Every Tim Burton Movie, Ranked

No, that’s not an American Robert Smith, that’s Tim Burton, Hollywood’s resident Hot Topic manager/goth filmmaker extraordinaire. And it’s time to rank his movies. Growing out of an animation world that wasn’t quite ready for his particular spin on the silly-sweet macabre, Burton broke out into a live-action directing landscape ready for an auteur with an intense and inventive aesthetic. From this idiosyncratic vantage, he changed how we looked at everything from superhero movies to horror-comedies – and shined spotlights on Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder and Danny Elfman strong enough to make them household names right alongside his most emo creations. While he eventually broadened his scope towards half-hearted, CG-reliant remakes, he boasts decades of work that have an artistic throughline going all the way back to the cheeky, grim warmth of his student film Stalk of the Celery Monster. While his movies’ aesthetic may no longer stand out from the mainstream – so much so that his return to TV barely made a wave at all – Burton was a major force in moving the movie needle towards darker fare, and remains one of the more influential figures in modern media.

Here’s every Tim Burton movie, ranked:

20. Dumbo (2019)

It makes sense for Tim Burton to be tapped to direct a live-action adaptation of Disney’s beloved animated classic about the bullied baby elephant with gigantic ears whose “disability” turns out to be what makes him extraordinary. Throughout his career, Burton has been drawn to telling the stories of melancholic outcasts and social rejects who build a world. Add to this the film’s setting, an early 20th century small traveling circus full of all of the whimsical tropes that come packaged with such things—snake charmers, wild animal trainers, clowns, strong men, etc.—and the project has Burton’s name written all over it. However, Burton begins on the wrong foot by treating the material as the kind of grand spectacle that worked well for recent Disney live-action remakes like Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. Those movies had issues, but matching the grandiosity of their adventure and thrills-filled originals wasn’t one of them. The 1941 Dumbo is a more low-key and intimate story. The 2019 Dumbo unwisely pushes its titular hero into the background in favor of human characters who lack depth, and an action-heavy script that runs out of steam barely after the first act is over. Colin Farrell plays Holt, who comes back to work at the small-time circus of frumpy but warmhearted Max Medici (Danny DeVito). Not only did Holt lose his arm in the war, but he finds out that Max has sold the horses he used to train for his act, forcing him to work with elephants. One of the elephants, Jumbo, gives birth to Dumbo, whose giant ears become a source of ridicule amongst the staff and the circus’ audience. However, Holt’s adorable children Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins) see something special in the baby elephant, and through their private training sessions, find out that he can actually fly using his ears as wings. To this point, Ehren Kruger’s script sticks pretty close to the story beats of the original, but the human characters are cardboard cutout Disney placeholders. Kruger further shoots himself in the foot by completing the entire story arc of the original Dumbo within the first act of the remake. This leaves an hour of runtime to go, so enter V. A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) and one of his star performers, Colette Marchant (Eva Green). Vandevere owns a giant theme park in New York and wants to incorporate Dumbo into his grand show. Vandevere is smarmy, sly, rich, and doesn’t like kids or animals. In typical Disney terms, this equals “bad guy.” Since the overall emotional arc of the story and its protagonist is pretty much over, we’re treated to the same scene of Dumbo flying around the circus, but this time it’s bigger and shinier, an apt and hopefully unintentional self-criticism the movie throws at itself. The premise of a bunch of 1919 circus freaks whimsically conspiring to save an elephant from captivity should be an easy layup for Burton, but he just goes through the motions here with a paint-by-numbers Disney climax.–Oktay Ege Kozak

19. Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a story that employs the most basic adventure tale formula with an imaginative gusto. The images he crafted are so affecting that they have been seamlessly woven into the cultural vernacular, resulting in endless adaptations. Each version of Alice in Wonderland distorts this imagery through the cultural lens. Unfortunately, Tim Burton’s offering is undercut by his penchant for the 21st century CGI-ed aesthetic. This Wonderland is populated with characters whose limbs stretch disproportionately long or whose unwieldy heads sit on slight shoulders, all of this is supposed to capture Lewis Carroll’s asymmetrical world, jagged and looming: a fever dream. But under Burton’s direction this landscape of characters is disarmingly ugly, decorated in the untextured gray of computer-generated scenes. While the early stage of his career was dominated by a B-movie sensibility which animated his actors with their practical reach, Alice in Wonderland proves that this newly stylized filmmaking isolates the actors. Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway can all craft strange characters, but each rendition of these storybook figures feels isolated and removed, segmenting the plot and muddling the tone. If nothing else, Alice in Wonderland confirms that Johnny Depp’s stilted quirkiness, once heralded as cool in its boldness, is nothing more than an embarrassing party trick.–Anna McKibbin

18. Dark Shadows (2012)

The adaptation of the 1970s soap opera, like so many reboots, re-imaginings and revivals of late, should have been left for dead. Johnny Depp is vampire Barnabas Collins, cursed to a life full of plot holes and bad jokes, or something like that. Our fanged fish out of water wakes up 200 years after being buried undead by a spiteful witch, and the zany Tim Burton twist here is that he’s in the 1970s, just like the show! Beat-you-over-the-head evidence of that abounds, including the requisite Volkswagen Bus, the local theater marquee, and a he’s-still-alive? Alice Cooper cameo. In fact, the scenery is often telling a better story than the script, because every character of note in the film spends most of their screen time explaining to us exactly why they’re there. The line between cute and corny begins to blur quickly, and seeing talented performers spout clichés in the name of half a dozen unfinished storylines becomes both plodding and depressing. All the quirks in Burton’s canon don’t add up to depth of character, and most of the characters here have an abundance of style and a lamentable dearth of substance. Everything feels a little fake and overdone; what was once fresh and bright is now two-dimensional and well-worn. Burton and Depp’s best efforts have been films that found humanity in the strangest places, but unfortunately, Dark Shadows ends up being a bumpy ride amidst some parlor tricks and wooden cutouts.—Tyler Chase

17. Big Eyes (2014)

Tim Burton has rightfully earned his place as a stylistically fringe, critically questionable, yet commercially successful director. So, who else would be better suited to helm the story of a stylistically fringe, critically questionable, yet commercially successful painter? Big Eyes is based on the true events of Walter and Margaret Keane, a power couple of the San Francisco art scene who, from 1955 to 1965, revolutionized a sacred sect of high culture into a mass commercial enterprise. Big Eyes’ staunchest goal is to re-evaluate the dynamic of that power couple by following the rise and fall of a pseudo-misogynist and the journey of the woman he held his domestic, creative and financial prisoner through emotional manipulation and a patriarchal pimp hand. When Walter (Christoph Waltz) and Margaret (Amy Adams) first meet, she’s new to the city, a brand-new divorcee with a daughter in tow. He comes upon her in the park, surrounded by her paintings—the now-iconic images of sad waifs with disproportionately big eyes, natch—pedaling sketch portraits to passersby for half her asking price. He pounces. Screenwriters Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander teamed up with Burton for the first time since 1994, when they supplied the script for Oscar-winning biopic on cult filmmaker and camp counselor Edward D. Wood Jr. The creative integrity of Ed Wood cannot be said of Big Eyes. One of the major malfunctions of Big Eyes is that its universe is a little too recognizable, following a narrative path that, though long and windy, is paved in familiar terrain. The theatrical kitsch that might otherwise work is understated to the point of pander and reads as misused and misunderstood as a stylistic tool. The story of Walter and Margaret Keane is bona fide movie material through and through, but rich narrative drama is just not part of Burton’s wheelhouse. Challenging the art world’s widespread dismissal of Keane’s kitschy works is not the goal of Big Eyes, just as the goal of Ed Wood is not to challenge Wood’s unfortunate position in directing history. Burton is trying to bring to life a sympathetic narrative for peripheral artists through his own distinguishable style, but in the process of trying to not distract from a heavy storyline, his visionary directing, though aesthetically vibrant, is severely stunted.—Melissa Weller

16. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

This bastardization of the delightful 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is as frustrating for its on-the-nose adaptive choices as for its charmless central performance. Roald Dahl’s source material is strangely off-putting, intoxicatingly imaginative, ridiculously colonial-capitalist (who writes a whole book about a magical factory owner?) and perfectly pitched at sucking in children with its alluring shades of darkness. Tim Burton and writer John August don’t bother hiding Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s terrifying subtext behind anything but Burton’s heightened (yet often impressive) sets. The racist British Imperial fantasy of the Oompa-Loompas? Enhanced and underlined, complete with a pith-helmeted Wonka. Gene Wilder’s charming, wry wit colored a gentle eccentric and was soft enough that if you weren’t listening closely, it could pass right by you. When harsh words, a hard attitude or a frightening display of shipborne nihilism snuck through, it was shocking. Johnny Depp’s terrible little coaxing mutter, dribbling out of a slickened and smoothed cartoon, seems designed to soothe and kidnap stray children—it’s more of a Pennywise choice than a wise choice. Jim Carrey could’ve pulled this off at his peak, maybe, but that’s because he could be clownish without seeming calculated. But an infatuation with a creepy performance isn’t the film’s only flaw: At Burton’s every turn, nuance is replaced with straightforwardness, lessening every impact. Insipid dialogue is just as frustrating as the same reaction shots used in every semi-elaborate song. Wonka’s backstory is explained in a series of flashbacks, something that would become all too familiar in the remake-apalooza afflicting Hollywood in and around the film. Of course, of equal blame (or maybe even more) for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the Dahl family. The moneygrubbing estate had full artistic control and bonded with Burton over disliking the original film. Burton remains a skilled artist with an undeniably effective visual toolbox, but cowing to the demands of the Dahls saps his work of impact—even at its most gleefully brutal.–Jacob Oller

15. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

With a little X-Men here, a sprinkling of Harry Potter there, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children treads in opulent fantasy and themes that are the stuff of sturdy all-ages drama: The battle between good and evil, say, or the struggle of the different against the oppressive and mundane. Tim Burton would seem well-suited to this material, embracing throughout his career the strange, the disaffected and the outcast—all of which apply here. In its grandest segment, the children set out on a rescue mission by raising a sunken wreck just off their coastline. Making the vessel seaworthy requires a few of the children to put their talents to use, and Burton turns their efforts into something majestic. This thrilling sequence follows them to a seaside amusement park in England, where the kids, Jake among them, must enter battle to save themselves. A pleasingly Burton-esque scene ensues: Skeletons get the Ray Harryhausen treatment so they can do battle set to a lively techno score. If there’s a problem with this scene, it’s that they suggest what the rest of film might have been—something more rousing, charming, and, above all, emotionally involving. That the movie hangs together is a tribute to Burton, who is ready as ever to play with his high-contrast, super-saturated colors. There’s also the efficient, unfussy way he constructs a scene, allowing us room to breathe and to truly understand the coherent space into which we’re immersed. What’s disappointing is that Burton doesn’t elevate the so-so material, which seems well-positioned to function as a resonant allegory about the costs of war, being without loving parents and the struggles of being different. In the composite, the series of beautifully framed and well-acted scenes is less than the sum of its parts. What we’re left with is an assemblage of familiar elements that never finds its emotional core.—Anthony Salveggi

14. Planet of the Apes (2001)

This much-maligned “re-imagining” isn’t the abomination that many claim it to be, but it’s also completely pointless and has somehow dated worse than its 1968 counterpart. Technically competent, but lacking any artistic drive to exist, Tim Burton’s remake bears none of his trademark whimsical-gothic style as he rushed through this project like the gun-for-hire that he was. In one of his first leading roles, Mark Wahlberg looks downright uncomfortable playing the iconic Charlton Heston part, and the film’s attempt at being truthful to Pierre Boulle’s original novel by moving the setting to an actual alien planet completely backfires. The less said about that ridiculous ending, the better.–Oktay Ege Kozak

13. Frankenweenie (2012)

When Victor Frankenstein’s beloved bull terrier, Sparky, is hit by a car and killed, his mission is clear: Bring Sparky back to life! Now Sparky’s good as new—except that he leaks water and anything he eats. And when the poodle he loves next door, Persephone, sniffs his new neck bolts, she gets an electric shock that adds Bride of Frankenstein-like streaks of white to her beehive hairdo. Sparky might be a re-animated dog made out of clay, but he’s also one of the most expressive cinema dogs of all time, one whose pain we feel when his resurrection is discovered and he runs away from Victor’s freaked-out parents. He finds himself in the pet cemetery, where he lies down mournfully on his own grave—after turning around in a circle several times like any dog. He heroically saves the day when other resurrected pets run amok, and we cheer when the formerly terrified townspeople all pitch in to bring Sparky back to life once more. —Sharon Knolle

12. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice takes Burton back to what he does best: silly-scary horror-comedy that at once feels lovingly homespun and vibrantly realized. It’s a trifling diversion, but it’s also Burton’s most comfortable, freewheeling and satisfying movie in years. Years after her encounter with Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) and the Maitlands, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), still decked out in her goth attire, is now the host of a tacky haunted house reality show called Ghost House, produced by her overzealous boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux). Lydia receives word from her stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) that her father Charles has died in a morbidly comic manner that allows him to be portrayed as headless once he’s revealed in the afterlife (a necessary choice to eschew the presence of disgraced actor Jeffrey Jones). Lydia, Delia and Rory pick up Lydia’s semi-estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), whose disbelief in all this ghost crap only makes her further resent her mom following the death of her father. They return to the town of Winter River for the funeral—and to sell off the old house that the Deetz family once shared with the spirits of the Maitlands who, according to Lydia, have since figured out how to “move on.” Meanwhile, Betelgeuse is on his daily grind as a working stiff in the afterlife, now a manager in a paper-pusher office staffed by a bunch of those great shrunken-head guys from the first movie. Luckily, the laxity that Burton brings to Alfred Gough and Miles Millar’s busy screenplay helps make the frivolous stakes more feature than bug, as do the commitment of the stacked cast and the return to wonderfully realized practical sight gags and spooky, neon-laden sets. The world of Beetlejuice is an exceedingly strange one, and the performers, new and old, ride the right tonal wavelength that intersects between the absurd grotesquery and the earnest character drama the script attempts to ground them in as we ping-pong between the living world and the kitschy, uncanny world of the dead.—Trace Sauveur

11. Mars Attacks! (1996)

With Jack Nicholson as president, Sarah Jessica Parker’s head appearing atop a chihuahua body and an alien race that speaks in a bird-like squawk, Mars Attacks! is filled with enough campy goodness to make even the most serious sci-fi fan crack a smile. Although it was initially received poorly among critics and fans alike, repeat viewings of Mars Attacks! made this one shine for a cult audience.—Sean Doyle