Beetlejuice (film)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** The only [[Wild Mass Guessing|Wild Mass Guess]] the same troper can come up with is that there must be some way for ghosts to make normal people see them, since Betelgeuse could always do so. Maybe Juno just assumed the Maitlands had already figured out how to make themselves visible.

** It isn't that people can't see ghosts, they ignore them as if they don't exist. Lydia doesn't ignore it so she can see them. Lydia even mentions this! Once they pulled their all too fun prank (they thought that would scare people) the members of the Deetz family now believed and were willing to see (notice how quick almost everyone else except the Deetzes are to dismiss it despite there being no real explanation for them to suddenly start dancing and singing then get attacked by their food). They only did the exorcism when they couldn't find them. I would assume however there is a way to make people notice them my guess is after the song and dance number the Deetzes at the very least could see them.

* Another element that [[Just Bugs Me]], though it's not really a problem with the movie, is that this troper always wanted to learn more about "Saturn" and the sandworms. Was it the real planet Saturn (seems pretty unlikely, with Saturn being a gas giant and all), or another dimension with the same name (since stepping out of the house takes them there, maybe it's a parallel ghost reality)? [[The Other Wiki]] says that in an earlier draft, it was called Titan rather than Saturn (which might explain the giant moon in the sky: that's probably Saturn itself), and that might still work, since Betelgeuse says "you've been to Saturn" (he didn't say they've been "on" Saturn, so maybe he meant the Saturn moons). The sandworms could apparently see and eat ghosts, which just adds to strangeness of it all. There's no way the movie could've gotten into the details without [[MST3K Mantra|bogging things down]], but there's so much mystery behind that plot element, and Saturn and its sandworms are just so weird and cool that I'd love to hear the writers talk more about what they had in mind.

** Saturn is clearly another part of [[Bleach|Hueco Mundo]] and the Sandworms are Hollows, which is why they eat ghosts(Wholes).

* It's nitpick time! After the Big B plays his commercial on the attic TV, Adam tries to pronounce his name and gets it wrong. Yay, humor. But the way he mispronounces it is "beetlegeiss", in essence. HOW?! Show me any word ''in any language'' where an "eu" diphthong makes a long I sound! At most, he should've messed up on the side of German, where "eu" gets pronounced as "oy". And going further, how is it that he got that wrong, but somehow "knew" the first E should be long? How many "average" people read a complex word for the first time and only mess up one bit of it?

** Such is the way of the Baldwin. It is far more enlightened and erudite than our own, to question a Baldwin in anyway is madness.

*** "Geuse" looks like "guise", which is a homophone for "guys", so he probably misread it as "guise" and mispronounced it (the character or the actor? I don't know) as "gice".

** AFAIK, Betelgeuse is pronounced "Beetlejuice".

** I've heard it pronounced "Betel-guys" by more than one person (it's a mistake, but a very common one), so saying "beetle-guys" isn't that much of a stretch.

** But "Betelgeuse" ''is'' the way you actually spell the red giant's name. (That or "Betelgeux", it's optional.) You'd think that an ''advertisement'' for Beetle Juice's services wouldn't be so hard to pronounce, since he needs people to say the name out loud, correctly, thrice. Perhaps he isn't aware of how much less of a well known term that star name is now compared to when he died, or maybe he just can't spell worth a fuck himself.

*** Right, so what I'm saying is that Beetlejuice can't write out his own name as it is actually spelled ("Beetlejuice") and thus is forced to write out a homonym ("Betelgeuse") in order to get people to say his name at all.

** The funny thing is that the confusion seems to be intentional on the part of the film-makers too: The opening credits actually say "and Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice", and the end credits say "Betelgeuse - Michael Keaton"!

* My problem was that the movie never makes it clear as to what Betelgeuse ''is''. He's apparently decaying and has the powers of a ghost, yet, when the sandworm crashes down on him, it has apparently killed him, because we next see him in the Waiting Room. So, can ghosts die again, or was he a living being? Is he the the star of the same name? Explain, movie!

 

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[[Category:Headscratchers]]

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