Tim Burton has to be one of the most overly praised directors. I find all his work so heavily based in atmosphere as to be superficial. There are no thoughtful themes or interesting ideas. He did some great visual stuff for the first Batman, but I can't stand anything else he did. His work is childish like that of Guillermo Del Toro.

Anyone can be a critic, Muldfeld. Is any of your work on display? I have loved Tim Burton's work since I was nine years old. I'm twenty seven now. I watched his animated Beetlejuice as a child as well as his major motion pictures. I was already a fan of his by 1994. I saw Nightmare before Christmas in the theatre and within the year I had the haunting score and soundtrack by Danny Elfman memorized (long before Hot Topic turned it into a brand). Only recently has he become considered trendy. This praise he's getting is long over due and well deserved. His work is beautiful, surreal and yes atmospheric. He also has a way of making horrific things curiously innocent.

I loathe planet of the Apes but I can forgive him for it. No one is perfect. I am actually really looking forward to his 2012 project of Dark Shadows. If anyone is fit for directing it, it's Tim Burton.

@Mudfield:

While you are certainly entitled to your own tastes in movies, I'm not exactly sure what you are using as your benchmark for "thoughtful themes" or "interesting ideas". Maybe if you let us know a bit more about what you do find worthy, we'd have a better grasp on your stance.

As for the work being "childish", again I don't know what your criteria are, but I'm thinking maybe you are mixing up child-like (something in the nature of Edward Scissorhands could be called child-like) with childish. (And I'm not sure where Guillermo del Toro came into it. 'Pan's Labyrinth' was childish? Really?)

As I said, you are intitles to your own tastes and opinions. I just like to see a bit of meat on any attacks made in a public forum. :)

When I say childish, I mean that both directors' conception of human nature is simplistic -- often divided into good versus evil -- and that their themes don't resonate with my life at all in that they avoid any political issues or any real complexity. Ira Steven Behr, Ronald D. Moore, and Chris Carter are far, far better.

Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinthe was simplistic because it was set in fascist Spain and yet didn't even try to understand why fascism appealed to so many; watching it, you don't even get a sense that the fascists won. It's just this one shockingly evil guy against all the good people. It's simplistic because it doesn't try to actually explore human nature or why these things happen.

Mandy, I'm glad you like Burton's stuff and I meant no offense to your memories, but this guy is hyped up all the time and his stuff is so superficial to me.

Muldfeld,

Thank you for the clarification. I do see where many of Tim Burton's movies probably polarize good and evil more than you want in a film (although I think there may be more shades of gray in there than get credit). I tend to like stories in the vein of myth and fairy tale, though, so it does not bother me at all.

Actually, I'd guess it is the very stylized, fairy tale atmosphere of Burton's movies that make the archetype-type characters stand out even more. I'm sure you can find the same kind of simplicity at the heart of many movies (even the ones that pretend to be "gritty" realism). So yeah, it is not going to appeal to everyone.

I am, however, afraid you are still going to have to sell me on the idea that Chris Carter ranks up there with Behr and Moore. I'll grant him the complexity and (at times) issues you are looking for, but I think he needs more coherence in the mix. I know real life is often chaotic and hard to follow, but some concessions have to be made for the sake of story. ;)

I think because Tim Burton takes a simplistic view of humanity (which though simple is honest) because that is what we are when you strip away all the excess. The raw basis of our natures is reflected in Burton's work. The bored and empty celebrity (Jack Skellington), the outcast artist who feels he can't touch anyone without hurting them (Edward scissorhands), the lonely girl who wants love but needs freedom (Corpse Bride). These are simple things but they're real and they exist in society.

If Tim Burton became political he would no longer be a timeless author. How well would Shakespeare have endured if he wrote political commentaries about specific officials of his day? Burton is doing Alice in Wonderland and at it's heart Alice in Wonderland IS a political commentary. Granted it's roughly a hundred or so years out of date but it's reflection of human society hasn't changed that drastically.

I wouldn't say Burton is shallow or superficial. Something can be simplistic but hold layers of meaning. That's part of why I was so thoroughly disappointed with Planet of the Apes. There was no meaning, just a twist for the sake of a twist.

Part of what made Burton so appealing to me as I grew up (before he was fashionable) is that he never tried to appeal to a specific demographic. He never condescended for children or tried to pander to a specific age group. He found his audience. We were a niche group once. Again, before the era of Hot Topic, but we were there. An we weren't a specific demographic. We came from all works of life.

Burton has a particular style but at the same time I think he's our generation's Andy Warhol. He's an artist. He knows how to find talent (as Andy did) he experiments and he knows how to add meaning to something simple and common. He's a Gothic (Not Goth) Andy Warhol.

Tanek, your Faery Tale comparison is very accurate. I feel Burton is a romantic at heart. He loves his Happily ever Afters. He's the only man who could successfully turn The Legend of Sleepy Hollow into a Faery Tale. And I like this. I think the world needs stories handled in faery tale manner. We don't have many of them anymore. Burton's heros aren't always the perfect hero. They're flawed. Sometimes to an extreme. It's true the antagonists are often uncomplex but sometimes we over complicate things in the world and when you strip away the excess that's what's underneath.

Burton's surreal style reminds me of the Goblin and faery artwork of Brian Froud. Not in the particular medium of art or colour style but in the surrealness of it, the large eyed, small footed characters with the highly expressive faces and beautifully surreal landscapes.

That should say all walks of life up there. Sorry about all the typos.

Tanek, I think the reasons you folks love Burton's work is exactly the reason I'm not particularly a fan (although, again, the way Batman's cloak waved and the Bat Wing and all that stuff looked much better than Nolan's stuff).

I actually think Chris Carter did some amazingly political stuff, considering it was expressly set in our world and aired on the Fox Network; Behr says that he couldn't get away with much of the commentary he was able to pull off with aliens on DS9 when he was doing The 4400.

I don't think Carter's work is as bold as Behr and Moore's work, but there are lots of historical mentions of things like the School of the Americas and the desperation of illegal immigrants and the Mai Lai Massacre. The essence of the syndicate's moral dilemma is very sympathetic, I think, and I find the Cigarette Smoking Man very believable and human, especially in the episodes "Two Fathers" and "One Son"; he wasn't evil at all, really.

I think there's great thematic coherence in his work, which I found laughable in my teens, especially the paranoia about government and the military industrial complex; I thought the scenes in which Mulder is beaten by military officials preposterous because I used to think America was morally superior. I now realize that Carter was totally right and he had seen a darker America in Vietnam, Watergate, and even in its actions into the present.

That said, Behr and Moore are more explicit in their themes, in part, because they can be in doing more sci fi stuff.

Mandy, I actually think that some of Shakespeare is very political. I was especially relate to Othello and his insecurity about his identity in a very Western setting, even to the point that he isn't sure he deserves the woman he loves.

Carter, Behr, and Moore don't try to deal with specifics of time and place too much. That's why DS9 relates so well as a commentary on the most pressing issues of the post-9/11 world, even though it ended in 1999 -- because the show drew on historical themes. Even if art avoids political stuff, I like it when it's at least psychologically realistic.

I honestly think that Tim Burton is one of the most realistic film makers in our time. The thing is, his philosophy is in every one of his films. He simply takes something that could happen and he simplifiys it. Which is exactly what a philosopher does.

He doesn't go for specific political statements, which is true. However, politics for the most part are made up... if you're red or blue, christian or athiest... it's all based on theories.

Burton takes what is real in the world and what is real in people and amplifies it, allowing people to view one or two aspects on human nature at a time.

If that is childish, I dare say that Aristotle was childish, so was Napoleon and many others.

Tim Burton is an observer and his films are based on those observations... His films are as real, as what you think is real... on your opinion of reality. So what if your opinions on reality don't match up? It is a joy to know of others...

Probably went to abstract there... but oh well.