Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands

Tim Burton Film: Edward Scissorhands

The idea of someone living with scissors as hands inspires a creepy, disturbing perspective. In Tim Burton's movie "Edward Scissorhands", he makes this idea come to life in a twisted love story. Before watching the movie, I expected the movie to be another one of Hollywood's twisted love stories where everything somehow ends up working out in the end, despite the fact that the main character is a monster with literal scissors for hands. While part of this could be found in "Edward Scissorhands", it also showed itself to be more than a love story. The movie starts out in black in white, soon telling the tale of an inventor who died before he could finish his finally project. This soon takes a turn, as viewers are shown a neighborhood with houses of bright color where it looks like everything is perfect. It becomes clear, however that everything is not perfect, as Peg has doors closed on her rudely by multiple neighbors while she tries to sell makeup. Tim Burton creates a juxtaposition between the bright colored, happy houses full of rude neighbors to the dark, grotesque mansion full of a beautiful garden and kind hearted monster. This juxtaposition continues throughout the movie, as the neighbors are shown as even more selfish and drama-oriented, creating problems for Edward, who is too kind to stand up to them. This eventually leads to Edward being driven back to his house, isolated from the rest of the world as everyone believes (and wants) him to be dead. This movie mixed just enough humor with a creepy love story to make it an entertaining story. It was interesting to watch the character development of Kim as she was able to see past Edwards looks and into his heart, while all the other characters (mainly the neighbors) remained mostly the same, selfish people from beginning to end. All of this came together with the juxtaposition created by Tim Burton to show the theme that everything is not always how it seems, and it is on the inside that countsI enjoyed how the movie did not give you all the information about Edward right off the bat. Instead the movie showed parts of Edwards creation in life in small snapshots throughout the movie, explaining things that had happened earlier in the movie. I did not expect the ending of the movie to be as sad as it was, as I assumed it would end in a happily ever after, classic Hollywood, love story ending. While part of me wishes the movie would have ended like that, for closure, I do like how Tim Burton strayed from the path and made up his own ending that still allowed for a little imagination on the viewers part. Overall, I would give the movie a 7 out of 10.