{"id":5742,"date":"2019-03-29T00:40:41","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T00:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/?p=5742"},"modified":"2019-04-01T23:59:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T23:59:44","slug":"how-tim-burtons-dumbo-celebrates-that-being-weird-is-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/how-tim-burtons-dumbo-celebrates-that-being-weird-is-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"How Tim Burton\u2019s \u2018Dumbo\u2019 Celebrates That Being Weird Is Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disney\u2019s original <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dumbo <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">scarred many of us as a child. So when I learned that the studio had decided to add the animated film to their roster of live-action remakes \u2013 one directed by Tim Burton, no less &#8211; it almost felt like a personal attack. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why would Disney want to scar me and<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a whole new generation of children?!<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Imagining what Burton\u2019s signature aesthetic would look like on a Disney property as beloved as this one, how the Beetlejuice director would bring the story\u2019s nightmarish pink elephants and clowns to live, lead to an instant \u201cskip it\u201d from me. Despite my reservations, I braved a screening of the film anyway. And what happened was the last thing I ever thought would: Tim Burton didn\u2019t scar me. In fact, his <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dumbo<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> helped prove that as \u201cweird\u201d as the flying elephant appears to those humans that don\u2019t understand him, weird isn\u2019t a thing to be ashamed of. It\u2019s something to be celebrated. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2DgCy5GFDzc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>The Original Wasn&#8217;t As Kind To Dumbo<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The original <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomtickets.com\/movies\/dumbo\/249077\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dumbo<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, with its lean (but slow-paced) 60-minute runtime, allowed for Burton and screenwriter Ehren Kruger\u2019s remake plenty of leeway to expand upon the core elements of the underdog story while honoring what came before. The remake\u00a0<\/span>preserved the antagonism Dumbo suffers from both human characters and his fellow animals, but it avoids some of the extremes of the original. Snooty female elephants at least don&#8217;t snub him or refuse to let him eat; clowns don&#8217;t want to make him jump a 1000 feet into a barrel of water for their enjoyment (though they do make him perform other scary acts).<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All because he\u2019s a baby elephant with huge ears. Because he is different. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Burton has made a career out of embracing weird and odd and \u201coutside the norm\u201d characters as truly special. We always fear what we don\u2019t understand, traditionally, and Burton visually and thematically subverts that unfortunate truth to inspire people not to lie about who \u2013 or what \u2013 they really are. Some of the best movies he\u2019s directed are successful largely because the filmmaker understands the inherent beauty in being different. He appreciates and arguably idolizes those differences, not just with Dumbo but in all the characters who inhabit the movie\u2019s Medici Brothers Circus, owned and operated by Max Medici (Danny Devito). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>The Medici Circus Is A Safe Space In Tim Burton&#8217;s World<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Medici Circus is a ramshackle affair, but one that is beloved by those members of its traveling show. It is a place that, despite moving from town to town, serves as a constant safe space for those living under its big top. It\u2019s where they find acceptance in a world that largely deems them unacceptable. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While most of the circus act\u2019s members are on the periphery, their impressive costume design and character flourishes make prominent the ideas underscoring this classic Disney story. They help service the original\u2019s timeless themes in a more modern way, showing that audiences now have the capacity to embrace that \u201cstrange and unusual,\u201d a la Winona Ryder\u2019s character in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beetlejuice<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, are not and should not be used as judgments.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Dumbo &#8211; Like The Circus Freaks &#8211; Is Treated Much More Kindly<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even the way the remake handles the origin of Dumbo\u2019s name is much more nuanced and gentler than the bullying way it was bestowed upon the animated counterpart. Despite the script\u2019s problematic narrative, what the remake lacks in a solid plot it more than makes up for with the sensitivity and affection it shows the title character. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unlike in the animated version, Dumbo is born with his large ears. There\u2019s no sneeze that \u201ccurses\u201d him with them. He\u2019s a cute newborn, covered in straw, whose big ears draw strange looks for the first eyes to see them. He\u2019s adorable to the viewer, even if characters within the movie are blind to that fact. Dumbo\u2019s special ability of flight, which could also be classified as weird, is treated differently-ish in the remake. For one, Dumbo flies much earlier in this film than he did in the original. Here, flight is what finally gives him worth to the circus, because it increases ticket sales, boosts the circus\u2019 profile, and helps line Medici\u2019s pockets. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A greedy businessman, V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton), wants to further exploit Dumbo\u2019s gift in a way that makes it feel like a curse; he wants to make the flying elephant the centerpiece of his new, extravagant theme park. (This meta touch is not lost on the casual Disney fan). Soon, Dumbo\u2019s weirdness is rewarded with his own show, which becomes quite popular. But that fame and notoriety quickly feels like a cage, one whose spotlight services more like a microscope &#8212; \u201ccome see the flying freak elephant!\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dreamland is soon revealed to be more of a nightmare, one Dumbo must escape from. It is in that escape that our cute titular character finds more than freedom. Unlike in the animated movie, where Dumbo flies happily behind a fancy train car housing Mrs. Jumbo, Burton crafts a new ending that\u2019s thrilling, scary, exciting, and conscious of the change in sentiment around whether elephants should even be in circuses. In doing so, Burton delivered once again on his theme of weird as being that which we should spend more effort accepting than shunning. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because even flying elephants deserve to feel seen and heard. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disney\u2019s original Dumbo scarred many of us as a child. So when I learned that the studio had decided to add the animated film to their roster of live-action remakes \u2013 one directed by Tim Burton, no less &#8211; it almost felt like a personal attack. Why would Disney want to scar me and a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[40,37],"class_list":["post-5742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","tag-featuredpage","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5742"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5832,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742\/revisions\/5832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}