The 5 Biggest Problems Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Needed To Exorcise

Contains spoilers for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"

This week, the juice is well and truly loose as Michael Keaton's bio-exorcist returns after a more than three-decade absence with "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." While fans of the original will likely enjoy the pretty fun paranormal follow-up, there's no doubt that (as pointed out in Looper's review) there's a very crowded haunted house at the center of this supernatural sequel. Even though this is the most Tim Burton movie that ever Burton'd, it feels incredibly overstuffed with excess plot threads that you might wish had vacated the premises and significant portions of the movie that make you wonder why they were included in the first place.

From dated set-pieces to characters that possess far too much screen time, there's so much that could be stripped away from "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." Big, bland plot points that will have you scratching your head that could have been totally omitted, giving the film so much more to dance about than what we've ended up with. After a close inspection, here are five of the biggest "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" sins that should've been sent to the back of the queue and left there, never to be seen again.

Teased in the trailer as the film's big bad, one of the most notable crimes "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" commits is introducing a great potential villain in the form of Monica Bellucci's Delores and doing absolutely nothing with her for most of the film. Revealed to be the cause of Beetlejuice's death, the movie sets Delores up as an impressive force, broken out of containment as a live-action Corpse Bride, and sucking the life out of Danny DeVito's Janitor before setting off to exact her revenge on the former flame that killed her.

And ... that's it.

From there, the actress spends the rest of the film walking towards the camera through the kooky and crooked halls of the afterlife in search of Beetlejuice. Only in the film's final act, when the movie is rushing to lay all its plot threads to rest, does she finally encounter her ex-hubby — only to be swiftly eaten by a sandworm and proving to have made absolutely no impact on the story whatsoever. Admittedly, as Burton fans know, it's nothing new for the director to cast his real-life romantic partner in a project; ex-wife Helena Bonham Carter appeared in seven of his movies during their marriage. Here's hoping that in whatever gig he has lined up next, Bellucci gets more to work with than angrily walking down hallways for the majority of her screen time.

If we had a nickel for every time Jenna Ortega was the daughter of a popular goth character and falls for a local boy who turns out to be a monster, we'd have two nickels, which isn't much — but it's weird that they both happened in Tim Burton projects.

Equally as impactful as Dolores, Arthur Conti's Jeremy really does feel like a rough draft of Hunter Doohan's Tyler from Netflix's "Wednesday" series, which is even more annoying given that he actually gives a great but grossly underused performance. The only benefit to be found in his inclusion is that his killer spirit, Richie, acts as an entry point into the world that Astrid has refused to believe in, but her mother has been invested in for her entire life. But even that leads to the creation of some sketchy plot holes.

Did the youngest Deetz family member really need to get loved-up with a potential romance in order to see things from her mother's perspective? More to the point, what was it that allowed her to see Jeremy in the first place? When the ghost spills the beans about his plans to use Astrid's soul to escape the afterlife, he even admits he doesn't know why she saw him. The movie's half-hearted explanation — "but she did" — is brushed over just as much as the rest of his plot thread. We just wish it had been given more time, or none at all, instead of lingering in storyline limbo.

"Wednesday" sparked arguments of Tim Burton's potentially racially-skewed casting choices, and one element in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" does little to weaken that argument. After previously defending his work for having predominantly white cast members, the only scenes in the new sequel to involve black characters are when Astrid is forced aboard (big sigh) the Soul Train.

Dragged into the afterlife by Jeremy, Astrid finds herself at risk of being sent to the great beyond and has to board a subway train that's filled with Black extras dressed in '70s gear and afros. It's a cheap and immensely outdated set piece that only highlights just how limited Burton's films are in regards to inclusivity and diversity. Sure, it might look great for a brief dance number, but when the only speaking role a Black cast member has is the Conductor (comedian Stephen K. Amos) ordering everyone "All aboard the Soul Train," it shines a bright spotlight on the fact that there's more work that should've been done here.

It's disappointing, especially given that the original film has its own issues with racial insensitivity. Spending so long on a sequence that feels like it was an idea left over from the first "Beetlejuice" just isn't needed. Like the Soul Train itself, this never really goes anywhere and is only there for a sequence that was just ... okay.

– and the film already has one of those at the end.

Any minute spent paying mind to a character that was played by a convicted sex offender is a minute too many. And yet, in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," Jeffrey Jones' Charles Deetz is not only the main drive for getting the family back together but is carefully (and unnecessarily) revisited throughout the film.

For those that don't know, Jeffrey Jones was arrested for possession of child pornography as well as soliciting a minor to pose for nude photos. He was given five years probation and required to register on the national database as a child sex offender.

While Jones does not reprise his role, the film resorts to stop-motion animation to reveal Charles' cause of death, explaining that he was killed in a shark attack during a bird-watching expedition. For the rest of the film, Charles is shown as half the man he was, wandering through the afterlife as a pair of legs topped by a shark-shaped bite where his head used to be. While the uninformed might be fine with it, Jones' presence in the film is strongly felt when it shouldn't be there at all. Why couldn't the film use a line of dialogue to write him out of the story in the same way that the mere mention of "a loophole" explains why Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) aren't present this time around? Instead, far too much attention is cast on Charles' character when simply giving up the ghost would've been the better approach.

In a film that houses a horrifying birth sequence involving a Beetlejuice baby having a "Trainspotting" moment, somehow Justin Theroux's parasitic boyfriend weaseling his way into the Deetz dynasty is more offensive. Another new character that makes little impact in the film as a whole, Theroux does a great job in turning Rory — the new beau of Winona Ryder's Lydia –into a loathsome foil. The problem is that the big reveal of his true agenda and the justice he's dealt are all dished out in the time it takes to say "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice."

There could have actually been something worth playing around with here in terms of story. Rory secretly shares the same view as Astrid, whose disbelief in her mother is the wedge that's pushing them apart and may have made for a more interesting family fix by the end. Instead, he's forced to admit to his scheme before being swiftly carried away by a sandworm and Delores at the end of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." As a result, Theroux's character is another one of many that are rushed off stage when time could've been spent to reveal that the real monster was the other guy haunting the Deetz family all along, and not the one with the mad green hair and rotten teeth (even if he's no good, either).