Why Tim Burton is glad everyone hated his first movie: “The reviews were really bad”

Posted On December 26, 2025December 26, 2025

These days, Tim Burton is one of the most famous directors on the planet whose unique style, blending gothic aesthetics with oddball characters and outlandish costumes, is unmissable, much to the delight of scene kids everywhere.

Sure, he’s made 20 feature films at the time of writing, with a total career gross of well over $4billion, but everyone, including Burton, has to start somewhere.

Dedicated Burtonites will know that the Englishman’s first foray into full-length filmmaking does not fit with the rest of his oeuvre at all, at least not on paper, for in 1985, a 26-year-old Burton helmed Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Starring the late Paul Reubens as Pee-Wee Herman, a childlike man adorned with his trademark bow tie, the film follows the character as he attempts to retrieve his stolen bicycle, and if you didn’t know this was a Burton production, you’d never guess it in a million years.

As captured by author Mark Salisbury for his book Burton on Burton, the director has a mixed relationship with his debut outing. On one hand, it was the film that spawned everything that came later; on the other hand, he felt like it made a poor first impression.

“The reviews on Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure were really bad,” he recalled, “I remember one review, and I’ll never forget this, which said, ‘Everything is great, the costumes are brilliant, the photography is great, the script is fabulous, the actors are all great, the only thing that’s terrible is the direction’. One said, ‘On a scale of one to ten, ten being best, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure gets a minus one’. It’s the first minus one I remember seeing.”

Interestingly, the numbers don’t support Burton’s theory, as Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure was actually quite well-received on the whole. While some prominent critics, most notably Gene Siskel, were down on the film, many others praised its light-hearted humour and the young filmmaker’s ability to capture Reubens’ persona on the big screen. It was also a financial success, raking in over $40million on a budget of just $7m, and over time, has become even more successful. It is now firmly entrenched in the pantheon of ‘cult favourites’, especially given its position as a prominent auteur’s first outing.

Even if the film had been totally dragged through the mud, Burton wouldn’t have minded, for he actually enjoyed reading those negative reviews. “I’ve known people who’ve gone through that first film thing when they get ‘They’re the next Orson Welles’, and that can kill you,” he said, “I’m glad I didn’t get that. I much prefer the kind of raking over the coals I got because it’s a mistake to believe any of it.”

It’s true; so many directors come out the gate strong, only to falter a few years down the line, so it’s better to be hated at the start and improve over time than to burn brightly and fade away.

For Burton, it wouldn’t take long to put any fears about Pee-Wee to bed, for three years later, he released what many consider to be his true coming-out moment with Beetlejuice, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

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