Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands Is Now Streaming

A love story needs more than attractive actors, chemistry, and romantic dialogue to make an impression. There is no set formula, but a little sadness and wistfulness can help.

After the box-office success of Batman, Tim Burton had a blank check for his next film. He chose a story he had dreamed of making for years: a Gothic fairy tale about an artificial man with scissors for hands. Released in 1990, Edward Scissorhands became one of Burton’s signature films and an enduring love story.

Burton’s most personal story

Caroline Thompson, the screenwriter and one of Burton’s key collaborators, described his pitch as “the stupidest idea I’d ever heard of.” The film marked their first collaboration. Burton told her that the idea for Edward came from a drawing he had made in high school.

Thompson had written a book about a monster fetus that Burton admired for its resemblance to the themes in his own work. Despite the odd premise of Edward Scissorhands, she understood what made it effective. “I knew it was brilliant,” she said. “It was just so clean and so stark in its meaning.”

The film opens with an elderly woman telling her granddaughter why it snows at Christmas. Her story takes us to a Gothic castle on a hill, where an aging Inventor (Vincent Price) lives alone among his creations. His most remarkable invention is an artificial young man named Edward (Johnny Depp). The Inventor dies before he can finish Edward, leaving him with scissors in place of hands.

Years later, Peg (Dianne Wiest), an Avon saleswoman, visits the castle in search of a customer. She finds a lonely Edward and offers him a place to stay. His appearance frightens the neighbors, but he wins them over by trimming their yards, creating topiary, and cutting the hair of suburban mothers. He also falls in love with Peg’s daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder).

Burton and Thompson strike a distinctive tone, one they returned to in films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. The whimsy and pastel colors of Edward Scissorhands make its darker Gothic elements stand out, from Edward himself to the town’s revulsion at his differences.

The role of the Inventor was written for Price, a horror icon known for films including House of Wax and The Fly. Ryder’s casting also gives Kim an intriguing contrast. Kim is a blonde cheerleader, far removed from Ryder’s image as an ’80s goth queen. Yet it feels natural that she would be drawn to the gentle Gothic outcast rather than her loud, all-American boyfriend Jim (Anthony Michael Hall).

Dancing in the snow

Edward and Kim’s relationship is the heart of the film, though they begin on opposite sides. Edward is smitten from the start, gazing at a photograph of Kim before she appears. Kim resents having a strange visitor in her house and takes advantage of his innocence and affection.

After Edward takes the blame for a break-in she persuaded him to join, Kim begins to see him differently. In the film’s most famous scene, Edward carves an ice statue of her for Christmas while she dances in the falling shavings. The moment is the height of their relationship and, soon after, its end. The townspeople pursue Edward and drive him back to the castle.

At the end, the film reveals that the grandmother telling the story is Kim. It still snows every Christmas, suggesting that Edward remains on the hill, carving ice. Their unfinished love story is part of what makes it memorable, preserved like the fairy tale itself.

Edward Scissorhands is streaming on Disney.

Source: Polygon