Warning: spoilers ahead for Beetlejuice BeetlejuiceMichael Keaton once again donned the striped suit of one of his most iconic characters in Beetlejuice BeetlejuiceWhich further explores the character’s backstory without fully revealing his real name. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Starring some familiar frequent Tim Burton collaborators, the story picks up with the Deetz family many years after the original ended. Keaton’s mischievous poltergeist returned to cause significantly more chaos, and provided more details about what makes Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
One of the key details that the original never addressed is the origins of Beetlejuice, or Betelgeuse’s name. Although he is known as “Beetlejuice” in popular culture, there is an alternate spelling featured on multiple occasions in the original movie. The 2024 sequel never reveals what his real name in life was, but it gives much more insight into Beetlejuice’s life, death and afterlife before the events of the original Beetlejuice.
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Betelgeuse is technically the correct name of Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice character
This is how one writes his name
While Michael Keaton’s self-proclaimed bio-exorcist is known in popular culture as “Beetlejuice,” that’s not the character’s real name. As seen on his tombstone in Adam Maitland’s Model City, The real name of the poltergeist is “Betelgeuse”. When written out. That spelling is still pronounced as “beetlejuice”, and given the importance of the name’s name, it makes sense that the special spelling is simplified.
Alec Baldwin’s Adam Maitland even pronounces it wrong at first, dismissing it as one of the three mentions that summon him from the afterlife. The simpler pronunciation, along with the anglicized spelling, Made the movie more digestible for the English-speaking audience. From a marketing perspective, the spelling of “Betelgeuse” can be pronounced several ways phonetically, so simplifying it into the sillier, easier to pronounce “Betlejuice” was a benefit in that regard, even if it wasn’t actually correct.
“Betelgeuse” is the name of the brightest star in the night sky – what it means for Michael Keaton’s character
The name could still carry a hidden meaning
Per the Encyclopedia BrittanicaBetelgeuse is a red supergiant star that is the second-brightest star in the famous Orion constellation. The name itself is Derived from an Arabic term meaning “the giant’s shoulder”which coincides with its position in the Orion constellation. It is considered one of the brightest stars in the night sky from Earth’s point of view. As just a small but significant part of a larger whole, it has been theorized that the star may actually be a clue to how and why Betelgeuse got its name.
The star Betelgeuse is part of a larger constellation, and the idea was that Ghostly Betelgeuse may therefore be part of a larger whole. Betelgeuse may be no more than the tip of the spear when it comes to supernatural chaos and its particular brand of “bio-exorcism.” Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Didn’t confirm that was the case, although to be fair the sequel didn’t dig into Betelgeuse’s name because there were bigger concerns about his character – namely his vengeful ex-wife.
Beetlejuice 2 doesn’t reveal Betelgeuse’s real name, but it does reveal his backstory
The 2024 sequel shows who Betelgeuse was and how he died
One of the most entertaining sequences of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is his investigation of Betelgeuse’s history on Earth. As the sequel reveals, Betelgeuse was a grave robber during the 14th century during the wrath of the Black Death, the bubonic plague that killed millions of Europeans. He met his wife at Robben’s body, and as it turns out, their marriage was short-lived; She actually married him as a means to gain supernatural power, and she married him on the night they were married to sacrifice him.
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She had revealed her plan to him before, because the poison was slow enough for him to take revenge and chop her down before he died himself. Rather than travel to the great beyond or be trapped on Earth as a ghost, Betelgeuse became a civil servant, working in the bureaucracy of the afterlife and the netherworld before branching out to create his own independent bio-exorcism organization. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Never touched on what Betelgeuse’s real name might be, but with the success of the sequel, revealing it in a third movie certainly seems possible.
Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica