Review: "Beetlejuice" and the power of the Controlling Idea

Movie of the Week #7 is about the difference between 'good' and 'great'

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In my review of Tim Burton’s Batman from this time last month, I summarized my complicated thoughts on the film thusly:

[Burton’s Batman is] a sometimes great and always fascinating cinematic object that is overwhelming as a piece of craftsmanship, and impossible for me not to respect as a genuine attempt to make a real movie instead of manage a brand or extend a property. I enjoy it less as a beginning-to-end linear experience that fully holds together than as a big audiovisual playground that is entrancing to explore – to poke around at not just the iconography and cinematography and Elfman’s amazing music, but also the performances and careful command of tone. 

With this week’s release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the delightfully-titled sequel to the 1988 film Burton made just before Batman, I knew I wanted to revisit the cinematic origin of Michael Keaton’s ‘ghost with the most.’ I had no dearth of notes to work from after watching, but it took me quite a while to figure out what I wanted to say about Beetlejuice, and whether or not it was worth devoting a piece to at all, because the main thrust of my reaction is basically identical to what I wrote about Batman: It’s a spectacularly-made toy box of extraordinary visuals, filled with memorable performances and moments, that evokes so much mood and atmosphere, but that doesn’t really hold together as a story, or as a single front-to-back 90-minute experience. The film is brimming with life and vitality, there are fun characters and inspired moments of staging everywhere, but it’s just a bit too misshapen to ever be more than the sum of its parts. There is a reason all future interpretations of this movie – like the 90s cartoon series, or the recent, wonderful Broadway musical – are better on their own terms, as they get to play in the amazing sandbox Burton and company built, while sharpening the story, characters, and tone into something more cohesive. The same, of course, is true of Burton’s Batman, which spawned the superior Animated Series, a show that could not exist without Burton’s aesthetic and atmospheric breakthroughs, but is much clearer and more confident in how it approaches Batman and tells stories in his world.

And if that was all I really had to say about Beetlejuice, supported by a laundry list of the many things I like and the places where the film fails to tie it all together, I didn’t think it would be a piece worth writing. Recycling the same thesis for two different films in quick succession wouldn’t be satisfying for me to write or you to read. But there was one piece of dialogue in Beetlejuice that kept gnawing at me, that I kept thinking about as the skeleton key unlocking the movie’s potential and explaining why its punches don’t fully land. And the more I considered it, the more I realized how exploring the reasons that line feels so significant is not only a good reason to write about Beetlejuice, but might make for a solid little Film Studies lesson, too.

This is the line, and it comes late in the film, from Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) to a depressed Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder):

This line is a textbook example of what Robert McKee, in his seminal 1997 screenwriting guide Story, calls the “Controlling Idea.” He prefers this phrase to the word ‘theme,’ because “it names a story's root or central idea, but it also implies function: The Controlling Idea shapes the writer's strategic choices … toward what is appropriate or inappropriate in your story, toward what is expressive of your Controlling Idea and may be kept versus what is irrelevant to it and must be cut.”¹ This idea “must be expressible in a single sentence,” and as an example of how powerful a good Controlling Idea can be, McKee tells us that Paddy Chayefsky – celebrated writer of 1976’s Network, generally considered one of the greatest screenplays in film history – would write his Controlling Idea “on a scrap of paper and tape it to his typewriter, so that nothing going through the machine wouldn't in one way or another express his central theme.”²

“Being dead really doesn’t make things any easier” is without a doubt the Controlling Idea of Beetlejuice. It is a story about two characters (the Maitlands, played by Davis and Alec Baldwin) who are too timid to go out and embrace life, to engage with the unpredictability of the world around them, who wind up prematurely dead and stuck haunting the meticulously constructed house they barely ever left. When they die, the Deetz family moves in, and their daughter, Lydia (Ryder), is a moody and depressed teen who hates the rapidly changing status quo of her newly blended family, who refuses to find joy and only sees darkness in her surroundings, and as a result considers suicide. All three characters are in some way choosing ‘death’ (a state of stasis, of refusing to ‘live’ in the larger world around them), and through their encounter with each other and with Keaton’s Betelgeuse – the dark figure tempting all parties to join him in the mud and chaotically lash out at the world – they learn that it is better to actively choose living, to make connections and find joy in the present even (or especially) when they cannot control their environment. Thus Barbara’s words to Lydia, as the first to learn this lesson: “Being dead really doesn’t make things any easier.”

But the weakness of Beetlejuice, as a screenplay and a finished film, is that when I give that interpretation, I think I’m pulling more from the film than it is actively giving me. I won’t say I’m ‘reading into it,’ because all those ideas are very much there. One of Burton’s smartest pieces of filmmaking here is the reveal at the end of the opening credits that this entire fly-through of the town has been a miniature diorama, built by Adam Maitland within the house he and Barbara have so painstakingly arranged as their own little walled garden. It foregrounds artificiality in a way that’s true to Burton’s entire approach, and introduces the motif of our protagonists living in a carefully constructed haven that’s quickly going to be bulldozed (figuratively and literally) by the dual whirlwinds of the afterlife and the Deetz family. That’s all there, as is the later contrast between the Maitlands’ storybook home and the utter chaos of the afterlife realm, or the explicit visual connection between the underworld and the dark, German Expressionist aesthetic Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) employs when renovating the house. Burton and production designer Bo Welch do a stupendous job telling this story visually.

But there is, in the writing and pacing, a slackness to how these ideas come through. The Maitlands are static in their motivations and approach for too much of the movie, and it’s really late in the film before we get clarity on Lydia’s perspective or her suicidal ideation; she is too underdeveloped as deuteragonist, and it takes too long for the film to shift gears and let the story and character dynamics evolve. The humor and tone are generally buttoned-down and deadpan, which is effectively uncanny in many instances, but also means the full chaos of the afterlife, or the ridiculousness of the adult Deetz family members, feels a bit too muted for the film to land the thematic punch about its protagonists learning to embrace discomfort and unpredictability. When neither the Maitlands nor Lydia seem that phased by things for long stretches, it muddies the actual stakes of the Controlling Idea. It isn’t inherently a problem that Michael Keaton is only on-screen as Betelgeuse for about 15 minutes, except for the fact that those are the 15 minutes the movie feels most alive, the most those stakes become palpable. The climax, where Betelgeuse is finally loosed to terrorize the Deetz family and try marrying Lydia, is the best stretch of the film, not only because it frees Burton to make the entire world so gloriously animated and pliable – it’s a very obvious extension of his short film work, and a precursor to The Nightmare Before Christmas or Corpse Bride – but because it’s the point where the stakes feel most clarified and the characters are most active in making choices.

I genuinely love the film’s ending, with Lydia and the Maitlands having formed this strange little found family, where she’s happier and more actively living her life, and the Maitlands have found fulfillment as her parents. The playful final beat of Lydia being rewarded for good grades by getting to do a ghost dance with the Maitlands, complete with the entire mise-en-scene dancing with her, is lovely, and Ryder communicates Lydia’s joy – literally embracing something impossible and unpredictable – so beautifully. But I also feel a little let down every time I get to that final scene, and find myself wishing the film up to that point had been sharper in reaching this ending, had put Lydia front and center earlier, and made the Maitlands’ character arcs a bit more dynamic. The ending is charming and funny and, again, finds Burton visually nailing the storytelling – the ghostly and the human coming together in this joyous, lively dance number – yet I can’t help but imagine a different, more tonally diverse and emotionally coherent version of the film where this exact scene plays out as a much more fulsome cathartic release for the characters and the audience.

And part of why I can’t help but imagine that is because it does actually exist, in the form of the Beetlejuice Broadway musical, which absolutely embraces “being dead really doesn’t make things any easier” as its Controlling Idea, and does a pretty expert job reorganizing the story to build and pay off that concept. It focuses the Maitlands’ characterization and motivations right off the bat with “Ready, Set, Not Yet,” a number about their fear of living life, and more importantly, it puts Lydia front and center from the beginning, giving her the equivalent of the show’s “I Want” song with the simultaneously funny and poignant “Dead Mom.” It foregrounds not only Lydia’s grief, but the way she literally doesn’t know how to live in a world where her Mom is gone and her Dad is going through a crazy mid-life crisis, her goth-girl affectations established as both a genuine part of her personality and an emotional defense mechanism. The show keeps returning to these ideas, building Lydia’s suicidal ideation out of that inner turmoil, and reaching a turning point at the end of Act One, with Act Two revolving around her shenanigans with Betelgeuse (borrowing from their friendlier dynamic in the 90s cartoon). As a result, there is more time to let the contrasts between life and death fester, the arcs between the Maitlands and Lydia proceed in a more even parallel, and the ending, while very similar on paper to the film’s, hits a lot harder. It builds that Controlling Idea into a full-throated expression of the joy in choosing life, even or especially when it is messy and hard. It’s right there in the show’s closing lyrics:  

“Seek a little strange and unusual / And you will find / Life, beyond all comprehension / A mess in multiple dimensions / A little unconventional, I know / Mama, I'm home!”

To be fair, it is easier to do this thematic work in musical theater, where characters can straightforwardly sing their truths, and the songs themselves act as focusing mechanisms for story and character. But even if one strips the songs away, the musical’s narrative structure clarifies where the film fails to maximally exploit its Controlling Idea, shows us how one can take all these same basic pieces and build something with a stronger overall punch. I’ve seen the film several times in my life, while I’ve never been lucky (or wealthy) enough to actually see the Broadway show in person (I’ve listened to the soundtrack a bunch and filled in gaps with fan recordings online); yet the musical, even though I’ve never gotten to see it in one front-to-back presentation, feels more ‘real’ to me, its shape clearer and easier to grasp. This too comes back to the Controlling Idea, I think. McKee explains that there is a potent irony to the concept, writing:

“The more beautifully you shape your work around one clear idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in your film as they take your idea and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives. Conversely, the more ideas you try to pack into a story, the more they implode upon themselves, until the film collapses into a rubble of tangential notions, saying nothing.”³

I would never go so far as to say Beetlejuice the film ‘collapses into a rubble of tangential notions,’ but I would say it’s stuck somewhere between those two extremes McKee lays out, while the musical is a lot closer to that full vision of living, applicable meaning – which is exactly why it registers for me more powerfully than the film.

Again, I say all this genuinely liking, and sometimes even loving, Burton’s film. The production design, which is genuinely masterful at all levels, isn’t just window dressing, but is telling the story in its own clear and confident way, with these incredible sets and matte paintings and miniatures that take the same kind of expressive leaps as Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but with contemporary effects, color, and rich 35mm capture. Keaton is a bizarre and abrasive delight, a live-action cartoon as vibrant as any special effect, and it speaks highly of Burton’s creative instincts that he saw Keaton going gloriously over-the-top here and then asked him to do a very underplayed, quietly studied take on Bruce Wayne in Batman (when you look at him in Beetlejuice, Keaton seems a more natural fit for the Joker).

And more than anything, Beetlejuice is a testament to the overwhelming talent Winona Ryder had right out the gate; she is this film’s secret weapon. Her performance and Lydia’s aesthetic obviously inspired a whole generation of goth kids, up to and including multiple interpretations of Wednesday Addams in live action (Jenna Ortega isn’t playing Lydia’s daughter in the sequel by accident). But the thing that makes Lydia an enduring character is that even as she is completely ridiculous – in stark white makeup and an enormous, silly hat, or with her hair styled up twice the size of her head – Ryder consistently makes her feel like a real person, not a parody or joke. This was Ryder’s superpower as a young actress. In films like Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, she was drawn to roles that challenged her to walk insane tonal tightropes, having to be completely earnest but also in on the joke. She was singularly gifted at selling the complicated emotional realities of characters in wild, larger-than-life situations, scenes out of storybooks and heightened, haunted dreams, while also letting real humor through, and expertly wearing the iconography of the part. If anything, Ryder is too good for Beetlejuice as written, because she creates a character in Lydia who is almost too vivid and compelling for the amount of focus the script affords her.

This review probably sounds more negative than I actually feel about the film, because what I have focused on here is the difference between a good movie and a great one. Beetlejuice is definitely a good movie, sometimes very much so, and I would happily watch it again any time (if nothing else, its 4K Blu-ray is one of the most astonishing-looking images one can display on a modern TV). But you can see the pieces for real greatness right there too, and I know I’m not alone in that reaction because future adaptations like the musical exist to make a meal out of those unsharpened ideas. I anticipate a pushback to my analysis in that I am taking a film that is, quite clearly, a comedy much too seriously. But again, I don’t think I’ve read anything into the film that isn’t already there. If Beetlejuice wanted to be a purely madcap farce, it wouldn’t have the Controlling Idea it has; later incarnations again provide clarity, since the 90s cartoon does ditch the film’s darker, heavier themes in favor of having fun, pairing up Lydia and Betelgeuse and using the wild aesthetic for surreal, comic adventures. Beetlejuice is, at the end of the day, a film whose copious raw potential is pulled in multiple directions, which is why it’s inspired a diverse second life across multiple media; if the film were fully articulated the first time around, that room to explore might not exist.

The Beetlejuice cycle comes full circle this weekend with the direct cinematic sequel, and while I’m excited to see Keaton and Ryder in these roles again, and hoping Burton has more inspiration in his back pocket than we’ve seen from him in a long while, I’m also a little disappointed that the direction appears to be a pretty straightforward legacy sequel. Maybe there’s fun to be had in seeing Jenna Ortega, as Lydia’s daughter, return to the old Maitland house and rediscover Betelgeuse, but it feels a little too predictable and on-the-nose, especially when there were so many more adventurous sequel concepts pitched over the last thirty years (including Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, which had a draft written by Heathers and Batman Returns scribe Daniel Waters – I very much want to visit the parallel world where that got made). Really, my ideal Beetlejuice film at this point would be a stop-motion animation adaptation of the musical, produced by Laika (makers of Coraline) and starring the original Broadway cast. That, to me, would feel like the ultimate expression of Beetlejuice’s potential, the final form of this bizarre little movie that has left such a delightfully outsized cultural footprint.

NEXT WEEK: We begin a run of several Francis Ford Coppola classics ahead of the release of Megalopolis, beginning with a double-feature of THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART II.

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1. Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (New York: Harper-Collins, 1997), 115.

2. Ibid., 118.

3. Ibid., 115.