The strange world of Jack, also know as The nightmare before Christmas, was born from a poem Tim Burton wrote when he was working as a digital animator for Disney. The classic stop motion musical film, which brings together the two most outstanding celebrations of the year, Christmas and Halloween, is considered by critics one of the best animated films, the same one that obtains a 95% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.
Directed by Henry Selick, the film was released 28 years ago. Now that Christmas is approaching, it continues to be a recommended movie to get out of the routine. This work of art that brought a new concept of stop motion, has several peculiarities. In this note we will tell you five of them.
1. Disney released the film via Touchstone Pictures
The Walt Disney Studios released the film via Touchstone Pictures, a film distribution label aimed at a more mature audience. This, because they believed that the film would be too dark and terrifying for children.
2. A Jack with a thousand faces
Being the main character, Jack needed more expressions than anyone else, so over 400 interchangeable heads were created showing different expressions. Each one so that the king of Halloween Town could gesture as many times as he wanted.
3. A blind composer
The composer of the characteristic songs of the tape was Danny Elfman, who had to create without seeing a single scene, since these had not yet been filmed when he began to compose the music. However, Tim Burton sat next to him to talk to him and draw his ideas and sketches, they also used to review the script so that the musician had an idea of how to create the musical pieces.
4. Works of art within another work of art
During the song “Jack’s Lament”, when the character emerges from between two graves, these are in the form of two famous classic paintings: the first of them has the appearance of The Scream by Edward Münck and the second is Guernica’s horse by Picasso.
5. Christmas and Halloween together
The setting and decoration of this film arose as a result of Tim Burton finding a curious interest in the mixture of Halloween and Christmas, as he assures that he was always struck by the way in which the decorations of both festivities were seen mixed in the showcases of the shops or in the decorations of the houses, overcoming the moment of changing from one holiday date to another.
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