Critically, on the other hand, there are a number of bones to pick. Burton was definitely the ideal director to take on the original Lewis Carroll novel’s surreal characters, situations and settings. What’s strange is he robbed it of much of its heart – a trait that’s so strong in much of Burton’s best work. Alice herself is more of a plot device than a true character, and the third act falls flat thanks in large part to a bombastic CGI battle scene, which was borrowed from the video game American McGee’s Alice, but seemed out of place in Carroll’s Wonderland.

14. Sleepy Hollow

Way back in 1820, Washington Irving published a creepy tale called “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” where a schoolmaster named Ichabod Crane is tortured by the legend, and possibly reality, of a ghostly headless horseman. At the end of the story, the horseman (ghost or not) kills Crane. In 1999, Burton brought the tale to the big screen with, obviously, Depp as Crane in Sleepy Hollow.

But Depp wasn’t the Crane we’ve come to know and love in the original tale and most other adaptations. The original was a superstitious schoolmaster, Depp’s was a skeptical cop. Many other liberties were taken with the plot. In fact, there are few similarities to the source material other than a character named Ichabod, a headless horseman and the setting of Sleepy Hollow. Even the ending, which we won’t spoil, is massively different. As always, though, with Burton movies, it’s worth watching for the visuals alone.

13. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Here’s the funny thing: despite the name change, 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was more faithful (though to be fair, not completely faithful) to Roald Dahl’s original book than Burton’s faithfully named 2005 adaptation, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. To no one’s surprise, Depp played Willy Wonka in this one, and it was a downright weird portrayal. And not weird in the “Tim Burton’s films are wonderfully weird” sense. That would have been perfect. No, this was just weird. Like “way too influenced by Michael Jackson’s controversial later years” weird.

Burton’s film also introduced an entirely new and unnecessary plotline involving Wonka’s father as a device to explain Wonka’s odd behavior. Really, both films can be criticized for focusing too much on Wonka and less on the film’s hero, Charlie Bucket, who was wonderfully portrayed by a young Freddie Highmore. However, the film was a big box office draw, thanks to the kid factor.

12. Mars Attacks!

Coming off the critical acclaim of Ed Wood, which was a departure for Burton in many ways, he returned with Mars Attacks! in 1996 with his weirdo guns ablaze. It was both a parody of the kinds of B-movies the real Ed Wood made and a motion picture take on the Mars Attacks trading cards series. When we say his weirdo guns were ablaze, we mean it. Of course, Burton’s trademark is that beautiful weirdness, and he’s rightfully beloved for it. But here he took it to the extreme. Let’s just say this: Johnny Depp actually turned down a role in this one. Although, truth be told, some people love it because it's so far out there, in a cult kind of way.

In his review, Roger Ebert said it best of this star-studded affair: "Ed Wood himself could have told us what's wrong with this movie: the makers felt superior to the material. To be funny, even schlock has to believe in itself.” Much of the dark humor just didn’t land, and it showed at the box office.

11. Big Eyes

Here’s Burton’s most recent offering, from 2014, as we await this Big Eyes is also a departure for Burton because it lacks much of the “weirdness” of most of his films. It’s a straight-up bio-pic about Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), whose husband Walter (Christoph Walz) took credit for her paintings of people with big eyes.

2012’s Frankenstein films.

It’s actually very much like an homage to Burton’s childhood, growing up loving old horror movies, with the story of a boy (named Victor Frankenstein, like Frankenstein’s protagonist) who loves his dog so much that when the dog dies he resurrects him using the power of electricity. Unfortunately, the film didn’t exactly light it up at the box office, vying for kids’ eyes at the time with the juggernaut that was Hotel Transylvania.

9. Batman Returns

After Burton revitalized the superhero movie with 1989’s Batman, he returned in 1992 with Batman Returns. While it couldn’t live up to the original’s greatness, it was definitely a solid offering, with Michael Keaton once again squeezing into the Bat-suit. But where in the first film it was just Batman versus the Joker, this time we got an early taste of where so many superhero movies go wrong these days, with the introduction of too many villains. Here we had Batman versus the Penguin (Danny DeVito), Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and an evil businessman named Max Shreck (Christopher Walken).

DeVito’s Penguin was a little disturbing at times, and certainly pathetic. Not nearly as frightening, as say, Jack Nicholson’s Joker in the first flick. But Pfeiffer filled out the Catsuit quite well. While it lacked some of the suspense of the first movie, some criticized it for being darker. Interestingly, Burton has said he liked this one better because it was “less dark.”

8. Corpse Bride

Hitting screens in 2005, Corpse Bride was the first animated feature that Burton directed (actually, he co-directed this, with Mike Johnson), following The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. It featured many of Burton’s favorite things: Johnny Depp (as the voice of Victor), Helena Bonham Carter (as the voice of Emily, the titular bride), stop-motion animation, and, well, death (and what comes after).

At the heart of it is a touching love story (a man taken from the love of his life, striving to return to her), wrapped within an animated musical – which almost sounds like a Disney movie (which this was not). It’s Burton’s inimitable stamp of macabre that lifts it out of that Disney zone and into something that is, simply put, Burtonesque.