Tim Burton’s Wednesday: One Surprising Easter Egg
What do Tim Burton’s Wednesday (2022) and the box office hit, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure have in common? The obvious answer is that they were both directed by the same dark mastermind, but there’s more to it than that. While watching Wednesday on Netflix, I noticed a quirky little Easter Egg throwback to Tim Burton’s wacky1985 masterpiece.
In 1985, young Tim Burton directed Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. With a twisted kid’s movie plotline and right hand man/composer Danny Elfman on the audio, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure became a Tim Burton classic.
Where so many mid-80s American children saw a zany Saturday morning personality in Pee Wee Herman, Danny Elfman seems to have seen something a little more interesting, because the film was zany and demented.
That Pee Wee’s clown dream, for example.
And don’t forget about the BDSM biker club. This was dark, wacky content for a family-friendly 1980s “find-yourself-in-America” film.
Not that you really know how dark something is when you’re a kid. At least I never thought about Pee Wee’s Big Adventure as dark. When the chesty red-headed biker lady (known as “Biker Mama”) grabs P.W. With a leather-gloved hand and says, “I say you let me have him first,” I never thought much of it, except that I liked her chestiness.
Here’s another horror tie-in, by the way: “Biker Mama” was played by none other than Cassandra Peterson, AKA Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Tim Burton: Twisting “Family Friendly”
So I think we can all agree that Tim Burton excels at taking something slightly demented, yet family-friendly, and crank up the dementia to just the right setting without crossing the line.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure was a huge part of my childhood. It helped me develop into the demented freak I am today. How about you?
Large Marge
One of those little scenes from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is Large Marge. Remember Large Marge?
Burton used cutting edge technology to make a scary trucker lady have big, buggy eyes that scare the crap out of Pee Wee.
The Easter Egg in Tim Burton’s Wednesday
If this scene with Large Marge looks familiar to you, you might have noticed the same thing as I did when I was watching episode 1 of Tim Burton’s new Netflix show, Wednesday (2022).
In episode 1, an eerie woman in red checkered flannel drops off a boy with glasses in front of a sign that reads, “Nevermore Academy.” Her truck may not be an 18-wheeler, but a flatbed still counts as a truck. On the side, it reads, “Martha’s.”
They say history repeats but doesn’t rhyme; Martha and Marge may not rhyme, but they sound hella similar…
This is definitely Tim Burton nodding to his older films. This little trucker lady Easter egg was a treat for me, as I’m sure it’ll be for any Tim Burton fan.
Special Effects in Tim Burton’s Wednesday (2022)
I haven’t confirmed this yet, but it seems Tim Burton’s Wednesday and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure both used the special effects of the day. The latter obviously used claymation on Large Marge’s face. I’m not sure about the red flannel trucker lady from Wednesday. Maybe she just has naturally huge, buggy eyes that look like they’re about to fall out of her freaking face. But it seems like they’re CGI.
She is so freaky.
