The Nightmare Before Christmas

In 1982, Tim Burton was working as an animator with Disney and wrote a poem that became 1992’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Released by Touchstone as Disney felt it was too dark and scary for their main brand, the film eventually became the first stop-motion animated feature to be entirely converted to 3D in 2006. Starring Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Glenn Shadix, and Ken Page, the film was scored by Danny Elfman. It won the Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. The film’s characters regularly take over the Haunted Mansion each year and became one of the best worlds in the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

After the current year’s celebration of Halloween, Jack Skellington (Sarandon/Elfman) goes for a long walk into the nearby forest and finds a circle of trees bearing holiday symbols. Immediately attracted to one with a Christmas Tree, he ventures into Christmas Town, where he discovers the bright and jolly holiday. He becomes obsessed with understanding Christmas.

He and the townsfolk of Halloween Town try to understand the holiday, but are limited by their experience of Halloween. With good intentions, Jack has Santa (Ed Ivory) kidnapped for a vacation so he can take over for the year. However, the rag doll Sally (O’Hara) has a vision of disaster. Add in a gambling boogie man (Page) and you get quite the adventure.

Jack is quite the main character. The whole plot is set in motion simply because he’s bored and dissatisfied with the status quo. And the viewer can actually understand what he’s going through as repetition does get tiresome after a while. He’s actually quite understandable to those with addictive personalities. We experience something new that we absolutely love and just can’t get it out of our minds for quite a long time. That’s how he is with Christmas. He finds something that’s the polar opposite of what he’s become bored with and not only decides to figure everything out about it, but gets everyone else on the act. But he can’t just stop there. He has to take over for Santa He won’t listen to Sally, but when someone has an idea that they just really want to do, they don’t listen to anyone. It’s only until he gets shot down by the military does he understand he was meddling in things he shouldn’t have meddled in. But he turns right around, and fixes it all. He’s a hero that everyone can relate to, understand and sympathize with.

It also seems like Santa is overreacting when Jack saves him from Oogie Boogie. Sure, he had every right to be upset, but he was just a little more so than he should have been.  But consider that he didn’t know Jack told the Lock, Shock, and Barrel to leave him out of it. He had most of the story, but didn’t quite know it all. Without Oogie, Jack actually wouldn’t have been redeemed in Santa’s eyes. Rather, he would have gone to get him, and Santa would have been on his merry way, just a little be less pissed off.

Oogie is a great villain, with the film not actually showing him until about halfway through the film. He’s on the moon in the beginning, but you don’t actually know that he’ll play a role, nor that he’s a villain. He’s also a very charismatic gambler and likes to make his victims thinking he’ll put everything to chance. But he constantly cheats because that’s what he does, because he knows he can’t win in a fair fight, which is seen when Jack shows up and he tries to have his devices take care of him while he’s running.

The music is great, with the best song being “Poor Jack” by far. Only Jack can make the words “What the heck,” sound particularly badass.

However, there are a few confusing edits, but it doesn’t ruin the overall tone or pacing of the film.  #5