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Tim Burton: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
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Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas has the distinction of being the first full length stop-motion animated film produced by Disney. Although Burton didn't actually direct the feature (directorial duties were provided by Henry Selick), he was responsible for the original concept and general design of the film. The animation itself is a technical marvel. The characters are incredibly expressive (apparently, the character of Jack had 150 interchangeable heads to get the entire range of emotion needed), and their graceful movements make it easy to forget that it was shot with traditional stop-action techniques. Built on the familiar foundation of the animated musical, Nightmare [I]s a delightful film, equally entertaining for children and adults alike. Yet in spite of the film's visceral beauty, there remains a rough edge to the film, an unfinished quality which is representative of most of Burton's oeuvre.
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Some measure of salvation came the following year when the studio decided that perhaps Burton's talents might be put to better use as a "conceptual artist" and not as an animator. Instead of trying to draw other people's ideas, Burton would be allowed to have a shot at creating the ideas themselves. The only problem was that nothing every came of his efforts. They were admired, even praised, but that would be the end of it. "It was a very weird relationship, because on the one hand they let me get away with murder, but it was like, 'Don't tell anybody,'" Burton noted of this period in his career. These brilliant ideas (including the one that would become Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993), were going nowhere at an alarming rate (Burton had spent a year coming up with ideas and designs that were never used); and what good is all the artistic freedom in the world if no one ever sees it?
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Directing an ensemble that included Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny DeVito, and Christopher Walken, Burton reteamed with Keaton for the 1992 Batman sequel, Batman Returns. The following year, he produced the animated musical Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Created with the painstaking process of stop-motion animation, the film became a critical and commercial success, while Burton was credited for his technical prowess.
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His next film, 1990's Edward Scissorhands, had a lot in common with Burton's earlier Frankenweenie. It was the tale of an artificial boy put together by a benign scientist (Vincent Price again, in one of his last performances), who unfortunately dies before he can complete the boy; as a result, the fabricated youth has hedge clipper-like scissors for hands. Alternately frightening, funny, and touching, Edward Scissorhands proved that Burton could inject humanity and audience empathy into an otherwise unbelievable yarn. By this point Burton was able to write his own Hollywood ticket, which resulted in a lucrative contractual arrangement with his one-time employer, Disney. The company that once refused to release his work now practically tripped over itself giving him carte blanche to produce his next project, a stop-motion animated cartoon about the King of Halloween kidnapping Santa Claus. The film came to fruition as 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas; although it wasn't the hit everyone hoped it would be, Nightmare was irrevocably Burton's film and his film alone, from drawing board to final release.
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All of Burton's films are well known for the highly imaginative and detailed world he creates to surround and inform the story. They include Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow.
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Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas