For years there have been rumors about the potential for a Beetlejuice sequel, and for years director Tim Burton turned the idea down. There was, of course, the occasional leaked sequel idea, like Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) going to Hawaii, and other outlandish ideas for the Ghost with the Most. But finally, after years of back and forth, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has sandwormed its way into the hearts of fans everywhere and made its big debut. To make it even better, many of the original cast are back, and those who didn’t return were given a reasonable explanation for their absence. Adam (Alex Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) found a loophole in ghost logic and their souls were able to move on. (In real life, Geena Davis has said ghosts don’t age and therefore it wouldn’t make sense for her to return to the film.)
As for Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones), the patriarch of the Deetz family, his situation is a little more complicated. Technically, he’s still wandering around the movie (more on that later), but the actor who portrayed him in the original film is not in the sequel. This is because the actor was arrested in 2002 for possession of child sexual abuse material and soliciting a minor. He was sentenced to five years probation, counselling, and to be registered as a sex offender for the rest of his life. He has since been arrested twice for failing to update his status. Naturally, with the disgusting actions of Jones, he was not going to be anywhere near Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but because his character was such a prominent part of the first movie, Tim Burton had to find a creative way to work around it.
What Happened to Charles Deetz in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’?
In the beginning of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice we catch up with Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) who is now the host of a paranormal talk show called Ghost House. Mid-way through a segment she gets a series of frantic texts from her stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and rushes to meet with her to find out what’s going on. Delia then delivers the jaw-dropping news to Lydia. “Your father has left me.” She cries. To which a confused Lydia, naturally assumes she means her father is divorcing Delia. Delia takes offence to this, and corrects Lydia, saying that Charles has died. This is world-shattering news to Lydia, after all, it’s never easy to lose a loved one. But then Delia tells her how it happened, and we the audience get to see the death play out in a dramatized claymation recreation as Delia narrates.
Charles went on a bird-watching expedition, but the plane crashed into the ocean. He miraculously survived the crash and clung onto a piece of debris to avoid drowning, but just when he thought he was safe a shark came up and ate the upper half of his body. The stop motion sequence of Charles’s death is a call-back to Burton’s previous works, as explained by Miles Millar in an interview with Forbes.
“Charles’ death sequence in the script is stop-motion. We thought that would be a really fun call back to Tim’s stop-motion movies and a really interesting way to see that depth,”
This is what allows Charles to be a part of the movie still. His death is the inciting incident that brings everyone back to Winter River, specifically to the home where the initial Betelgeuse antics took place. Throughout the movie though, whenever we’re in the afterlife, we see Charles wandering around as he tries to navigate his way through. It’s hard to miss him, as he’s walking around with a shark-sized bite out of his torso, and it makes for some really hilarious moments, most notably when he and Delia reunite at the end and he sprays blood on her as she shows off her own fatal wounds. But as absurd as Charles’s death may seem, it’s actually deeply personal to Tim Burton.
Charles Deetz’s Death in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Is Actually Tim Burton’s Worst Nightmare
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice screenwriter Alfred Gough revealed that Charles’s death was inspired by Tim Burton’s own fears.
“The way Charles dies in that animated piece is Tim’s nightmare of dying. He literally pitched that:
‘My nightmare is, I’m in a plane crash, I survive the plane crash, I almost drown, and then a shark eats me.’
We were like, ‘Well, that’s genius. So that’s going to be how he dies.'”
There was really no other way to go about the character’s absence given he was such a big part of the original, but giving Charles such a campy and borderline unbelievable death really helped kick off the movie in a hilarious way. It’s only made better by the fact that it was Burton’s own idea and genuine fear, which we hope he never has to face. On the flip side, Charles’s death allowed more room for the film to tell the Deetz women’s story. Well, the Deetz women, and Betelgeuse. This is something that Gough also spoke about in the interview with EW.
“Charles dying was the impetus for doing it. Because, as you know, when you have these moments of family crisis, I think everybody likes to believe a family gets stronger. A family doesn’t. Whatever fissures are in your family, in a way, get magnified. So it was just the idea of having these three generations of women under one roof in this very intense situation and how they’re dealing with it and the forces that come with that.”
Ultimately it was a good choice. It was a believable way to bring everyone back to Winter River, and specifically to the house, which likely none of them would have willingly returned to after what happened in it. Charles’s death may be the inciting incident of the movie, and it may be the reason everyone comes together again, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the Deetz women’s story, and that’s how it shall remain.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is currently in theaters in the U.S.
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