Michael Keaton Thought His Performance 'Sucked' In This Tim Burton Movie

In a weird way, director Tim Burton and actor Michael Keaton's first three films together form a spiritual trilogy. 1988's "Beetlejuice" is a giddily naughty creation that Burton himself has deemed an anti-Spielberg movie, blending grotesque zaniness with a disdain for Reagan-era yuppie culture. 1989's "Batman," on the other hand, is a Gothic, operatic comic book crime thriller where the hero is a wealthy, reclusive oddball tormented by his traumas of his childhood. It's 1992's "Batman Returns" that subsequently melds aspects of the two films to create a boldly twisted (in theory, four-quadrant) superhero tentpole that's as much a dark political satire by way of a Universal-style monster movie as it is a film about a guy dressed as a bat punching out criminals.

Given the pair's track record, hopes were high heading into Burton and Keaton's reunion on 2019's "Dumbo" that the live-action Disney remake would help the former get his groove back after years of lackluster efforts. It very nearly got the job done, too — emphasis, sadly, on "nearly." The first half of "Dumbo" is, unfortunately, what we've come to expect from the Mouse House's re-toolings of its animated classics. Some superficial additions aside (namely, a storyline about a human family befriending Dumbo at the traveling circus where he resides), Burton's film tediously recycles much of the original 1941 feature while dropping the "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence entirely, which kind of seems to defeat the whole purpose of Tim Burton remaking "Dumbo" in the first place. (The remake also dispels with the crows — gotta give credit where credit is due.)

It's only during its second half, when Keaton enters the picture and the remake continues beyond the point where the original animated feature stopped, that "Dumbo" really starts to fly. Keaton, however, doesn't appear to feel he deserves any credit for that.

While the actual film was more of a middling under-performer than a disaster, the experience of making "Dumbo" was bad enough to almost convince Burton to quit making movies. It was only thanks to season 1 of Netflix's "Wednesday" (which Burton co-directed) that the filmmaker didn't settle into an early retirement and instead set about reuniting with Keaton on the belated sequel "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." Keaton, for his part, seems to partly blame himself for that. As he told The New York Times:

"I love working with Tim so much, but I don't think we ever really analyzed why we work pretty well together; we just do. I think I let him down on one movie, but that's just me, and it bugs me to this day. I was clueless on 'Dumbo.' I sucked in 'Dumbo.'"

Burton, who participated in the same interview, was quick to assure his collaborator, "I don't even know what you're talking about. But whatever." Expounding on that: Keaton co-stars in "Dumbo" as V.A. Vandevere, a conniving businessman who gets dollar signs in his eyes when he learns that Dumbo can use his oversized ears to fly. With a little finessing, Vandevere is able to buy Dumbo's circus and incorporate it into his garish amusement park, at which point he begins to exploit and abuse the elephant and his loved ones for all they're worth. Ironically, it doesn't take a leap to read Vandevere and his operation as a metaphor for Disney itself, which similarly loves to gobble up franchises and milk the properties it owns for every cent they're worth.

That said, for as much as "Dumbo" makes for a compelling anti-Disney allegory (as Burton would later come to realize), Keaton, admittedly, doesn't leave a very strong impression as Vandevere one way or the other. So, while saying he "sucked" is going too far, you can also see why the actor might not hold the same fondness for that character as the more iconic ones he's played for Burton before.

"Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" opens in theaters on September 6, 2024.