The November 1st movie is something of a yearly tradition for me. With Halloween over and Christmas looming ahead, it can be difficult to transition straight from one holiday feeling to the next. Luckily there's one movie that specifically helps with this problem.
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993)
Blogtober Qualifications: Monsters, skeletons, the Boogeyman, a literal Halloweentown
Yeah, you knew what it'd be.
Halloween has come to a close for another year, and the residents of Halloweentown are celebrating all the work they put in this year. For the record, Halloweentown seems to be an otherworldly place, the sole purpose of which is to bring Halloween to the world every year.
One resident of the town doesn't quite join in on the festivities, however: the Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon). Jack, you see, is actually kind of depressed. He's been at the Halloween game for a long time, and just doesn't feel the thrill of it anymore. He desperately seeks a new experience.
Seemingly completely by chance, Jack discovers the existence of Christmastown, which is exactly what it sounds like. This place is unlike anything Jack has ever seen, and he quickly becomes enamored with the idea of Christmas. He returns to Halloweentown to share what he's learned and, before long, the townsfolk decide that it might be a good idea to make Christmas themselves this year...
So. Yes. There's a very real possibility that you've already seen this movie. It wouldn't be too surprising, considering the fame it's garnered for itself over the past ten years or so. Ironically, it was more of a cult movie for a good while. I can vividly remember a time when I was the only person I knew that had even heard of it, much less liked it.
By now, though, it's exploded in popularity. It's not quite as in vogue as it was a few years ago, when everybody was into it, but you still find merch and fanart everywhere. The funny thing is, popular internet opinion seems to suggest that I should hate these "new fans." I've been here since the beginning, but they're just jumping on a bandwagon, right? How dare they come in so much later, suddenly the biggest fans in the world?
Now, I can understand this feeling. When you have something that you care about, that everyone else ignores, you become that much more attached to it. And then, if everyone else suddenly shows interest in that thing, it can cause some serious whiplash. You tell yourself they don't really understand it. That they're only interested now because it's become popular. And worst of all, you become afraid that people will think that you are only interested now because it's become popular. You wish you could wear some sort of badge that says "Longtime Fan" or something. I get it, I do.
The most recent thing this happened with for me was JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, when the new anime adaptation began a few years ago. I had been a JoJo fan for years by that point, but now everyone was a JoJo fan. On the one hand it's a good thing, right? We're getting licensed games in North America! Sure, I had already imported the Japanese version of the game, but I bought it again in English. But now JoJo isn't "mine" anymore, is it? It's not that thing that I can point to and go "Yes, this is mine. You may not understand it, but it's mine." I went through all those emotions I talked about in the previous paragraph. But I came to a conclusion at the time, and I've tried to live by it ever since.
It is never a bad thing for the things you love to be getting appreciation.
Best case scenario, it takes off like gangbusters, they make new stuff, or just newly-released versions. Maybe it'll get an awesome sequel or follow-up, or get adapted into a new medium, and maybe it'll all just rock.
Worst case scenario, they try to do what I just said, screw it up, and it goes away again. Sure, it sucks, but you just ignore the bad stuff and continue loving what you love. And I bet that thing now has more fans than it had before.
In the case of JoJo, we got a sweet new anime (which will hopefully debut a new season soon), the entire series is being released in English, finally (originally only Part 3 got an English release), and in awesome new hardbound versions, no less. It's, honestly, a great time to be a fan of the series.
So no, your pet fandom suddenly becoming bigger isn't really worth complaining about, as long as it's being respected.
Anyway, enough of that rabbit hole. I'll talk about JoJo at length sometime in the future, I'm sure, maybe a full series retrospective. But for now, let's get back to Nightmare Before Christmas.
Honestly, though, what needs to be said? You've probably already seen it. If you haven't, and you have any interest whatsoever, you should. You probably at least know some of the songs, so you can go ahead and sing along.
I love stop-motion. We currently live in what is essentially the renaissance of stop-motion movies. Just look at all the great ones that have come out in the past decade: Coraline, Paranorman, Frankenweenie. I haven't seen The Boxtrolls or Kubo & the Two Strings, but I plan to fix that quite soon. And every single one of those movies has The Nightmare Before Christmas to thank.
And not just because a lot of them are made by the same people. Nightmare was daring at the time, a dark fantasy that skewed towards older kids, created with what was essentially becoming an "obsolete" technology. And yet, it became something special. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if every single one of those movies I listed before were made possible because of Nightmare's surge in popularity. Sure, Corpse Bride was lackluster, but it wasn't lackluster enough to derail the train.
And sure, most of those newer movies are better than Nightmare (not Corpse Bride), but none of them are anything like it. There's honestly nothing else like it. The world that it presents is unique, it's quirky, and it's dripping with Halloween feeling. And then, AND THEN, we take the biggest risk of all: we completely abandon that and instead focus on Christmas, and the dichotomy of the two holidays being essentially right next to each other.
It asks a question that was honestly begging to be asked: What if Halloween tried to do the job of Christmas? What would the most wonderful time of the year look like through the lens of the macabre? It's a real treat to watch.
On top of that, this movie, in my mind at least, created the idea of different holidays having a soul and a presence of their very own. It made Halloween and Christmas (and others) linchpins of the universe. I'm sure that things "felt like" Halloween and Christmas before this movie, but this created the idea that it could be something tangible, something that we can take a little piece of in our hands and carry it with us.
The cast of characters is great. Jack Skellington's design is top-notch, and it's funny when you realize that, in anything else, he'd be a villain. And yet he's not; instead, he's a charismatic, passionate leader of the people who just wants to experience something great. Sally (voiced by Catherine O'Hara) the patchwork doll is a surprisingly deep character, mischievous one minute and contemplative the next. And Oogie Boogie (voiced by Ken Page) is a great villain, greedy, chaotic, and disgusting, but still fun to watch. He also has a great villain song.
Speaking of songs, almost all of them are great. There's one or two that don't quite hit the bar for me, but all of the rest are catchy and memorable. If any song from this soundtrack starts playing, I will sing along with it, even the couple I'm not that big on.
Now, I don't want you coming away with the idea that I think this is a perfect movie, because it's not. As I said before, the stop-motion genre (if you want to call it that) has produced some seriously, seriously good movies in the years since, and so it becomes more difficult to look past Nightmare's few flaws. And yes, they're few, and they're minor, but they're there.
Still, Nightmare more than holds its own in the modern day stop-motion arena. Hell, it may still be my favorite, even if it gets by just a bit on nostalgia. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you've never seen this movie, and you have any idea that it might be the kind of thing you enjoy, it is absolutely worth your time.
And with that, we bring to a close the final review of Blogtober. We're still not quite done, though, because tomorrow I'll be writing one final post to end it. It'll be a "closing ceremonies" of a sort, where I'll be reflecting on how this October went, what movies I liked the best, and just generally looking back on what it was like to work on this project, and what it meant to me. If you've enjoyed listening to me ramble so far, I hope you'll join me again.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - Multiple
Listening - Multiple
Playing - Super Mario Odyssey (2017)
Reading - The Complete Books of Blood (Clive Barker, 1984)
Watching - Kamen Rider Kiva (2008)
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