Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a fun time but imperfect. It’s a wonderfully weird dip into the imagination of legendary director Tim Burton and a reminder that Michael Keaton is a highly esteemed comedy maniac. It also has a bunch of plot holes and is a tad overstuffed before Burton starts dropping new characters through escape hatches or rendering them mostly irrelevant. Still, the overall reception has been largely positive and the opening box office was stellar ($110M over three days). If Michael Keaton wants to play the title role in a third film and Burton is down to party, then a party they shall almost assuredly have.
What would or should a third Beetlejuice movie look like, though? Those questions are traditionally reserved for the filmmakers and people paying for these movies and not critics and bloggers, but why not waste some time and toss out a few ideas on a Monday?
One thing that may surprise audiences is that Keaton’s character isn’t exactly ever-present. At least not physically. Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz is haunted by the thought of him at the start and she tries her best to warn her wormy fiance (Justin Theroux) and eye-roll enthusiast daughter (Jenna Ortega), but Beetlejuice is held back for maximum impact later on. That strategy mirrors the first film, which was a team lift between Ryder’s character, Catherine O’Hara’s Delia, the house-haunting Maitlands (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, who sat out the sequel), and Keaton’s “ghost with the most.”
It’s hard to argue with the results – maybe too much Beetlejuice would cause him to be over-exposed. But I kinda want to find out, preferably in a movie that’s more detached from what/who we’ve already seen across these first two films.
Don’t get me wrong: it was great to see Ryder reprising the role of Lydia and O’Hara absolutely EATS when given more opportunities to be scathing and ridiculous as Delia’s ultra-pretentious artist in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Without spoiling too much, each character also has something approaching a fulfilling arc, meaning I’m just not sure how much more there is to do with them within this franchise.
With the setting, it was also amazing to see the ghost house, the town of Winter River, and parts of the afterlife so lovingly recreated and gently expanded from the original, but now I have seen that. What’s next?
Interestingly, the answer may come from the non-canon lore of the franchise.
Launched in the aftermath of the first film and serving as a gateway drug into Beetlejuice for ‘90s kids (including myself), Beetlejuice the animated series feels, in reflection, like goth Rick & Morty. Sanding down Beetlejuice’s rough edges, he and his bestie Lydia go on adventures and pal around the netherworld with a bunch of extremely esoteric ‘90s animation characters including a French skeleton who wants to be a bodybuilder.
I am not suggesting a third Beetlejuice film faithfully adapt a PG 30+ year old cartoon completely. It’s more about building on the scenes in the most recent film when Beetlejuice helps Lydia – a fun, all too short pairing. Slightly pivoting the Beetlejuice character from antagonist into more of an uneasy trickster aly can be fun and won’t be too much of leap. Teaming him with Ortega’s Astrid would only add to it, giving us the chance to see Ortega (who as demonstrated in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and her title role in Wednesday, completely gets Burton material) play off of Keaton’s chaos wavelength while exploring the afterlife in a way that would make more sense for a newer character; one who is still processing her ability to see ghosts.
Break into “The Great Beyond” that’s oft mentioned in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – be it heavenly, hellish, or both. Mine another aspect of the “Handbook For The Recently Deceased.” Or, if Burton’s interest in the afterlife is more limited to its waiting room, crack open another part of Beetlejuice non-canon and let Beetlejuice finally, at long last, go Hawaiian, paying off the plans for a long-ago scrapped sequel that saw the shifty demon follow the Deetz family to paradise and the haunted resort they opened.
The point isn’t so much that Burton do these specific things, it just seems vital that a third film keep expanding on the idea of what a Beetlejuice movie can be. And based on things like claymation plane crashes and all-Italian black and white origin stories, it feels like Burton is pretty up to the task.
