It’s the start of December, which means it’s Nightmare Before Christmas season! The movie is a classic, having been released almost 32 years ago in 1993 by Tim Burton. This haunting tale has been one of the most popular Christmas, but also not-so-Christmas movies ever released.
The movie follows Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king of Halloweentown. He becomes bored with his routine of frightening people in what they call “the real world.” Eventually, he comes across Christmastown, and creates a plan to kidnap Santa Claus and take over his role.
Writing the musical and performing Jack’s singing parts was all the work of Danny Elfman. He was in charge of making the dark fantasy world out of Burton’s creative writing. The pair had already shown the world how good they worked together in 1989’s Batman, and 1992’s Batman Returns. The initial idea for the film came from Burton’s three-page poem that he wrote in 1982 after finishing his short film called Vincent. At the time of the movie, Burton was an employee of Walt Disney Feature Animation. His poem also drew ideas for other popular Christmas TV specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
The entire movie is in stop-motion animation. The creators of the film made more than 200 physical models for various characters and certain scenes. They also made still images of the characters positioned in discrete poses defined for a particular action or motion. When they stitched these still-framed images together, they brought the characters to life and revealed the intended character motion. What made this movie impressive to me was the fact that they didn’t use any electronic devices or actuators that most movies use to give their scenes that non-human motion.
The artists slowly, but surely, developed the movie over many weeks, using more than 10,000 pictures. Even with all their hard work, the team was only able to generate 70 seconds of the movie per week. They also had to reuse certain frames at certain times depending on the scene. The final movie has a lot of choppiness because of the stop-motion animation. It reminds us that each and every one of the props in the movie were human-hand-designed, touched, and positioned in every frame.
In conclusion, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a horror, romance, fantasy, science fiction, and even comedy movie. The film is inspiring and clever. Its genre provides something for everyone regardless of their age and preferences. Since its release, it has become a cultural classic. It’s overall a very enjoyable movie, and many people can agree that it has become a tradition in their families to watch it every year.
