Let’s put aside whether the Killers suck, don’t suck, or whether you should care or not. Let’s talk about one Mr. Tim Burton, who has a fanbase rivaling even the biggest of teenage heartthrobs. The kids love the dark, off-kilter vibe Mr. Burton loves to work with, with said vibe reaching a perfect crescendo with Disney’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. When you outgrow your Aladdin pajamas the thing to do to stick it to the man is to buy a Jack Skellington sweatshirt that you’ll proudly wear for that traumatic period of your life between 15-25. It shows you’re “dark”, it shows you’re “different”, and it shows you’re completely happy to pay Disney™ for the privilege. Sweet, sweet irony.

With the video for Bones, Mr. Burton continues with this trend and I’m sure the Skellington crowd will love what he’s done. The idea is that everybody is truly dead, a skeleton at least, and that taking off one’s clothes is not truly taking off one’s armor: taking off one’s SKIN is the only way to reveal the inner self. So we get Devon Aoki and some guy doing the skinny dipping on the beach thing, but it’s the skin coming off, not the clothes. This allows burton to throw in the two things mandated by his deal with the devil to show up in all his work: skeletons, and stop motion.

The Skeletons are an obvious homage to Jason and the Argonauts (which is playing at the drive-in at the start of the video) while the concept of everyone secretly being dead recalls the basic plot twist in The Pirates of the Caribbean. While the video ends up being okay, there are two problems with Burton’s approach. One, it doesn’t look all that good. Sure, it looks decent for a Music Video, but it doesn’t look good for Tim Burton.The green-screening is painfully apparent and, fair or not, people like me are expecting better production values out of a multi-gazilion dollar director. Two, Tim Burton’s whole “quirky and jerky stop motion thing” are out of their league in Music Video land. Sure, in feature films it comes off as something human and something different, but not here. Music Videos are the breeding ground of quirky stop-motion, Tim. The gimmick is tired hat here, and as such nothing really feels that fresh.

I’ll leave you with a comment left over on the ‘gum about the video that represents why the internet is a sad, sad place:

dammit, tim burton.
 still like it better than most of the half-assed indie videos we (don’t really ever…) see.

So, Tim Burton’s video for a huge band looks better than videos that usually have no budget? Nice point, champ. You’re a genius.

The Killers – Bones, directed by Tim Burton

Link is likely dead because YouTube sucks in both quality and dependability. Go with that Quicktime download.

Via SRO (iPod Compatible: 12.7 MB)

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