![]() ![]() By abandoning routine, stumbling into the Christmas world, and obsessively putting everything into stealing Christmas for himself, Jack Skellington is doing exactly what we should do with a holiday: letting its lore and atmosphere inspire us as a break from the mundanity of our own lives. The purpose of a holiday is a successful act of escapist transportation into another world. The purpose of a holiday is not to go through yearly cycles of going through the same ritualistic tradition every year. After an Icarus moment of being shot out of the sky by surface-to-air missiles while delivering Christmas presents (yes, this does happen), Jack sings about wanting to create a Christmas more memorable and greater than any which has come before. Jack Skellington does not want to keep doing Halloween just for the sake of it, and the moral of the movie is certainly not something about the holiday spirit. This is one of the factors that sets it apart from other Christmas movies – it’s framed in terms of a fundamental dissatisfaction with holiday tradition being routinely accepted. So a monologuing skeleton man gets wanderlust after years of stasis of only ever managing Halloween and steals Christmas to run, more in search for an intellectual challenge than anything else. After all, one of his claims to fame is ‘since I am dead I can take off my head to recite Shakespearean quotations.’ The protagonist is a Byronic hero, the skeleton king of Halloween Town, and although my English tutors might be disappointed, I still appreciate his balladic soliloquies almost as much as I appreciate Hamlet’s. Subsequently, viewers were presented with a kid’s movie in which there are multiple songs about the kidnap or cooking alive of Santa Claus. The music and lyrics were written by Danny Elfman, chosen by Tim Burton because of Burton’s appreciation for Elfman’s twisted new-wave band Oingo Boingo, an act that was by no means writing music for children. At one point the protagonist Jack Skellington powers Christmas fairy lights with an electric chair. ![]() If nothing else, it’s unlike any other Christmas movie. Subsequently, it’s often thought of as a movie for people trying to be edgy (and who haven’t fully let go of 2006…). If you’ve heard of it, it’s probably because it was re-released by Disney in 2006 and popularised during the emo scene, as its songs were covered in an album by Fall Out Boy, Marilyn Manson, Panic! At the Disco, and others. ![]() In the box office, it made about 1/10th of what Aladdin made. Much worse.The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) was one of the least successful Disney movies ever made, although it was eventually released through Touchstone Pictures after being deemed too scary and threatening for a mainline children’s Disney movie. Just a second, fellas! Of course! That's what I'm missing! You don't need to have another worry about Christmas this year. Wh - ! Why, you have hands! You don't have claws at all! But what? I've got the beard, the coat, the boots, the belt. Jack, I know you think something's missing, but. Isn't that wonderful? It couldn't be more wonderful! Be careful with Sandy Claws when you fetch him. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, sir. Which door? There's more than one! Sandy Claws is behind the door shaped like this. Jack! Jack! We caught him, we caught him. ![]()
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