The Bats are characters featured in Tim Burton's 1993 animated feature film The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Appearances[]
The Nightmare Before Christmas[]
After the Oogie Boogie shadow appears on a full moon during the "This is Halloween" sequence, he transforms into a flock of bats which fly towards the screen just before the song resumes to show the citizens entering Halloween Town. Later during the "Town Meeting Song", the Mayor of Halloween Town turns on a spotlight for Jack Skellington to begin his presentation with bats briefly flying out of it. Just as Jack is planning to take over Christmas during the "Making Christmas", he suggests to the Harlequin Demon to make a hat themed after a bat instead of using a rat to make it.
Later, when Santa Claus falls down a chute leading to Oogie Boogie's Lair, he sees a flock of blue-colored bats with visible skeletal bones flapping their wings above him but not before Oogie himself enters. Later, three green-colored bats flap their wings while Oogie continues singing, just before they fly away. Furthermore during the climax of the film, Jack arrives at the real world and suddenly sneaks into one of the citizens' houses placing some bats disguised as Christmas ornaments onto two girls' Christmas tree. As they soon arrive, they suddenly start flying around and frightening the children, which the montage continues with more citizens stalked by the Christmas presents Jack gave to them.
Eventually, Jack defeats Oogie Boogie, and then rescues Santa Claus, who then removes all the Halloween-themed Christmas presents, which includes the bats disguised as Christmas ornaments (and presumably replacing them with real Christmas ornaments).
Video games[]
The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge[]
Bats also appear in the game's thirteenth chapter, "The Vampire Brothers", where the Vampires are cursed and transformed into sentient bats by Oogie Boogie. The player must find and capture the bats in certain areas of the chapter and then turn the vampires back to their humanoid forms. Upon doing so, the player must return to the Vampires' House and place them in their coffins, turning them back to their normal forms.
Disney Crossy Road[]
Bats also appeared in the Nightmare Before Christmas hub of Disney Crossy Road, serving as the hub's "birds" which would fly away when approached when playing as any character. In addition to serving as interactive entities, they also became part of the objectives in the Daily Missions mechanics and Weekly Challenge events themed after The Nightmare Before Christmas, which the player had to scare a certain amount to complete these objectives.
Disney Parks[]
Haunted Mansion Holiday[]
These bats from The Nightmare Before Christmas also appear in the seasonal overlay of the Haunted Mansion. In the loading area in the Disneyland version of the attraction, a shadow of Oogie Boogie seen in this area would occasionally appear on the full moon where he appears for a while and then transforms into a flock of bats. Additionally, some bats can occasionally appear flying towards left and right respectively. In the Tokyo Disneyland version, bat decorations appear on the conveyor belt area when guests are boarding on Doom Buggies.
Trivia[]
- The scene where the bats fly out of a spotlight during the "Town Meeting” sequence, is a nod to Tim Burton's 1989 adaptation of Batman, which was also directed by Tim Burton himself.
- Bats occasionally appear in merchandise inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, despite their short amount of screen time.
- The effects used for the bats flying were done through the use of strings or wires controlling the bat puppets, where the animators made sure the bats were coordinated to give an illusion of them flying off the screen the right way, making them complex characters to animate.[1]
References[]
- ↑ Mueller, Matt (October 18, 2023). "Two local animators look back at 30 years of The Nightmare Before Christmas". OnMilwaukee.
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