore is a minor gripe – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice still looks like a ton of fun
I’m still really excited to see where Burton goes withBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, and how he expands the curious world of the original film. AndI’m sure all these changes to theBeetlejuicelore will be explainedwithin the film itself. We don’t know Charles isn’t seen in the Afterlife and we don’t know Lydia and Astrid are alive when they go to Saturn. The mythology isn’t necessarily whatBeetlejuice Beetlejuicehas to get right; what it has to get right, above everything else, is the first film’s unbridled sense of fun.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Cast
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the sequel to the original Tim Burton classic that starred Michael Keaton and Wynona Rider in a horror-comedy that involved ghosts trying to scare off new homebuyers from taking their house. The sequel brings back Michael Keaton as the hilarious and sleazy ghost with selfish intentions, now joined by Jenna Ortega in a new role.
