Honestly, why would you mess with perfection? Because it might make Disney a load of cash once again is the usual reason and the only thing that’s needed for the Mouse House to keep trotting out one old idea after another while trying to make it something new and exciting. As Mike Floorwalker from Looper mentions this isn’t the worst idea in the world honestly since Disney has done quite well at the box office by taking old titles and giving them a once-over and creating something in their own image. But Nightmare Before Christmas doesn’t really need a sequel, and there are a couple of reasons why it didn’t happen. To be honest it’s something to be thankful for since a lot of us can probably remember this movie from our childhood or adolescent years and it’s enough to state that it was great then just as it is now. This is one of those movies that you can watch pretty much any time of year, but during these last few months of the year it becomes even better. Jack Skellington, Sallie, Oogie Boogie, all of the cast tend to light up the screen in a big way that’s fun to experience and tends to remind us just why we enjoyed it in the first place.
But among the reasons why we haven’t seen a sequel, thankfully, is that Tim Burton had no desire to do CG when it came to one of the best movies he’s ever made. The creator and director is actually quite fond of his characters and doesn’t want to see them ruined by something like CG, which isn’t hard to understand, but this is the only way that Disney, who took on the first movie, would run a sequel. There’s also the idea that Burton and Danny Elfman, who’s provided the music for many of Burton’s projects, weren’t able to get along for a while. But the main reason seems to be the fact that it would need to be CG, which some people might think looks better than the stop-motion that the original movie was done in, but others would claim is bound to ruin the whole thing since it just doesn’t look the same. It’s very true that the stop-motion process does look kind of choppy in a way and doesn’t really smooth out any rough edges that CG might, but it does look a little more natural as CG starts to look too much like a cartoon, as David Christopher Bell of Cracked states, and has been seen to ruin effects in movies since it becomes little more than an animated feature with a few live action hints placed in the middle to give it some validity. In this instance it would ALL have to be CG, and that just doesn’t seem to fly with Burton.
There’s actually a rumor that Disney would want to make this movie into a live-action version, which would be horrible idea in my own personal opinion. If CG would be a heavy blow to this movie then live action would be akin to a death knell, ironic I know, that would spell the end before the credits even rolled. When you really think about it the effects and the changes that would need to be made to turn this into live-action would be absolutely gruesome no matter which way a person cuts it. Think about it, Jack’s home is filled with some of the nastiest, most horrifying monsters that you can imagine, and if you try and state that Halloweentown is a good example of what might happen, then you might as well admit that the movie would be a flop and a half unlike the few other live action movies that have done fairly well. Want to know what makes a Disney live-action movie actually work? They stick closely to the formula that managed to get the movie noticed as an animated feature. In this case Disney would need to make a certified horror movie that would feature some truly startling images that would likely give kids nightmares and be deemed as too graphic to be a family-friendly movie. And if they didn’t, well, then the movie would be pointless since the kids’ version still has a few images that scared the living hell out of kids back in the day.
At some point or another it would be great to hear someone finally speak up and tell Disney to knock it off and leave some of the classics alone while focusing on new and innovative material that people might want to see. Given their resources and their ability to create new and exciting stories it would seem that they could leave some of the more loved classics alone. But in the interest of making money the company is going to do things that just don’t make sense sometimes.
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