‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is three decades old. This weekend the Philadelphia Orchestra made it anew.

Jack is the keeper of Halloween, but he has grown bored with all things ghoulish and macabre. Even a highly acclaimed Pumpkin King, it seems, can have bouts of ennui, and Jack cures his by stealing Christmas — making a terrible mess of things.

Christmas gets saved, of course, in the dystopian world of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and so, in a way, does another subculture: orchestral music.

The Philadelphia Orchestra this weekend used the classic Tim Burton stop-animation film to usher in a month packed with holiday programming, and by the looks of Friday night’s Verizon Hall sold-out crowd, this intoxicating music became part of the Christmas tradition for a lot of millennials.

Classical purists may ask whether it’s a waste of a great orchestra to plunk it down beneath the silver screen and play second fiddle to another artform. And one may have doubts about how the attention equation of the live-to-screen experience will play out when the Philadelphia Orchestra competes against Will Ferrell in two showings of Elf next month.

But The Nightmare Before Christmas is a perfect place for the Philadelphia Orchestra to find itself (despite what some of its own musicians may think). There’s barely a stretch in the film without music, and the score by Danny Elfman and his colorful orchestrators is only made better in the hands of the Philadelphians. For various reasons, this outing was far more satisfying than the one by the Philly Pops at the Met Philadelphia in 2019.

The film’s musical language is familiar — a sweet, dark brew of classical influences (the dies irae motif is prominent), Broadway torch songs, Kurt Weill melancholy, and an occasional poignant Mahlerian harmonic progression. At no moment does the action of film elbow aside the music.

All this is obvious in the original soundtrack, but having a live orchestra — and this orchestra in particular — makes the music its most fully realized version of itself.

Some of the instrumental characterizations are subtle — the beautifully rounded sound with which timpanist Don S. Liuzzi punctuated Jack’s pensive opening song (sung by Elfman), or the dark colors flutist Patrick Williams brought to the despairing response of Sally (Catherine O’Hara). Violinists David Kim and Juliette Kang had a brief but biting musical moment depicting the demonic little thugs Lock, Shock, and Barrel.

Conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos did a workmanlike job of marrying musical forces — one set in stone decades ago and, hence, the other forever hemmed in.

But the greater contribution of the orchestra was visceral. Sax players Todd Groves and Chad Smith helped to tilt the overall ensemble toward Weill’s world-weary soundscape, and the beefy, polished brass brought real menace to the psychedelic jazz-tinged underworld of Oogie Boogie (Ken Page).

The sound system in Verizon Hall often favored live orchestra over the recorded sung parts, and I suppose the balance could have been more actively managed. But the sheer power of the orchestra was great fun. Just as happens when the orchestra plays a John Williams score live-to-screen, the size and depth of sound is directly proportional to the emotion, and in terms of pure sonic firepower, the Philadelphia Orchestra might be unmatched.

And then there’s this. Feeling totally surrounded in sound has a way of getting into one’s emotional inner life in a way few other experiences can muster. Three decades have passed since The Nightmare Before Christmas’ initial release, and for many fans its special sound is hardwired for instant time travel. And who these days couldn’t use a little escapism?

Additional performance Sunday at 2 p.m. in Verizon Hall, Broad and Spruce Streets. Limited tickets available. philorch.org, 215-893-1999.