The Colorless Creativity of Tim Burton

By: Aashi Mehrotra and Charlie Hoang

How can a director and visionary who dreams up and brings to life ghostly towns, haunted forests, whimsical creatures, and larger-than-life characters fail to envision a cast as diverse as the audience he captivates?

Tim Burton is a name synonymous with the strange and surreal. His distinct visual style has defined a generation of filmmaking, with films like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, and Beetlejuice becoming pillars of pop culture. Each movie creates a world that feels like a trip into Burton’s psyche: haunted landscapes, quirky misfits, and shadowy settings alive with wonder and melancholy. Credited with his own aesthetic—Burtonesque—and the introduction of the gothic art style into mainstream media, Burton has majorly impacted movie-making in his almost 4 decades in the industry. 

For many, Tim Burton is Halloween, with costumes, decorations, and annual film screenings echoing his darkly magical vision every October. This is not to say his talents are limited to just art of a spooky nature; Burton has also been ascribed to working on or directing legendary projects such as Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Planet of the Apes (2001), and more recently, the live-action Dumbo (2019). His artistry has inspired countless fans and helped shape gothic fantasy as a cinematic genre. 

Yet, a persistent question follows Burton’s legacy: How can someone who imagines entire fantasy worlds fail to imagine diversity within them? His films, though filled with colorful characters, are conspicuously homogenous, often lacking racial and cultural variety. 

Films like Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children feature meticulously crafted worlds populated by characters with eccentric looks and personalities, yet they almost exclusively feature white actors in significant roles. In fact, it wasn’t until Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children in 2016—31 years after his directorial debut in 1985—that Burton cast a Black actor, Samuel L. Jackson, in a leading role. 

Around the time of the movie’s release, he spoke to Rachel Simon, famed editor of Bustle, about his excuse for the lack of representation. He commented,“I remember back when I was a child watching “The Brady Bunch” and they started to get all politically correct, like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black—I used to get more offended by that than just—I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies.” He remarked that casting people of color “feels forced” and that his films reflect “his vision”—an answer that some saw as dismissive of the importance of representation. 

Indeed, according to his own words, his fear of blacksploitation kept him from having any black leading characters in any of his projects. Blacksploitation is “an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s,” and an exploitation film refers to “a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content,” as defined by Britannica. It seems quite ironic, doesn’t it? Instead of being discriminatory and casting actors of color with exploitative intent, he opted to not cast them at all. How is that any better? Burton’s response went quite viral at the time and proved itself quite controversial, with many people criticizing it.

Many further questioned that for a creator of fantasy worlds where people can be blue or have scissors for hands, surely a person of color can exist? In Tim Burton’s mind, the answer was no. 

However, there was a brief moment when Burton seemed to challenge this notion himself. In 2022, while directing Netflix’s Wednesday, a spinoff from The Addams Family,  Burton embraced a more diverse cast, casting Jenna Ortega, a Latina actress, in the lead role. It is important to note that The Addams Family is canonically Hispanic and has been portrayed that way since a 1964 episode of a TV show by the same name. The new show Wednesday explores topics of discrimination, social hierarchy, and fitting in, often through Wednesday’s perspective as an outsider. This casting choice gave fans hope that Burton had evolved his perspective on representation, welcoming diversity into his worlds in a way that felt seamless and even meaningful. Actors of all cultural and racial backgrounds were included as main and background characters, and Jenna Ortega herself was able to incorporate her Hispanic heritage into her equally Hispanic character.

But Burton’s embrace of inclusivity arrived just as quickly as it faded. Wednesday had proved to be an exception, rather than an indicator of a positive shift. For example, when it came down to the casting of his newest movie, Beetlejuice 2, which takes place in Winter River, a fictional town in Connecticut, there were exactly three actors of color in the main cast. Juliana Yazbeck played a fleeting role as a blue mummy, Jenna Ortega acted as one of the main characters, and finally, Jenna Ortega’s stunt double was the last main person of color in the cast. In the scenes set in Winter River, zero other people of color are seen in the background, taking Burton back to square one in diversity. 

Furthermore—as seen with the repetition of Jenna Ortega in his two most recent projects—Tim Burton tends to repeat the casting of his favorite actors to work with such as Helena Bonham Carter appearing in 7 of his projects, Johnny Depp appearing in 8, Christopher Lee in 5, Micheal Gough in 5 as well, and Winona Ryder in 4. The list goes on; the most notable detail they all have in common is that they are all white, with the exception of Jenna Ortega.

This leads to the question: should directors actively cast “diverse” actors, especially when it conflicts with their vision? 

To answer, in movies where race is irrelevant to the plot, casting decisions should prioritize talent, charisma, and personality over skin color. Skilled directors can seamlessly handle diverse appearances without compromising visual coherence. The art of filmmaking involves choosing actors who elevate the story, and talented makeup artists, editors, and other crew members can address any visual concerns without being limited by skin tone.

Ultimately, Tim Burton’s legacy is undeniable. His authentic voice has set the standard for gothic fantasy, inspiring countless imitators and loyal fans. But, as the cultural landscape shifts to value inclusivity as much as creatively, there’s a question that lingers over his filmography: can the worlds that Tim Burton creates truly feel as imaginative as they claim to be if they exclude such a vast range of voices? In the end, maybe the most powerful kind of fantasy is one that dares to envision everyone.

[Corpse Bride/Tim Burton]