Fairy Tale Story With Modern Parallels

Tim Burton is a strange character, and he has a different sort of mind. But in that mind there is a lot of brilliance. He has brought us a lot of fantasy type movies and movies that make us just go "What was he thinking?". That's definitely not a bad thing as he has given us gems like A Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Big Fish, and Edward Scissorhands.

Edward Scissorhands is a story about a scientist (played by Vincent Price) who makes a boy but dies before he can put the boy's hands on him, so he still just has scissors for hands. Later an Avon lady comes to call on the house where the boy, Edward (played by Johnny Depp), lives. She sees that he is all by himself, so she brings him home with her to live with her family. They find that he is a very shy but talented boy. He can do many different things with his scissors that others can't, like do hedgework, cut hair on dogs and humans, and ice sculpt. But his scissorhands also make certain things for him very difficult, like eating and shaking hands. He is viewed as eccentric for a while, then he is viewed as an outsider and people want him to leave.

Edward Scissorhands is kind of parallel for me in my life. When I was younger, a family from Laos moved into our neighborhood. It was a small town with mostly white people. The town hadn't really had an Asian family in their midst before, and many people didn't know how to react. But after seeing Edward Scissorhands, I realized how this movie was similar to that. I got to know an Asian boy from the family who was the same age as me. Like Edward, he was eager to learn about all the things that were going on around him. He was fascinated with things that we took for granted. But he also brought in some culture to me that I had never experienced before like martial arts and other artwork that was native to him. To the few friends he had, he was a marvel. But to most of the town he was weird and an outsider. Sadly, the family left town after a few years, but the impression that he left on me was lifelong. Same thing kind of applies with Edward Scissorhands. He was a misunderstood outsider to everyone except those closest to him, and when he went back to the place where he came from, those closest to him were hurt.

I definitely recommend this movie to everyone. It's a comedy, but also a sort of tragic love story at the same time. But it's not too sappy to be labeled a chick flick. It's not a realistic story, but it's a story that shows us the morality of how we should treat others regardless of how different they are.

Edward Scissorhands [1990]

~ Once upon a time there was a man who had scissors for hands ...

He lived in a castle on a hill that looked down upon a small suburban town. An elderly inventor [Vincent Price] created the man, giving him all the body parts required of a human except hands, for the inventor died before he could finish his creation ...

Edward Scissorhands [Johnny Depp] lived alone in the castle for many years until one day someone raps hard at the door and in walks the local Avon Lady, Peg [Dianne Wiest]. Disheartened by the way Edward is living, she invites him to leave the damp and dismal castle and live with her family back in colorful suburbia ...

Here he settles in and befriends Peg's husband, Bill [Alan Arkin] and their son, Kevin. He quickly falls in love with their daughter, Kim [Winona Ryder]and astounds the neighborhood with his 'chopping talents' that range from topiary to haircutting. But it soon becomes obvious that his scissor-hands are deadly sharp ...

Throughout the film Edward is transformed from freak to celebrity and inevitably back to freak once more, as the townspeople - who are initially enchanted by his oddball talents - soon tire of him. Once trouble rears its ugly head - mainly in the shape of Kim's jealous boyfriend, Jim [Anthony Michael Hall] - Edward is rendered an outcast once more ...

The final confrontation aptly takes place one snowy Christmas Eve, a nice touch for this modern-day fairytale ~

What Tim Burton has created here is a modern-day Frankenstein, loved by a few but shunned by an angry mob, who inevitably fear and hate him. Like Mary Shelley's creation, Edward is the Other, an outsider who knows little about life in the real world and finds it equally hard to adapt to his new life and surroundings; he is extremely naive and vulnerable, imaginative yet misunderstood like many of the characters in Tim Burton's films [see Ed Wood].

For the film's setting, Burton offers two strikingly different locations - a stereotypical 1980s suburban village and a Gothic castle - which works perfectly when comparing the uninspiring and viciously petty suburbanites to the lonely gentle spirit that is Edward.

Ghost
BookFiends.

Edward Scissorhands ,a lasting fable.

As a fairly recent admirer of Johnny Depp's extensive abilities, I am endeavoring to build a collection of my favorites of his many fine films. I was busy with a career of my own when 21 Jump Street and all the attendant hoopla about his off-screen "performances" was outweighing some people's opinions of his artistic talent. In fact, when I mentioned one of his films to a friend in my own age range (senior) I was told he waould not watch Depp's work because he diapproved of his behavior. In recent years, it seems to me, that his offscreen life is certainly his own to live and he appears to be a serious family man.
Dismissing all of this, I find each of his films to be exceptional, with great depth of character delineation and with no need to capitalize on his striking personal charisma.
Edward Scissorhands certainly ignores his physical beauty and concentrates on his amazing artistic intelligence. The director, Tim Burton, has a wonderfully off-center way of observing and presenting a story to the viewer.
Enjoy this modern fairy tale and let it be the beginning of an exciting journey through the many characters created by a phenomenally gifted actor named Johnny Depp. You won't be sorry!