The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film directed by Henry Selick (in his feature directorial debut) and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, the King of "Halloween Town" who stumbles upon "Christmas Town" and becomes obsessed with celebrating the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score, and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.
The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. With the success of Vincent in the same year, Burton began to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or a half-hour television special to no avail. Over the years, Burton's thoughts regularly returned to the project and in 1990, he made a development deal with Walt Disney Studios. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco; Disney initially released the film through Touchstone Pictures because the studio believed the film would be "too dark and scary for kids".
The film met with both critical and financial success, earning praise for its animation (particularly the innovation of the stop-motion art form), characters, songs and score. It has grossed $91.5 million worldwide since its initial release and garnered a cult following. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, a first for an animated film. The film has since been reissued by Walt Disney Pictures, and was re-released annually in Disney Digital 3-D from 2006 until 2010.
Plot[]
Halloween Town is a fantasy world populated by various monsters and beings associated with the holiday. Jack Skellington, respected by the citizens as the "Pumpkin King", leads them in organizing the annual Halloween celebrations. However, this year, Jack has grown tired of the same annual routine and wants something new. Wandering in the woods the next morning, he encounters six trees containing doors leading to other holiday-themed worlds and stumbles into the one leading to Christmas Town. Awed by the unfamiliar holiday, Jack returns home to show his friends and neighbors his findings, but unaware of the idea of Christmas, they compare everything to their ideas of Halloween. However, they do relate to one Christmas Town character: its ruler, Santa Claus, or "Sandy Claws" as Jack mistakenly calls him. Jack sequesters himself in his house to study Christmas further and find a way to rationally explain it. After studying and experimentation accomplish nothing, Jack ultimately decides that Christmas should be improved rather than understood and announces that Halloween Town will take over Christmas this year.
Jack assigns the residents many Christmas-themed jobs, including singing carols, making presents, and building a sleigh pulled by skeletal reindeer. Sally is a feminine creation of local mad scientist Dr. Finklestein, and she secretly loves Jack. Sally experiences a vision detailing that their efforts will end disastrously, but Jack dismisses this and assigns her the task of making him a Santa Claus suit. He also tasks mischievous trick-or-treating trio Lock, Shock and Barrel to abduct Santa and bring him to Halloween Town. Jack tells Santa he will be handling Christmas in his place this year and orders the trio to keep Santa safe, but against his wishes, they instead deliver Santa to Jack's long-time rival, Oogie Boogie, a bogeyman who has a passion for gambling and plots to play a game with Santa's life at stake. Sally attempts to rescue Santa to save both him and Jack from their potential fates, but she is captured as well.
Jack departs to deliver his presents in the real world, but they instead frighten the populace, who contact the authorities and are instructed by them to lock down their homes and residences for protection. When word spreads about Jack's presumed wrongdoings, he is ultimately shot down by military forces, causing him to crash in a cemetery. While all of Halloween Town sadly believe him to be dead, Jack actually survived. As he bemoans the disaster he has caused, he finds he enjoyed the experience nonetheless, reigniting his love of Halloween, but soon realizes he must act fast to fix his mess. Jack returns home and infiltrates Oogie's lair, rescuing Santa and Sally before confronting Oogie and defeating him by unraveling a thread holding his cloth form together, causing all the bugs inside him to spill out and reduce him to nothing. Jack apologizes to Santa for his actions, to which he, despite being furious at Jack for the trouble he caused and not heeding Sally's forewarnings, assures him that he can still save Christmas. As Santa replaces Jack's presents with genuine ones, all of Halloween Town celebrates Jack's survival and return. Santa then shows Jack that there are no hard feelings between them by bringing a snowfall to the town, which fulfills Jack's original dream in a way and causes the residents to finally realize the true meaning of Christmas. Afterwards, Jack and Sally declare their love for each other.