Ranking the 10 best Tim Burton movies ahead of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Tim Burton came to Hollywood as a true visionary out of CalArts, forging one of the truly original and lasting careers among any of his contemporaries.

From forging the modern superhero movie with Batman to building some of the most memorable characters we've ever seen in Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, Burton's career features one of the truly great runs of any filmmaker in his era The Pee-wee's Big Adventure through Mars Attacks! stretch is legendary.

While some feel Burton has fallen off over the years (nonsense to us; he's never lost his step), his long-awaited sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has garnered plenty of excitement.

As we consider Burton's storied career, let's rank his 10 best films and talk about why they're all such wonderful films that highlight just what a wonderfully singular voice he is in the field.

10. Big Eyes

Burton's anticipated reunion with Ed Wood screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski gave us one of his most straightforward efforts, but the filmmaker's Margaret Keane biopic still finds a nice balance between the tenderhearted approach Keane brought to her art and the darkness behind the true artisanship of her work. This bookends with another Burton biopic on our list, as this one lacks the masterpiece sheen of that one but still reinforces the themes of the director's filmography with style and bite. It'd be great to see Burton work with Amy Adams again.

9. Big Fish

This is perhaps Burton's most soulful film besides Edward Scissorhands, a lovely fable weaved with tall tales and a grand heart. Some say this is Burton's last great film (which we definitely don't agree with, to be honest), one built on the bedrock of how storytelling keeps us connected and an embrace of the abstract keeps us whole. Two decades later, Big Fish remains as poignant as ever. This film also gives us one of Ewan McGregor's great performances, so that was a plus.

8. Mars Attacks!

After extolling the virtues of Ed Wood, Burton decided to mount his campiest production yet with Mars Attacks! A glorious alien invasion flick, Burton lets loose with this anarchistic gem that relishes in cartoon violence, schoolyard shock and B-movie bona fides. While it's a lark in the end, it's also one of Burton's most confident productions. You could watch this one on loop and find something new and funny about it on each viewing. It just gets better and better with age.

7. Batman

Batman is the movie that forever changed Hollywood, as bizarre as it is to say now that a superhero movie with the Caped Crusader was a major risk for a studio, a director and a star in flux like Michael Keaton. Well, it's safe to say that this one worked out pretty darn well for everyone involved. Batman remains one of the great superhero films, in part because of its soaring craft and its obsession with the macabre flourishes of the source material. Jack Nicholson remains unreal as the Joker, and Keaton's Batman is still one of the best incarnations of the character. This one rules.

6. Frankenweenie

Burton's feature-length adaptation of his 1980s Disney short film about a boy who Frankensteins his beloved pooch is the great masterwork of his latter career. Not only is it the best stop-motion film Burton worked on as a director or producer, it's one of the best animated films of that decade. It's creative and joyful in a way the best Burton movies are, carefully wielding its emotional heft and its dissection of suburban anxiety against the filmmaker's more delightfully scandalous sight gags. Burton took a risk to go back to Frankenweenie, and it paid off big time. This one is special.

5. Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice is the garish granddaddy of kinda small-scale kinda family-friendly horror comedy as Tim Burton is in his full element. The "Banana Boat (Day O)" scene is one of Burton’s most “this is me!” moments, and you have to love that about him. It’s one of his proudest set pieces and such a great one for the history of comedy. Everything about this movie works so well, especially Michael Keaton's grotesquely hilarious used car salesman of the afterlife.

4. Edward Scissorhands

For a guy who has made some really great movies, this is very much one of Burton’s best and most heart-wrenching. Having Burton make his fairy tale Frankenstein in the late 80s/early 90s suburbia, for which he clearly has both great disdain genuine fascination, was such an inspired thing, and clearly, it’s a film he poured his soul into, complete with just about every creative decision working out for him. This one remains a classic that is one of the great entry points for Burton's aura.

3. Batman Returns

With

2. Ed Wood

Is this Tim Burton’s best movie? It might just be! Ed Wood is just such a wonderful tale of misfits and oddballs trying to make do in a world that doesn’t want them, with Wood the grand marshal. What an uplifting, funny movie about a man who had such a sad life, with Burton refusing to show us where Wood ended up, only where he spent his heyday. It’s a mission to redefine Wood’s life and career; Burton had the power to make this what Wood would be remembered for, and it’s hard to say he wasn’t completely successful with that. It's his true masterwork, outside of one film...

1. Pee-wee's Big Adventure

Pee-wee's Big Adventure is one of the truly great films and of the most creatively segmented comedies...ever? Pee-Wee Herman is and always will be a gift to mankind. Ed Wood is probably his best, but this one is just so full of joy and pure zaniness. Pee-Wee is chaotic good (and a loner, Dottie, a rebel) in a frazzled world. We need him now more than ever. This endlessly quotable, endlessly watchable masterpiece of cinema is for us all.

Oh... and be sure and tell ‘em Large Marge sent ya!

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Ranking the 10 best Tim Burton movies ahead of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice