Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride Is Free to Stream on YouTube

Laika has used handcrafted puppets and 3D-printing technology to tell stop-motion stories ranging from Coraline to Kubo and the Two Strings. Its films often explore family relationships alongside adult themes and gothic elements. Those qualities also appear in Travis Knight’s fantasy Wildwood.

For another gothic stop-motion tale, Tim Burton’s 2005 film Corpse Bride is available to stream for free on YouTube.

A gothic fairy tale

Directed by Burton and Mike Johnson, Corpse Bride follows Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp), who is set to marry Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson). After a disastrous wedding rehearsal, Victor goes into the woods to practice his vows. He says them aloud and places his ring on what he thinks is a branch protruding from the ground.

The branch turns out to be the finger of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), an undead bride who assumes Victor has proposed to her. She drags him into the land of the dead, where he meets its inhabitants.

Burton has acknowledged that Corpse Bride drew on “The Finger,” a Jewish tale by Howard Schwartz featured in Lilith’s Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural. The tale takes place in Russia rather than Victorian England, but its young bridegroom makes the same mistake as Victor, slipping his wedding ring onto a corpse’s finger while reciting his vows.

In the tale, the groom takes his dead spouse to a local rabbi, who annuls the marriage because she is dead. The bride falls into a pile of bones, and the groom goes on with his life.

The adaptation makes Emily’s ending more peaceful and fulfilling and gives Victor more empathy. Burton’s films can be macabre, but their endings often have a sweetness, even when it is bittersweet.

“We wanted to make a version that wasn’t so disturbing that you couldn’t put it in a family movie,” co-screenwriter John August told the Jewish Journal. Discussing the setting and the change to non-Jewish characters, August said Burton gravitates toward “universal, fairy-tale qualities in his films.”

A new direction for Burton

Burton had produced stop-motion films before, including The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996). Corpse Bride was his first stop-motion directing credit. He was also working on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the time, leaving Johnson to take what he called a more “organic” approach to directing.

“Tim knew where he wanted the film to go as far as the emotional tone and story points to hit,” Johnson told Creative Planet Network. “My job was to work with the crew on a daily basis and get the footage as close as possible to how I thought he wanted it.”

Burton retained control over the storyboards, concepts and scenes, reviewing and approving them before Johnson considered them finished. Johnson oversaw much of the day-to-day production.

The film still bears Burton’s macabre visual style. His films often use stark contrasts between settings, as in the difference between the Red Queen’s castle and the Mad Hatter’s tea party in his Alice in Wonderland adaptations.

In Corpse Bride, the world of the living is draped in gray and black, and its inhabitants seem miserable. The land of the dead, by contrast, bursts with yellow, green, blue and red. Its residents have music and the freedom to live as they wish.

Laika later released its debut feature, Coraline, in 2009. Directed by Henry Selick, the film shares some of Burton’s gothic sensibility. Laika went on to develop its own body of stop-motion work, while films such as Corpse Bride remain examples of Burton’s childlike wonder and taste for the macabre.

Corpse Bride is also available to stream on HBO Max.

Source: Polygon