Just in time for the kiddies' spring break movie fever, we've started to see teases for the new teen-targeted Tim Burton feature Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Based on the young adult book series by Ransom Riggs, there's a feast of spooky oddities that fit right into Burton's sensibilities. However, the first looks suggest that he's playing into his current era's weaknesses. The trailer and some thoughts I had staring at the new poster after the jump...
1. Must we?
2. The source novel (which I admittedly didn't like) suggests a more chiaroscuro pallet and leans to the creepier side of fun. That element looks to be gone entirely.
3. Hasn't Asa Butterfield been 13 for a decade now?
4. This is not the Eva Green action hero I asked for. This also looks like the Dark Shadows sequel nobody asked for.
5. Don't you miss the days when Burton used color in hugely impactful ways? Beetlejuice, Batman Returns, even Sleepy Hollow. I think this is just what we're getting from here on, folks.
6. Children and their Peculiarities: a fire-starting teenaged Florence Welch, an invisible version of my doppleganger, a girl lifting the tombstone of Tim Burton's career, clones of that kid from The Orphanage, and a floating low-rent Alice back from Wonderland.
7. This cast also includes Judi Dench, Samuel L. Jackson, Allison Janney, Kim Dickens, Chris O'Dowd, Terrence Stamp, and Rupert Everett. Wouldn't you see any other movie with this cast??
8. Also, why leave such a cast unmentioned on the poster?
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children opens September 30.