RANKED

Every Tim Burton Movie, Ranked

By Matt Oakes · October 24, 2026

Few filmmakers have a style so distinctive that their name became an adjective, but “Burtonesque” is now shorthand for a very specific blend of gothic whimsy, pale outsiders, and candy-colored dread. Across 20 features and four decades, Tim Burton has made some of the most beloved cult films ever (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood), helped invent the modern superhero blockbuster with Batman and Batman Returns, and topped $1 billion at the box office with Alice in Wonderland, his biggest hit. Along the way he built one of cinema’s great creative families: Johnny Depp (eight films), Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Keaton, and composer Danny Elfman, who has scored nearly all of his movies. His films have won Oscars for makeup, art direction, and costumes, plus Martin Landau’s Best Supporting Actor win for Ed Wood, and his work has been a fixture of Halloween viewing for generations.

One common point of confusion: Burton produced and dreamed up The Nightmare Before Christmas, but Henry Selick directed it, so it isn’t ranked here. Edward Scissorhands tops my list and Alice in Wonderland sits at the very bottom. Here’s every Tim Burton movie, ranked.

Quick list:

Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Beetlejuice (1988)
Batman Returns (1992)
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
Batman (1989)
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Ed Wood (1994)
Frankenweenie (2012)
Big Fish (2003)
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Corpse Bride (2005)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Big Eyes (2014)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Dumbo (2019)
Dark Shadows (2012)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Critics and Audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes; ratings from IMDb. Scores as of October 2026.

20. ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010)

51%Critics 55%Audience 6.4IMDb

Alice in Wonderland (2010) still
The highest-grossing film of Burton’s career, and the worst. This sequel of sorts finds a 19-year-old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) tumbling back into “Underland” to fulfill a prophecy and slay the Jabberwocky, a chosen-one fantasy that turns Lewis Carroll’s gloriously nonsensical world into a generic CGI battle epic. Johnny Depp’s lisping, orange-haired Mad Hatter grates (his “Futterwacken” dance is a career low), though Helena Bonham Carter’s bulbous-headed Red Queen earns a few laughs. It made more than $1 billion. That’s about all it has going for it.

▶ Streaming on Disney Plus

19. CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005)

83%Critics 51%Audience 6.7IMDb

Burton’s take on Roald Dahl hews closer to the book than the 1971 Gene Wilder version, and is somehow far less magical. Freddie Highmore makes a sweet Charlie, and Deep Roy playing every single Oompa-Loompa is a fun bit of digital trickery, but Johnny Depp’s pale, pageboy-cut Wonka is more unsettling than enchanting, and an invented backstory with his dentist father (Christopher Lee) drains the mystery out of the character. The factory looks great. The candy just tastes a little stale.

▶ Streaming on HBO Max and Cinemax

18. DARK SHADOWS (2012)

35%Critics 46%Audience 6.2IMDb

Burton’s adaptation of the cult gothic soap opera can’t decide whether it’s a campy fish-out-of-water comedy or a moody family melodrama, and ends up stranded somewhere in between. Johnny Depp plays Barnabas Collins, an 18th-century vampire unearthed in 1972 who returns to his decaying family estate, while Eva Green has a ball as the vengeful witch who cursed him. The production design is lavish and Michelle Pfeiffer is reliably classy, but the gags are tired and the finale is a CGI mess.

▶ Streaming on fuboTV and Freeform

17. DUMBO (2019)

46%Critics 47%Audience 6.3IMDb

Adapting the 1941 story of a circus elephant whose oversized ears enable him to fly, Burton and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (Ghost in the Shell) co-opt the basic premise of the original tale and fluff out the barebones story with a cast of uninteresting human characters and a corporate subplot that offers kids a warning about bad employers and carefully reading contracts.

Sentimental but emotionally vacant, Tim Burton’s live-action rendition of Dumbo makes the story of the flying elephant longer without adding much. Bad child acting, an artificial hue that leaves the film feeling soulless, and a total lack of imagination park this with the lesser breed of Disney’s recent live-action remakes.▶ Watch on Disney+ · Read the full review

16. PLANET OF THE APES (2001)

42%Critics 27%Audience 5.7IMDb

Burton’s “reimagining” of the 1968 classic has terrific ape makeup courtesy of Rick Baker and a snarling Tim Roth, and very little else. Mark Wahlberg is woefully miscast as the astronaut stranded on a planet where apes rule, Helena Bonham Carter does what she can as a human-rights-minded chimpanzee, and the infamous twist ending, involving a very ape-ish Lincoln Memorial, makes absolutely no sense. A big, handsome misfire that the Caesar trilogy would thankfully wash away a decade later.

▶ Streaming on Hulu

15. BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (2024)

76%Critics 78%Audience 6.6IMDb

Thirty-six years later, Burton finally got the band back together, and the result is a messy but frequently delightful reunion. Michael Keaton slips right back into the striped suit, Winona Ryder’s Lydia is now a TV medium with a skeptical teen daughter (Jenna Ortega), and Catherine O’Hara is as gloriously self-absorbed as ever. Too many subplots crowd the frame, but Willem Dafoe’s hammy afterlife cop and a show-stopping musical finale make it a good time. Audiences agreed: it grossed more than $450 million worldwide.

▶ Streaming on HBO Max and YouTube TV

14. BIG EYES (2014)

72%Critics 68%Audience 6.9IMDb

Burton’s most restrained film reunites him with Ed Wood writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski for the true story of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), the painter behind those wildly popular big-eyed waifs, whose husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) spent years taking credit for her work. Adams won a Golden Globe for her quietly devastating turn, though Waltz’s broad, cartoonish con man throws the tone off balance. A minor work, but a welcome reminder that Burton can do grounded, human-scale drama when he wants to.

▶ Streaming on Philo and The Roku Channel

13. MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN (2016)

65%Critics 60%Audience 6.7IMDb

There’s this odd duality that percolates throughout Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. At almost any given time, it is either extremely lively or extremely dull. Look no further than its charisma-hole of a lead, Asa Butterfield (Hugo) for the dullness. He slums through scenes; a wet blanket personified.

As a sort of X-Men with prepubescents, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is an often clunky, occasionally awesome slice of Tim Burton weirdness. With strong adult leads (Eva Green, Sam Jackson), a healthy number of chuckles, and Grimm-like visual flair working in its favor and a flaccid child star (Asa Butterfield) and a burdensome script working against it, it mostly lives up to the “peculiar” part of its title without ever daring to be extraordinary.▶ Watch on Disney+ · Read the full review

12. SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007)

86%Critics 81%Audience 7.3IMDb

Burton’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical is a gorgeous, blood-soaked opera of revenge. Johnny Depp earned an Oscar nomination as the vengeful barber of Fleet Street, with Helena Bonham Carter as his pie-baking accomplice and Alan Rickman as the corrupt judge who wronged him. The colors are drained to near black and white so the arterial spray hits harder, and it does, often. Neither lead is a natural singer, but the commitment carries it. Grim, grand, and gruesome.

▶ Streaming on fuboTV and Paramount Plus Premium

11. CORPSE BRIDE (2005)

85%Critics 77%Audience 7.4IMDb

Burton’s stop-motion follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas (which he produced but didn’t direct) is a slight but lovely gothic romance. Johnny Depp voices a nervous Victorian groom who accidentally weds a lonely dead bride (Helena Bonham Carter), only to discover that the Land of the Dead is a far livelier place than his gray, joyless world above. Making the afterlife the colorful, musical half of the film is pure Burton, though at a brisk 77 minutes it ends just as it gets going.

▶ Streaming on HBO Max

10. SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)

71%Critics 80%Audience 7.3IMDb

Burton’s most purely gothic film reimagines Washington Irving’s tale as a Hammer-style horror mystery. Johnny Depp plays Ichabod Crane as a squeamish New York constable with a fondness for forensic gadgets, sent upstate to investigate a string of beheadings by a Headless Horseman (Christopher Walken, all filed teeth and wild hair, in flashbacks). Drenched in fog, blood, and desaturated autumn color, it won an Oscar for its art direction and remains one of the most gorgeous-looking films of its decade.

▶ Streaming on fuboTV and Paramount Plus Premium

9. BIG FISH (2003)

76%Critics 89%Audience 7.9IMDb

Burton’s most sentimental film, made in the wake of his own father’s death, follows a son (Billy Crudup) trying to separate fact from fiction in the tall tales of his dying dad (Albert Finney, with Ewan McGregor playing him in his youth). Giants, witches, conjoined twins, and a field of daffodils fill the flashbacks with storybook whimsy, but it’s the ending, a funeral that becomes a parade of the stories themselves, that wrecks you. A sweet, sincere, and occasionally saccharine ode to the way we mythologize the people we love.

▶ Streaming on YouTube Free and Tubi TV

8. FRANKENWEENIE (2012)

87%Critics 70%Audience 6.9IMDb

Burton expanded his 1984 live-action short (the one that helped get him fired from Disney) into a black-and-white stop-motion feature, and the result is one of his warmest films. When young Victor Frankenstein’s beloved dog Sparky is hit by a car, the boy uses a science-class lightning experiment to bring him back, sparking an arms race of reanimated pets among his classmates. Stuffed with loving nods to Universal horror and Godzilla, it’s a heartfelt ode to monster movies and the kids who grow up on them.

▶ Streaming on Disney Plus and fuboTV

7. ED WOOD (1994)

92%Critics 88%Audience 7.8IMDb

Burton’s most tender film is a black-and-white love letter to the so-called worst director of all time. Johnny Depp plays Ed Wood as an irrepressible optimist who never lets a lack of talent, money, or retakes get in his way, while Martin Landau won an Oscar for his heartbreaking turn as a faded, morphine-addicted Bela Lugosi. Rather than mocking its subject, the film celebrates the sheer joy of making things with your friends. A beautiful, funny ode to outsiders, and maybe the most underrated film Burton ever made.

6. MARS ATTACKS! (1996)

57%Critics 53%Audience 6.4IMDb

Burton’s gloriously mean-spirited answer to Independence Day, based on, of all things, a vintage trading card series. An all-star cast (Jack Nicholson in two roles, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Natalie Portman, Danny DeVito) gets gleefully disintegrated by bug-eyed, “ack ack”-squawking Martians who can only be defeated by the yodeling of Slim Whitman. Audiences didn’t know what to make of it in 1996. Today it plays like the cult classic it was always meant to be: cynical, cartoonish, and hilarious.

▶ Streaming on The Roku Channel and Kanopy

5. BATMAN (1989)

77%Critics 84%Audience 7.5IMDb

The movie that proved a dark superhero blockbuster could rule the box office. Fans howled when Michael Keaton was cast, then watched him become a brooding, unexpectedly perfect Bruce Wayne, while Jack Nicholson’s cackling Joker gave the film its showmanship and its fangs. Anton Furst’s towering, art-deco Gotham won an Oscar, Danny Elfman’s theme became instantly iconic, and the film grossed more than $400 million worldwide, laying the blueprint for the modern comic book movie. Some of it creaks today, but the Batmania was real.

▶ Streaming on HBO Max and Cinemax

4. PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (1985)

78%Critics 79%Audience 7.1IMDb

Burton’s feature debut is a sugar-rushed road movie built around the beloved bicycle of Paul Reubens’ man-child Pee-wee Herman. When the bike is stolen, Pee-wee sets off across America to find it (it’s in the basement of the Alamo, a fortune teller insists), crossing paths with a convict on the run, a ghostly trucker named Large Marge, and a biker gang he wins over with a dance. It also marked Burton’s first collaboration with Danny Elfman, whose carnival-esque score is half the fun. Pure, deranged joy.

3. BATMAN RETURNS (1992)

81%Critics 73%Audience 7.1IMDb

The rare superhero sequel that’s weirder, darker, and better than the original. Given near-total creative control, Burton turned Gotham into a snow-globe nightmare of Christmas-season decay, unleashing Danny DeVito’s grotesque, bile-spitting Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, still the gold standard for the character, with Christopher Walken’s smarmy industrialist pulling strings in the shadows. Parents (and McDonald’s, which had a Happy Meal tie-in) were famously horrified. Decades later, it plays like a gothic art film that snuck a Batman movie inside it.

▶ Streaming on HBO Max and Cinemax

2. BEETLEJUICE (1988)

83%Critics 82%Audience 7.4IMDb

Michael Keaton is on screen for less than 20 minutes and still walks away with one of the most iconic comedic performances of the ’80s. A recently deceased couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) try to scare the obnoxious new owners out of their beloved home, only to enlist a sleazy, lecherous “bio-exorcist” who proves far worse. Gleefully grotesque, handmade, and endlessly quotable, from the “Day-O” dinner possession to Winona Ryder’s goth icon Lydia Deetz, it’s the film that cemented the Burton aesthetic, and it won an Oscar for its makeup to boot.

▶ Streaming on fuboTV and HBO Max

1. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)

92%Critics 91%Audience 7.8IMDb

Burton’s most personal film is also his best. Johnny Depp, in the first of eight collaborations with the director, plays an unfinished artificial man with shears for hands, adopted by a kindly Avon lady and dropped into a candy-colored suburb that adores him right up until it doesn’t. Vincent Price, in one of his final screen roles, plays his inventor, and Danny Elfman’s swooning score turns every flurry of shaved-ice snow into pure heartbreak. A gothic fairy tale about outsiders, conformity, and the cruelty of crowds, it’s the purest distillation of everything Burton has ever cared about.

▶ Streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu

FAQ

What is the best Tim Burton movie?

By my ranking, Edward Scissorhands (1990) is Tim Burton’s best film, followed by Beetlejuice and Batman Returns.

What is the worst Tim Burton movie?

Alice in Wonderland (2010) sits at the bottom of my ranking, despite being the biggest box office hit of his career.

Is The Nightmare Before Christmas a Tim Burton movie?

Not as director. Tim Burton conceived the story and produced it, but Henry Selick directed The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), so it isn’t included in this ranking.