Tim Burton’s 10 Best Movie Sets

If there is one thing Tim Burton Known for, it is the incredible set design of his creative movies. Visionary director Time Burton has a trademark visual style, one that manages to shine in the settings of his varied and often fantastical stories. Although there are many sets that are worthy of admiration in Tim Burton’s filmography, a few are selected as the most eye-popping.

first and foremost, Burton’s ability to filter any location through his unique art style is quite impressiveWhether it’s on the set of a live-action movie or the intricate stage of a stop-motion picture. It’s also remarkable how well Burton is able to delicately create his dizzying worlds with strikingly little CGI, relying on mostly practical effects to sell the fantasy of his different worlds. Although he may populate them with the same dozen recurring actors who collaborate with Burton, his sets are always wonderfully unique.

10

The Netherworld

Beetlejuice

Tim Burton is best known for combining the macabre with the whimsical, and Few films present this unique combination through their set design better than Beetlejuice. Although the human home in the majority of the drama is a decent-enough looking set, it is surely the harrowing netherworld that takes the cake for the most bombastic scenery in the film.

A sort of paralyzing limbo in which the souls of the dead await their fate as hideous corpses, the Netherworld is a twisted, exaggerated version of a typical office.. While gruesome sights such as flattened car crash victims are healed along rails in the ceiling are common, what makes the netherworld so terrifying is its suffocating bureaucracy.

Gray rows of desks, jagged waiting rooms, and terrible stacks of paper fill every crevice of this undead sorting station, intersecting with the cave-like pillars of stone and stalactites dripping from the ceiling. Combining a classic underworld with a disturbing office setting, The Neitherworld is easily one of Burton’s most creative sets, returning to theaters with the release of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

9

The land of the dead

dead bride

Always fascinated with the visual cues of death and decay, it’s no wonder Burton returned to the concept of the netherworld in this stop-motion animation masterpiece dead bride An overlooked entry in Burton’s impressive career, the film revolves around a young groom who accidentally marries a corpse rather than his intended arrangement.

The majority of the film takes place in a similar dimension inhabited by walking corpses, known here as the Land of the Dead. Compared to the dull, monochromatic visuals of the living world, the land of the dead is, ironically, quite a lively place.

Although statues of skeletal horses and walking severed heads fill the streets of this country, It’s full of vibrant, sickly colors that give the macabre place a fun, party-like energy. Even if the heroic victor ends up returning to his rightful place in the Land of the Living, it’s hard not to mourn the loss of the Land of the Dead’s sheer eye candy.

8

Gotham City

Batman

Still considered to be one of the best live-action Batman movies, Tim Burton’s 1989 classic still holds up today. This is thanks in large part to the director’s vision of Gotham City, the caped crusader’s archetypal hometown. Although the entire film is admittedly in Gotham, there are the dark alleyways, seedy streets and fog-covered back roads of Gotham. Batmans most striking shots.

With dark, towering buildings that look more like the cathedrals of antiquity than modern skyscrapers, grotesque gargoyles lowering from every rooftop, and shrouds of fog blanketing the most crime-ridden streets, Burton’s vision of Gotham instantly shaped the visual language for decades of Batman stories to come. The film came close to creating a unique skyline for the fictional city, which helped distinguish Gotham from being a thin analogue of any real-world megalopolis. Thanks to Burton, one of the most iconic places in DC Comics is also the best visually-defined.

7

The Spiral Hill

The Nightmare Before Christmas

In fact, every square inch of The Nightmare Before Christmas‘s miniaturized stop-motion set reflects the strength of Tim Burton’s artistic vision. But it’s rare that a single location in a film is almost as instantly recognizable as its characters. Somehow, the spiral hill in The Nightmare Before Christmas manages the feat, being plastered front-and-center on the film’s poster upon release alongside an avalanche of merchandise in the modern day.

The scene in which Jack strides down the unfurling curl of the hill while singing against the backdrop of the full moon is perhaps the single most striking shot of the film. The landmark is back again with Sally in tow, now frozen with icicles hanging off its iconic spiral. Perhaps the most important part of Burton’s career, it is difficult to understate the arresting beauty with which Burton is able to execute such a seemingly simple concept.

6

Gotham City in winter

Batman Returns

It says something that Tim Burton’s most iconic movie location was used in not just one, but two of his most famous films. Go in batman returns Burton was allowed to inject much more of his personal flair and trademark dark sensibility into the sequel compared to 1989’s. Batman. This is reflected in the new depiction of Gotham City, which manages to feel quite visually different from the previous film.

for one, Batman Returns Takes place during the winter holiday season, burying every surface of the Gothic mega-city under a muffled layer of snow. The added darkness and isolation of the film version of Gotham reflects on Batman’s own character arc in the film, as he struggles to fight the inherent darkness within. On the flip side, the vivid pixie lights and Christmas trees that line the bustling city centers help break up the monotony, keeping the movie incarnation of Gotham City rich and textured.

5

tinsmith circle

Edward Scissorhands

Another one of Burton’s most thoughtfully assembled series of sets, Edward Scissorhands is an impressive achievement of art department. From the lonely castle on the hill that Edward hails from to the gouache pastels of the city center, the film is full of memorable stages on which the awkward homunculus can continue its journey into humanity. That being said, the most impressive of all of them is the simple Tinsmith Circle, a cul-de-sac of cookie-cutter houses Edward spends the majority of his time in.

Built on the grounds of the real street in Florida, the stylish suburb is a shocking outlier in Burton’s filmography. This does not make it less impressive, because the glaring tacky colors of each house and the perfectly manicured lawns come together to form a liminal representation of American suburbia, baking under the Florida sun. It says something that Burton is able to make such a comfortable environment feel more hostile than an abandoned castle.

4

The Chocolate Room

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Like most Tim Burton films, The remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is full of wonderful sets, and it can be difficult to choose a single standout spot from such a fantastic journey of the sense. That said, the film has a clear winner in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Room, a wing of the factory dedicated to the flow and transport of his stream of liquid chocolate. The title of “Chocolate Room” may be a bit of a misnomer, as most of what makes the room so interesting is the other candy offerings.

From edible grass to chocolate dirt and seemingly organic growth of candied plants and trees, Wonka declares everything in the room to be edible (even himself). With how believable every surface is coated in a thin sheen of sugary textures, it’s hard not to believe him, because the features of the chocolate room look just as delicious as the rampaging children declare them to be. Like the rest of the film, however, the place has a sinister air just outside the boundaries of sweet candy friendliness, with drab factor walls, dingy overhead lighting and dangerous torrents of flowing chocolate.

3

Fleet Street

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Choosing the best spot from Burton’s take on a classic stage play is simple enough, considering the winner is right there in the title. The movie describes the heinous crimes of the so-called demon barber, Sweeney Todd, and his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, in musical form. Matching the somber tone is the lore set design of Fleet Street itself, a dark reflection of the crimes committed there.

Both inside and outside Todd’s infamous barber shop, the eponymous street is at once alive and bursting with color.. The starkly empty and uneven rooms of the barbershop pay homage to the film’s stage origins, looking like the set of a play hastily rolled out between scenes. However, this sense of falsity does not take away from the story, but rather enhances it as a kind of crude folk tale, mythologizing Todd and Lovett into elegant urban legends with a hazy environment to match.

2

The tree of the dead

Sleepy Hollow

A clear homage to the great Hammer horror films of old, Tim Burton Sleepy Hollow is one of his goriest and most macabre films to date. Fair enough, it benefits from a carefully crafted sense of set design that enhances the chilling tale with its haunted house aesthetic, not exactly realistic but extremely comforting for it. By far the best realized location in the film is the Evil Tree of the Dead, the supposed final resting place of the film’s villain, the Headless Horseman.

All of the western woods outside of upstate New York’s Sleepy Hollow are quite sinister, with every spindly, leafless branch spiderwebbing into the gray sky like evil veins. But the tree of resurrection is the real show-stopper, unnaturally sinking into itself to let Ichabod and company know that all they are looking for is an unnatural shame on earth. The fact that the top of the tree is missing reflects the Headless Horseman’s own condition is a nice touch.

1

The alien landing site

Mars Attacks!

Mars Attacks! Not exactly the highest-rated of Tim Burton’s myriad works, but deserves more credit for crafting an endearing pastiche of 50s science fiction. Although the film has a few spots of uneven early CGI, for the most partThe practical sets look just as good as the rest of Burton’s work, only with the added benefit of eye-popping colors compared to his usual desaturated tastes. The best scene to feast your eyes on is easily the initial landing of Martians, taking place in the desert just outside Pahrump, Nevada.

Every single hue of the earth’s botched welcoming committee is tailored to perfection, from the olive drab green of the army equipment to the brilliant orange hues of the arid Nevada landscape. The gunmetal gray of the aliens’ daunting craft sits in cold melt against the colorful bleachers and rows of hippies waiting to welcome the extraterrestrial invaders, too. Although it is not one of Tim BurtonThe most appreciated scene, the detail of the set is proven by the impressive tracking shot of Jack Black’s soldier character flailing through the chaos.