Friday, October 28, 2011

First Look at "Frankenweenie"

Entertainment Weekly provides the very first official look at Frankenweenie, in glorious black and white!







In the article, Tim Burton also spoke fondly of a childhood dog, and how it might have influenced his original short film and its new feature-length update.

“It’s such an unconditional relationship,” Burton recalls. “A lot of kids have that experience – I certainly had that experience with a first pet. You’ll probably never have it again in your life in that way, it’s so pure and memorable.”

“His name was Pepe — we lived in a Spanish neighborhood,” Burton recalls. “Our dog had this thing called distemper, and wasn’t supposed to live more than a couple of years. He lived much longer than that, which kind of fed into this Frankenstein mythology as well.”

What kind of dog was Pepe? “It was a mix, kind of a mutt, with a bit of terrier, and a bit of something else,” Burton says. “I don’t know what it was. It was kind of a mixture.”

Sparky, the main character of the film, may look a bit freakish once he gets his stitches, but the story is more simple and heartfelt than outlandishly macabre. “It just tries to keep that idea of a very, simple pure relationship,” Burton says. What’s more pure than the story of a kid and his first pet?

“Mix that with the Frankenstein myth,” Burton adds with a chuckle, “and it causes problems.” But the big beating heart in the story (apart from the re-animated one inside Frankenweenie’s chest) is the sad fact that we all outlive those four-legged pals from our childhood, and goodbye can be a painful thing. The idea of bringing a lost friend back to life? “It has its good side and repercussions,” Burton says. “Ultimately, we try to go with the slightly more positive aspects of keeping that [boy-and-his-dog] relationship going.”

2 comments:

Jack said...

whoa, very cool. can't wait to see what the animation looks like. its awesome Tim actually got to do it in black and white.

deadhearts666 said...

I'm just.....speechless.