NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS - WHAT TYPE OF MOVIE IS THIS?

NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS - WHAT TYPE OF MOVIE IS THIS?

There has been a real big debate about this subject. Is Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas a Halloween film or is it a Christmas movie?

I feel like I have had this conversation before. I don't know, I may have. I have written a bunch of nonsense over the last ten years and 3,000 post. But let's get into it again because if there's nothing more pressing in the world right now to talk about, it's if an animated film about scary creatures during a christmas season is actually more one holiday film or the other.

The facts are simple - The first minute of the film takes place on Halloween night during the celebration where Jack Skellington is doing a whole Halloween town parade and singing. So perhaps we should take that to mean that this film, while literally starting off on Halloween night, passes the whole holiday up in the rear view within the first five minutes. Halloween is over from there on end as Jack searches for himself in some sort of extensional crisis of discovering who he is after being so bored with Halloween for all these years now.

What follows is Jack finding Christmas town and totally trying to appropriate that town's "thing", Man, Jack, here I thought you were cool and low and behold, I discover you're just a genetrifier motherfucker piece of shit appropriating other's culture. Totally not cool, bro.

The rest of the film is him doing exactly that and leading up to when he makes the attempt to totally take over that holiday - including kidnapping and putting in mortal danger Santa Clause. The whole thing fails in a glorious situation where it tries to teach the youth that you should be happy for who you are and not try to be different, especially not try to appropriate a culture that you have no part in doing and are so juxtaposed in trying to do so - I'm looking at you, white skinny dude who I saw trying to wear a Maui halloween costume. You were NOT pulling off those curly hair look at all.

I will say this, the film's main arcs happen between the end of Halloween and Christmas. So I personally feel like it's not so much a Halloween film. It's a bold stance, I know, but it's a film you watch on literally Halloween because that is when it takes place on the time scale and from there you use it as a way to bury Halloween and get into the Christmas spirit. So on that regard, I will defend the fact that Nightmare Before Christmas is actually a Christmas movie and not so much a Halloween film.

Sure, you start it off as the last thing you do on Halloween, because that's what happens in the film, Halloween is no more. It's finished. This film is putting that nail in the coffin of the Halloween festivities. You can't watch it leading up to Halloween. I mean, you can, but then you're cheating yourself out of actually enjoying Halloween stuff as the film is, as stated, about building up towards Christmas.  

Disney's theme park dresses up the Haunted Mansion to look like Jack took over every Halloween through Christmas time.That should tell you something. If this was a Halloween movie, it would only be up for Halloween time. But no, Halloween takes a back seat to the Christmas spirit and that in itself should be the biggest clue on what type of film is this.

Much like Die Hard is a Christmas movie, despite the fact that it is in Los Angeles and has no snow or any other indication of winter despite the Holiday party theme, some music and nudges here and there that this takes place during Christmas, the film is a Christmas film. Much like NBC is a straight up Christmas film and NOT a Halloween one.

These are just my opinions and you can think I'm full of shit. Doesn't change the fact that the film is a Christmas movie.