This ranking covers Tim Burton’s 20 feature films as director, from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024). Burton’s official project list separates feature films from television, shorts, and music videos; AFI’s filmography also distinguishes directing credits from producing credits. The list below weighs storytelling, performances, visual invention, tonal control, and lasting impact across Burton’s different genres—not just how closely a film resembles his signature gothic style.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is not included: Burton is closely associated with it and produced it, but Henry Selick directed it. AFI lists Burton as producer, and Rotten Tomatoes likewise excludes it from its director ranking.
![The Tim Burton Collection & Hardcover Book [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51OmPWUUvuL._SL160_.jpg)
All 20 Tim Burton movies, ranked
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Ed Wood (1994)
Burton’s warm, black-and-white portrait of the famously inept filmmaker turns a story about failure into a generous celebration of creative conviction. Johnny Depp gives Ed an exuberant optimism, while Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning performance as Bela Lugosi supplies the film’s ache. The stylized period photography serves the people and their peculiar ambitions rather than overwhelming them. Rotten Tomatoes’ Critics Consensus calls it “typically strange and wonderful”; the site’s September 30, 2025 guide placed it first with a 92% Tomatometer score. That score is a dated critic snapshot, not a permanent measure.
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Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Burton’s most affecting fable makes its outsider hero’s literal inability to touch a world of pastel conformity the engine of both its comedy and sadness. Johnny Depp’s delicately physical performance and the contrast between a shadowy mansion and brightly ordered suburbia make the film’s visual design inseparable from its theme. It is romantic without being sugary, and its final image lingers. Rotten Tomatoes listed it at 92% in its September 30, 2025 guide.
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Beetlejuice (1988)
A gleefully unruly ghost story, Beetlejuice finds Burton’s comic voice in the collision of domestic mundanity, handmade supernatural effects, and Michael Keaton’s shamelessly anarchic title character. Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin give the newly dead couple a human center, while Winona Ryder’s Lydia makes morbid curiosity feel like a form of intelligence. Its practical, tactile weirdness remains more inviting than polished spectacle.
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Batman Returns (1992)
Rather than simply repeat the first Batman, Burton makes Gotham a grotesque winter fairy tale, with a towering cityscape that feels both theatrical and hostile. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman brings the film its sharpest mix of humor, rage, and vulnerability; Danny DeVito’s Penguin is an unsettling creature of both civic spectacle and personal grievance. The film’s dense tone can be excessive, but its visual confidence and outsider characters make it one of Burton’s most distinctive studio productions.
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Big Fish (2003)
Burton’s most openly sentimental film turns a son’s attempt to understand his dying father into a contest between literal truth and the stories people use to make a life legible. Ewan McGregor’s younger Edward Bloom inhabits tall tales with infectious ease, while the older version, played by Albert Finney, gives their exaggerations a moving human cost. The fantasy is less macabre than usual, but the film’s emotional directness makes that shift feel earned.
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Frankenweenie (2012)
This stop-motion feature expands Burton’s 1984 short into a loving black-and-white tribute to classic monster movies and the bond between a boy and his dog. Its handmade animation gives the familiar neighborhood and creature-feature tropes genuine texture, and the story understands that its comic horror works because the grief underneath it is sincere. Rotten Tomatoes ranked it third in its September 30, 2025 guide, with an 87% Tomatometer score.
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Batman (1989)
Burton’s first Batman is a landmark of comic-book filmmaking less for realism than for the world it builds: a shadowed, monumental Gotham that feels like a city designed by fever dream. Jack Nicholson’s Joker is a flamboyant counterweight to Michael Keaton’s restrained Bruce Wayne. The film’s spectacle occasionally outpaces its character work, but its production design and influence on the superhero genre are substantial.
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Corpse Bride (2005)
This stop-motion romance gives its afterlife more color and movement than the gray world of the living, then uses that reversal to tell a surprisingly tender story about duty, longing, and letting go. The puppetry’s precise craft is a pleasure in itself, and the film’s compact fairy-tale structure suits its material. It does not reach the emotional heights of Burton’s strongest work, but its visual invention and melancholy musicality endure.
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Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
Burton’s first feature announces a talent for turning a simple premise into a parade of eccentric set pieces. Pee-wee’s search for his stolen bicycle gives the young director room to experiment with exaggerated characters and absurdist visual jokes without losing the hero’s childlike sincerity. The film is looser than Burton’s later work, but its energy and comic imagination remain unmistakable.
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Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Burton reshapes Washington Irving’s tale as an atmospheric Gothic mystery, full of fog, bare branches, and elaborate period design. Johnny Depp’s nervous, rationalist Ichabod Crane makes a useful contrast with the story’s escalating supernatural violence, while Christina Ricci’s Katrina brings composure to the proceedings. The film’s striking craft often matters more than its mystery, but as an exercise in mood it is among Burton’s most accomplished.
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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Burton’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical leans into its grim Victorian setting and blood-soaked revenge plot. Johnny Depp’s restrained, hollowed-out Sweeney and Helena Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett give the film its bleak comic core. Its limited palette and stylized violence suit the material, though the movie’s chill can make the tragedy feel more studied than devastating.
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Burton’s version of Roald Dahl’s story emphasizes the factory’s strange machinery and Willy Wonka’s damaged eccentricity over the earlier film’s cozy musical charm. Johnny Depp’s Wonka is deliberately awkward, and the vivid production design keeps the tour visually inventive. The movie’s oddness can be a strength, but its episodic structure and chilly emotional register leave less warmth than the story’s moral fable invites.
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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Burton’s eye for the uncanny is a natural fit for a story about children with unusual abilities and a time loop that shelters them from danger. The film has moments of memorable design and a well-cast Eva Green as its protective headmistress, but it has to carry a great deal of world-building and plot machinery. The result is visually engaging yet less emotionally focused than Burton’s best fantasy work.
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Planet of the Apes (2001)
Burton’s reimagining of the science-fiction franchise invests heavily in elaborate makeup, costumes, and production design, creating a world with impressive physical presence. Mark Wahlberg’s astronaut gives the story a comparatively muted center, and the film’s narrative never matches the force of its visual premise. It is an ambitious studio spectacle whose most memorable element is its constructed world.
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![Tim Burton 9-Film Collection [Blu-ray] [2022] [Region Free]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51OmDkFMqYL._SL160_.jpg)
Tim Burton 9-Film Collection [Blu-ray] [2022] [Region Free]- Tim Buton 9-film collection. Tim Burton Collection. 9-films. Blu-ray. Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Beetlejuice. Batman. Batman Returns. Mars Attacks. Sweeney Todd. Corpse Bride. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. Dark Shadows. Tim Burton. Paul Reubens. Alec Baldwin.
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Dark Shadows (2012)
Burton adapts the gothic television property as a fish-out-of-water comedy about a vampire returning to a changed family and a changed decade. Johnny Depp’s Barnabas brings the period mismatch to life, and the film’s look is knowingly ornate. But its comedy, romance, and supernatural plot pull in different directions, leaving the story less coherent than its eccentric details. Rotten Tomatoes placed it twentieth in its September 30, 2025 guide, with a 35% Tomatometer score.
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Dumbo (2019)
Burton’s live-action expansion of Disney’s animated story adds a human circus family and a theme-park antagonist to Dumbo’s tale of separation and belonging. The film has flashes of visual whimsy and a clear affection for outsiders, but its added plot dilutes the directness of the original story. The emotional premise remains potent; the surrounding spectacle is less so.
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Frankenweenie (1984 short film)
This early short is not one of the 20 feature films, but it is worth separating from the 2012 feature because it shows Burton developing the same blend of suburban setting, monster-movie affection, and childlike grief in miniature. Its short-form simplicity gives the premise an immediacy the later feature necessarily elaborates.
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Stainboy (2000)
Stainboy is an online animated series rather than a feature film, so it does not belong in the 20-film count. It offers a compact extension of Burton’s illustrated oddball characters, but its episodic web format makes it a side path rather than a central filmography entry.
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James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Burton produced this stop-motion adaptation rather than directing it; Henry Selick directed. It belongs in conversations about Burton’s screen work and visual sensibility, but not in a ranking of his directed features. Its handcrafted animation and surreal children’s-story world may help explain the recurring confusion.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Henry Selick directed this stop-motion musical, while Burton developed the original story and produced the film. It is a major Burton-associated work, but it is not one of his directed features. Rotten Tomatoes’ director ranking excludes it for that reason, despite its place on Burton’s official project page.
How this ranking differs from Rotten Tomatoes’ order
Rotten Tomatoes’ guide, updated September 30, 2025, orders films by Tomatometer, a critics’ score—not by a combined assessment of storytelling, acting, visual design, tone, and staying power. Its snapshot placed Ed Wood first and Dark Shadows twentieth. The scores can provide a useful point of comparison, but they do not settle an editorial ranking, and scores may change over time.
How many movies has Tim Burton directed?
Under the scope used here—feature films directed by Burton—the count is 20, beginning with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and ending with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024). His broader filmography also includes producing, television, shorts, and music videos, which are distinct categories on his official project page.
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