One way that our new, perpetually flailing streaming ecosystem resembles older movie-studio configurations is that certain actors will become closely associated with certain streaming services. This may be more imitative of Will Smith and Adam Sandler at Sony or Margot Robbie at Warner Bros. than the old contract-player studio systems, but it’s still clear when a company has its favorites, even outside of the megastar orbit. Netflix is particularly obvious about its chosen starlets: Joey King, for example, stars in the upcoming sci-fi drama Uglies, just on the heels of her Netflix comedy-drama A Family Affair, after seeing success with the Kissing Booth trilogy. When Millie Bobby Brown isn’t making Stranger Things for Netflix, she’s shooting movies like Damsel, also for Netflix. Lana Condor did the Netflix series Boo, Bitch after the Netflix trilogy of To All the Boys movies.
Jenna Ortega should be on a similar path. She co-starred in the Netflix movies The Babysitter: Killer Queen and Yes Day and did a voice role on their Jurassic World animated series before reaching another level of stardom thanks to Wednesday, the streamer’s YA take on The Addams Family. Yet somehow, Ortega seems to be heading where Brown, Condor, and King haven’t been hanging out, at least not recently: the big screen. This week, Ortega co-stars in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s sequel to his beloved 1988 horror-comedy Beetlejuice, poised to score one of the biggest opening weekends of the year. It may, in fact, outgross Ortega’s biggest hits – the last couple of Scream movies – in as few as three or four days. While Condor and King started in movies before getting big on streaming, and Brown has only ever appeared in a couple of Godzilla–related theatrical releases (and alienating herself from very-online movie buffs by purporting not to watch movies at all), Ortega may actually parlay Big on Streaming into old-fashioned movie stardom. That she even appears to want to feels like a change of pace.
She certainly does a better job of standing out alongside her veteran Beetlejuice co-stars than, say, Joey King, who gets lost alongside Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron in Family Affair. And granted, some of Ortega’s starriness may be more a question of self-marketing than true undeniable drawing power. The press tour for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, often pairing her with Catherine O’Hara, has showcased Ortega’s poise and goth-influenced fashion sense, giving her the aura of a movie star even if she hasn’t actually appeared in that many hit movies.
That aura floats around her in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice; it’s possible that it enhances her performance more than the other way around. It would be a stretch to call this a pantheon-level role for Ortega – her work on Wednesday, though the show itself isn’t as funny or inventive as this movie, probably has more nuance to it – yet she does share, with Winona Ryder, the emotional heavy lifting of the movie. Michael Keaton returns as the title character and wisely keeps his role from overexposed overkill, Catherine O’Hara steals scenes of her own as before, while Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci inhabit new characters that are more delightful Burton sketches than fully developed personalities.
That leaves Lydia Deetz (Ryder) and her teenage daughter Astrid (Ortega) to provide the human element. Astrid feels alienated from Lydia, just as Lydia once disdained her stepmother (O’Hara) in the earlier film – though presumably it stings a bit more, with Lydia and Astrid knowing each other all their lives. The movie is supposed to be about mother and daughter coming to an understanding of each other’s lives. At the same time, Ortega’s task is sometimes more technical than emotional, as demanded by the screenplay’s whipsaw turns and oddball conceits: She must thread the needle of projecting unsmiling, Lydia-like morbidity while disbelieving (for a while, anyway) her mother’s ability to peer into the afterlife and see ghostly visions. The idea seems to be that she’s goth for real-world doominess, not behind-the-veil mysteries, though the movie doesn’t press it much further than that.
What comes through in all the commotion – largely too fun for heavy sentiment – is Ortega’s physical presence. Ryder’s Lydia deadpan tends to come from stillness, especially in her current age. Ortega is more demonstrative; she doesn’t mug her way through Astrid’s reactions, but her physicality, from her expressive eyes to her half-suppressed smile, remains eye-catching. At one point, a patented Beetlejuice musical possession throws her into an involuntary dance; maybe it was inevitable, in the wake of that famous Wednesday scene, and it’s only a minute or two of screentime, if that, but for that moment, she feels more possessed than her castmates.
Still, it would be disingenuous to pretend Beetlejuice Beetlejuice represents a step forward for her as an actor, given that it casts her as another gothic-adjacent teenager. Where it really propels her forward is as a brand-name, big-screen presence, which is no small feat for her peer group. Ortega has plenty of evidence herself: Her recent movie Miller’s Girl didn’t exactly draw massive crowds in its theatrical release (and seemed to get a bigger audience when it debuted on, you guessed it, Netflix). Her upcoming indie romance Winter Spring Summer or Fall likely won’t post blockbuster numbers (and could very well wind up as a mostly-streaming affair). At the multiplex, she’s been most successful as the literal Scream queen (she’s also in the terrific slasher picture X). Still, her YA series is just one degree of that persona; King, Condor, and Brown all feel consigned to the kiddie table by comparison.
It’s also possible that Ortega doesn’t have designs on traditional movie stardom. After all, nothing she’s done at the movies has had the same impact as her starring role on Wednesday. She’s young enough to simply not process the idea of stardom the same way, having come of age at a time when more and more celebrities cultivate their own ecosystems, complete with private stan armies. But her TV-to-multiplex trajectory and horror-picture bona fides suggest that she does actually care about the old ways. (I won’t go so far as to suggest that she’s a real-life Cairo Sweet, knowingly and masterfully flattering middle-aged men.) Normally, plugging a young star into old IP feels like a cynical move on both parts. For Ortega, it feels like a signal that she wants to peek behind the veil of 2020s-era fame into a different and better world.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
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