Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Tim Burton returned 36 years after the first film and handed the script to Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. He has said he could only make it after going through parenthood and ageing himself, and he did not rewatch the 1988 film while preparing, preferring to remember the feeling rather than the continuity. He compared Michael Keaton slipping back into the part to demonic possession. The handmade claim is a production decision here rather than a slogan. The sandworm and the plane sequence were shot as stop motion by Mackinnon and Saunders, the studio behind Burton’s Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie; the creature puppets came from Neal Scanlan’s team. Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos replaced blue and green screen with backlit projection screens, so the actors looked at an image instead of at nothing. For one flashback he had the camera’s infrared filter removed and shot black and white infrared. Exteriors went back to East Corinth, Vermont, the town used for the original, where the hardware store and the covered bridge were rebuilt. The MacArthur Park number at the end was also Burton’s pick. A good fit if you want the worm and the puppets to move with puppet weight instead of arriving as clean computer images. Not for anyone starting the series here; Lydia’s 1988 history is assumed rather than explained.