Characters / Edward Scissorhands

Titular Character

Edward

Edward Scissorhands

Played By: Johnny Depp

• The Ageless: The end of the film reveals that Edward apparently hasn’t aged a day while Kim is an elderly woman.
• All-Loving Hero: Edward cares about and is kind to everyone, even the other residents of the town as they start to turn against him. While he does kill Jim, it was self defense and he did it mostly to protect Kim.
• Ambiguous Robot: While his hands are obviously not organic, it's unclear if the rest of his body is meant to be organic or mechanical. It's also implied that the black "outfit" he wears is actually part of his body.
• Androids Are People, Too: The point of his character is that he's still a person even though he's technically a metal golem made to resemble a human.
• Berserk Button: You don't want to hurt Kim in front of Edward. Really, you don't.
• Beware the Nice Ones: After dealing with his garbage for most of the film, Edward kills Jim to protect Kim.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: When Jim makes a patsy out of him and walks away free of consequence, Edward tears up some curtains and shreads wallpaper in a fit of rage. At the climax of the film, he kills Jim after he continually abuses Kim in front of him.
• Blessed with Suck: He has scissors for hands, which prove to be a heavy burden for Edward. While he can do amazing things with them, such as carving sculptures and giving people good haircuts, he cannot touch people with them for obvious reasons, nor can he pick up things. He is also treated like a freak by certain characters like Jim because of it.
• Break the Cutie: By the end, Edward has been ostracized by the whole town and left to spend the rest of his days in his mansion.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Edward is as kind and sweet as can be, but his naïveté leads to him being taken advantage of.
• Creepy Good: He is very eerie-looking, but that doesn't stop him from being a kind-hearted soul.
• Cumbersome Claws: Edward's dying creator was in the process of finishing his body with normal human hands. As his creator died showing the new hands, Edward accidentally cut them up with the scissor-and-shear limbs he already had, leaving him stuck with those. He's able to do surprisingly artistic things with his scissor hands like bush sculpting and hairstyling, but he also has mishaps like puncturing a Wacky Waterbed and electrocuting himself when he stabs a microphone cable. His own face is Covered with Scars because of all his attempts at self-care with his sharp digits. And he always has to be careful when it comes to physical affection with others.
• The Cutie: He doesn't talk too much, he's very sweet and just wants to be loved.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Edward had to watch as his father died right before his eyes, and before he could give him his regular hands.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Pretty much the only character who wears black, yet is pure-hearted.
• Devoted to You: As Jim himself points out, Edward would do anything for Kim. Including murder.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Or rather sharpness; he accidentally cuts a lot of stuff.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: He's extremely pale, which contrasts with his dark hair.
• Frankenstein's Monster: A modernized take on the character. Edward was created by a scientist from spare parts, but the final result wasn't refined enough to pass for a normal person and he struggled to find a place to belong. Similar to Mary Shelley's original telling, both want to be loved but are denied as such and end their stories just as lonely as they began.
• The Grotesque: He's deathly pale, has disheveled hair and his face is covered in scars, yet comes across as endearing due to his sheltered nature.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: As the film goes on, Edward eventually drifts into this as the townspeople reject him due to him taking the blame for several incidents.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Edward says in his interview that he’d like to meet the doctor who can get him prosthetic hands and says he wants to be normal when a woman points out he’ll be like everyone else.
• Looks Like Cesare: Lean frame, tight black outfit, black hair and sickly visage. For many a viewer, Edward was their first experience with this trope. His hair is also reminiscent of Robert Smith.
• Machine Blood: He has artificial blood, which is seen when he cuts himself while examining his reflection in Kim's mirror.
• Magitek: Implied to be the type of technology his body runs on. Given the Inventor's mansion was filled with 19th century-inspired machinery, it's a mystery how he was able to develop the more intricate parts of human anatomy such as creating an expressive face, skin that can form scars if it's wounded, functioning taste buds and the necessary organs needed to eat and drink.
• Manchild: Of an "innocent" rather than "immature" variant.
• Manslaughter Provocation: Justified, as it was in self-defense. He gives Jim a Disney Villain Death after impaling him with his scissors.
• Master of Unlocking: His scissor hands act as surprisingly-effective lockpicks, allowing him to easily break into anything with a standard tumbler lock.
• Mutual Kill: Not really, but after he kills Jim, Kim claims this is what happened to protect him.
• Nice Guy: He's a real sweetheart. The Inventor made sure to teach Edward basic etiquette and he conducts himself like an old-timey gentleman.
• No Brows: Luckily his dark eyelids help him emote.
• Not So Stoic: Edward visibly panics when he’s locked in Jim’s dad’s room by the security system. He's also quite destructive when he's pushed too far.
• No Social Skills: Downplayed. He's always polite and friendly to people, however because he spent years sheltered from the outside world, he isn't particularly good at interacting with people, which might explain why he's often quiet and shy. Despite this, he knows his table manners and is extremely sweet.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Edward stabs Jim and pushes him out a window after Jim invaded his home, tried to kill him and hit Kim. On a more comedic note, Edward spooks the local Bible-thumper Esmerelda by vandalizing one of her topiaries to resemble a cartoon devil.
• Protagonist Title: The titular Edward Scissorhands.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Edward's big innocent eyes help offset the rest of his creepy visage.
• The Quiet One: Despite being the main character of the film, he has a grand total of 169 words of dialogue throughout it.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: While he lacks the more outlandish hair and eye colors, his appearance still stands out from the rest of the population of Suburbia. Aside from that he ticks many of the boxes, as he's an Artificial Human who was created in a gothic castle by a Mad Scientist as his son, has pale skin, is largely stoic and quiet, appears to have shown affection for his long-dead creator, and becomes the Love Interest for Kim Boggs. His bladed fingers due to his creator dying from old age right when he was going to give him regular human hands also adds to his otherworly character. Also his face is Covered with Scars due to his bladed fingers. As the film came out five years before Evangelion debuted, he could be considered a proto-example of this.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: A golem, actually, but he easily passes for human.
• Self-Harm: An accident example. Edward’s face is covered in scares and he nicks himself in the face while looking in the mirror near the beginning of the film.
• Shrinking Violet: He is very shy.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Kim, who is a human while he's an immortal golem.
• The Stoic: He isn't particularly expressive, nor does he say very much. When he is expressive, he usually lets his body language do the talking.
• Tragic Hero: Edawrd was born from machines, lost his only parental figure before his hands could be attached and spent an unknown amount of time in solitude before Peg found him. While he gets to meet other people, experience love and feel loved back, Edward also gets framed for at least two crimes by the actual offenders, chased out of town and attacked in the one place he felt safe, which forced him to go on the offensive and have to give up on any kind of future with Kim. The movie ends with Edward in the excat same spot he began, doomed to spend the rest of his life completely alone.
• Tranquil Fury: When he kills Jim, he keeps his stoic expression, but is clearly at the end of his rope with this character.

Boggs Family

Peg

Peg Boggs

Played By: Dianne Wiest

• My God, What Have I Done?: When public opinion of Edward goes sour, Peg realizes that she may have done more harm than good when she brought Edward home with her.
• Nice Girl: Takes Edward under her wing without a second thought and goes out of her way to make him feel at home.
• Parental Substitute: She's basically a mother to Edward for most of the story and she never once doubts his innocence, though she eventually concedes that bringing him to her home was a mistake, even if she had the best of intentions.
• Team Mom: She knows Edward better than her husband and immediately knows what’s happening when he walks away, unlike her husband who ignores the obvious bullying of Edward by Jim.
• Shrinking Violet: She tends to get steamrolled by her noisier, pushier neighbours.

Kim

Kim Boggs

Played By: Winona Ryder ^{Other Languages} Renée Simonot (Older Kim, European French)

• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Subverted. At first she's dating the rebellious and troublesome Jim, but after meeting Edward, she realizes just what a scumbag Jim is and leaves him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She threatens to kill Jim herself if he doesn't stop harassing Edward, even holding a blade to his throat. Jim does not heed her warning.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Kim's utterly terrified of Edward at first, but eventually sees him for who he really is.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: One of the only people who doesn't turn against Edward in the movie's climax.
• Narrator All Along: She is the elderly lady in the story's Framing Device.
• Nice Girl: While scared of Edward at first, she’s sweet to him once she learns he’s a good guy.
• Only Sane Woman: Throughout both acts of the film, for different reasons in each. She's understandably weirded out when she sees this strange-looking figure in her bed and takes awhile to warm up to him, but when she realizes he's harmless she expresses reservations about how he's getting exploited by others, particularly Jim when he wants to steal from his own father. Then when the neighbors turn on Edward she fully sympathizes with him, which gradually turns to love.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: When Jim breaks into Edward's home and attacks him, Kim manages to get him on his back and coldly threatens to kill him if he doesn't back down.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Edward. By the time Kim warms up to him, Edward has been chased out of town and forced to kill in self-defence, to which Kim has to tell everyone they'd killed each other so that he wouldn't be hunted down any further. Kim never got another chance to see Edward again after that and as she aged she decided it would be best he didn't, as Edward likely didn't want to be reminded that she's just as mortal as his creator.

Bill

Bill Boggs

Played By: Alan Arkin ^{Other Languages}

• Nice Guy: In spite of his dull demanor, Bill is nothing but welcoming to Edward. Even when Edward gets arrested and wrecks the bathroom in a fit of rage, Bill tries to talk sense into him rather than kick Edward out.
• Standard '50s Father: An unflattering parody of one. While he does provide a stable life for his family (as Peg's job is shown to be highly unsuccessful) and he's friendly enough to Edward, Bill still spends a lot of his screen time being too distracted or apathetic to his surroundings to actively participate, likely because he's exhausted from working.

Kevin

Kevin Boggs

Played By: Robert Oliveri ^{Other Languages}

• Nightmare Fetishist: After gawking at Edward's hands, he comes to the conclusion that they're cool because he can imagine Edward killing someone with a well-placed karate chop.

Neighbors

Jim

Jim

Played By: Anthony Michael Hall

• Abusive Parents: His dad is an even bigger asshole then he is, and Jim is actively afraid of him.
• Asshole Victim: In the end, he ends up getting stabbed by Edward after pushing him too far.
• Ax-Crazy: It wasn't enough to just scare Edward off, Jim decides to hunt him down and kill him.
• Big Bad: While not at first, as the story progresses, it becomes clearer that Jim is the main antagonist of the film, actively attempting to keep Kim and Edward apart from each other.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first, he seems like a rather nice and decent guy. However his true nature is revealed as a cruel, possessive asshole and thug when he breaks into his own parents house to steal and frames Edward for it, as well as trying to keep Edward and Kim apart.
• Bright Is Not Good: His blonde hair and brightly colored clothing help him fit in with the suburban neighborhood where the film takes place. However, it's him, not the dark and spooky Edward, who becomes the psychopathic Big Bad.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: He's so possessive over Kim he's willing to get into a fight with a guy with scissors for hands over her.
• Disney Villain Death: He is pushed out of the window at the top of the castle by Edward after also being stabbed by him.
• Drunk Driver / Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Later on in the movie, he's drinking whisky while driving his van and nearly runs over Kim's little brother (whom Edward rescues).
• Et Tu, Brute?: Kim eventually turns on him too, threatening him while he gives Edward a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Faux Affably Evil: Jim initially comes of a kind and courteous person, but as his loathing of Edward grows more the real bastard he is underneath start to come out.
• Freudian Excuse: His abusive dad is the reason he’s such an asshole.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Of course, no amount of suffering in his life justifies the loathsome asshole he is, now.
• Hate Sink: He doesn't have any redeeming traits worth mentioning, and is designed to be a horrible, loathsome asshole. By the end of the film his own former girlfriend Kim threatens to kill him.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He is stabbed with Edward's scissors before being pushed out of the window in the climax.
• Jerkass: Had no problem leaving Edward to take the fall during their failed heist. After Kim dumps him, even his friends begin to see that he deserved it.
• Jerk Jock: He is a tough boy who is psychopathic out of public view.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Very rightly points out that Kim was involved with the robbery as well and can fess up whenever she wants.
• Lack of Empathy: He is completely unrepentant and feels no guilt framing Edward and treating him like crap.
• Only One Name: Despite him being the Big Bad of the film, his last name is never given.
• The Sociopath: He is shown several times to have no regard for the law, and attempts to kill Edward.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Most of the townsfolk have a good opinion on Jim, even though he's a thug and an asshole in reality.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He may be this.
• Would Hit a Girl: Slaps Kim in the final battle just so he can kill Edward.

The Inventor

The Inventor

Played By: Vincent Price

• Absent-Minded Professor: His priorities when building Edward were questionable to say the least. He started teaching him etiquette and poetry before attaching his legs and replacing his scissor-hands. In the end he never did get around to giving his surrogate son hands, as he died as soon as he showed them to Edward.
• Cool Old Guy: He was an incredibly gifted inventor with a Mr. Rogers type personality who used his skills for good and was a very good father figure to Edward.
• Eccentric Mentor: Taught Edward how to function in polite society.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Manufactured an entire assembly line to produce shortbread cookies and chop up vegetables.
• Good Parents: Before his death, he was very fatherly and caring towards Edward. While he isn't Edward's biological dad, he still technically counts as his father, due to being his creator.
• Mad Scientist: A benevolent example. He created aesthetically unsettling machines with harmless applications (like his cookie-making machine), worked in his spooky mansion and created a person from scratch. "Mad"? Maybe, but not a bad guy.
• Nice Guy: He is shown to be a good and kind-hearted old man who bakes cookies shaped like hearts and other pleasant things. He teaches Edward etiquette and keeps him entertained with silly limericks when he sees he's getting bored. He also giftwraps Edward's prosthetic hands, as he wants the final touch on his creation to be cause for celebration.
• No Name Given: We never find out what his actual name is.
• Oh, Crap!: A very tragic example; The Inventor's smile when he shows Edward the finishing touches to his body gives way to wide-eyed horror as the Inventor realizes he's about to die with his greatest work left incomplete.
• Posthumous Character: He's long dead by the time Pegg meets Edward.
• Truly Single Parent: Created Edward by himself.

Joyce

Joyce Monroe

Played By: Creator/Kathy Baker ^{Other Languages}

• Hate Sink: She made sexual advances on Edward despite his obvious discomfort and when he ran out she spread rumors that he was the one who attacked her.

Esmerelda

Esmerelda

Played By: O-Lan Jones ^{Other Languages}

• Moral Guardians: She's a highly devout woman who accuses Edward of being some Satanic abomination.