SAME, BROTHER

Tim Burton: The Internet Makes Me ‘Quite Depressed’

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Director Tim Burton famously likes things a little scary, but I guess everyone has their limits. Burton’s personal nightmare? Existing online, apparently.

“If I look at the internet, I found that I got quite depressed,“ Burton told BBC News, gesturing toward an unspecified period when he was too logged on. “It scared me because I started to go down a dark hole. So I try to avoid it, because it doesn’t make me feel good.”

A correct and relatable opinion, if also a potentially surprising take from a man of gothic tastes. Still, Burton has received his share of criticism online, particularly over his lack of diversity in casting. It’s not clear if Burton was referring to a particular incident, though.

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The director spoke with the BBC at a retrospective on his career, “The World of Tim Burton,” at London‘s Design Museum. And while he did talk about his films—he won’t be directing another Batman movie, for example, although the BBC says the Beetlejuice reboot “invigorated” him—it was technology that seemed to really preoccupy him. Artificial intelligence, for example.

“It’s something I can’t even quite fathom‚” he said. He pointed to a BuzzFeed list from 2023, which used AI to reimagine Disney characters in Burton’s style. “Until it happens to you, really don’t understand it. But it was quite disturbing: intellectually and emotionally disturbing. It felt like my soul had been taken from me.”

“It’s like when other cultures say, ‘Oh, don’t take my picture, because you’re taking away my soul,’” he told the broadcaster. “And that’s how it is. It’s something that’s robbing you of humanity.”

He’s made a similar comparison before, but... yeah. Perhaps best to just log off.

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