1 week Ago By Tori Brazier
Beetlejuice fans who don’t already know will be in for an unpleasant shock when they discover the upsetting reason actor Jeffrey Jones didn’t return for the sequel alongside other original stars. Of course, in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – the follow-up 36 years in the making to Tim Burton’s original horror-comedy movie from 1988 – Michae Keaton is back as the titular ghost , wise-cracking his way through the Afterlife – and the realm of the living, where he can. Winona Ryder also reprises her role as Lydia Deetz, with Jenna Ortega joining the cast as her teenage daughter Astrid and Catherine O’Hara back as Lydia’s kooky artist stepmother Delia.
Other new additions include Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux and Monica Bellucci – but Jones, who played Lydia’s father Charles Deetz, is not featured in the film . Beetlejuice 2 does, however, find ingenious ways to reference and depict his character – including some very Burton-esque stop-motion animation. Although no statement has been made on the matter by Burton or Jones himself, the actor’s career – which had included movies like Amadeus and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – was interrupted when he was arrested in 2002.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser that supports HTML5video Jones, now 77, pleaded no contest the following year for possession of child pornography after allegedly hiring a 14-year-old boy to pose nude for photographs. After skirting a possible three-year prison term with his plea deal, Jones was sentenced to five years’ probation, ordered to undergo counselling and was placed on the sex offenders register for the rest of his life, according to Entertainment Weekly at the time. Following his sentencing, Jones read out a statement outside the courthouse, which said: ‘This concludes a really painful chapter in my life.
I am sorry that this incident was allowed to occur. Such an event has never happened before and it will never happen again.’ Jones’ lawyer, Leonard Levine, added that the accusations against his client were ‘just a case about photographs’, without Jones being accused of any unlawful sexual act or touching in relation to the boy.
‘He hopes at some point the public will forgive him and he can go on with his life and his career,’ Levine concluded, as per wire reports. However, he was later arrested twice – first in Florida in 2004 and then in California in 2010 – for failing to update his sex offender status. Jones is required to update his information every year.
After pleading guilty to the 2010 charge, he was given a sentence of 250 hours of community service as well as three years’ probation, reported the BBC . His career, which also included roles in Sleepy Hollow and Dr Dolittle 2, did not immediately grind to a halt following his conviction as a sex offender. Jones appeared in 2007 movie Who’s Your Caddy?, where locals reportedly took umbrage over his involvement given families were invited to set.
He was also cast in TV show Deadwood as A.W. Merrick from 2004, before reprising the role in the 2019 TV – which is his last known credit.
In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Charles’s death and Jones’s absence are both handled rather ingeniously. *Spoilers below for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice* To begin with, the Deetz patriarch’s death is revealed early in the film, with Delia breaking the news to Lydia, and it’s this unexpected tragedy that sends the family back to Winter River and the famous haunted house from the first movie. It transpires that Charles met rather a gruesome and unexpected end as the victim of a shark attack abroad – after surviving a plane crash.
While Delia explains these details to Lydia, a stop-motion animation is shown onscreen telling the tale, which fits in well with the tone of the film given the way parts of the Afterlife and its creatures (including the giant striped sandworms) are depicted. When audiences come across him once again in the netherworld as he bumbles about in the famous waiting room, Charles is but a body with its head and shoulders missing, who gurgles a lot of blood when he speaks. It’s not Jones providing the voice for this Charles, and the character also fits right in with the other creative deaths Burton has given his fellow recently deceased neighbours, including a woman (still) being eaten by her cats.
Many fans who were not aware of Jones’ conviction prior to the sequel and have since discovered its nature, have expressed their horror on social media. Others have applauded Burton and Warner Bros for how the issue was handled. ‘The way beetlejuice beetlejuice addresses the death of charles and absence of jeffrey jones is nothing short of sheer perfection tbh,’ commented @sandwormgf on X after watching the movie.
‘The jeffrey jones workaround in beetlejuice 2 is even funnier because it goes nowhere at all,’ tweeted @cheaperby12film. ‘Cannot think of a more bizarre acknowledgement of a cancelled actor.’ ‘I can’t believe they somehow found a way to both have and not have Jeffrey Jones in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,’ observed @ZachSMarsh, while @JitStomper praised the handling of it as ‘so good’.
However, others were not comfortable seeing the character of Charles depicted as much as he was onscreen, given the association with Jones. More Trending Beetlejuice sequel lands impressively rare Rotten Tomatoes score 80s blockbuster film 'set for sequel with original cast 40 years later' Traits and controversial behaviours James Bond can't have anymore in 2024 Babygirl's 'hardcore' sex scenes are not what you thought you'd see Nicole Kidman ever do ‘I will say, it bugged me how much Beetlejuice Beetlejuice shows Jeffrey Jones,’ posted CM Tusk, while @spfarrelltweets pointed out that he was ‘still very much part of it’ and Ryan McLelland condemned the choice a ‘embarrassing’. ‘There is a frankly uncomfortable amount of Jeffrey Jones in the film,’ added Andy McCarroll.
Metro.co.uk has contacted a rep for Jeffrey Jones for comment.
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