In celebration of its 20th birthday, Tim Burton's beautifully morbid stop-motion animation Corpse Bride is back in cinemas in 4K, ready to both terrify and awe a new generation of children just as it did for me. However, as the movie claws its way back to the big screen (much like the film's corpse Emily desperately digs herself out of the dirt in search of marriage), I can't help but feel as though the meaning of the movie has changed for me, and Emily's story is much more relatable than I originally thought.
Although Corpse Bride follows shy and awkward Victor, anxious about marrying Victoria, the movie is really about Emily and her journey of self-discovery. Through her own internalized idea of who she should be and what society wants from her, Emily's eagerness to marry sends her into an early grave. But even when she is dead, she still cannot shake the pressure of one day being a real bride. As a child watching the film, you presume that Emily's obsessive quest for love comes from her cruel death and the fact that she is now a monster of sorts, when, actually, it's very real societal pressure following her even into the afterlife.
