Time has an interesting effect on everything. Especially when it comes to rendering judgment on what is good and bad. A great example of this can be found in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. When this stop-motion animation film came out in 1993, it was a flop at the box office and many felt that it was “too scary” for kids given some of the things the movie did (shrunken head in a Christmas present might have been…ahead of its time).
However, nowadays, Nightmare Before Christmas is a classic film for many, and for the man behind the voice of Jack Skellington, Danny Elfman, he couldn’t be happier with its status as a cult classic film.
“When it came out, I did a two-day press junket and virtually every interview started with: ‘Too scary for kids, right?’,” Elfman, who composed the music and provided the singing voice of Jack Skellington, recalled to Variety. “I think that’s why Disney was like, ‘What do we do with this thing? We’re a family film company.’ So to come back years later and to see families out there, and to be getting recordings of people’s kids who are 4 years old singing ‘What’s This’ or ‘This is Halloween,’ makes me really feel blessed. It’s like a second life and proving them wrong.”
Elfman also praised Disney for realizing what they had eventually and putting energy into keeping the film alive. Every Halloween they turn the Haunted Mansion at various parks into Halloween Town from the film. What’s more, they allowed the property to be in the beloved Kingdom Hearts franchise as one of the worlds the main characters visited. There have been books and comics about the movie and there are an infinite number of art pieces by fans over the years showing their love of the franchise.
So in the end, history remembered it fondly, as it should.