Edward Scissorhands



"The story of an uncommonly gentle man."

To paraphrase Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas, of all the Tim Burton movies in the world, this is the Tim Burtoniest. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

This 1990 film was Burton's first after the mega-success that was Batman, and with the rather free hand he was given, he decided to shoot for the moon with a serio-comic Fairy Tale. He came up with the concept and Caroline Thompson handled the screenplay.

The youthful hero (Johnny Depp) is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a sort of android. His creator, a lonely inventor (Vincent Price, in what was his final film appearance), built him from scratch with the assembly-line machinery in his castle, until he finally almost completely resembles a human being - however, he dies just before completing his project by giving him hands. Edward is left alone with the scissor-and-shear limbs he already has. He shyly, quietly keeps to himself, passing the time by tending the garden (in particular, sculpting the bushes into whimsical images) until one day, an Avon lady comes calling. You see, while the castle and its residents are straight out of Gothic fantasy, the town at the foot of the hill it stands upon is a 1950s-60s pastel suburbia. Realizing he is friendly and mostly harmless (as he understands the dangers his blades pose) the Avon lady, Peg Boggs, compassionately decides to take him to live with her family.

At first, Edward is welcomed by the community and he is quite happy to be of help to others; in particular, his talent for yard decoration progresses to dog grooming and eventually hairstyling. He's so fascinatingly alien that a local tart, Joyce, even tries to seduce him. Ironically, he falls in love with Peg's teenaged daughter Kim (Winona Ryder), one of the few who isn't immediately enamored with him. Of course, that's partially because she already has a boyfriend, the Jerk Jock Jim (Anthony Michael Hall). He decides to take advantage of her love for him to convince her to take advantage of Edward's innocent kindness, so he will help them commit a burglary. The consequences of this start a chain of events that will lead to a most Bittersweet Ending.

While only a modest success at the time, in part because of the strange premise and perhaps because Home Alone effectively commandeered the holiday movie season that year (both were 20th Century Fox releases, as it happened), it's since gained a large fanbase, and turned out to be the first of seven (so far) collaborations between Burton and Depp. In 2005 it was adapted into a ballet by British choreographer Matthew Bourne.

This film contains examples of:
"Kim: Hold me. Edward: I can't."
 * Adaptation Expansion: The ballet adds a lot of characters to the neighborhood that weren't in the movie, and it gives Esmeralda a husband and two children.
 * Ambiguous Disorder: Edward is speculated as being a metaphor for autism and related diseases. One particularly notable thing is the way the film portrays people's reactions to him. While one might see the fascination most of the neighborhood has with him as being parodic of the stereotype of 1950s suburbanites being closed-minded, it's perfectly apt considering the timeframe when the movie came out. In the post-Rain Man world of the late-80s and early 90s there was widespread interest in the savant abilities possessed by some autistics.
 * Anachronism Stew: The whole town seems like some sort of 50's-60's suburban fairy tale, but Peg drives a 70's Dodge, and Jim mentions his father getting a new CD player.
 * Not to mention the gothic castle atop the hill. Word of God says that these contrasts were done on purpose, so the seemingly idyllic 1950's neighbourhood Edward is brought into has a hidden dark side.
 * Artificial Human: Edward, of course, but he is more of a homunculus than a robot or golem.
 * Ascended Extra: Esmeralda has a slightly bigger role in the ballet. Instead of being a reclusive neighborhood crazy, she's the wife of the local preacher, Reverend Judas Evercreech, and she has two children (Gabriel and Marilyn-Ann Evercreech, a pair of stereotypical goths who hang out with Kim and her friends). Though she's just as nuts as in the movie, she's not as reclusive, and is seen mingling with the women of the neighborhood a lot more.
 * Auteur License: Burton exercises his for the first time...and certainly not the last.
 * Author Appeal: Many of Burton's favorites show up: strange hands, dogs, German Expressionism, Vincent Price, snow...heck, the hero looks like him!
 * Beast and Beauty: Edward and Kim. Played with in that Edward's personality is more akin to that of a Gentle Giant, and he isn't so much ugly as odd in comparison to the other characters,.
 * Berserk Button: Towards the climax . It also counts as Beware the Nice Ones.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * Blood Splattered White Dress: Kim's lovely white dress ends up spattered with  blood.
 * Cannot Spit It Out: Many people seem to know a doctor who could help him get real hands, but they never seem to actually give the information of who or where.
 * Blessed with Suck / Cursed with Awesome: Guess who.
 * Cassandra Truth: Subverted. Esmeralda, a fanatical fundamentalist Christian, believes Edward is evil and tries to convince her neighbors of this, but no one takes her seriously. Once Edward has been arrested for the burglary, thus changing their opinion of him, she's able to say she told them so. The subversion is that the audience knows all along Edward isn't evil.
 * Chekhov's Gun: Edward's ability to pick locks with his blades.
 * Cherubic Choir: The score is arguably the modern popularizer of this trope, using it for both optimistic and creepy effects.
 * Clingy Costume: Both in-movie and on set. The leather stifled Johnny Depp so much in the Florida heat, that when he did the scene where Edward runs back to the mansion, he collapsed from heat stroke.
 * Completely Missing the Point: 20th Century Fox would have preferred Tom Cruise, a much bigger star at the time, as Edward, but Cruise felt the role was insufficiently masculine and wanted the ending changed to a Happily Ever After one in which Edward got normal hands. Understandably, the filmmakers were not willing to make these changes.
 * Also, this movie is often played as Halloween-fare, despite it being a tearjerker Christmas movie. Just because it's Tim Burton doesn't make it Halloween-themed. Part of this association may be because of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is not only a Christmas movie but a Halloween one as well.
 * Dark Is Not Evil
 * Dreaming of a White Christmas: Averted and then played with. There's no snow at all in this town and Bill Boggs staples fake snow on the rooftop of their house at one point. However, Edward essentially brings this to Kim when he carves the ice angel,.
 * DVD Commentary: Two - One with Burton, and one with Danny Elfman that combines this with an isolated music track.
 * Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Edward
 * Elephant in the Living Room: Almost completely averted for everyone who is introduced to Edward. People are either fascinated with Edward's hands or perceive it as just a very minor quirk. Bad first impression notwithstanding, Kim is the only one who feels awkward after being formally introduced to him.
 * Enforced Method Acting: Being rather frail of health at this point, Vincent Price fainted under the hot studio lights in the scene where he dies. Tim Burton reportedly kept the shot of him on the floor in the final movie.
 * Everytown, America: Save for the castle on the hill, the town is a throwback to 1950s suburbia.
 * Fairy Tale: A throwback to the pre-Disneyfication era, at that.
 * Fetish:Edward is heavily viewed a some sort of sex machine by the women of the street.
 * First Law of Tragicomedies: The first half is mostly comic, an Affectionate Parody of suburbia. The humor gradually disappears as Edward's situation deteriorates. Even the soundtrack album acknowledges this by dividing the tracks between two "acts", one with the upbeat material Edward Meets the World, the second the bittersweet and tragic stuff Poor Edward!.
 * Flash Back : Edward's life before Peg found him is gradually revealed this way.
 * Framing Device: The film is framed as an old woman telling her granddaughter this story.
 * Freaky Is Cool: Used in-story: At first, Edward and his talents are warmly welcomed by most of the neighborhood because they're refreshingly unusual.
 * Genre Blind: A question: if you're an Avon representative and see a big, ominous-looking house on the top of a random mountain, and the sky over it looks overcast, and the inside is empty and dusty, do you go in? 'Cause that's what Peg does in the beginning! Nothing bad comes of it, but if this were the case in a horror movie, she'd be Too Dumb to Live.
 * Good Scars, Evil Scars/Scars Are Forever : Edward has many small scars on his face, due to his own hands and having no one to tend to him after the Inventor's death. The latter trope is played with: one of the first things Peg does when she meets him and realizes he's friendly is tend to them so they won't get infected. She later uses makeup -- she is an Avon lady after all -- to help conceal them to an extent, as well as to counteract his pale skin.
 * The Grotesque: Edward might be the most famous modern example of this trope.
 * It Got Worse:
 * Gossipy Hens: The women in town can't help themselves from gossiping about Edward.
 * Hold Me: One of the most famous lines.

"Kim: Then why did you do it? Edward: Because you asked me to."
 * Innocent Inaccurate: Edward - who is himself apparently immortal - doesn't understand what's happened to his 'father.' When Peg inquires about him, Edward replies simply, "He didn't wake up."
 * There's also the scene following Joyce's attempted seduction in which he pleasantly tells the family that she took him into the back room "and took off all her clothes."
 * Note that none of the family seems particularly surprised by this revelation, perhaps reinforcing this part of Edward's character.
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Variation, when Kim learns Edward knew whose house he was robbing, when he seemed to have been tricked into thinking they were retrieving stolen goods.


 * In a more platonic sense,
 * Jerk Jock: Jim is an especially nasty one.
 * Laser-Guided Karma: Esmeralda spends the entire movie accusing Edward of being a satanic creature. When Edward gets pissed one of the things he does is re-trim her hedges to resemble a devil staring at her window.
 * Looks Like Cesare: Edward. Very, very much.
 * Love Triangle: Kim, Edward, and Jim.
 * Kick the Dog: A literal version! It's easy to miss, but when Joyce is chatting with Edward in her garden and her dog is continously yapping over their conversation, she casually back kicks it to shut it up.
 * Mad Scientist: Subverted with the Inventor, aptly described by online critic MaryAnn Johanson as "perhaps the first kindly mad scientist".
 * Misapplied Phlebotinum: You'd think a guy with scissors for hands would do something with his hair...
 * No Name Given: Edward's "father."
 * Nosy Neighbor: All of them.
 * One-Scene Wonder: Though he was in a few scenes, his screen time was still short, but Vincent Price as the inventor just about steals the film from Johnny Depp.
 * Only Sane Man: Kim is more or less this throughout the movie; for the first half she's the only one that sees Edward's condition as odd (which, in reality, it would be), and for the second half she's the only one who doesn't perceive Edward as a malicious man.
 * The cop who helps Edward and Kim could count too.
 * Kim's friend at dinner who won't accept the roast because Edward "...used his hands. I don't think it's sanitary." She's got a point - his clippers have trimmed bushes and hair and are only cleaned with oil out of the garage. No one else at the table seems to mind.
 * Pinocchio Syndrome: Edward's odd hands mean he is unable to touch others physically, which becomes a problem when he falls for Kim. The film suggests there are ways he could gain ordinary hands, but that never comes to pass. Ultimately, it matters more to him that she understands and reciprocates his love.
 * Playing Against Type: Johnny Depp -- then best known for 21 Jump Street -- as Edward, and the usually nerdy Anthony Michael Hall as Jim.
 * Which is kind of funny, since Depp's close involvement with Burton over recent years has made him famous for this type of role as well.
 * Please Wake Up: Edward tells Peg, when asked about his father, "He didn't wake up."
 * The Quiet One: Edward only speaks 169 words throughout the entire film!
 * Quirky Town: And how! Could qualify as a humorous Schizo-Tech/Decade Dissonance setting; while few go near it, and most believe it to be haunted, apparently no one minds the sheer presence of the castle on the hill.
 * Recycled Trailer Music: Danny Elfman's much-recycled/imitated music is one of several scores that provided this trope with its name.
 * Ridiculously Human Robot: Edward can eat, bleed, and even fall in love. This despite the fact he's basically the final iteration of a line of machines originally designed to make cookies. Except he is more like a homunculus than a robot.
 * Snow Means Love: The ice angel sequence -.
 * Which makes the ending even more of a Tear Jerker when you realize that
 * Stan Winston: The real man who gave Johnny Depp his articulate scissorhands and doll-like appearance.
 * Too Good for This Sinful Earth: The artificial being variant,
 * Torches and Pitchforks: The mob doesn't have these items specifically, but as Burton notes on the DVD commentary, they fit this trope otherwise.
 * Trailers Always Spoil: The trailers gave virtually the whole story away. This may have been to make sure people understood this wasn't a horror movie, but a tragicomic fantasy.
 * Travelling Salesman Montage: Peg repeatedly strikes out while trying to sell Avon products to her neighbors. After having yet another door shut in her face, she gets the idea to drop by the creepy castle on the hill.
 * Truly Single Parent: The unnamed scientist who creates Edward.
 * Twisted Christmas: The climax takes place on the night of a Christmas party.
 * Ugly Hero, Good-Looking Villain: Edward and Jim.
 * Somewhat debatable, plenty of people find Depp more attractive, even with makeup so he Looks Like Cesare.
 * Unusual Eyebrows: Edward doesn't really have any.
 * Woman Scorned: Joyce spreads nasty rumors about Edward after he rejects her attempt at seduction.