Burton conceivedEdward Scissorhands from his childhood upbringing in suburbanBurbank, California. Duringpre-production ofBeetlejuice, Thompson was hired to adapt Burton's story into a screenplay, and the film began development at20th Century Fox afterWarner Bros. declined.Edward Scissorhands was thenfast-tracked after Burton's critical and financial success withBatman. The film also marks the fourth collaboration between Burton andfilm score composerDanny Elfman, and was Vincent Price's last film role to be released in his lifetime.
One snowy evening, an elderly woman tells her granddaughter the story of a young man named Edward, who has scissor blades for hands.
Many years earlier, Peg Boggs, a door-to-doorAvon saleswoman, drives to the decrepitGothic mansion where Edward lives, perched on a hill overlooking Peg's stereotypically pastel suburban neighborhood. The creation of an old inventor, Edward is an ageless humanoid. The inventor homeschooled Edward but died from a heart attack before giving Edward hands, leaving him unfinished. Peg finds Edward alone and offers to take him to her home. She introduces Edward to her husband, Bill, their young son, Kevin, and their teenage daughter, Kim. Edward falls in love with Kim. As their neighbors are curious about the new houseguest, the Boggses throw a neighborhood barbecue welcoming him. Most of the neighbors are fascinated by Edward and befriend him, except for the eccentricreligious fanatic Esmeralda and Kim's supercilious boyfriend, Jim.
Edward repays the neighborhood for their kindness by trimming their hedges intotopiaries, progressing to grooming dogs and later styling the hair of the neighborhood women. One of the neighbors, Joyce, offers to help Edward open a hair salon. While scouting a location, Joyce attempts to seduce him but scares him away. Joyce lies to the neighborhood women that Edward forced himself on her, reducing their trust in him. Edward's dream of opening the salon is ruined when the bank refuses him a loan.
Jealous of Kim's attraction to Edward, Jim takes advantage of his naivety by asking him to pick the lock on his parents' home so he can steal his father's electronic goods and sell them to buy a van. Edward agrees, but when he picks the lock and enters the house, a burglar alarm is triggered and walls come down, trapping him inside. Jim flees, and Edward is arrested. The police determine that a lifetime of isolation has left Edward without any common sense or morality; thus, he cannot be criminally charged. Edward nevertheless takes responsibility for the robbery, telling Kim that he did it because she asked him to. Consequently, he is shunned by the entire neighborhood except for the Boggs family.
AtChristmas, Edward carves an ice sculpture modeled after Kim; the ice shavings are thrown into the air and fall like snow, something that has never happened before in the town. Kim dances in the snowfall. Jim arrives suddenly, calling out to Edward, surprising him and causing him to accidentally cut Kim's hand. Jim accuses Edward of intentionally harming her, but Kim, fed up with Jim's jealous behavior towards Edward, breaks up with him. Meanwhile, Edward flees.
Kim's parents go to find Edward while she stays behind in case he returns. Edward returns, finding Kim there. She asks him to hold her and arranges his scissor hands so they can embrace. Jim's drunken friend drives to Kim's house and nearly runs over Kim's younger brother, Kevin, but Edward pushes Kevin to safety while inadvertently cutting him. Witnesses accuse Edward of attacking Kevin. When Jim assaults him, Edward defends himself and injures Jim's arm before fleeing back to the inventor's mansion on the hill.
Kim goes to find Edward. Jim obtains a gun, follows her, and shoots at Edward before grabbing a fire poker and beating him. Edward refuses to fight back until he sees Jim strike Kim as she attempts to intervene. Enraged, Edward stabs Jim in the stomach and pushes him from a window of the mansion to his death. Kim confesses her love to Edward and kisses him as they accept that their love can never be fulfilled. As the neighbors gather, Kim convinces them that Jim and Edward killed each other.
The elderly woman, revealing herself to be Kim, finishes telling her granddaughter the story and says that she never saw Edward again, hoping that by staying away he would remember her as she was in her youth. She believes he is still alive because it would not be snowing without him. Edward is then seen carving ice sculptures of his experiences with Kim, with shavings of ice floating down from the mansion as snow in the wind. The elderly Kim, commenting on the snow, concludes, "Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it."
The genesis ofEdward Scissorhands came from a drawing by then-teenaged director Tim Burton, which reflected his feelings of isolation and being unable to communicate to people around him in suburban Burbank. The drawing depicted a thin, solemn man with long, sharp blades for fingers. Burton stated that he was often alone and had trouble retaining friendships. "I get the feeling people just got this urge to want to leave me alone for some reason, I don't know exactly why." Duringpre-production ofBeetlejuice, Burton hired Caroline Thompson, then a young novelist, to write theEdward Scissorhands screenplay as aspec script. Burton was impressed with her short novel,First Born, which was "about anabortion that came back to life". Burton feltFirst Born had the same psychological elements he wanted to showcase inEdward Scissorhands.[6] "Every detail was so important to Tim because it was so personal", Thompson remarked.[7] She wroteScissorhands as a "love poem" to Burton, stating "He is the most articulate person I know but I couldn't tell you a single complete sentence he has ever said".[8]
Shortly after Thompson's hiring, Burton began to developEdward Scissorhands at Warner Bros., with whom he worked onPee-wee's Big Adventure,Beetlejuice, andBatman. However, within a couple of months, Warner Bros. sold thefilm rights to20th Century Fox.[9] Fox agreed to finance Thompson's screenplay while giving Burton complete creative control. At the time, the budget was projected to be around $8–9 million.[10] When writing the storyline, Burton and Thompson were influenced byUniversal Horror films, such asThe Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923),The Phantom of the Opera (1925),Frankenstein (1931), andCreature from the Black Lagoon (1954), as well asKing Kong (1933) and variousfairy tales. Burton originally wanted to makeScissorhands as amusical, feeling "it seemed big and operatic to me", but later dropped the idea.[11] Following the enormous success ofBatman, Burton arrived to the status of being anA-list director. He had the opportunity to do any film he wanted, but rather thanfast track Warner Bros.' choices forBatman Returns[6] orBeetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, Burton opted to makeEdward Scissorhands for Fox.[12]
AlthoughWinona Ryder was the first cast member attached to the script,[11]Dianne Wiest was the first to sign on. "Dianne, in particular, was wonderful", Burton said. "She was the first actress to read the script, supported it completely and, because she is so respected, once she had given it her stamp of approval, others soon got interested".[13] When it came to casting the lead role of Edward, several actors were considered;[14] Fox was insistent on having Burton meet withTom Cruise. "He certainly wasn't my ideal, but I talked to him", Burton remembered. "He was interesting, but I think it worked out for the best. A lot of questions came up".[13] Cruise asked for a "happier" ending.[15][16]Gary Oldman was on Burton's shortlist for the part, but he turned it down;[11][17][18] Oldman didn't understand the script and found the story to be absurd, but understood it after watching "literally two minutes" of the completed film.[19][20]Jim Carrey was also considered for the role, while Thompson favoredJohn Cusack.[14] Elsewhere,Tom Hanks,William Hurt,Robert Downey Jr. and musicianMichael Jackson expressed interest,[11][21] although Burton did not converse with Jackson.[14]
Though Burton was unfamiliar withJohnny Depp's then-popular performance in21 Jump Street, he had always been Burton's first choice.[13] At the time of his casting, Depp was seeking to break out of theteen idol status which his performance in21 Jump Street had afforded him. When he was sent the script, Depp immediately found personal and emotional connections with the story.[22] In preparation for the role, Depp watched manyCharlie Chaplin films to study the idea of creating sympathy without dialogue.[23] Foxstudio executives were so worried about Edward's image, that they tried to keep pictures of Depp in full costume under wraps until release of the film.[24] Burton approached Ryder for the role of Kim Boggs based on their positive working experience inBeetlejuice.[13]Drew Barrymore previously auditioned for the role.[25]Crispin Glover auditioned for the role of Jim beforeAnthony Michael Hall was cast.[10]
Kathy Baker saw her part of Joyce, the neighbor who tries to seduce Edward, as a perfect chance to break into comedy.[11]Alan Arkin says when he first read the script, he was "a bit baffled. Nothing really made sense to me until I saw the sets. Burton's visual imagination is extraordinary".[11] The role of The Inventor was written specifically forVincent Price, and would ultimately be his final feature film role. Burton commonly watched Price's films as a child, and, after completingVincent, the two became good friends.[citation needed]Robert Oliveri was cast as Kevin, Kim's younger brother.
Burbank, California was considered as a possible location for thesuburban neighborhoods, but Burton believed the city had become too altered since his childhood[13] so theTampa Bay Area ofFlorida, including the town ofLutz, on Tinsmith Circle inside the Carpenter's Run subdivision, and the Southgate Shopping Center ofLakeland was chosen for a three-monthshooting schedule.[7] The production crew found, in the words of theproduction designerBo Welch, "a kind of generic, plain-wrap suburb, which we made even more characterless by painting all the houses in faded pastels, and reducing the window sizes to make it look a little more paranoid."[26] The key element to unify the look of the neighborhood was Welch's decision to repaint each of the houses in one of four colors, which he described as "sea-foam green, dirty flesh, butter, and dirty blue".[27] Thefacade of theGothic mansion was built just outsideDade City. The majority of filming took place in Lutz between March 26 and July 19, 1990.[28] FilmingEdward Scissorhands created hundreds of (temporary) jobs and injected over $4 million into the Tampa Bay economy.[29] Production then moved to a Fox Studiossound stage inCentury City, California, where interiors of the mansion were filmed.[26]
To create Edward's scissor hands, Burton employedStan Winston, who would later design thePenguin'sprosthetic makeup inBatman Returns.[30] Depp's wardrobe andprosthetic makeup took one hour and 45 minutes to apply.[31] The gianttopiaries that Edward creates in the film were made by wrapping metal skeletons in chicken wire, then weaving in thousands of small plastic plant sprigs.[32]Rick Heinrichs worked as one of theart directors.
Edward Scissorhands is the fourth feature film collaboration between directorTim Burton and composerDanny Elfman. The orchestra consisted of 79 musicians.[33] Elfman citesScissorhands as epitomizing his most personal and favorite work. In addition to Elfman's music, threeTom Jones songs also appear: "It's Not Unusual", "Delilah" and "With These Hands". "It's Not Unusual" would later be used inMars Attacks! (1996), another film of Burton's with music composed by Elfman.[34]
Burton acknowledged that the main themes ofEdward Scissorhands deal with self-discovery and isolation. Edward is found living alone in the attic of aGothic castle, a setting that is also used for main characters in Burton'sBeetlejuice,Batman,Batman Returns, andThe Nightmare Before Christmas.Edward Scissorhandsclimaxes much likeJames Whale'sFrankenstein and Burton's ownFrankenweenie. A mob confronts the "evil creature", in this case, Edward, at his castle. With Edward unable to consummate his love for Kim because of his appearance, the film can also be seen as being influenced byBeauty and the Beast.Edward Scissorhands is afairy tale book-ended by a prologue and an epilogue featuring Kim Boggs as an old woman telling her granddaughter the story,[30] augmenting theGerman Expressionism andGothic fiction archetypes.[35]
Burton explained that his depiction of suburbia is "not a bad place. It's a weird place. I tried to walk the fine line of making it funny and strange without it being judgmental. It's a place where there's a lot of integrity."[27] Kim leaves herjock boyfriend (Jim) to be with Edward, an event that many have postulated as Burton's revenge against jocks he encountered as a teenager in suburbanBurbank, California. Jim is subsequently killed, a scene that shocked a number of observers who felt the whole tone of the film had been radically altered. Burton referred to this scene as a "high school fantasy".[30]
Test screenings for the film were encouraging for20th Century Fox.Joe Roth, then president of the company, considered marketingEdward Scissorhands on the scale of "anE.T.-sizedblockbuster," but Roth decided not to aggressively promote the film in that direction. "We have to let it find its place. We want to be careful not to hype the movie out of the universe," he reasoned.[36]Edward Scissorhands had itslimited release in the United States on December 7, 1990. Thewide release came on December 14, and the film earned $6,325,249 in its opening weekend in 1,372 theaters.Edward Scissorhands eventually grossed $56,362,352 in North America, and a further $29,661,653 outside North America, coming to a worldwide total of $86.02 million. With a budget of $20 million, the film is considered a box office success.[4]The New York Times wrote "the chemistry between Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder, who were together in real life at the time (1989–1993), gave the filmteen idol potential, drawing younger audiences."[31]
Edward Scissorhands received acclaim from critics and audiences. On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 91% of 69 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "The first collaboration between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton,Edward Scissorhands is a magical modern fairy tale with gothic overtones and a sweet center."[37]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[38]CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film an "A−" grade.[39]
Peter Travers ofRolling Stone praised the piece by stating, "Burton's richly entertaining update of theFrankenstein story is the year's most comic, romantic and haunting film fantasy." He continued by praising Depp's performance, stating, "Depp artfully expresses the fierce longing in gentle Edward; it's a terrific performance" and the "engulfing score" from Danny Elfman.[40] Amy Dawes ofVariety spoke highly of the film, "Director [Burton] takes a character as wildly unlikely as a boy whose arms end in pruning shears, and makes him the center of a delightful and delicate comic fable."[41]
Marc Lee ofThe Daily Telegraph scored the film five out of five stars, writing, "Burton's modern fairytale has an almost palpably personal feel: it is told gently, subtly and with infinite sympathy for an outsider who charms the locals but then inadvertently arouses their baser instincts." He also praised Depp as being "sensational in the lead role, summoning anxiety, melancholy and innocence with heartbreaking conviction. And it's all in the eyes: his dialogue is cut-to-the-bone minimal."[42]
The Washington Post'sDesson Thomson wrote, "Depp is perfectly cast, Burton builds a surrealistically funny cul-de-sac world, and there are some very funny performances from grownups Dianne Wiest, Kathy Baker and Alan Arkin."[43] Rita Kempley, also writing forThe Washington Post, praised the film: "Enchantment on the cutting edge, a dark yet heartfelt portrait of the artist as a young mannequin." She too praised Depp's performance in stating, "... nicely cast, brings the eloquence of the silent era to this part of few words, saying it all through bright black eyes and the tremulous care with which he holds his horror-movie hands.[44]
Owen Gleiberman, writing forEntertainment Weekly, gave the film an "A−" rating, commending Elfman's score and calling the character of Edward "Burton's surreal portrait of himself as an artist: a wounded child converting his private darkness into outlandish pop visions", and "Burton's purest achievement as a director so far." Of Depp he wrote, "Depp may not be doing that much acting beneath his neo-Kabuki makeup, but what he does is tremulous and affecting."[45]
Janet Maslin ofThe New York Times wrote, "Mr. Burton invests awe-inspiring ingenuity into the process of reinventing something very small."[46]Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film a mixed review, awarding it two stars out of four and writing that "Burton has not yet found the storytelling and character-building strength to go along with his pictorial flair."[47]
Burton citesEdward Scissorhands as epitomizing his most personal work.[12] The film is also Burton's first collaboration with Depp andcinematographer Stefan Czapsky. In October 2008, theHallmark Channel purchased the television rights.[55]Metal bandMotionless in White have a song entitled "Scissorhands (The Last Snow)", with its lyrics written about the film in homage to its legacy and impact on thegothic subculture.[56] Additionally, metal bandIce Nine Kills wrote and performed the song "The World in My Hands" on their fifth studio album,The Silver Scream.[57]
In 2012, Depp reprised his role in theFamily Guy episode "Lois Comes Out of Her Shell"; in the cutaway, Edward takes up a babysitter job and promises to the parents to make sure the baby is handled with as much care and fragility as possible; within seconds of going into the nursery, he suddenly remerges, declaring "it's dead".[58]
An extinct lobster-like sea creature calledKootenichela deppi is named after Depp because of its scissor-like claws.[59]
From 2014 to 2015,IDW Publishing released anEdward Scissorhands comic book series which serves as a sequel and takes place several decades after the film. The series consists of ten issues which have been collected in two trade paperbacks. It was written byKate Leth with art by Drew Rausch.[60]
An ad for theCadillac Lyriq, an electric car with hands-free driving features, premiered duringSuper Bowl LV and is based on the film; it features Ryder reprising her role as Kim, now mother to Edward's son Edgar (played byTimothée Chalamet).[61]
In October 2024,Fortnite released a new character skin featuring Edward Scissorhands.[62]
Atheatrical dance adaptation by the British choreographerMatthew Bourne premiered atSadler's Wells Theatre in London in November 2005. After an 11-week season, the production toured the UK, Asia and the United States.[63] The British director Richard Crawford directed a stage adaptation of the Tim Burton film, which had its world premiere on June 25, 2010, at The Brooklyn Studio Lab and ended July 3.[64][11]
^Kempley, Rita (December 14, 1990)."'Edward Scissorhands'".The Washington Post.Archived from the original on October 8, 2017. RetrievedAugust 26, 2017.
