Corpse Bride is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and it’s still Tim Burton’s unfairly overlooked masterpiece. Tim Burton has had many hits in his career, with his works standing out thanks to his unique visual style. Tim Burton’s movies are known for their blend of fantasy and family-friendly horror, with a unique Gothic style.

Burton’s filmography is a combination of original works, adaptations, and remakes, with many big hits and a couple of flops, but even most of the latter have a unique charm to them. Some of Burton’s most beloved and acclaimed works, however, are his stop-motion animated movies.

Burton’s history in the world of stop-motion animation started in short films, with his first big hit being The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick from a story by Burton. However, there’s another stop-motion masterpiece in Burton’s filmography that has been overlooked for years and deserves a lot more praise: Corpse Bride.

Corpse Bride: The Quintessential Tim Burton Movie?

As mentioned above, Tim Burton’s career in the field of animation started with short films back in the 1980s. Burton’s first stop-motion animated short film was Vincent, and it has all the elements of a Burton project: Gothic elements, a dark story, fantasy creatures, and a tormented protagonist.

For years, Burton has been wrongly believed to have directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, so his first stop-motion animated feature is actually Corpse Bride, released in 2005. Co-directed by Mike Johnson, Corpse Bride is based on characters created by Burton and Carlos Grangel, and it takes the audience back to the Victorian era.

Corpse Bride follows Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp), the son of “new rich” fish merchants, who is preparing for his arranged marriage to Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson). The Everglots are broke, so the marriage will restore their wealth while also boosting the social status of the Van Dorts. However, Victor is so nervous that he keeps messing up the rehearsal.

Victor goes to the woods and keeps rehearsing his vows, placing the ring on a branch… that isn’t a branch, but the finger of the тιтle corpse bride, Emily (Helena Bonham Carter). Emily claims that they are now married and takes Victor to the Land of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, with Victor trying to find a way to return to Victoria without hurting Emily’s feelings.

Corpse Bride has all the elements of a Tim Burton movie, both in narrative and visually. Corpse Bride is a full-on Gothic movie, not just in its visual style and Victorian setting, but in its dark themes of death, betrayal, grief, and the supernatural, with a love story at the front and center.

With incredible animation, catchy songs, relatable and charming characters, and emotional depth, Corpse Bride is a quintessential Tim Burton movie that, unfortunately, flew under the radar during its initial release, but now that it turns 20, it deserves the praise it should have gotten from the beginning.

Every Element Of Corpse Bride Deserves Praise

Whether Corpse Bride is a flawless movie or not will ultimately depend on each viewer, but the truth is that every element of it deserves praise. Stop-motion animation has improved a lot since The Nightmare Before Christmas (which is still impressive, don’t get me wrong), with every move, take, and camera movement being smooth and seamless in Corpse Bride.

The main characters are well-developed and complex, especially Emily and Victor, which helps make them relatable. Corpse Bride also gives them the time and space they need for their stories and personalities to be explored and developed, adding to their unique charm.

Of course, the story itself deserves praise, too, thanks to its originality and its exploration of themes like death and revenge. Corpse Bride’s visual storytelling is also a thing of beauty, most notably its contrast between the Land of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and the one of the living, with the latter being gray and dull and the former being colorful and lively.

The cherry on top of Corpse Bride is the music, brought by Burton’s frequent collaborator, Danny Elfman. The catchy songs tell stories and go deeper into the characters’ backgrounds and personalities, and the animation of the musical numbers is a visual delight.

Corpse Bride Spoke To A Generation Being Swept Up In Emo Subculture

Subcultures and movies are heavily linked, and in Corpse Bride’s case, its link is to the emo subculture. Emo comes from the 1980s emocore music, but it entered the mainstream in the 2000s. Emo subculture was characterized by specific hairstyles and fashion, but at its core, it was about introspection, nostalgia, angst, love, sadness, and isolation.

Corpse Bride, then, came out during the peak of emo subculture, and it fitted in perfectly. Its dark, Gothic atmosphere evoking nostalgia and a sense of despair and loneliness spoke to the emo subculture, along with the movie’s visual style, emotional depth, and the themes addressed in it.

Surely, there are differences between Gothic and the emo subculture, but they have similarities that overlapped in projects like Corpse Bride. This was key to Corpse Bride’s success with specific audiences, even if that meant not getting the wider praise it deserves.

Why Corpse Bride Doesn’t Get The Love It Deserves

Corpse Bride was a commercial success and currently holds an 84% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, and yet, it’s one of Tim Burton’s most underrated works. Corpse Bride was inevitably linked to The Nightmare Before Christmas thanks to its animation style and Burton being behind both, and as mentioned above, the latter has been wrongly believed to have been directed by Burton.

While this surely helped promote Corpse Bride, it ultimately backfired. Many expected Corpse Bride to be like The Nightmare Before Christmas, when it’s actually a darker and more mature film in every way. This didn’t allow Corpse Bride to be judged on its own merits, being compared to The Nightmare Before Christmas when it shouldn’t have been.

Corpse Bride could end up benefiting from the pᴀssage of time and finally get the love and praise it deserves, 20 years after its release. Corpse Bride is one of Tim Burton’s finest works, as well as one of the best animated movies of all time.