The musical dark fantasy film The Nightmare Before Christmas is an animated film based on characters by Tim Burton. He started writing the story in poetry form and considered developing it into a film after the success of Vincent, one of his horror short films. Following the story of Jack Skellington, king of Halloweentown, who accidentally stumbles upon Christmastown and is both surprised and amused to see bright colours, warm things and all things contrary to Halloweentown. Bored with the mundanities of scaring people every Halloween, he wishes to bring this new-found place under his rule but soon finds out that things often tend to go wrong in situations like this.
Skellington even took a prize home!
This weekend, comedian and actor Pete Davidson brought Skellington’s character to life during his sketch on Saturday Night Live. Fans were excited to see him dressed up in the familiar costume and white stockings-to highlight Jack’s skinny legs for his pageant Men with Tiny Legs- getting his act on in front of Tim Burton’s memorable movie poster. He even put on gloves with extremely long fingers to parody the scrawny hands of Skellington. Show’s host Rege-Jean Page is heard asking Davidson when he realised having such thin legs, and the latter replied in joke saying he was always told as a kid that he had legs just like Olive Oyl from the Popeye cartoons. It all pays off, as Pete’s character wins the pageant in the end.
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Burtonesque is a real thing:
Tim Burton is a pioneer of the gothic subgenre in the horror world of cinema. He has previously worked on films such as Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows and many more. His visual aesthetics have appealed to people from all age groups at some level with his characters’ unique-looking features. Most of his animated characters have the same hollow-face look and sad eyes, but almost all of his characters from films and shorts have one thing in common: they are all outcasts. Something about this idea behind the macabre connects to his audience very well and helps them see people beyond their appearances.
