After a 36-year hiatus,Beetlejuicereturned to the big screen on September 6,2024, and easily exorcised its box-office competitors. In the acclaimed sequelBeetlejuice Beetlejuice,Tim Burton hit the right balance of horror and humor, allowing the original cast members to shine while introducing new characters and pushing the mythological universe forward. Yet, for all the zany cartoonish fun and macabre fright, fans have noticed a detail regarding the purgatorial time crunch from the 1988 original that is oddly missing from the amusing sequel.
InBeetlejuice, ghostly residents Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) step outside their home for a moment and are suddenly transported to an otherworldly desert environment wheretime moves much fasterthan on Earth. When they return home, they realize two hours have passed despite being away for mere minutes. A similar situation occurs inBeetlejuice Beetlejuicewithout the time-crunch, leading to some fan complaints about inconsistent continuity. While the omission hardly makes a dramatic difference, the consequential timing of Lydia’s wedding should be altered based on the original movie’s lore.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Omits the Original Movie’s Time Crunch
Although Adam and Barbara Maitland do not physically appear inBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, the characters remain a crucial part of the sequel’s narrative. In the opening sequence, the camera hovers over a large model of the town of Winter River (owned by Adam in the original) featuring small figurines of Adam and Barbara and their car upside down in the river below a covered bridge.
Later in the sequel, Lydia (Winona Ryder) tells her skeptical teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) that Adam and Barbara escaped captivity in their home throughan existential loophole. The deceased couple’s departure makes Lydia sad after she formed a profound bond with them in the first film. Adam and Barbara unwittingly perished after their car fell off the bridge when swerving at the last minute to save a dog. After they die, Adam and Barbara visit The Netherworld, a hellish limbo in which they take a number in the waiting room and receiveThe Handbook for the Recently Deceasedby their caseworker.
When Adam and Barbara return home from The Netherworld, they learn they have been gone for months despite only a few minutes passing.This establishes the bizarre passage of time for the deceased inBeetlejuice, which is not consistently upheld in the sequel. Later, when Adam opens a door in her house and steps outside, he is suddenly on Saturn’s moon facing giant Sandworms. Barbara quickly saves her from being eaten.Although Adam is outside for a few seconds, Barbara tells him he was gone for two hours, further clarifying Beetlejuice’s time-dilation.
InBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, several characters wander through the Netherworld, where the passage of time occurs much differently than in the original. For example, Astrid is tricked by Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a ghostly murderer who forces her to swap her life for his, going through the administrative steps inside the ghastly purgatory. Later, Delia (Catherine O’Hara) decries that she is not dead, nor belongs in The Netherworld. Yet, when each returns home, there is no accelerated time jump. The timeline of events remains the same, leading up to Lydia and Rory’s (Justin Theroux) Halloween wedding.
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Lydia and Rory’s Wedding Should Have Occurred Much Later
At the reception for Charles' funeral, Rory asks Lydia to marry him two days later on Halloween. Lydia reluctantly agrees, much to the chagrin of Astrid and Delia.However, given how much time Lydia spends attempting to rescue Astrid from Jeremy in the Netherworld, where time supposedly moves much faster, it’s impossible that Lydia would return to marry Rory two days later. Adam and Barbara spent minutes in the afterlife and returned home months later. Astrid and Lydia spent much more time in The Netherworld yet returned in roughly 48 hours. Considering the rules established inBeetlejuice, the continuity in the sequel does not hold up.
HadBeetlejuice 2adhered to the Netherworld time crunch established in the original, Lydia and Astrid would have returned to Winter River long after Halloween. Therefore, Lydia and Rory’s grand wedding ceremony would not occur as originally planned on Lydia’s favorite holiday. While the timeline has absolutely zero bearing on the amusement level of the wedding musical number set to Richard Harris' “MacArthur Park,” it does make one wonder about the confusing continuity betweenthe original Tim Burton movieand the sequel.
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In the wedding sequence, Astrid rushes to dispatch Beetlejuice’s evil ex, Delores (Monica Bellucci), by drawing a trap door on the floor as instructed by the handbook.The door leads to the moon of Saturn, where sandworms pass through the church, lethally swallow Delores and Rory, and return with them to the moon. Considering how time passes much faster on the moon than on Earth, the continuity inthe final sequenceis also a bit fuzzy. Yet, for a sequel released 36 years after the original, the somewhat confusing timeline ofBeetlejuice’safterlife hardly affects the movie’s overall enjoyment level.Beetlejuice Beetlejuicegets so many things right that the illogical after-timeline barely registers.
