The 20 Best Tim Burton Movies Ranked

Praise Betelgeuse: Tim Burton is back, baby.

For fans of the goth icon and his own peculiar vision of blockbuster filmmaking, the past few years have not exactly been an easy time to shake senora and jump in the line. Once one of popular cinema’s most distinctive auteurs, producing populist hits like “Beetlejuice” and “Batman Returns” that truly could only have been made through his distinctive lens, Burton’s output became increasingly scattershot in the 21st century. But even failures like his “Planet of the Apes” retelling were balanced out by more successful efforts (“Big Fish,” “Corpse Bride,” etc.)

It was around 2010 when Burton increasingly became subsumed in passionless, frictionless franchise fare, from his pointless “Alice in Wonderland” take to his baffling 2019 remake of “Dumbo.” Along the way, all of the signature elements that make a Burton film so distinct — gothic architecture and aesthetics reminiscent of German Expressionism, suburban kitsch, quirky black comedy suitable for adults and children alike, Danny Elfman scores, and Johnny Depp as a wide-eyed leading man — curdled into parodies of themselves.

So it’s a pleasant surprise that Burton revisiting one of his most beloved films has been exactly what the director needed to get his mojo back. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is a direct sequel to the original 1988 movie, which starred Michael Keaton as a mischievous spirit who wreaks havoc upon an idyllic country home haunted by ghosts. Bringing back Keaton along with stars Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder (whose original teen performance inspired many an emo phase), “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is an easy movie to be skeptical of, as a sequel over 30 years in the making and an opportunity to cash in on the nostalgia that has built up around the film.

And yet, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is Burton’s best movie in years, a funny, joyous recapturing of the original manic spirit that made the original film such a favorite for many. It also sees Burton tap into what makes him a great filmmaker beyond the aesthetics: A talent for producing a certain poignancy and sadness beyond the quirk, a sense of groundedness that can give even a silly romp through the afterlife like this macabre comedy some real emotional (beetle)juice. Does this creative triumph signal a second wind for Burton’s career? Who knows. But at the very least, we can treasure finally getting another film from the director worth screaming for.

With “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” kicking off scary season in theaters, IndieWire revisited Burton’s filmography to determine the best — and the worst — of his droll creations. This list sticks to Burton’s feature films, omitting shorts like the original “Frankenweenie” or his production credits (so yes, “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” is not on here). Read on for all 20 of Burton’s movies ranked from worst to best.

20. ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (2010)

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Not just Burton’s worst film, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is one of the worst films of its decade. A garish, ugly, soulless sequel to the original Disney film run through a corporate girlboss filter, Burton’s inexplicable box office hit wastes Mia Wasikowska’s talents as an older Alice all grown up and back in Wonderland to fight the Red Queen’s army, reducing her to a hollow cipher instead of a real human being. All the energy is sucked out by tired performances from Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, and Helena Bonham Carter as various characters from the original Lewis Carroll novel. What really sinks this film, however, is how unimaginative it is. From its generic action movie plot to its rubbery CGI, there’s no wonder to be found in Burton’s Wonderland.
19. ‘Dark Shadows’ (2012)

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Is ‘Dark Shadows’ a real movie, or just a fever dream we all collectively made up? Theoretically the answer is the former, but the latter feels like it makes the most sense. Burton directing a reboot of the gothic vampire soap opera with Johnny Depp in the lead role sounds like a ’30 Rock’ joke more than an actual film, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’s watched this film since 2012 or can remember a thing that happens in it. But yes, ‘Dark Shadows’ is a real film, and it’s as flimsy as you’d expect it to be. Aside from Eva Green’s spicy performance as the witch that curses Depp’s vampiric aristocrat, ‘Dark Shadows’ consists of a whole lot of talented actors — Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Bella Heathcote — mugging it up, replacing the classic camp of the original with thudding, clunky comedy. The visuals are phoned in, the plot is a tangled mess of a thousand different storylines, and Depp is a terrible leading man — this is the definition of Burton on autopilot.
18. ‘Planet of the Apes’ (2001)

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Burton’s first major fumble as a director is still one of his worst, although it’s not quite the disaster it was portrayed as being at the time. His reboot of the ‘Planet of the Apes’ films has its virtues, including incredible prosthetic makeup designs from Rick Baker, creative costumes from Colleen Atwood, and a compelling performance from Tim Roth as the coldhearted ape dictator at the center of the story. But the film somehow feels far more dated than the original 1968 film, slow as molasses and utterly dreary and dull, thanks in part to Mark Wahlberg’s anemic performance as the token human. It’s the most blatant hired gun film in Burton’s arsenal, containing none of his aesthetic vision or gothic concerns. And the less said about that insipid ending, the better.
17. ‘Dumbo’ (2019)

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There’s some subtext to 2019’s ‘Dumbo’ that makes it interesting to think about, even if it’s mostly agonizing to actually watch. ‘Dumbo’ is a live-action Disney remake that also reads as a metaphor for how Disney the corporation is an evil force in the world, with its grafting of a story about a greedy carnival that buys up and guts a smaller one onto the classic story of an elephant that can fly with his big ears. One can feel Burton’s antipathy for his Disney work in this story — he’s come out since saying he’ll never work for the company again and that he considered retirement after his bad experience making the movie. That’s all fascinating, and also a lot more entertaining to read about than it is to watch his version of ‘Dumbo,’ which dilutes the melancholic sadness of the original animated film by reducing the elephant to a side character, giving far too much focus to Colin Farrell, his boring family, and a bunch of two-dimensional circus villains. Like many Disney remakes, it’s a shiny, competently-made bobble with nothing of substance to offer.
16. ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ (2016)

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Yes, Burton directed a film called ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.’ It came out in 2016, and it inexplicably grossed over $200 million. An adaptation of a series of YA novels, ‘Miss Peregrine’ is a labored affair that imagines the X-Men in a gothic novel, casting Eva Green as the title benefactor of a home for children with special powers. There are some fun special effects — stop-motion is used to bring skeletons to life — but the movie is as generic as the logline suggests, and, on a whole, too devoid of real human emotion to register as anything more than meh.
15. ‘Big Eyes’ (2014)

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A flat, turgid little biopic, ‘Big Eyes’ sees Burton tone down his stylistic impulses to tell the story of Margaret Keane, who sued her husband Walter after he took credit for her series of paintings depicting striking, saucer-eyed young girls. Coming out at a time when Burton was deep in a rut, the promise of an ‘adult’ film from the director seemed enticing, and it helped that Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz were playing the leads. When ‘Big Eyes’ actually came out, though, it was quickly forgotten; while there’s a heartfelt appreciation for Keane’s critically-derided, kitschy works lingering in the movie, and Adams’ portrayal of the long-suffering wife has a tinge of poignancy, on a whole, ‘Big Eyes’ is too uneven and restrained, a little too content to stick to biopic trappings, to really serve as the celebration of artistic weirdos that Burton seemingly wants it to be.
14. ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ (2005)

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Johnny Depp is in a lot of the movies on this list (eight, to be exact); the star and Burton’s careers are inextricable from each other, with the foppish ’90s matinee idol morphing into the director’s consistent muse. But over time, their partnership became a bit toxic for their artistic success, as Burton seemed content to let Depp mug his way through the beautiful worlds he conjured up. This really sinks Burton’s version of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ which has more to recommend than people give it credit for; the set design to create Willy Wonka’s wild factory is exquisite, and the clipped sardonic tone is an unconventional but fitting interpretation of the original Roald Dahl story. But Depp is charmless as this version of Willy Wonka, with none of the warmth needed to counteract the danger, falling woefully short of Gene Wilder’s definitive portrayal. His performance sinks the movie, which could be much more with a different star on camera.
13. ‘Sleepy Hollow’ (1999)

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A relatively straightforward take on the classic tale of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, Burton’s ‘Sleepy Hollow’ is mainly notable for how gorgeous it looks. Rick Heinrichs and Peter Young won an Oscar for Best Art Direction creating the Upstate New York small town and its haunted forest, while cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki bathes this stomping ground in darkness and shades of eerie blue. The police-procedural take on the story, with Johnny Depp playing Ichabod as a detective, isn’t the most compelling angle, but it’s an efficient dose of period slasher fun.
12. ‘Corpse Bride’ (2005)

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Co-directed with Mike Johnson, stop-motion film ‘Corpse Bride’ doesn’t hold a candle to ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas.’ Still, it’s a fun, surprisingly sad little story about a nervous groom who gets dragged into the underworld by a spirit determined to have him for herself, with a mournful tone befitting the best of Burton’s efforts. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter give voice performances that somehow feel less cartoonish than many of their live-action roles, and the whole movie is gorgeously rendered, a Technicolor afterlife with animation that builds and improves upon the iconic world of the original ‘Nightmare Before Christmas.’
11. ‘Batman’ (1989)

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A cultural phenomenon upon its release, 1989’s ‘Batman’ pushed so much merchandise (the Prince tie-in album alone!) and made so much money at the box office that it created the modern superhero film as we know it. Divorced from the hype of the time, the actual film now feels a little quaint, and it hasn’t aged perfectly: It’s a relatively paint-by-numbers battle between Michael Keaton’s Caped Crusader and Jack Nicholson’s Joker, with less than exciting action to keep you invested. Still, it’s an entertaining and gorgeous film with an unforgettable Gotham created by set decorator Anton Furst, a steely Keaton performance, and a manic, wildly entertaining Nicholson. All of that, plus the iconic Danny Elfman score, adds to pure-fun summer blockbuster filmmaking.
10. ‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ (2007)

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Controversial among theater nerds, Burton’s adaptation of the acclaimed ‘Sweeney Todd’ stage musical received approval from the original composer, legend Stephen Sondheim himself, who saw all of the changes that Burton made as necessary for translating the operatic tale of revenge, murder, and meat pies out of the theater and on to the big screen. The iconic opening narration song and several numbers are jettisoned, therefore, to make the film a bit more of a straightforward thriller, although Burton thankfully lets his actors go a little camp for the comedy songs like ‘A Little Priest.’ The visuals are a bit overly muted, but Burton overall handles the musical stages with aplomb, and although much of the cast aren’t natural singers, he still rings excellent work from his stars, especially Depp as the murderous barber the story centers on. It adds up to a version of ‘Sweeney Todd’ that doesn’t quite live up to the original musical’s full potential, but the bones of this story are so strong that it still cuts deep anyway.
9. ‘Frankenweenie’ (2012)

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One of Burton’s most underrated films, 2012’s ‘Frankenweenie’ sees the director adapt his own 1984 short into a feature-length — although still extremely brief — little treat. Parodying classic Universal Monster films, the stop-motion spectacle follows a genius young scientist who resurrects his bull-dog into a Frankenstein monster, only for his classmates to do the same to their own dead animals that overrun their suburban neighborhood in the process. It’s a simple story uplifted by the gorgeous black-and-white visuals and the playful, irreverent, and geeky tone Burton brings, showing his deep love for the movies that inspired this tale. And the authentic emotions of the film, about an outsider looking for love and acceptance, makes it among Burton’s most heartwarming offerings.
8. ‘Mars Attacks!’ (1996)

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A shlock favorite with a devoted cult following, ‘Mars Attacks!’ is a beautifully, delightfully mean film about how humanity is dumb and crass and maybe deserves to be taken over by a bunch of green-brained Martians. Featuring eye-catching designs lifted from the classic trading card game, the dark comedy stars a cavalcade of very ’90s stars (including a scene-stealing Jack Nicholson as President of the United States) meeting their gruesome end as Martians who claim to come in peace turn out to very much not come in peace. Somehow, by the end, you’re rooting for the Martians to pulverize our asses, as the invaders seem downright human compared to the caricatures in the human cast. ‘Mars Attacks!’ was greeted with scorn by critics upon its release in the largely optimistic ’90s, but today, it’s pitch dark (and very funny) vision of humanity feels all too real.
7. ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ (2024)

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It’s so easy to imagine a version of ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ that’s dispiriting and depressing, another legacyquel that references and repeats the original without fully understanding what makes it special. What a pleasure, then, that ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ is the best movie that Burton has made in years — a wildly entertaining comedic journey through the afterlife that showcases all of the imagination and humor Burton seemed to have lost in his late career. The ramshackle plot about Winona Ryder’s Lydia teaming up with Michael Keaton’s chaotic titular demon to rescue her daughter Astrid (a perfectly cast Jenna Ortega) isn’t the most lucid arc in the world, but it’s perfectly fitting with the chaotic spirit of the original. It allows Burton to run rampant with stop motion sequences, practical effects, and the disco stylings of Donna Summer. The comedy is fresh, sweet, and genuinely funny, with a hint of sadness about the passage of time and the futility of nostalgia, particularly in its surprisingly ambiguous and dark ending. And while Keaton is once again a blast as the title character, it’s really Ryder who runs away with the film as an all-grown-up Lydia, poignantly playing her as a woman still struggling to put her past nightmares behind her.
6. ‘Big Fish’ (2003)

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When Burton wants to, he can really make you cry. Many of his films are tearjerkers and heartbreakers, and none more so than ‘Big Fish,’ his 2003 push into slightly more serious and original territory. Recounting a complicated father-son story through the life of a habitual tall tale teller (played by Albert Finney as a old man and Ewan McGregor as a young one), ‘Big Fish’ applies a lightly magical touch to its otherwise intimate story of family, infidelity, death, and love, in a way that could be unbearably twee in the hands of another director. And yet, ‘Big Fish’ never gets there: it’s instead a thoroughly enchanting and often moving story, before going in for the kill with an ending systematically and successfully designed to reduce you to a blubbering mess.
5. ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (1990)

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For as odious as Johnny Depp has become in the 21st century (both artistically and as a human being), his performance in Burton’s dark romance ‘Edward Scissorhands’ is undeniable. Playing the titular Frankenstein monster with blades for fingers, Depp’s a striking presence, with makeup and prosthetics assisting in creating a gaunt emo icon with a shock of frizzy black hair that makes him stand out all the more in the stereotypical suburbia he eventually finds himself in. As a satire of Americana conformity, ‘Edward Scissorhands’ is good but not great. As a tragic romance between the perfectly sensitive Depp and a yearning Winona Ryder, it’s exquisite, holding a heartbreaking power that feels timeless. This is Burton and his regular collaborators (from costume designer Colleen Atwood to Danny Elfman, whose work as a composer has never been better than it is here) operating at the heights of their powers.
4. ‘Beetlejuice’ (1988)

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A Calypso-inflected romp, ‘Beetlejuice’ is Burton’s funniest film and possibly the most quintessentially Burton film ever made: the wacky practical effects, the pitch black comedy, the white and black spirals, the love for everything spooky that courses through this comedy about a family haunted by a poltergeist in their upstate New York manor. It all hangs together thanks to Michael Keaton’s furiously funny central performance, combining genuine danger with a gleeful lunacy. And a seriously strong central cast — from Winona Ryder’s iconic obnoxious goth girl to Catherine O’Hara’s yuppie mom to Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin as two ghosts caught up in the mess — make the film a wildly fun treat, a perfect melding of suburban satire with gothic horror.
3. ‘Ed Wood’ (1994)

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Burton’s most outright ‘prestigious’ film, biopic Ed Wood nonetheless is unmistakably his own. No other director could have created a film about Ed Wood, the eccentric B-movie director often declared one of the worst directors of all time, and made it so loving and clear-eyed toward the cinematic dreamer and misfit — see ‘The Room’ biopic ‘The Disaster Artist’ for an example of the smug, superior tone that a lesser director could have approached the material with. He wrings drama and tears out of the central friendship between Johnny Depp’s Wood and Martin Landau’s Bela Lugosi, both of whom give the greatest performances of their career (Landau in particular won the Oscar for it). Funny but deeply touching, ‘Ed Wood’ feels like the clearest distillation of Burton’s love for the freaks and weirdos of cinema.
2. ‘Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure’ (1985)

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Burton’s debut feature, ‘Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure’ is one of the director’s few projects to be led by a creative vision that isn’t his own. Instead, the film adaptation of the ‘Pee-Wee Herman Show’ faithfully translates star Paul Reubens’ (who co-wrote the script with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol) singular stage character onto the big screen, with all the campy comedy and childlike glee that made the original a delight. And yet, you can feel Burton’s influence all over ‘Big Adventure,’ and in a deeper way than just recruiting Danny Elfman to make the off-kilter score. The world of Pee-Wee might be sunnier than usual for Burton, but it’s still a cartoonish, kitschy world seen from the perspective of an outsider looking for acceptance (and his bicycle). The movie’s a stone cold classic for several reasons — its script, its performances — but it’s Burton’s work that really elevates it to true greatness.
1. ‘Batman Returns’ (1992)

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Burton’s first ‘Batman’ film was a straightforward superhero film. There were some tinges of Burton’s aesthetic in the stylized vision of Gotham, but on the whole, the 1989 phenomenon was a straightforward blockbuster that could appeal to kids, adults, and everybody in between. Burton’s follow-up is Burton making a Tim Burton film, further twisting the comic book character’s mythos into a weird, gorgeous fairy tale parable about loners, freaks, and outcasts trying to find connection in a cruel world. That pivot made ‘Batman Returns’ controversial for comic nerds when it was originally released, but it stands today as Burton’s most vividly realized film, both exhilarating blockbuster fun and poignant tragedy. Keaton’s gruff Batman is still our anchor into this world, but takes a backseat to the unforgettable villains, from Christopher Walken’s ruthless businessman to Danny DeVito’s abused, neglected Penguin. And as a meek Selina Kyle murdered and resurrected into a vamping Catwoman, Michelle Pfeiffer gives the greatest, most human performance in any Burton film, supplying a bone-deep rage and sadness that elevates the movie into a mythical gothic melodrama. For all of his aesthetic achievements, Burton’s films are at their best when they tap into a lurking sadness and appreciation for the misfits of the world, and ‘Batman Returns’ gets to to the core of what makes the director’s work so indelible 30 years later.