I love The Nightmare Before Christmas. Yeah breaking news, dork says dork thing, whoopdee-doo. But that movie is just so amazing. It was really the first time I watched a movie where the main character wasn’t the good guy. I mean Jack is really a bad dude throughout most of the movie. Not that he means badly, but he ruins Christmas for the world and almost gets Santa killed. But I’m getting off track, I want to talk to you about the music. It’s a musical after all, and what makes it so great, is that you can get the entire story just from listening to the soundtrack.
Just through the album alone you know that Jack, while unfulfilled with his role as a Halloween legend, attempts to recreate the magical holiday Christmas, while his friend Sally foresees the disaster to come. Which comes true, forcing Jack to reckon with who he is, and what he wants, ultimately finding happiness in who he is, and fixing Christmas for everyone. Also the boogeyman is there.
It’s just such a well written soundtrack and I’m sure it doesn’t have to be said, but Danny Elfman is a genius. Now that I have sufficiently praised the movie, I want to tell you about something you gotta check out. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is putting on a live play of the movie! If that didn’t make any sense, the movie will play on the screen, but the VSO will play the music as it happens! I just got my tickets today, and I am so pumped. My girlfriend loves the movie too, so I gave her tickets as a birthday present.
But the VSO is no stranger to events like this. Just last year they put on Encanto. So they really do it all. I mean the jump between the hopping tunes of that magical family, down to the slower, gothic moves of Halloweentown, can’t be easy. But they’ve done this before, so they’ve gotta be doing something right. And I for one, cannot wait to find out. I can’t stress enough how excited I am to see this. I saw the limited rerelease in theatres a couple years ago and it was amazing. Whatever you were going to do after reading this, put it on hold for a few minutes, and go buy tickets to see the show. If you like the Nightmare Before Christmas, if you’re like my siblings and hate it? First of all, shame on you, second, yeah maybe don’t go. I mean maybe do, maybe this’ll be what changes your mind.