Phixius

6th Apr 2016

Beetlejuice (1988)

Question: When Adam first steps out of the house and ends up on Saturn, he's only there for a few seconds in real time, but Barbara tells him he was gone for two hours. Yet towards the end of the movie when Beetlejuice banishes Barbara to Saturn, she's there for a considerably longer time (at least long enough to wrangle a sandworm and co-opt it) but ends up only being gone for a few minutes and manages to return to the house in time to stop Beetlejuice from marrying. Why is this? Since she was on Saturn longer than Adam's first time there, shouldn't she have been gone for longer than two Earth hours?

Phaneron

Chosen answer: Time flows differently on Saturn and in the afterlife than it does in the house. Not faster or slower, just differently. Ten minutes on Saturn could be hours, or months, or just seconds in the house. There is no connection or relationship between the passage of time in one place and the passage of time in another.

Phixius

13th Dec 2012

Beetlejuice (1988)

Question: In the beginning only Lydia can see Adam and Barbra, but everyone can see Betelgeuse. How come the Deetze's can see Betelgeuse but not Adam and Barbra?

Lueroi

Chosen answer: He's got more experience interacting with the living. Adam and Barbara are capable of making themselves seen by the others, they just don't know how yet.

Phixius

Answer: They could see him because Adam and Barbara's parlor display gave them reason to believe in supernatural entities.

13th May 2011

Beetlejuice (1988)

Question: In the scene where Juno is talking to Adam and Barbara in her office, look out the window behind Adam and Barbara. There is a group of people who look like they are watching TV and eating popcorn. One of them looks like Otho, wearing a suit and sunglasses. Is there any significance to this?

SAZOO1975

Chosen answer: It's not meant to be Otho. It's a theater full of ghosts. The idea being that, when this film was still in theaters itself, the audience got the impression that they themselves were being watched by ghosts on "the other side" who were also at a viewing of Beetlejuice, watched from the opposite perspective.

Phixius

15th Apr 2010

Beetlejuice (1988)

Answer: She wanted to be with the couple, she did not think of the repercussions.

Phixius

She was incredibly depressed. She wasn't happy anywhere and she didn't fit in with her own family or anything they were trying to do. She was a goth girl. The realm of the dead and the macabre seemed more a place for her. When one sees the "Netherworld," it kind of seems like a more interesting place. But... upon closer inspection, it's not really all that different from our world.

Answer: She wanted to be with her mom who had passed sway.

It's never stated that her mom had died. There could be a possibility that Charles and her mom got divorced. The first two answers are more likely.

I've heard the interpretation that Delia really is Lydia's biological mother, but they are very different and don't get along, so Lydia pretends that Delia is a stepmother.

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