As the main man himself says, the juice is back. Warner Bros. has finally dropped the first trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and it looks like there’s going to be more practical effects than CGI this time around. Michael Keaton is back as Beetlejuice along with Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, Catherine O’Hara as Delia Deetz, Wynona Rider as Lydia, and the talents of Willem DaFoe, Justin Theroux, and Monica Bellucci.
The story sees three generations of Deetz come back to the house at Winter River after a family tragedy forces the reunion. Astrid is Lydia’s daughter and her rebellious streak will drop her on a portal to the afterlife that kicks off another family ordeal with the iconic raspy voiced demon. Cue the mayhem and the obligatory dance number (which gets hinted at in the trailer).
While there’s a few scenes that are clearly put together by heavy CGI work, there is a surprising amount of practical effects on display, especially in the make-up department. Beetlejuice looks every bit as playful and sarcastic in his stripped black and white suit as he did in the original movie. Other familiar ghosts, demons, and phantoms that are back for part 2 also look like they’ve transferred over without the now standard computer-generated treatment other long awaited franchise sequels and remakes have gotten (like every live-action update of classic Disney animation).
There’s a brief glimpse of the completely bonkers sandworm that Beetlejuice is scared of in the first movie, but it’s not enough of a look to confirm if it’s entirely CGI or if there are some practical details in it. Odds are they went the way of the computer, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
The new faces in the cast certainly look like they belong in world of Beetlejuice, especially Bellucci’s character. There’s a Frankenstein’s Bride feel about her that makes her antagonistic role carry considerable weight. It also looks like the movie will spend a lot of time in the afterlife’s office space that was such a boon to the original’s story, specifically in terms of how much worldbuilding director Tim Burton got out of it. The screenplay was penned by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar who recently worked with Burton on the Netflix Wednesday series, from a story by Gough & Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is slated for a September 5th release, so expect to see a few more trailers in the coming months. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the story and what Beetlejuice hopes to get out of the Deetz family this time around. What we do now is that there’s a clear attempt to capture some of the same weirdness of the original, but not to the point of being a complete retread of it. That right there is enough to say the demon’s name three more times again this coming September.
