Anyone would have guessed that pairing Tim Burton* with the Addams family would be a match made in heaven – er – the deepest pits of hell. The new show, Wednesday, places the titular goth at a magical school near a small town in New England. The story has a lot to love, including Burton’s signature aesthetic and a cast of fascinating characters. This makes the big weakness of the show pretty darn strange: Despite the formidable skills of its Latine actors, the Addams family has lost its dark luster.
Perhaps we should have seen this coming. Moving Wednesday from a quirky side character to the hero of a whole series would be a challenge for any storyteller. However, it was still achievable. Burton is no stranger to tricky characters, and showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have no shortage of experience. They just put clichés before Wednesday Addams.
The Tricky Charm of the Addams Family
The signature goth jokes of the Addams family are delightful for viewers but devilishly tricky for any story with depth and tension. I say “jokes,” but there’s really only one joke repeated in innumerable ways. The Addams family loves everything traditionally associated with evil and is repulsed by what most viewers associate with goodness.
The Addams Family got its start in mediums that didn’t require a long, engrossing story. It began as a single-panel comic by Charles Addams. In 1964, it became a sitcom with self-contained, 30-minute episodes. All it needed to do was tell funny jokes and conclude before the jokes got old.
The ’90s movies, The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, took it to the next level. That’s where the Wednesday we all love was born. Brought to life by Christina Ricci,* Wednesday in the movies represents the ultimate subversion of childhood. Instead of a playful demeanor, she wears a perpetual stony expression. She conducts childhood activities in a businesslike fashion, trading out innocence for murderous intent. In one iconic moment, she orders her younger brother, Pugsley, to get into an electric chair. He asks why, and she tells him it’s so they can play a game called “Is There a God?”
The Wrong Jokes Can Destroy Tension
The Addams family is so busy torturing and killing each other that we can only assume they have magic that makes them largely indestructible. And therein lies the first problem with putting them in a longer, serious story. How do you threaten them? If Wednesday adores being kidnapped and tortured, the possibility of her being kidnapped and tortured won’t get anyone on the edge of their seats.
To handle this, the ’90s movies start by lowering the stakes. The Addamses may not be concerned by murder, but they still care about keeping their mansion. In Addams Family Values, Wednesday and Pugsley are sent to a summer camp where the hostile camp counselors try to make them conform. While not a matter of life or death, being locked in a cabin and forced to watch children’s classics is not a good time for them.
Addams Family Values also proved how helpful it is for the Addams to face their polar opposite, so they can show some terror and disgust. They may not be afraid of dismemberment, but they are afraid of singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire. As Morticia says to the villain, Debbie, “You have married Fester, you have destroyed his spirit, you have taken him from us. All that I could forgive. But Debbie… pastels?”
When it’s finally time to bring in mortal danger, the filmmakers toned down the jokes without making the Addamses look outright afraid. That way the family could stay in character and the audience could feel concerned without impediment. Even so, this trick was easier to pull off with a couple of two-hour movies. The shorter the story is, the less the story’s tension needs to escalate, and the less time the audience has to consider discrepancies.
Evil Protagonists May Not Be Likable
The other issue with protagonists that murder and maim is, well, that they murder and maim. While it’s only for laughs, the Addams family still thinks murder is fun, and they’re unlikely to save anyone from a grisly fate when they can watch instead. Wednesday herself loves sadistic games. This is a big part of her novelty, but if done poorly, it still risks turning the audience against her.
This means a story with Wednesday must allow her to cause mayhem while keeping any of that mayhem from upsetting the audience. In the first ’90s movie, she targets her seemingly indestructible brother and shocks onlookers at a play by spewing blood everywhere. In Addams Family Values, the audience is made to hate her antagonists as much as possible.
The camp counselors act like goody-two-shoes, but they quickly reveal themselves as bigots. They are the perfect foil to bring out Wednesday’s novelty while making her look saintly. When Wednesday terrorizes them, the audience just rejoices.
Also, the camera cuts away a lot. As long as we don’t see Wednesday’s victims actually die, we can pretend it’s all in good fun. Wednesday’s secondary part in the movie is helpful here. The more time Wednesday is onscreen, the harder this balancing act becomes.
How Wednesday Changed Them
If we’re being gracious to Burton, Gough, and Millar, we could say that their version of Wednesday is inconsistent. If we’re being less gracious, we might say she’s a cookie-cutter hero with some black icing smeared on top. To be clear, actress Jenna Ortega does a fantastic job delivering the version of Wednesday everyone wanted. But she can’t erase the mistakes in the writing.
Just in the first episode, Wednesday applauds the sadism that is high school but then explains she avoids social media because it’s a “soul-sucking void.” Shouldn’t that mean you love it, Wednesday? The writers clearly had trouble getting Wednesday to express dislike while staying in character. That’s a problem, because this version of Wednesday dislikes everything.
Wednesday no longer pursues a twisted version of typical activities. While she does unleash piranhas and blow up a statue, this is more out of angry rebellion than sadistic delight. And it’s not just cheery pursuits that earn her ire. When her parents give her a dissection kit with dead squirrels, she complains that she’d like live squirrels better. She even grumbles over a seance because she doesn’t want to talk to the dead.
And that’s the least of the show’s changes.
The Plot Pulls Wednesday in the Wrong Direction
The biggest issue is that the show’s entire plot depends on Wednesday being an altruistic, and therefore rather typical, hero. The season arc features a monster that’s attacking people, but not Wednesday. It actually saves her life. Wednesday needs a reason to solve the mystery of what and who this monster is, so I guess she cares about protecting the innocent now.
Queue line after line of voice-over where Wednesday states she likes bad things, but not things that are this bad. Or she likes bad things, but not this flavor of bad thing. Episode by episode, Wednesday is hollowed out until it’s hard to say anything about her – except that she dislikes everything, of course.
Burton, Gough, and Millar try to package Wednesday’s heroic activities as dark by making her unusually obsessed with solving these serial killings. She disregards the feelings and needs of other people in pursuit of solving the mystery. But this is typical heroic behavior. I can’t count how many protagonists have had an obsession with their job or saving the day as a character flaw. Wednesday’s a little more of an asshole about it, is all.
The altruism gets even worse when Morticia and Gomez show up for an episode. The local sheriff thinks Gomez committed murder when he was young. For some reason, Wednesday finds this upsetting. The episode is then spent trying to prove Gomez’s innocence and not just to get him out of jail. Apparently the Addams family hates murder now.
Wednesday Doesn’t Have the Right Antagonists
The Addams family has always relied on contrast with the people around them. The typical sitcom plot involved inviting reputable professionals into the Addamses’ home so they could be scandalized by the family’s lifestyle. Addams Family Values had a whole antagonistic cast of blond people in pastels.
With the exception of her court-mandated therapist, Wednesday doesn’t get the contrasting characters she needed. Much of the show takes place at Nevermore Academy, which is for magical and monstrous people who are much like Wednesday. But since Wednesday has to stand out, they’re kind of normal monstrous people, but still not normal enough to be scandalized by her.
Wednesday’s primary antagonistic foil is her principal, Larissa Weems. But while Principal Weems smiles and wears white, she’s still the champion of a group of rather monstrous students. Both Wednesday and Weems want to protect people; their only difference is that Weems also wants to protect the school’s reputation. If Wednesday were only discreet, Weems would have no problem with Wednesday’s activities. That means to get them at odds, Wednesday has to become a crusader for truth. I guess at this point she might as well be.
Then Burton, Gough, and Millar jump at the chance to create yet another oppressed mages story. While the Addams movies did specify that some members of the family had been burned as witches, they seemed quite happy and proud about it. In contrast, this storyline requires that normal townsfolk seem threatening. We don’t have much opportunity to laugh when Wednesday shocks them, because shocking them needs real consequences now.
And for what? Non-magical people make terrible antagonists for protagonists with special abilities. They’re not powerful enough; that’s why the big threat of the season is a monster. It’s also why all the villainous “normies” Wednesday faces in the finale somehow have magic. And at that point, they’re not really normies anymore, are they?
With the magical people in the show reframed as “outcasts,” viewers are treated to an unnecessary flashback of the Addamses being persecuted, plus a pile of insensitive comparisons between “outcasts” and marginalized groups in real life. Burton, you don’t know enough about social justice for this material. Please just focus on good representation.
So, sure, the show still has Addams-style goth jokes. But they are only skin deep.
How the Show Could Have Done Better
So, what’s a better way to tell this story? Is there a better way? Yes, there is. While a character like Wednesday Addams has to be handled with immense care, other storytellers have pulled off similar challenges.
Nevermore Shouldn’t Have Been Gothic
It’s no surprise Burton wanted to stamp the school with his personal aesthetic, but, again, Wednesday needs contrast. This should have been a school filled with fairy godparents, guardian angels, and other magical beings who claim to only care about goodness and protecting humanity. This way, Wednesday can then scare off many of the junior students and teachers while leaving the more powerful ones as effective antagonists.
If Wednesday constantly disobeyed the rules, it might escalate the plot too quickly. In the current show, Principal Weems doesn’t have an effective means of punishing Wednesday without just expelling her, which would oust her from the show. Pretty soon, Weems looks ineffectual and the rules don’t seem to matter. To slow this down, I would have had Wednesday technically follow the rules while finding creative ways to subvert them. Her assignment was to inspire a human to change his ways, and the horde of poisonous spiders was inspiring, wasn’t it?
Of course, Wednesday would befriend sympathetic students who have trouble conforming. They don’t want to smile all the time, sometimes they get fed up with the humans they’re supposed to protect, and they might even be hiding some dark inclinations. The marginalization of these students will make the school look bad and begin blurring the line between good and evil. Then the white-clad antagonists can reveal themselves as extremely patronizing. They plan to help humans by “fixing” and controlling them.
This could culminate in Wednesday’s discovery that the school used to have a whole monstrous side. Maybe there were two school principals who fought. When the angelic principal won, she banned the monstrous students, closed that side of the school, and erased it from the school’s history. Wednesday could then bring it back. By this time, viewers will see this conflict as order vs. chaos. We’d just keep pretending order = good and chaos = evil by using the right aesthetics.
Of course, doing this would mean reducing the dark atmosphere of the setting for the first episodes. But trust me, audiences who enjoy a dark atmosphere absolutely love watching anything that’s full of goodness become corrupted. The trade-off would be worth it.
Wednesday Needed a Selfish Motivation
While Wednesday’s struggle against the school principal might be enough to sustain the season’s plot, bringing in an outside threat would still have been helpful. This would have taken some pressure off the school conflict and raised the stakes. The threat could even be a monster that’s killing people.
The key is that Wednesday needs another motivation for fighting it. For instance, perhaps she’s being blamed for the attacks. She doesn’t mind the additional fear and hate, but the monster’s methods are sloppy, clichéd even. She’s a true artist, not a hack like this monster. She’ll catch whoever is tarnishing her name with such embarrassing displays.
Then during her efforts to stop the monster, Wednesday just happens to save lives. She’s not trying. In fact, the unjust reputation she earns for being a savior is the scariest thing she’s encountered yet. Some people are even smiling warmly at her tricks now. It’s the worst. Of course, the monster is to blame. She will enjoy her sweet revenge.
The show could maintain Wednesday’s faux evilness through this type of circumstance and coincidence. She could also destroy property and terrorize irritating people in entertaining ways. After the asshole prom king is eaten by his own tuxedo, we could insert a line about how he’s not coming back to school and leave the rest up to the imagination.
Of course, the audience will still be concerned for the lovable side characters the monster could hurt. And as Wednesday gets close to the students who don’t fit in, she could return their loyalty by protecting them. This might have a selfish component – they’re her minions and she needs them – but it’s also okay for Wednesday to build some loving relationships. The key is to take baby steps and avoid giving her any devotion to moral principles rather than specific people.
If Wednesday has a selfish motivation and gets to act out in the right environment, we won’t need to make her hate everything for no reason.
At this point, it’s probably too late for the show to turn all these issues around. Fortunately, the mishandling of the Addams legacy hasn’t tanked it. The show is still a fun romp and a popular one at that. But if you haven’t seen the ’90s movies, give them a try. It’s a great glimpse into what the Addams family can be, and, hopefully, what they will be in the next incarnation.
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Yikes, I had no idea the show was that bad. Sure, a lot of the reviews were less than stellar, but Christina Ricci’s shoes are hard to fill when it comes to Wednesday Addams.
I think your idea with the ‘good’ school Wednesday was going to was a good one. Another would be to have a very mundane, upper-class sort of boarding school where Wednesday would stick out for not having the same values as the rest of them. Of course, if she were to go to a school with fairies and future heroes, she’d stick out even more.
One way to turn things upside down I rather liked was in “American Dragon”. There were twins who could see the future, one the bad things, one the good things. The twin who could see the bad things happening was bright and chirpy and the twin who could see the good things was usually glum. They explained it by the twin who could see the bad things never getting a bad surprise, so she enjoyed life, as she’d always know beforehand if something bad was to happen whereas her sister never had a nice surprise, already knowing about good things in advance.
The show really isn’t bad, just flawed. It’s well paced, has plenty of likable characters (though a few pretty bland ones too), and Jenna Ortega is absolutely perfect as the lead. I’d even say most of her dialogue is really fun and entertaining, but yeah, her motivations are inconsistent and the theming of Nevermore is seriously out of whack.
Yeah, I agree with you and this article. It’s hard to write anti-heroes sometimes without just making them normal heroes with GRIMDARK frosting.
Also, Wednesday/Enid is best ship.
“Christina Ricci’s shoes are hard to fill when it comes to Wednesday Addams.”
Christina Ricci’s performance was good, but her character is the least appealing Wednesday to me personally. Today, her character is beloved by older millenials and Gen X’s who grew up watching her, but upon release, those movies had far lower critic ratings than Wednesday does today. Are there plot holes in Wednesday? Sure. But unlike Ricci’s version, Jenna’s version is actually likeable.
Well, part of the plot of Addams Family Values was that Fester’s new wife, Debby, was trying to kill him
But Fester was so hard to kill that this played out more as humor than as a threat
In fact, Fester’s isolation from the rest of his family was more of a threat, more of a conflict than Debby’s murder attempts
>It’s no surprise Burton wanted to stamp the school with his personal aesthetic, but, again, Wednesday needs contrast
Burton had no problem w/ this in Edward Scissorhands. The town was a pastiche of a “good little surburb”. And Edward’s pale black-clad blade-wielding look was the perfect contrast
I hope Jenna Ortega gets more gigs after this one, because she’s an absolute gem!
In the original comics and the 1964 television, Wednesday Adams was a cute elementary school girl that happened to have the gothic/morbid tastes of her family like playing with a headless Marie Antoinette doll or getting upset when a knight killed a dragon. Otherwise, she is normal kid behavior wise. She wasn’t a snarky goth teen like the movies and everything after that imagines.
I think the problem with Wednesday is that the original Addams were monsterish in a human world while now the Addams are humanish in a monster world. Being humanish in a monster world doesn’t really work with the basic vibe of the Addams family being humanish in a monster world. You need to change them to being monsters that like good things. The reverse of the original joke to get a similar vibe.
Yeah, I kinda miss that version of Wednesday. The way she reacted like a normal child to things, even if the causes of reactions we’re reversed (not that she’s the only one to sympathize with dragons) really brought home the fact that the Addamses are, underneath all the macabre, essentially normal people with reverse tastes from those around them.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of having Addams family be genuinely heroic. However, said heroism must come from them doing things their own way, not the way others do.
The comics and 1964 sitcom also never go too far into the supernatural elements. The Addams family struts the line between just having some really off beat tastes compared to normal people and genuine supernatural strangeness. Cousin It, Lurch and Thing are about as supernatural as it gets. Putting the Addams family in more definitely supernatural world seems not to be really getting it.
I agree with much of what you say, but the suggestion on how to fix the problem reminds me of ‘The School for Good and Evil’ movie, which I felt was contrived and unsatisfying. The good wasn’t really good, the evil was more cartoonish evil.
It would be a big challenge to pull the idea off with Nevermore. I agree with the comment that what she needs contrast with is normalcy, not slightly less grey monsters. Perhaps the school could be a school for ‘problem children’, with the exception of the monster, none of the other students needed to be different. Their magic is hardly touched on anyway.
I do like the idea of Wednesday being blamed for the murders and being angry because they were unimaginative and crass, and she would never do anything like that.
Despite being a fan of the show, I agree with your assessment of its flaws. Ryan George did a great Pitch Meeting episode covering the same inconsistencies.
But I think the show could be salvaged without having to change the setting or characters that much. The main issue would be to have Wednesday as the chief suspect for the murders and have her needing to prove herself innocent of such lazy slashing. The contrast then becomes how even in a school of outcasts she is literally the outcast.
Chris Winkle, I totally DISAGREE.
I have watched the episodes quite a few times and I did not see anything that lacking it’s dark luster. The show was a massive hit and for many reasons why. Not to mention Jenna Ortega played the Wednesday role very well and kept true to the characters goth persona not to mention they built her character more as the show progressed!
I disagree with many of your points. I think you’re missing the larger picture: she is not the same character as represented by the movies. You seem to be conflating the two because they have similar flat affect and razor sharp and violent wit. But at heart, they’re very different people, partly because of the run time differences. The movie version had limited screen time to get her character across, so relied on stereotypes and a one-dimensional schtick that made for excellent viewing because she was highly novel. (Don’t get me wrong, “Are they made from real Girl Scouts?” is one of my favorite Wednesday lines of all time.) Plus the movies were comedies. This is not a comedy.
I’m also confused by your reference to her calling social media soul-sucking. I think you’re taking her too literally. She had consistently shown a reluctance to participate in social interaction. She’s basically calling social media pointless with this line, not literally saying it will steal your soul.
This Wednesday is far more nuanced and proof that even though she has a flat affect and negative demeanor, she also has empathy and a strong sense of justice. This is not exactly the same as altruism, which I would argue she does not show except in her relentless pursuit of justice. She defends from bullies her brother and other students that she, reluctantly, gets to know better, such as Eugene. Her sense of justice leads her to correct her father’s imprisonment who was in fact innocent. And her sense of justice leads her to explore the monster and what happened to Rowan.
In defense of Weems, the school’s reputation is what keeps it running as a shelter for outcasts in a wider world of normies that might try to reenact the witch trials if not for her running interference. I would say that a large group of townsfolk are threatening to small numbers of not terribly powerful magical people.
Finally, I think that the world of the series is better off for more nuanced main and side characters instead of the one-dimensional plastic people of the movies. Which, don’t get me wrong, worked great for the movies. Having her surrounded by holier than thou peers seems like a step backwards. This show gives us side characters with shades of gray. Just look at Bianca. She could be written as a villain or annoyingly self-righteous, but there’s space in this series for her to be a complex and troubled character. I think we’re better off for it. Even the humans are given empathy and a chance to fix their mistakes, such as Lucas.
In sum, I think the series is showing us that Wednesday was never the villain, just stereotyped as one just like all the other students at the school. Her strict sense of justice motivates her character.
> “she is not the same character as represented by the movies »
She is not completely different either.
It’s normal that the show would introduce variations in her demeanour, in her personality, but the writers clearly had the 90’s version in mind when writing the show.
That’s why we still have the snarky goth girl who likes inflicting torment on the world, instead of the helpful yet slightly oblivious version of the first show, that’s why we have Christina Ricci being in the show too.
They were clearly capitalising on the success of the two movies when writing this, so they have to know that the audience will expect some consistency about the character. Yes they can introduce more nuances to her character, but they also must not deviate too much from the source material either.
> “she also has empathy and a strong sense of justice.This is not exactly the same as altruism, which I would argue she does not show except in her relentless pursuit of justice”
I would disagree partially on that one. It may not be exactly the same, but combining empathy and a very strong sense of justice is going to give the same reactions as being altruistic : coming at the rescue of victims.
I agree that the level of empathy she shows is not a bad thing, however I think they did go a bit overboard with it when it comes to the main throughline.
« My biggest fear is to be responsible for something terrible » is presented as her main motivation for trying to stop what’s coming and in my opinion really hurts the whole vibe they were aiming at.
The ‘I act like I don’t care but I secretly do’ works perfectly well for her relationships with Enid, Euegene, Pugsley etc… but when it comes to her core, the very thing that makes Wednesday Addams a popular character today is that she loves the mayhem she can cause.
Instead of « I’m afraid of being responsible of this », her motivation should have been something more selfish initially, like her pride being hurt like Chris suggested, and then as her relationship with Nevermore grows, transition to a more heroic « I’m gonna protect it ».
But starting right of the bat with it makes her way too heroic and altruistic.
> “I would say that a large group of townsfolk are threatening to small numbers of not terribly powerful magical people »
With sirens being able to hypnotise large groups of people and gorgons turn them all to stone, and werewolf being big mauling machines, it’s very doubtful the Outcasts would be in any kind of danger.
I don’t like admitting it, but the show fell straight into the oppressed-mage territory.
> “Having her surrounded by holier than thou peers seems like a step backwards »
Just like you can introduce nuance to the one-dimensional movie versions of the Addams, you can do the same with the holier-than-thee movie version of the antagonists.
Bianca starts as the stereotypical queen bee and then gets more depth in her character (though I wish they would have spent a little more time on that), in the same way you could have a stereotypical head-girl guardian angel being obnoxiously good and then reveal more nuances about her, for example she could have had a trauma with Dark Side people and be compensating, or maybe build sympathy by showing she’s on the verge of burn-out trying to keep up with expectations etc…
I think Chris is right on that point, it would have been better to use what made the movie successful : the contrast between Wednesday- I love darkness- Addams and the « good » and « ordered » people.
Have you read The School for Good and Evil series? I personally think it could have been executed much better but the plot is actually incredibly similar to the plot you recommended for Wednesday, with a gothic person who doesn’t like to smile being stuck in a goody two shoes fairy tale school with patronizing staff, and a history where two heads of the school battled and the evil one lost. Though it also includes a second school where everything is gothic and dark and the goody two shoes girl is stuck there.
Also I agree with you on Wednesday, I liked the first two episodes but then it went super downhill, and made Wednesday involved in a love triangle which was NOT necessary.
I’ve briefly seen the title floating around on … Netflix I think? But haven’t watched it or read it.
I’d read the book before watching the movie, which I think is a poor adaptation with impressive visuals. Most annoying is it was *almost* so bad it was good, but took itself just that bit too seriously. If they’d gone full camp it would have been incredible.
To add to what Juliette says of the protagonist Agnes, the core of what makes the story interesting (to me, anyway) is that she embodies actual good qualities like empathy, understanding and a desire for justice. She is rightfully sorted into the “Good” school, but many of her peers think she’s in the wrong place because she doesn’t fit their superficial idea of what Good looks like.
Meanwhile, her best friend from the real/”Reader” world, Sophie, fits the pretty princess box precisely but was assigned to the Evil school. Agnes doesn’t think her friend is evil. Really she just wants to get the both of them out of there and back to normalcy. However, Sophie is dead set on becoming a princess, sure that there’s been some sort of mistake and the only issue is that Agnes should be in the Evil school. So Agnes, being a good friend, tries to help her prove this “mistake”.
Overall, I experienced it as having unexpectedly nuanced social commentary for a middle-grade novel. Also, I have no idea if it’s intentional but the vibe between Sophie and Agnes is extremely gay at times—way more chemistry than any of the supposed love interests.
Plot definitely leaves something to be desired. Contrived at times and very predictable. But I enjoyed it overall and am looking forward to season 2 (although the way it ended seems like it will be even more forced).
Tried a rewatch a couple of months ago but couldn’t make it through ep 1 again. Ortega definitely carries the show.
Ha! I want to see the prom king get eaten by his tuxedo.
Ortega’s performance was what hooked me in and kept me watching.
She’s very good!
I agree because I think that Wednesday is too overrated, and what I hated the most was how they put Wednesday in a love triangle, as if she had those types of feelings which she shouldn’t.
I love Wednesday more than anything I’ve seen in 2022 except maybe ST season 4. That being said, this article raises a few interesting points, none of which I will respond to, because a separate point activated my Addams Family pet peeve, and now I have to address it.
So here is an unintentional perfect example of why I despise The Addams Family Values and love Tim Burton’s Wednesday so much. This passage in particular is illuminating:
“While it’s only for laughs, the Addams family still thinks murder is fun, and they’re unlikely to save anyone from a grisly fate when they can watch instead.”
Yes, this is correct…if we define the Christina Ricci films as the true Addams Family. Anyone who has watched the original Addams Family show will realize the 90s films perverted the spirit of the Addams Family by making them basically villains. Off the top of my head, I can name eight episodes where The Addams Family intentionally helps ordinary people. I can name ZERO episodes where they intentionally harm or wish ill on their neighbors. Yet because of Ricci’s good performance and because older millennials grew up watching those films, they are regarded as the “true” Addams Family, and these older fans bash the modern Wednesday for not being a sociopath. Screen Junkies did the same thing the other day. Let’s keep in mind that Charles Addams himself describes Wednesday as a sweet and shy little girl. If anything, Tim Burton’s Wednesday is not nice enough compares to the original…but I think she’s great all the same.
For the record, we’re doing a rewatch of the 1964 sitcom currently, and there are a bunch of times when the various family members talk about doing horrible things to people. They never actually do it on screen of course, same as the 1990s movies. While those movies did make plenty of changes, that isn’t one of them. We can also tell just from watching the show that the 2022 Wednesday is intended to channel the 1990s Wednesday because she talks about liking all the same things, and even has a similar affect. Ortega’s Wednesday has much more in common with Ricci’s Wednesday than with Loring’s.
I would dispute the idea that we never see the 1990s Addams do bad things on screen. For example, in the opening scene, they pour boiling water on top of Christmas carolers. About ten minutes later, Pugsley steals a stop sign and causes a fatal crash. We don’t see the crash on screen, but we hear the cars smashing into each other. In Addams Family Values, as originally filmed, it is implied Wednesday kills the blonde girl. Test audiences thought this was too dark, so the studio ordered them to reshoot and add the airplane scene showing she survived.
I can’t remember them discussing killing anyone in the 60s show, out of curiosity, can you list an example?
Off the top of my head, they strongly imply that Fester killed the “tax man” (whatever that means) on Gomez’s behalf, and in The New Neighbors Meet the Addams Family, they talk about different possibilities for killing their new neighbors. Fester wants to shoot them in the back, while Gomez thinks it should be in an honorable duel. Also, in Wednesday Leaves Home, they have a string of police badges that they keep as trophies. While a lot of folks might consider that a less than bad thing, it was clearly designed as a joke about how evil they are. In The Addams Family Tree, Wednesday and Pugsley do a bit of light offscreen torture on the neighbor’s kid. Plus they say things like “we may have saved the world! Do you think we did the right thing?”
Of course, the show isn’t super consistent on these things, being a 1960s sitcom. We also have Morticia come out strongly against hitting kids because it would be wrong, for example. But the 90s movies didn’t invent this aspect of the Addams family.
Oh shoot, I forgot about The New Neighbors Meet the Addams Family. Yeah, that definitely counts as murderous behavior lol.
I guess I’d amend my main point to that because the TV show is on balance much longer than the 90s movies, and has inconsistent behaviors for the Addams family like you mention, it is easier to get a negative impression on the family on the films. The films are basically consistent in leaning into the violence of the Addams family, which is why when people say the ideal Addams family are evil, they’re likely thinking of the films imo.
Anyway, I don’t mean to bash the films too harshly. I admire the performances, and it’s unlikely Wednesday would exist if not for their success.
It’s worth remembering in this discussion that the Addams Family intellectual property has undergone numerous iterations. It started as a comic strip, then in the 1960s there was the TV show with all its iconic camp, as well as a cartoon from that era. There was also a cartoon version in the 1990s, and The New Addams Family, a live action version in the 1990s. This is ignoring crossovers (Scooby Do, for example) and the recent CGI movies and a few one-offs and things that never went anywhere.
Wednesday was significantly different in each version. (To be fair, so do the other characters–“Wednesday” is hardly the first time Gomez’ character has been criticized!) There is no “right” version, just what anyone prefers.
My biggest complaint with this show is that Nevermore is gothic. I love gothic aesthetics, but Wednesday works best as a foil. She works best as a dark mirror, showing the side of things people don’t think about. Perhaps her most iconic moment as a character was her speech during the play in “Addams Family Values”, where she rips open the colonialism, classism, and bigotry of the camp for everyone to see by displaying the historical context of the events being portrayed. You can’t do that in a gothic setting, because frankly everyone else is busy doing that. Her personality is based on other people, and there simply isn’t anything at Nevermore for her to work with.
Basically, “Wednesday” inverts Pixar’s formula. Pixar takes characters and puts them in uncomfortable situations to drive plot. “Wednesday” takes a character and puts her in the only situation where she should be comfortable. This makes any angst feel petulant.