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The Nightmare Before Christmas

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"Halloween Town" redirects here. For the Disney Channel movie, see Halloweentown.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
File:Nightmare Before Christmas poster.JPG
Directed byHenry Selick
Written byTim Burton (story)
Caroline Thompson (screenplay)
Michael McDowell (Adaptation)
Danny Elfman (lyrics)
StarringChris Sarandon
Danny Elfman
Catherine O'Hara
William Hickey
Glenn Shadix
Paul Reubens
Distributed byTouchstone Pictures (original version)
Walt Disney Pictures (2006 remastered 3-D version)
Release dates
October 22, 1993
October 20, 2006 (remastered 3-D version)
Running time
75 min.
LanguageEnglish

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is a 1993 stop motion animated musical film about the inhabitants of Halloween Town who take over Christmas, directed by stop-motion animator Henry Selick. The film is loosely based on drawings and a poem by Tim Burton, and he served as co-producer. He did not direct the film as is sometimes believed, but he was heavily involved.

The film was released by Touchstone Pictures, a film studio owned by the Walt Disney Company, after the main Walt Disney Pictures division balked at some of the darker content.

The remastered 3-D version of the film was re-released by Walt Disney Pictures on October 20, 2006. Note that it is 3-D via 3-D glasses and not CGI. [1]

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to Halloweentown and its biggest celebrity, Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King. Although Jack is loved and respected by the townspeople, he has become bored with the repetitiveness of Halloween and feels that there is something missing from his life. While wandering in the woods after one such Halloween, with his ghost dog, Zero, Jack discovers a circle of trees he has never seen before. Each tree has a door on it but Jack is immediately attracted to the door in the shape of a Christmas tree. When Jack opens this Christmas tree door, he is sucked into a town filled with snow, lights, and happiness. Jack is mesmerized by all the colors and cheerfulness, and realizes that this may be what he has been searching for.

Upon his return to Halloweentown, Jack immediately calls for a town meeting. During the meeting he reveals several of the artifacts he brought with him from Christmas town. Unfortunately, the denizens of Halloweentown only think in terms of how these toys could be used for Halloween. Frustrated from the misunderstandings, Jack describes the ruler of Christmastown in the only way the town members can understand: as a lobster-red creature possessing a deep voice and riding his sleigh "like a vulture in the sky," his name, "Sandy Claws". Distraught by his friends' inability to understand Christmas, Jack locks himself in his house and performs multiple experiments to try to understand the meaning of Christmas. He finally comes to the realization that believing in Christmas is all it takes and he informs the town of his intention to take over Christmas for that year. Jack then assigns each of the townspeople certain duties in order to make Christmas theirs, including having Sally sew Jack a Santa Claus outfit and having Dr. Finkelstein bring several skeleton reindeer to life. In order to complete this takeover, Jack enlists the help of a trio of young trick or treaters named Lock, Shock, and Barrel to "Kidnap the Sandy Claws." After mistakenly kidnapping the Easter bunny the trio bring Santa Claus to Jack, who tells them not to bring them to Oogie Boogie but end up doing so anyway. Despite Jack's efforts to make their Christmas joyful, the townspeople end up mixing the ideas of Christmas and Halloween, creating twisted toys and decorations.

Sally, who is secretly in love with Jack, has a vision about the disasters to come and tries to warn him that taking over something he knows nothing about may be a bad idea. However, Jack is too wrapped in his fantasies to listen, so she attempts to stop Jack's departure by creating a fog bank, but Zero's lighted, jack-o-lantern nose allows Jack to see.

Now Christmas eve, Jack embarks from Halloweentown to share Halloweentown's toys with the whole world. Unfortunately, the citizens of the real world are not so receptive to these twisted toys and begin to call police reporting attacks from toys and a "flying skeleton." Soon after, the military is called in to deal with the Santa Claus impostor, eventually shooting Jack out of the sky. At the same time, Sally sets off to rescue Santa Claus in order to set things right. However, during her rescue attempt she is also captured by Oogie Boogie who perversely gambles with both of their lives. The other citizens of Halloweentown witness Jack being shot down, and, fearing the worst, begin to mourn his death.

Meanwhile, the citizens of the real world are being informed that since the real Santa Claus can't be found Christmas must be cancelled. Upon regaining consciousness in a graveyard amongst the wreckage of his failed Christmas, Jack hears this news and realizes his foolishness. He realizes that his role in life is to be the Pumpkin King and vows to make the next Halloween the best ever. In an effort to save this Christmas, Jack returns to Halloweentown to save Santa Claus. He rushes to Oogie's lair to rescue both Sally and Santa Claus and in defeating Oogie reveals him to be nothing more than a sack full of bugs. Santa Claus informs Jack that he can easily save Christmas, after all he is Santa Claus, and magically floats out the chimney and restores peace to the real world by replacing all of Jack's presents. Jack returns to Halloweentown to the great joy of its citizens and Santa is seen flying over Halloween Town wishing the citizens a Happy Halloween while Jack responds with a Merry Christmas. With him, however, Santa brings snow and the citizens of Halloweentown finally understand the Christmas spirit.

Finally, Sally reveals her true feelings for Jack and the movie ends with a kiss.

Cast (voices)

NOTE: On the soundtrack album, Patrick Stewart voices the opening narrative poem. A second poem, also read by Stewart, is included before the "End Credits" music; in this passage, the narrator describes a visit he made to Halloween Town many years after the events of the film.

Songs

  • This Is Halloween - Halloween Town Citizens
  • Jack's Lament - Jack Skellington
  • What's This? - Jack Skellington
  • Town Meeting Song - Jack/Halloween Town Citizens
  • Jack's Obsession - Jack/Halloween Town Citizens
  • Kidnap the Sandy Claws - Lock/Shock/Barrel
  • Making Christmas - Jack/Halloween Town Citizens
  • Oogie Boogie's Song - Oogie Boogie/Santa Claus
  • Sally's Song - Sally
  • Poor Jack - Jack
  • Finale/Reprise - Jack/Sally/Halloween Town Citizens

Initial conception

The original ideas for the film came to Tim Burton while working as an animator for Disney. Burton has stated that he was inspired by being at a store and seeing them taking down the Halloween merchandise and changing it out for Christmas displays. Also, Tim loved holiday movies such as How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. In an interview he also described The Nightmare Before Christmas as almost an opposite of The Grinch because instead of wanting to destroy Christmas, Jack wants to celebrate it but accidentally destroys it. While at work, Burton scribbled out the poem on a piece of paper as well as a few drawings. These initial versions only included Jack, Zero and Santa Claus.

Production

The Nightmare Before Christmas marked the first time that a stop motion movie had been attempted at this scale. It is one of the best movies ever made with Christmas mixing with Halloween. Because of this fact, a great deal of imagination and inventiveness had to be used in making the film. In order to produce the film, Tim Burton assembled a hand-picked group of animators, artists, and crew members to work on the film and founded a production company called Skellington Studios. In order to flesh out the script and come up with new characters (as an artist himself he was very specific as to the look and feel of the movie, even limiting them to orange, black and white for the primary colors of Halloween Town). Burton also encouraged the artists to not use their dominant hands as to give their drawings his trademark feel. Once the sets had been approved they were then made into half scale mock-ups out of cardboard. These were then used as guidelines to build the actual sets. The puppets were constructed with a detailed metal armature as a skeleton, and then placed into moulds which were injected with a foam latex. From there they were sent to the fabrication department to be painted and finished. Multiple puppets were made of most of the characters so that they could cycle between the set and fabrication for touch ups.

The crew often had to improvise solutions to problems that they encountered during production. One of these problems was to give facial expressions to the puppets and making them speak. This was accomplished in a number of different fashions. Some puppets had mouths that were moved manually while some of the main puppets, such as Jack, were given hundreds of replaceable heads so that they could have a greater range of expression. The puppet for Sally was given interchangeable masks that were integrated behind her hairline because her hair was too long to be sculpted for the number of heads that would be needed. Another problem that was faced was allowing the animators to work on the sets. Because some were so large, the animators were worried that they would have to reach too far to move the puppets. This problem was solved by building the sets in different sections that could be separated when an animator was working and then placed back together for the shot.

The actual production of filming was a very slow and grueling process, taking over 3 years to finish. The animators worked on multiple sound stages at once to improve productivity on the film but a week’s work was still only a minute’s worth of actual film. The animators had to be very careful to be cautious on the sets as a simple thing such as a bump to one of the puppets could ruin a shot and they would have to start from scratch.

At the finish of the production of the film, the sets and puppets all faced different fates. Henry Selick kept a great deal of props from the film in his personal collection, and some of the animators also took home the puppets. Many of the sets were simply discarded as there were so many of them and they took up a great deal of space. A number of the puppets with a more human like structure were cut open and the armature taken out, as they were custom made and expensive. The Town Hall can currently be seen on display by the staircase leading from the ground to the 1st floor at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney, Orlando, Florida.

Reaction and legacy

Nightmare originally opened in wide release on October 29, 1993. Although it received generally positive reviews by critics, with a 97% "fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes, the film struggled to find an audience. It eventually earned a respectable $50 million at the box office, but still was not nearly as successful as many other Disney films of that time.

The film was nominated for best original score in the 1994 Golden Globes, as well as an Oscar nomination for Visual Effects, however it lost in both cases.

When The Nightmare Before Christmas was released on video, it gradually gained a cult following, especially among the goth subculture. After a merchandising blitz for the film emerged in the early 2000s, the film became wildly popular among youth. Since, The Nightmare Before Christmas has become a mainstream hit and is even considered a holiday classic.

The same studio that produced The Nightmare Before Christmas later created another stop motion movie based on the Roald Dahl book, James and the Giant Peach (1996), and received success, albeit to a much lesser extent.

In 2005, Burton returned to the medium of stop motion with the film, Corpse Bride, which was distributed by Warner Bros. Though it was heavily compared to The Nightmare Before Christmas, it released to positive reviews.

On October 20, 2006, a remastered Disney Digital 3D version of the film was released in select theatres. In conjunction with the 3D re-release, Disney released a special two-disc soundtrack album on October 24, 2006. It features musical artists such as Fall Out Boy, Marilyn Manson, Panic! At The Disco, Fiona Apple and She Wants Revenge, who contribute cover versions of songs featured in the film. The album quickly rose to #4 on the iTunes Top Albums chart. [2]

Technical data

Merchandising

The Nightmare Before Christmas has become one of the most successful franchises ever in terms of selling merchandise, and much of the original merchandise has become highly collectible and rare. A very dedicated group of collectors has developed over the years, utilizing on-line auction websites such as eBay to obtain rare items.

In recent years, with the introduction of alternative clothing stores such as Hot Topic, there has been an explosion of new merchandise. This has caused a great deal of tension and debate between some of the original fans and the people buying these newer items.

Haunted Mansion Holiday

For the past five years, the Disneyland in California and Tokyo Disneyland in Japan have received a Nightmare Before Christmas themed overlay, entitled Haunted Mansion Holiday in California and Holiday Nightmare in Japan, for their Haunted Mansion attractions. The attractions are closed in September each year for themes to be completely overhauled, and open again themed in October until January of the next year. The attraction generally has a one night opening event each year that includes special guests, a dinner, special merchandise, and a ride through the attraction, although the Happiest Celebration on Earth halted that in Disneyland in 2005. Starting in 2001, the ride has included a score that was written specifically for the ride by film composer Danny Elfman. There has been a great deal of speculation recently that 2006 will be the last year for the event, allegedly at Tim Burton's request. Despite this, Disney CEO Bob Iger dismissed these rumours at the shareholders meeting in 2006, saying "there is no reason why the Haunted Mansion Holiday will not go ahead".

Video games

A video game based on the original movie was released in 2005. The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge is an action/adventure game developed by Capcom from Japan for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox systems. Intended to be a sequel to the movie, the game features the return of all the well-known characters in a new and arguably darker story with upgraded versions of the film's songs. In the story, Jack leaves Halloween Town to satisfy his curiosity. During Jack's absence, unfortunately, Oogie Boogie is reconstructed. By the time Jack returns, the monster has taken over Halloween Town and tricked its people into thinking Jack has abandoned them. Now Jack has to stop Oogie Boogie's evil plans as he attempts to take over the other holiday worlds, and the 'real' world. The game features controls similar to Devil May Cry. The game features a weapon known as a 'Soul Robber'. In the game players get other costumes such as "Pumpkin King," and "Santa Jack".

A GBA game, The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King came out in fall 2005. The opposite of the PlayStation and Xbox versions, the GBA game works as a prequel to the movie. The Pumpkin King is a side-scrolling action platformer (similar to Metroid and Castlevania) in which the player controls Jack Skellington and use a number of different weapons to fight enemies and traverse obstacles. The side-scrolling adventure game centers on the first time Jack faced off against his nemesis, Oogie Boogie, to eventually become the Pumpkin King. The game's plot will kick off with the invasion of some unusual bugs in Halloween Town. Jack soon discovers that these nasty insects are under the control of Oogie Boogie, who's looking to take over Halloween himself. With these creepy wheels set in motion, it will be up to Jack and his friends--including characters such as Zero, Sally, Dr. Finklestein, and others to both stop Oogie and save Halloween.

Template:Spoiler Halloween Town's first appearance in a video game was one of the worlds in the Square Enix/Disney Kingdom Hearts video game series. In this game, Jack tries to create an artificial heart so he can control the Heartless for use in his "Heartless Halloween". His plan goes awry when Oogie Boogie (one of the Disney villains allied with Maleficent) steals the heart, ingests it, and tries to use it to control the Heartless for his own purposes. Jack then teams up with Sora and the others to stop Oogie Boogie's plans. Jack can also join Sora's party whenever they are in Halloween Town. He was also included in the GameBoy Advance game Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories as a Friend Card sporting his own unique Sleights, or combos. In this version, he helps Sora stop Oogie Boogie after the latter drank a potion that shows the true memories of the heart and frightens all but the most pure-hearted. His appearance as a Friend unlocks the availability of the Pumpkinhead Keyblade Card as well.

Kingdom Hearts II also features Halloween Town and its residents. It seemingly follows the movie plot, in which Jack tries to take Santa Claus's place in Christmas. However, at one point during the story, Jack and Santa mention this being the second time Jack has attempted to take over Christmas. This justifies the theory that Kingdom Hearts II takes place after the events of the movie (Although is it not specified whether it also takes place after Oogie's Revenge, as that game and the Kingdom Hearts series are owned by different companies, though the fact Jack does not wield the Soul Robber in this game may mean that this takes place before Oogie's Revenge, or that the game is not in the Kingdom Hearts continuity), minus Oogie Boogie. In the game, Maleficent arrives to recruit Lock, Shock, and Barrel to help her wreck Christmas Town and make Santa Claus into a Heartless. But when Sora arrives to help Jack as Santa's bodyguard, Maleficent uses her powers to revive Oogie Boogie, who now seems to have a short-term memory loss, remembering only his undying hatred of Jack and "sidekicks". Nonetheless, Oogie Boogie is defeated just as he had been before.

In the second visit, Jack (still wearing the Santa outfit) teams up with Sora to help bring back lost presents to Santa. During their mission, the two learn of a mysterious "gift-thief". This thief turns out to be a robotic creature created by Dr. Finklestein, referred to as the "Experiment." It is caught and defeated while attempting to find a heart by stealing Santa's presents since it lacked its own.

Trading card game

In September 2005, a card game called The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG was released. In March 2006, a new set came out: Christmas Town. A tournament kit also came out during that time.

Comics

The characters of The Nightmare Before Christmas have also appeared in the realm of comic books, more specifically in manga. An adaptation of the movie by Jun Asaga was published by Kodansha and later translated in English by Disney Press. Jack also appears as a secondary character in the manga adaptation of the videogame Kingdom Hearts by Shiro Amano, published by Bros.Comics EX (and later translated in English by Tokyopop). An allusion to the movie is also provided in the manga Wallflower by Tomoko Hayakawa.

Trivia

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  • The Head in the bass of the four man band closely resembles Danny Elfman
  • There is a hidden Mickey when Jack is on the train in Christmas Town. The Steam blower puffs out a Mickey shaped cloud but it quickly turns into a rabbit shaped cloud.
  • In the German version, Sally was dubbed by Nina Hagen.
  • In the Italian version, Jack is voiced over by Renato Zero.
  • In the Spanish version for Latin America, the movie is titled "Jack's strange world". Similarly, in the French version, the title translates as "The Strange Christmas of Mr. Jack".
  • In the song, "This is Halloween", the lyrics "...tender lumplings everywhere..." refers to "Tender Lumplings," a song composed by Danny Elfman when he was with Oingo Boingo.
  • Behemoth is based on B-movie actor/Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson.
  • Tim Burton has said the original poem was inspired after seeing Halloween merchandise display in a store being taken down and replaced by a Christmas display. The juxtaposition of ghouls and goblins with Santa and his reindeer sparked his imagination.
  • Two items were invented to facilitate the filming of the movie: One was a "light alarm" which would warn the animators if any of the stage lights failed to come on. The other was a system that enabled a puppeteer to seamlessly switch to a replacement puppet if a puppet broke during a shot. Prior to this, either situation, a light failing to come on or a puppet breaking would destroy a shot.
  • Two toys that Jack delivers reference Batman Returns, the film Tim Burton had directing commitments towards at the time. One is an evil duck on wheels, which is the vehicle that the Penguin drives. The other is an evil cat doll, which has the same head as the mascot for Shreck's corporation.
  • The teaser trailer tells us that the film was originally produced by the major Disney division, playing the movie heavily as the next generation of film making. By the time the theatrical trailer was released, the production team had changed (Touchstone Pictures, which is itself a division of Disney), and the comparisons to Walt Disney as the new great animator are gone. The reason for this was, at the time Disney did not think it proper to have a "PG" rating under the Disney banner, so it was switched to the Touchstone banner.
  • This was the first movie to ever be fully animated using the stop-motion technique that was favored by Tim Burton for special effects in some of his other movies for its surreal quality. The animators received Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects as a result, but lost to ILM who created the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park (1993)
  • Oogie Boogie is inspired by Cab Calloway, who provided character voices and musical numbers for several Fleischer Bros. cartoons; he and Santa Claus quote dialog from the Betty Boop short "The Old Man of the Mountain", when Santa asks (quoting Betty's line) "What are you going to do?", and Oogie returns Calloway's (as the Old Man) "I'm gonna do the best I can..."
  • At the films end vampires are seen playing ice hockey with a pumpkin. The scene was originally shot using a model of Tim Burton's head but was replaced by the pumpkin.
  • Jack Skellington can be seen as a pirate captain in James and the Giant Peach
  • The stars in the sky and the production pictures were present in the end credits for the remasted 3-D Disney version. These were not present in the end credits for the original Touchstone version.
  • This was the fourth Disney animated film to be theatrically re-released since The Little Mermaid. The first three were Fantasia 2000, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. Aladdin was original set for an IMAX re-release, but ended up released on DVD.



  • In the Gamecube game, Animal Crossing, a Halloween event allows you to meet "Jack: the King of Halloween". Jack is the character that allows players to obtain the "Spooky" set of furniture, the only Halloween style furniture in the game.
  • The character design in Okage: Shadow King has been said to be reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It is unclear whether the similarity is an intentional tribute or merely due to Nightmare's immense popularity in Japan.
  • The movie was spoofed in a Halloween episode of Tiny Toon Adventures. A pumpkin-headed Jack mourns how bored he is with Halloween and uses Zero as a tissue to blow his nose. He discovers the holiday forest and sees a tree with the Tiny Toons logo on. He tries to open the door, but it falls on him. Later, he is standing around, bored, when the Tiny Toons characters are singing, is then struck by lightning and the title screen crushes him. At the end of the opening credits, he lifts up the title screen and groans, 'How long 'til Mother's Day?'
  • There was also a spoof in The Critic called 'The Nightmare Before Hanukkah'.
  • The webcomic Grim Tales From Down Below by Bleedman features many characters associated with death and hell. Jack is shown to be the brother of the Grim Reaper (from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy), and Sally, Lock, Shock, and Barrel, Zero, and Oogie Boogie have been seen thus far.
  • In episode 2, of the hentai series Angel Blade, when General Chloe is in the hospital and goes to Ayame's room, there is a dummy in her bed in place of her. This dummy is Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, except with modified hair.
  • In the blink-182 song "I Miss You," references the movie with "We can live like Jack and Sally if we want//Where you can always find me//And we'll have Halloween on Christmas//And in the night we'll wish this never ends"
  • In the song "Where We Begin And I End," by Showbread, a few verses from the movie are sung.
  • In the first volume of the manga .hack//Legend of the Twilight, Mireille, after seeing a stack of bones during a Cherry Blossom festival, asks if someone had uploaded a Nightmare Before Christmas mod.
  • The Anime Roleplaying website Gaia Online features a pumpkinheaded NPC named Jack who appears every Halloween. The 2005 Christmas event involved a reference to the Nightmare Before Christmas plot. The event includes Jack and Santa's feud over the events of that years Halloween, resulting in Santa's temporary demise. As a result, Mrs. Claus and the elves formed a company called S Corp to revive him (S Corp being a parody of the G Corp from the 2004 Halloween event which in itself was a parody of the Umbrella Corporation). A special world for the Holiday Spirits not unlike the towns in the film was also shown.
  • During the potion-making step of the recent Haunted Woods plot (A Tale of Woe) on Neopets.com, Sophie the Swamp Witch quotes a line Jack said during his experiments on Christmas items (There's a reaction, but what does it mean?).
  • In the children's computer game Pajama Sam 'No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside', the character Darkness resembles Oogie Boogie and his house resembles Oogie Boogie's
  • On one of the Halloween specials for the website Homestarrunner.com, the King of Town dresses as the Mayor of Halloween Town.
  • Marylin Manson and Panic! at the Disco also sing the "This is Halloween" tune.
  • An episode of Robot Chicken titled "Anne Marie's Pride" spoofed The Nightmare Before Christmas by suggesting a fictional sequel titled The Nightmare Before Hanukkah. The brief segment featured Jack singing "What's this? What's this? There's magic in the air!", then seeing a Jewish family opening their presents which are socks and mezuzot. Jack replies to this "Oh wow, this sucks."
Wikiquote has quotations related to The Nightmare Before Christmas.
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