Visionary filmmaker Tim Burton knew that he’d found his next project when he first picked up Ransom Riggs’ best selling novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.
“I don’t know if I saw the book when it first came out, but somebody sent it to me,” he says. “I didn’t really know that much about it, and it was good in a way because you get something fresh where you don’t have any preconceptions about it.
“It felt like a discovery to me, even though it had been out for a little while. I wasn’t reacting to whatever The New York Times said – I was just sort of reacting to it, and there was something very positive about that. There were no outside influences that way, you could just respond to the book purely.”
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children stars Asa Butterfield as Jake who grows up in suburban Florida believing that he is an ‘ordinary kid’ listening to stories told by his much adored grandfather of his time in a magical home on a Welsh island and of the strange children with remarkable abilities who live there.
Jake believed that the stories came straight from his grandpa’s vivid imagination but then a frightening chain of events leads him to believe that the home -– and the “peculiar” children who lived there protected by Miss Peregrine – might indeed be real and he sets out to find it.
When he does, Jake is entranced by the eccentric band of youngsters who live there, trapped in a time loop living one day in 1940 over and over again. He also discovers that – just like his grandfather before him – he has a pivotal role in keeping them safe from the evil ‘hollowgasts’ who are hunting them.
For Burton, the director who has made contemporary classics including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Alice In Wonderland, Riggs’ story, and Jane Goldman’s screenplay, was a classic tale of outsiders trying to survive in a “normal” world. The children’s unusual abilities are not of the classic superhero variety, he points out.
“Obviously the superhero genre is alive and well, but with this I never quite saw it that way. I always felt this was a more human version of that kind of thing, and I always saw it as less of a superpower and more of an affliction,” he explains.
“Each kid had their own peculiarity, that’s what I was interested in. It wasn’t, ‘We’re going to save the world.’ It was, ‘We are who we are and this is our thing, and maybe we can help to get out of a problem, or deal with an issue.’ It was a much more down-to-earth human level to me that I was attracted to.”
The stellar cast that includes Eva Green as Miss Peregrine, Dame Judi Dench as Miss Avocet, Terence Stamp as Jake’s grandfather Abe and Samuel L. Jackson as the terrifying Barron.
Asa Butterfield (The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas, Hugo) is Jake, Ella Purnell plays Emma (who is lighter than air), Finlay Macmillan is Enoch, who can make inanimate objects come to life, and Lauren McCostie is Olive, who can create fire from her fingertips.
Q: When you first read Ransom Riggs’ book, what did you make of the photographs in it?
A: Well that’s what drew me to it. That’s the thing I liked the most about it, was that the story was based on those old photographs. I don’t have as big a collection as he has, but I look at and collect some photographs, and I just love the mystery of them and the poetry, and the creepiness, and that there’s a story but you don’t really know what it is. It just sort of spurs your imagination to make up your own story about these things and I just thought it was an interesting way to approach the book.
Q: Did the visual element of the book make it more complex to adapt?
A: The thing about the photographs is that you sort of feel things but you don’t really know everything. To try to keep the mystery without explaining everything, that aspect of it was important, just to try to get the vibe of that, so that it’s not about, ‘Well why does this boy have bees living in him?’ It’s just to try to keep that slight air of mystery about it, where you can make up your own mind and find out your own feelings about it.
Q: Rolling Stone have described this as your ‘ode to otherness’, but it strikes me that the same term might be applied to any of your films. Are you drawn to strange characters, outsiders?
A: I just have always been drawn to that kind of material, because that’s how you feel at a certain point in your life. Even if you change and you can become verbal, or have friends, or success, or popularity, those kind of feelings that you have at that time of your life stay with you forever. I think that’s why I’m attracted to that kind of material. Also, telling a story without knowing everything about it, keeping the mystery of things, is something I like.
Q: When did you first become familiar with the book?
A: It was a couple of years ago. I don’t know if I saw the book when it first came out, but somebody sent it to me. I didn’t really know that much about it, and it was good in a way because you get something fresh where you don’t have any preconceptions about it. It felt like a discovery to me, even though it had been out for a little while. I wasn’t reacting to whatever The New York Times said – I was just sort of reacting to it, and there was something very positive about that. There were no outside influences that way, you could just respond to the book purely.
Q: Did you have favourite peculiarities going into it? Or any that you were looking forward to filming?
A: Well they all had their own peculiarities. Again, I think, for better or for worse, the interesting thing is that we use effects not in the traditional sense of like, ‘You’ve got to save the world.’ It’s slightly more personalised, and again that’s why I felt like it just touched on people and kids and the way that they feel, and that kind of thing of, ‘This is just who I am.’ It could be used for good or for bad or for making honey or for nothing – there’s just something more grounded to me about that.
Q: Why is it important for children to see stories like this?
A: If you go back before films to fairy tales – those are horrible stories. They’re graphic, grotesque, with mothers eating their children. I just always believed, and I believed it for my own self and my own kids, that when you’re new to life, everything is just abstract. It’s horrible imagery, but they’re somehow processing something that you don’t intellectually understand yet as an adult. I think that’s an interesting thing about the power of those kinds of stories, or myself growing up with monster movies and fantasy movies. They’re not real, but they are real to me, and they help process whatever psychological things you’re trying to understand in your life. The abstraction is actually quite important that way. The things that may seem kind of creepy, I was trying to mix in with humour and some emotion, so that it’s not just weirdness for weirdness’ sake. You just try to do it so that you’re getting all those elements that make a person into one thing.
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN is rich with fantastical and immersive imagery, memorable characters, epic battles, and unique time travel manipulations—all brought to life by Tim Burton, in the grand style of his films Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Most significantly, it is about embracing the original and peculiar in us all.
Customers will also get a chance to bring home a Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children paperback. To join, customers must share a photo of them with their Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children DVD and email it to [email protected]. The first 80 customers to send in their entries automatically wins. 
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN is now available to own on DVD from Magnavision
