The Nightmare Before Christmas

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link title[1]:"Halloween Town" redirects here. Halloweentown, spelled as one word, is a setting in the Halloweentown series of movies. Template:Infobox Film Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is a stop motion animated musical film about the inhabitants of Halloween Town who take over Christmas one year, 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 still 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.

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Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film centers on Jack Skellington, the much adored leader of Halloween Town. Although Jack is loved and respected by the townspeople, he is bored with the repetitiveness of his Halloween festivities and feels that there is something unknown to him that is missing from his life. One day while wandering in the woods with his dog Zero, Jack discovers a circle of trees unlike anything that he has seen before. Each tree has a door on it representing a different holiday. When Jack opens the Christmas door he is sucked into the wonderful world of Christmas Town. Jack is mesmerized by the color and cheerfulness of the holiday, and realizes that this is exactly what he has been searching for.

When Jack returns to Halloween Town he locks himself in his home and performs countless experiments to try to better understand Christmas Town. Soon Jack calls a meeting in Town Hall and reveals his plans to take over Christmas. All of the townspeople pitch in to create their own twisted version of the holiday. Sally, a close friend and admirer of Jack, tries to warn him that she thinks it is a bad idea to take over something he knows nothing about, but Jack is too wrapped in his fantasies to listen.

In order to successfully take over Christmas, Jack enlists the help of a trio of misfits named Lock, Shock, and Barrel to kidnap Santa Claus. The children take him to a villainous monster named Oogie Boogie.

On Christmas Eve, Jack embarks on his makeshift sleigh flanked by skeleton reindeer and his ghost dog, Zero. Jack's scary and sometimes dangerous presents put the people in the real world in a panic and they begin to call the police with reports of attacking Christmas toys and an impostor Santa Claus. Soon, Jack is targeted by the military and shot down. At the same time, Sally goes to try and rescue Santa Claus but is captured by Oogie Boogie and the two are in risk of their lives.

When Jack finds himself and his sleigh crashed in a graveyard and his vision of Christmas wrecked, he realizes that he is the Pumpkin King and that he should stick to what he knows best: Halloween. In order to salvage Christmas Jack hurries back to Halloween Town and confronts Oogie Boogie. After Jack destroys Oogie, revealing him to be nothing more that a burlap sack full of bugs, Santa Claus hurries to deliver the correct presents and save Christmas. Once Santa has delivered all the presents he brings the Christmas spirit to Halloween Town, including snow, and the citizens are amazed by the new sensations.

Finally, Sally reveals her true feelings to Jack and the movie ends on a kiss. Template:Endspoiler

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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. 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 and the plot was subsequently much different than that of the film. Originally, Tim Burton pitched his idea to Disney, but it was declined. Disney told him the theme was too dark in nature, so he kept his sketches and continued his work on Disney's The Black Cauldron. It wasn't until years later that he was able to start production on something that had become his dream to create.

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Production

'The Nightmare Before Christmas' marked the first time that a stop motion movie had been attempted at this scale. 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 the initial poems only had Jack, Zero and Santa Claus), Burton hired screenwriter Caroline Thompson. Burton also worked very closely with composer and long time collaborator Danny Elfman to write songs for the film. Because Burton was not able to give his full attention to the project (he was contractually bound to direct Batman Returns), he hired director Henry Selick to helm the project. Selick brought an understanding of the media to the film and maintained a vision close to that of Burton.

When Tim handed over the project to the concept artists 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 detail metal armature as a skeleton, and then placed into moulds which were injected with a foam latex. From there they were set 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 giving 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 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 was 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.

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Public Reaction

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

'Nightmare Before Christmas' 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.

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Legacy

When 'Nightmare' was released on video, the general public began to discover it and it quickly gained a cult following. In more recent years, Nightmare has become a mainstream hit and is even considered a holiday classic.

The same studio that produced Nightmare later created another stop motion movie based on the Roald Dahl book, James and the Giant Peach (1996), though it did not receive the same amount of success.

In 2005, Tim Burton returned to the medium of stop motion with his new film, Corpse Bride, which was distributed by Warner Bros.

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Technical data

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Cast (voices)

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, Santa Claus describes a visit he made to Halloween Town many years after the events of the film.

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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. Some of the original fans maintain that the newer merchandise is overproduced and uninspired, as well as poorly made, and thus is cheapening a film which, at one point, was a cult classic.

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Haunted Mansion Holiday

For the past five years, the Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland in California and Japan have received a Nightmare Before Christmas themed overlay, called Haunted Mansion Holiday, for their Haunted Mansion attractions. Although the Magic Kingdom Park in Florida might bring this themed overlay to their park. The attractions are closed in October each year for themes to be completely overhauled, and open 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 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".

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Video games

Image:Zero jack sally.jpg 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, but during his absence, Oogie Boogie is reconstructed and by the time Jack returns he 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 you 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 in which you'll control 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.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Halloween Town also appears as one of the worlds in the Square Enix/Disney Kingdom Hearts video game series (in fact, it was the movie's first official video game appearance). In this game, Jack tries to create an artificial heart so he can control the Heartless for use in his "Heartless Halloween," but the plan goes awry when Oogie Boogie (who was 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. Kingdom Hearts II follows the movie plot, where Jack tries to take over Santa Claus' place on Christmas. 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 show the true memories of the heart and frightens all but the most pure-hearted. His appearance as a Friend unlocks the availability of the Pumpkin Head Keyblade Card as well.

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Trading Card Game

Sometime during 2005, a card game, titled The Nightmare Before Christmas TCG, was released. Released were starter decks and a base set. In March 2006, there will be a new set, called Christmas Town, and a Tournament Kit released.

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External links

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