Visionary filmmaker Tim Burton is declaring that his days of working with Disney are done.
It is the end of a working relationship between the two that goes back over 40 years, when Burton was an animator on the Disney films “The Fox and the Hound” and “Tron.”
Burton made the announcement during a news conference at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, France, on Saturday, according to Deadline.
Burton lamented that while some individual projects might rarely get the green light from Disney, the studio is now focused on major franchises like Marvel, Star Wars and the Pixar brand.
“It’s gotten to be very homogenized, very consolidated. There’s less room for different types of things,” Burton said. He added that he could not do a Marvel movie: “I can only deal with one universe. I can’t deal with a multi-universe.”
Burton described his work on the live-action adaptation of “Dumbo” as the catalyst for his moving on from Disney.
“My history is that I started out there. I was hired and fired like several times throughout my career there. The thing about ‘Dumbo,’ is that’s why I think my days with Disney are done, I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus and I needed to escape. That movie is quite autobiographical at a certain level,” he said.
Tim Burton has always followed the beat of his own drum. During his original run at Disney he produced “Vincent” and “Frankenweenie”: two animated shorts that the company all but disowned.
After getting fired by Disney for seemingly wasting company resources, frustration led Burton to Warner Brothers. It was there that his big break came in 1985 with the release of “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.”
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The success of that film propelled Burton to A-list director status. It was followed by the fantasy horror comedy “Beetlejuice,” and Burton was fully tapping the vein with his signature visuals and sense of macabre humor.
And then came 1989’s mega-event motion picture “Batman.” Once again Burton injected his trademark weirdness into the DNA of the film. It was a chemistry that broke new ground and set the tone for much of modern comic book film adaptation.
“It did feel very exciting to be at the beginning of all of it,” IndieWire quoted Burton as saying during a masterclass at the Lumière Festival. “It’s amazing how much it hasn’t really changed in a sense — the tortured superhero, weird costumes — but for me, at the time it was very exciting. It felt new.”
“The thing that is funny about it now is, people go ‘What do you think of the new “Batman”?’ And I start laughing and crying because I go back to a time capsule, where pretty much every day the studios were saying, ‘It’s too dark, it’s too dark.’ Now it looks like a lighthearted romp.”
Following further success with “Edward Scissorhands” — often cited as being his masterpiece — and the second Batman film, Burton again appeared at Disney, seemingly the conquering hero. That began a slate of films that Burton made for the studio between 1993 with “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and on through to 2019 with the release of “Dumbo.”
It is hard to believe that Burton does not have a point about Disney.
The company has produced volume after volume of its Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and series for its Disney+ streaming service. It has also premiered many projects set in the Star Wars mythos.
The company may be playing things too safe, at the cost of artistic vision.
Once upon a time Disney was a house of true innovation in terms of storytelling and technical prowess in pulling off a riveting tale. But that time is gone now.
It has vanished during what can be described as Disney’s schizophrenic pursuit of big blockbuster profits while at the same time being determined to insult most of its audience with socially engineered wokery.
In March, Disney television executive Latoya Raveneau proclaimed that the company would be introducing many sexual deviant characters into its productions aimed at small children.
It was a boast that general entertainment president Karey Burke said Disney would follow through on. “I’m here as the mother of two queer children, actually, one transgender child and one pansexual child, and also as a leader,” Burke said.
Disney seems to be more interested in catering to the demands of a distinct minority than it is in producing wholesome entertainment that can be enjoyed by all, and most especially by families with small children.
But it also seems that going “woke” is backfiring on the company. Its film “Lightyear,” which was deemed a tentpole of the 2022 summer movie schedule, bombed big at the box office. Caused in part, no doubt, by star Chris Evans declaring that anti-indoctrination people would “die off like dinosaurs” and that the film was “social advancement.”
Tell that to the nearly 70 percent of polled voters who said that Disney’s pro-deviant agenda has turned them off from having anything to do with the company.
And yet, it is a direly observable trend that apparently does not register at all with either Disney or the mainstream media in general.
Some at Disney have understood how the company is doing itself in. Sadly those are few and far between.
Tim Burton has always had a particular vision when it comes to his filmmaking. He has devoted himself to being true to that vision. And far more often than not his vision has become classic motion pictures that nobody else could have likely ever achieved.
Burton will not lack support for his projects. He has worked with a number of studios in his time and has almost always been given extensive license for carrying out his dreams.
His films also have the quality of being very approachable by a wide slice of the audience spectrum: young and old, men and women, serious and off-kilter. It is hard to think of a Burton film that is infected with sexual politics. Burton, and other filmmakers for certain, recognize that to do such a thing to a project is to take enormous risks that promise very little payout.
Tim Burton is respecting his talents. He has also shown that he respects his audience.
And that may be the biggest reason of all why he is separating from Disney.
