Michael Keaton’s performance in 1988 was one of pure id—a rabid, unstoppable force of harassment and mischief. In the sequel, Betelgeuse has been “dead” for decades, his influence waning. He now works as a dead-end bureaucrat in the afterlife’s unemployment office. This is a brilliant metatextual move: the disruptive punk has been assimilated.
Astrid functions as a narrative fulcrum—a rationalist who rejects the supernatural, embodying the cynical Gen Z viewer who finds her mother’s generation’s nostalgia “cringe.” When Astrid is tricked into the afterlife by a new villain (the soul-sucking ex-wife of Beetlejuice, Delores, played by Monica Bellucci), Lydia is forced to re-summon Betelgeuse. Crucially, she does so out of maternal desperation, not curiosity. This reframes the sequel’s conflict: the original was about escaping adults; the sequel is about becoming an adult willing to make a deal with a demon. beetlejuice 2
Visually, Burton makes a conscious decision to limit CGI in favor of practical puppetry, stop-motion sandworms, and prosthetic makeup. The afterlife’s expansion—including a “Soul Train” (literal train made of souls) and a bureaucratic labyrinth—retains the claustrophobic, felt-and-glue texture of the original. This aesthetic choice resists the “smooth” nostalgia of Marvel’s digital de-aging. Michael Keaton’s performance in 1988 was one of