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The Nightmare Before Christmas

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Despite its apparent complexity, 3D is actually a deceptively simple process. Two images are filmed, one offset from the other by a same measurement that separates your two eyes, and then one is projected in red, the other in blue. The glasses that are handed out in the cinema, or in a copy of TV Guide if you’re stupid enough to be watching the season finale of Medium, have one red lens, and one blue. By giving each eye the same image but shifted, the film tricks your brain into thinking that you have a headache and kind of want to throw up a little bit. It can be a powerful effect when used properly, but all it’s been used for in the past few years is to try and make Superman Returns not a colossal waste of time, and to try and sell at least a few tickets to Spy Kids 3.

Here, however, is the exception that proves the rule. For its 10th anniversary, The Nightmare Before Christmas has been given the Disney 3D treatment not to sell tickets, but rather to sell black leather purses to Goth girls too old for Emily the Strange merchandise but too young to masturbate with a black skull dildo while listening toMarduk’s ‘Funeral Bitch’. I swear to Christ, this movie is the only thing keeping the Disney store afloat. I think they plastered Jack Skellington’s face on so much merchandise, 30th century archeologist are going to think we’re all lonely high school girls with bad skin and Marilyn Manson T-shirts.

As for the movie itself, I can’t even tell if I like it or not anymore. Every time I watch it, all I see is dollar signs and Oogie Boogie plush toys dancing around with Hello Kitty wallets and Tickle Me Elmos. It’s like the 80s all over again, except instead of My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake toys, I’m supposed to buy a grown woman slippers shaped like pumpkins. I don’t even remember what this movie’s supposed to be about. I think the king of Halloweentown decides to hijack Christmas, but then learns that shrunken heads don’t make good presents anywhere outside of the Belgian Congo. But that’s all incidental, because this film is just a computer program written to get me to buy actionfigures. By the movie’s 20th anniversary, I’m betting you’ll be able to get a Nightmare Before Christmas nativity scene, in a crèche shaped like a rib cage. What was a great idea for a film has been turned into a great idea for a $20 belt buckle, and everyone seems to be buying into it. Why must everything even remotely cool be co-opted by My Chemical Romance fans so they can post about it on MySpace? Fuck! Fuck you and your goddamn black nail polish and Lock, Shock, and Barrel shoelaces. Fuck your Dr. Finklestein curtains, and your Sally snow globes, and your Bobble Head of that lummox with the axe in his skull. Fuck your idiosyncratic conformity, fuck the bad attitude you can fit inside your black skull-patterned pencil case, and fuck the shitty poetry you write in your Oyster Boy pencil case. And fuck the fact that I’ve turned into yet another website with a Nightmare Before Christmas post on it.