Someday You'll Find It,
The Burton Connection...
Posted by Leah on
11/14/2014 10:55:48 AM
I’ve been a huge fan of all things Tim Burton for years. With so many great movies under his belt, such as Beetlejuice, Big Fish, Sleepy Hollow and many more, it’s no wonder that he has such a broad appeal. Until recently I hadn’t given these films so much as a second thought past the enjoyment I get from watching them. It was during a recent airing of Corpse Bride on the Disney Channel that my husband suggested that perhaps there are some deeper connections between at least Burton’s stop animation movies, if not most of the original films he’sever made. This got me thinking, and digging, in an attempt to find answers. I’m going to keep this to his three stop animation films, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie, to keep things a little easier to chew; and although there are other connections to be made with other characters in these three films, I’ll be focusing on the main characters only.I’ll do my best not to include any major spoilers.
The main characters in Frankenweenie are a young boy named Victor and his dog, Sparky. After Sparky dies in an accident Victor is heartbroken and manages to put Sparky back together and bring him back to life. The running theory here is that Victor renames Sparky Scraps since he used scraps to piece the dog back together.
We then meet Victor again in Corpse Bride when he’s all grown up. In this movie Victor ends up in an unnamed after life world where he meets the Corpse Bride and is reunited with Scraps, (formerly Sparky). They never mention the name of the Corpse Bride, but her build and overall look is very similar to Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas, leading some to believe that they’re the same person,just in different stages of decomposition.
Which finally brings us to The Nightmare Before Christmas.The main character in this one is Jack Skellington and his dog Zero. The thought here is that Victor, having died and become a prominent member of Halloweentown, changes his name to Jack Skellington to better reflect his new identity and to gain distance from the anguishes he faced during life. Zero,Jack’s dog, is thought to have been once again renamed from Sparky and Scraps to reflect that he’s now a ghost.
“But wait!” you yell at your computer screen, “these movies didn’t come out in the order you discussed, therefore they can’t be connected!” That little dilemma is easily explained. 29 years ago, when Burton then worked for Disney, he created a shortstop animation film called Frankenweenie. Disney hated the film and eventually Burton was fired and the original Frankenweenie was never released. Close to a decade later Burton tried again with The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993, and while he had a bit of a hard time getting any of the studios to pick it up, Touchstone Pictures eventually agreed. Corpse Bride came next in 2005, released by Warner Brothers. Lastly came Frankenweenie, which Disney finally agreed to do almost 3 decades later with the caveat that it be stretched into a feature length film. So, as you can see, the ideas for these movies almost certainly came to Burton in chronological order, they just weren’t made and released that way. Instead they came out backwards chronologically speaking.
And there you have it in a nutshell. As I said before, there are many more connections between the movies and characters, (if you believe this sort of thing) and there is sure to be many more to come. As for Burton himself, I couldn't find anything anywhere that has him on record admitting that these connections are true, but that certainly doesn’t mean that they aren’t! Now I urge you to go and see these three films in the order Burton (probably) intended and decide for yourself whether you believe all of this or not.