What do you think of when you think of a Tim Burton movie? His movies have always had a larger-than-life feeling, whether they depict evil Martians invading the Earth, the Caped Crusader defending Gotham, or two ghosts trying to haunt their house’s new residents. But in 1990, Tim Burton traded his extravagant aesthetic for what could be his smallest movie ever — and it’s definitely his most beautiful and underrated. It deserves to be a Christmas classic as much as The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Edward Scissorhands is probably so magical because it’s when Burton started working with the actor who would become his go-to star, Johnny Depp. In the movie, Depp plays Edward, a humanoid android created by a mysterious Inventor (Vincent Price) who slowly made him more and more human, but passed away before he was able to finish the hands, leaving Edward with just a combination of blades and scissors.
But when Avon saleslady Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest) discovers Edward, she decides to take him home to her suburban family, including her daughter Kim (Winona Ryder). Edward finds it difficult to communicate, but his hands allow him to create magnificent topiaries and, later, haircuts, which allow him to find a sense of purpose. But when he falls for Kim, their romance has a dark and deadly end.
This story is, above all else, a Christmas fairy tale. The movie begins with an old woman telling her granddaughter about a boy with scissors for hands, and by the end, we learn she was actually Kim all along (and this was two years before Titanic did a similar framing device.) But it’s also a Christmas story, ultimately ending with Edward making Kim an ice sculpture. In one of the most iconic scenes in the movie, the sculpting creates snow to fall, and Kim dances in it, as it had never snowed in the town before.
Edward and Kim’s love is doomed, but the movie ends with the hopeful message that he still survives and makes sculptures for her. “If he weren't up there now... I don't think it would be snowing,” the older Kim says. “Sometimes, you can still catch me dancing in it.”
Tim Burton is no stranger to a tragic romance — Corpse Bride is another underrated love story of his — but Edward Scissorhands so deftly balances the whimsy of the holiday season, the fragility of young love, the otherness that comes with young adulthood, and the morbidity of classic fairy tales that weren’t afraid to end with bloodshed.
Edward Scissorhands may not jump to mind as a Christmas movie, but it’s the perfect watch on those long December nights. It may veer wildly from suburban satire to Gothic melodrama, but where else could this story live but on a razor’s edge?
