History Headscratchers / EdwardScissorhands

* KIm tells her granddaughter that she never went back to Edward because she wanted him to remember her how she was. This explains why she doesn't go back now but why didn't she go back sooner? For example...she could have just waited until she was over 18 and had moved out of her parents' house and go back to the mansion and get Edward and then run off somewhere...maybe buy a few acres of land in Montana where Edward can live without having to deal with society. The two of them could have lived happily that way. Yes it would have sucked that she would grow old and he wouldn't but I don't think he would have loved her any less just because she aged...and yes it would be hard when she died but at least they could have enjoyed many decades together before that happened.

* The film looks to be a fable about how the snow appears. This makes Edward a partly folk-legend creation who causes the snow.

* After the inventor died and left no heirs wouldn't his mansion become the state's property at some point? Would they really just let that land sit idle? Over many years the generation that knew Edward would die out and the notoriety of the mansion would no longer be fresh in anyone's mind so wouldn't it just be a matter of time before they tore the place down and built houses or condos up there? And a construction crew would discover Edward still living up there?

* Just ''why'' exactly did Edward wind up with scissors for hands? I understand that the inventor never got around to building Edward proper human-like hands, but why the hell would he put '''''scissors''''' on him in the first place? Even if Edward was supposed to be a gentle soul, building a Frankenstein-like artificial human with deadly metal blades for hands is a pretty big risk for an inventor to take--what if he ever went rogue? And if he just didn't have time to build hands, wouldn't it have made more sense to give him grasping claws that he could actually hold things with? Or better yet, he could've just not bothered with putting anything in place of hands until he was ready to give Edward the real thing. As we see in the movie, scissor-hands are very handy for cutting hair and bushes, but they're pretty much useless for anything that you would ordinarily use hands for. It seems like the scissor-hands caused much more trouble than they were worth.
** Edward started out as a (presumably mindless) machine used to cut things up. When the inventor built that, he never intended to eventually make him into a human/android. Eventually he got the idea to do just that, but again, it's not like he started out creating a human robot and kept the scissor hands for the lulz. He did intend to give him regular hands, just died before he could do it.
** They actually show the hands Edward would have gotten; but the scientist dies literally on Edward's hands; and Edward can't do anything to help him and may have in fact killed his own father; the hands are shown to have been damaged well beyond repair and the film is not clear on just how much time has passed between that accident and the current day; but it's safe to assume it has been years and years; we are shown at the end that Edward doesn't age and is still very functional.

*** I think the hands presented to him in the box are largely meant to be symbolic, an idea of what the inventor will be giving him. I also don't think Edward actually kills the inventor - all he does is touch his face with a blade and he doesn't react - As Edward later tells Peg, '''"He didn't wake up,"'''. At some point in the film we also see some pages and overlays for Edward's design, which appear to suggest that he was basically a modified version of one of the chopping robots we see.

** As added to the YMMV page, the 'Burton on Burton' book of collected interviews published in the 90's suggests that, for Burton, there ''is'' a small element of revenge fantasy in that scene, perhaps making it slightly less palatable. Jim's still a sadistic creep who nearly mowed down Kim's brother, probably could have killed her, and tried to kill Edward, but even so.

** They assumed it was deserted. You naturally would do when faced with an aging, decrepit mansion that nobody has ever claimed to have lived in. Remember it took a desperate salesman to finally go up there.

** Kim's granddaughter says that she heard it was haunted. Given the exclusive nature of the neighbors toward anything diverse or outstanding, it's not hard to imagine that negative rumours like that had been around since the mansion was built. Everyone keeps away because they don't like how nonconformist it is.

** One possible explanation is that there's a theme of misanthropy throughout the film. The townspeople are happy to be entertained by Edward, but they never truly try to help him, they just condescend to him, and then feel better about themselves for it like they just did him a favour by acknowledging he exists. They want to look compassionate without being compassionate. It's easy to mention you know a doctor, it's quite another to see about actually putting Edward in contact with that doctor.

** It was also mentioned that he considered it, but didn't want his gift of styling and sculpting taken away. Still that makes both more and less sense since maybe he could have made the normal and scissor hands interchangeable after the procedure was finished. Or say the least have one normal and the other scissored.
** A deleted scene with Edward in the hospital after his shock from the talk show had him ask a nurse about the doctor that could help him, only to be told there was no such person. Burton said this wasn't needed, as well as Edward's make-up being different since it was the first day of filming.
** There is the little fact that hand/arm replacement is the single biggest challenge for the medical prothesis industry, there have been plenty of breakthroughs recently but we are still not quite there. Back in 1990 there was nothing available in the market that even approched the level of finesse and control that Ed had with his scissors.

** The neighbors loved his plant sculptures so much they all chipped in to have the ice delivered just so he could sculpt it.

** Which would still leave the question how on earth he moved the ice blocks to the attic.

** I figured he had been cutting it, but kept botching it, along bed-headedness. Hence why he has all those scars on his face.

** She didn't want people knocking at his door should they catch her sneaking off to the mansion. Aside from that, she said to her grand daughter that she wanted Edward to remember her as she was when he met her. After seeing his "father" die of old age, he probably couldn't bear seeing the same happening to Kim.

* How did Joyce ever come to the conclusion that having sex with a scissor-handed man was a good idea?

** There's a PornParody of the film, ''Edward Penishands''. Obviously some people find Edward sexually attractive (& he ''is'' played by Johnny Depp...).

*** ...Really? I mean, why would he think to add that on? Unless he's planning for Edward to then reproduce (and given that its unlikely he'd have the means to add in robot-DNA somehow, that's unlikely to ever be possible, even in a world where its possible to make a sentient scissor-handed robot), then I'd think it'd be far more odd for him to decide to give his robot son a penis.

** I don't think Edward can have sex (my impression was that black leather-like suit over his torso was closer to being his skin than just clothing). The inventor would've have to have had some really twisted priorities if "fully functional penis" ranked higher on his list of things to install than "hands."

* This troper wonders, even though, it was obviously never done to keep the film going, why did they never just you know blunt/ cut a majority of the blades on his digits and place some kind of rubber/latex "tips"? if you look closely at his hands there are some joints in his "fingers" so simply reducing the size and shape probably would have made the whole "not cutting everything to shreds" thing a whole load more manageable.
** One thing to understand is that with the exception of Kim, nobody in that town (yes, not even Peg) was really interested in helping Edward. For them, Edward was their own sideshow freak, a cool novelty to break the monotony of their little suburbia heaven.

* Peg and Bill's son was shown to have a bunk bed, and Bill had a pull out sofa bed in his den. Why stick the guy with blades on his hands on a waterbed?

** It's also stated several times that Jim's father is rich and influential. He would almost certainly quash any attempt to pin the blame on his own son, if only to avoid becoming the subject of town gossip.

** Confirmation bias. It’s fairly evident that Edward exists as little more than a novelty to the housewives and neighborhood at large. They don’t actually form any meaningful relationships with him and he solely exists as something other or alien to them. By the time the burglary happened, they had already made up their minds that he was a dangerous freak with scissors for hands. They weren’t going to look too far into Joyce’s claims because it just further solidified their preconceived notions of him being a danger to the neighborhood.

* After the inventor died and left no heirs wouldn't his mansion become the property of the state at some point? Would they really just let that land sit idle? Over many years the generation that knew Edward would die out and the notoriety of the mansion would no longer be fresh in anyone's mind so wouldn't it just be a matter of time before they tore the place down and built houses or condos up there? And a construction crew would discover Edward still living up there?

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** Peggy's a ''woman''.
** Kim's granddaughter says that she heard it was haunted. Given the exclusive nature of the neighbors toward anything diverse or outstanding, it's not hard to imagine that negative rumors like that had been around since the mansion was built. Everyone keeps away because they don't like how nonconformist it is.

* Why did Edward never see a doctor? It was mentioned several times in the film that he should see a surgeon about getting prosthetic hands, and one time he actually said he'd like the name of one when offerred, but we never saw any follow-up on the subject.
** One possible explanation is that there's a theme of misanthropy throughout the film. The townspeople are happy to be entertained by Edward, but they never truly try to help him, they just condescend to him, and then feel better about themselves for it like they just did him a favor by acknowledging he exists. They want to look compassionate without being compassionate. It's easy to mention you know a doctor, it's quite another to see about actually putting Edward in contact with that doctor.

** It was also mentioned that he considered it, but didn't want his gift of styling and sculpting taken away. Still that makes both more and less sense since maybe he coulda made the normal and scissor hands interchangeable after the procedure was finished. Or say the least have one normal and the other scissored.

** Confirmation bias. It’s fairly evident that Edward exists as little more than a novelty to the housewives and neighborhood at large. They don’t actually form any meaningful relationships with him and he solely exists as something other or alien to them. By the time the burglary happened, they had already made up their minds that he was a dangerous freak with scissors for hands.

* This troper wonders, even though, it was obviously never done to keep the film going, why did they never just you know blunt/ cut a majority of the blades on his digits and place some kind of rubber/latex "tips"? if you look closely at his hands there are some joints in his "fingers" so simply reducing the size and shape probably would of made the whole "not cutting everything to shreds" thing a whole load more manageable.

** The particular suburb Burton used for filming isn’t a set, it’s an actual neighborhood in Central Florida. Barring the northern panhandle of Florida, it doesn’t snow there, which is why we see Bill stapling fake snow on his roof when they’re decorating for Christmas. Not to mention there are plenty of areas in the US (take Los Angeles, for example) that rarely if ever see snow. It’s safe to say that while snow does exist, the film takes place in an area where snow would be a weather anomaly. As for the giant blocks of ice, the Inventor started out building robots to make pastries and chop produce. The ice could be from a storage freezer.

* Did snow not exist before Edward came along? And ''if'' it didn’t exist, how was there ice to make it out of?