Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is a very well known early 90’s film. If you aren’t familiar with the animated movie, it’s about the adventures of Jack Skellington in Halloweentown. The townspeople in Halloweentown live for the night of frights.
Jack is Halloweentown’s Pumpkin King, who has become tired of doing the same thing every year for Halloween. While taking a walk, the curious pumpkin king stumbles upon Christmastown. One night while walking sorrowfully in the woods, Jack finds different tree stumps that have each holiday illustrated on them. The Christmastown stump caught the pumpkin king’s eye the most. Jack decides he wants change, and enters Christmastown. Followed by a lot of confusion and new discovery he also finds a better outlook on life. He was determined to be in charge of Christmastown, and took Santa’s role.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fantasy/musical. It features many songs like, “This is Halloween,” “What’s this?” which is performed when Jack arrives in Christmastown, and “Sally’s Song.” The soundtrack for this holiday movie fits each scene perfectly. When listening to the soundtrack, you can instantly tell it’s a Tim Burton animation just by the sound of each song.
When it comes to the artwork in the film itself, the characters are portrayed perfectly in the animation. Jack Skellington is this lanky, mysterious, tall, creepy creation. In the film though, one of the reoccurring themes I notice is that everything is not what it seems. Each character from Halloweentown is shown as scary, something out of nightmares. But, they all are nice, wholesome people. The two main characters, Jack Skellington and Sally Shock are voiced by Danny Elfman and Catherine O’Hara.
One of the biggest discussions over Burton’s masterpiece is, is it considered a holiday movie or halloween movie? The great thing about this film is that it has a perfect mixture of both holidays and what they’re about. It also incorporates relationships, and different ways to portray life. You can watch The Nightmare Before Christmas at any age, and find different meanings to it each time. Yes, it’s still Burton’s creepy animation style, but it isn’t made to be a scary movie. It’s much more than that.
This movie is a classic for the holiday season, and in my opinion I think it suits Christmas more. Jack finds his new love for Christmas and has a determination to know more about it. The holidays are all about coming together, and in The Nightmare Before Christmas that is shown throughout the movie. There is a lot of character development in this film, and it teaches a lot of valuable lessons.
