Director: Tim Burton

Tim Burton trained as an animator at Disney and hated it, which is roughly the origin story his entire filmography keeps retelling. The recurring figure is an outsider with strange hands and stranger hair who is misunderstood by a pastel suburb, and Edward Scissorhands states it so plainly that the later films mostly just vary the costume.

The visual signature is German Expressionism filtered through Halloween: tilted architecture, spiral patterns, high contrast and a palette that runs black, white and one saturated accent. Beetlejuice, Batman, Sleepy Hollow and Corpse Bride all sit inside that grammar, and his work with Danny Elfman on nearly every score reinforces it.

The criticism is that the aesthetic hardened into a brand and the later studio work coasts on it. That is fair for some titles and unfair for Ed Wood, which is warm, generous and among his best.