Ahead of the release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice next month, director Tim Burton is discussing the very personal reasons why it took him so long to make a sequel. Premiering in theaters on September 6, the film reunites Burton with original stars Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara, and brings newcomers Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, and Willem Dafoe along for the ride. Set 36 years after the events depicted in the 1988 horror-comedy classic, the Deetz family return to Winter River to say farewell to a beloved family member, only to get caught up in the chaos that Betelgeuse brings with him.
Per Slashfilm, Burton was on hand at a press event to promote Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and mentioned that he was in no position to make the sequel sooner because he had yet to experience all of life’s ups and downs. In the years that followed Beetlejuice, Burton grew up and became a parent, and it was that maturity that led the director to ponder what happened to Lydia. He says that it was only time that could have led to the appropriate answers, thus making the sequel a very personal film for him.
“Well, what happened to this person 35 years later? It’s a bit, like 35 up. You go from cool teenager to what? Some kind of f**ked up adult or whatever. And what relationships do you have? Whether you have kids? What’s your relationship with that? So it’s not something I could have done back then.
“It’s only something you could do once you’d experienced those things yourself. So for me, this became a very personal movie, like kind of a weird family movie, about a weird family, or a weird family movie, or I don’t know which way you want to look at it.”
Burton went on to liken it to his experience making Big Fish, a film about the reconciliation between a dying father and his son. His own father died in 2000, and without going through that loss, the director says it’s not a movie he could have made.
It’s like when I made Big Fish, I couldn’t have made that film before my father died. I could only make that having those feelings that surprised me. So it’s the same with this.
Winona Ryder Was Also Eager to Explore What Happened to Lydia
Now 52, Ryder was only 15 years old when she made Beetlejuice. Back then, Lydia was a rebellious, brooding teenager who’d been uprooted from her home in New York to go and live in a small, country town. Her goth fashion sensibilities and eccentric quirks stood out like a pig in church, and for Winona Ryder, the last thing she pictured was her character ever becoming a mother.
“I never pictured Lydia either having children or in any type of relationship. I just always thought she was just probably in her own world as she got older,” she told Slashfilm. Burton’s script surprised her, though, which led the actress to consider many of the same questions the director had when it came to the sequel.
“So that was the big challenge was, who is she now? We’ve all been in those things where you’re just like, what was I thinking, in terms of the relationship I have?”
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It’s very existentialist, and perhaps that will help make the sequel resonate with audiences who watched the original film 35 years ago, and have gone on to have their own life experiences. We can see for ourselves what became of Lydia, and how her relationship with her daughter plays into it all when Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters on September 6 from Warner Bros. Pictures.
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