A Brief History
On September 6, 2024, we scurried to our local theater to watch the remastered RealD version of the 2009 blockbuster stop motion film, Coraline. The original film was not only mega-successful when released in 2009, it also became the third highest grossing stop motion movie of all time with a box office of $172.8 million against a budget of $60 million
Digging Deeper
While the original version is of course great, according to various viewers, this new version, put together with incredible painstaking detail by the original animators, is absolutely extraordinary. Colorful, fast paced, and combining comedy and horror, the anniversary edition is worth going to see even if you have never seen the original.
With a stellar voice cast that includes Dakota Fanning (in the title role), Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, and the peerless Ian McShane, the movie strikes us as incredibly fresh for a remastered film.
A tale of a young girl that moves to a new/very old house that harbors a grim secret passage to another reality, Coraline is serious enough to keep the attention of adults while also providing a captivating story for tweens and even younger children, as long as they are not overly sensitive to stressful horror situations.
At the end of the film is a must-see mini documentary about making the remastered version and this clip is incredibly informative and interesting. The massive amount of work, creativity and attention to detail that went into making and remastering the film is daunting. What seems on the screen to be an animated cartoon like movie is actually dependent on so many finely crafted puppets the artistry and technology to create those puppets and the film blew us away. We have to wonder how such a massive undertaking can even be done cheaply enough to make a profit.
Having never seen the original, this reviewer was ho hum about going to see an animated film that seemed to be fodder for kids. Boy was I surprised! The story line is good, the animation fantastic, and the voice acting spot on. Critics and audiences loved the original and will certainly love this anniversary edition, and we predict you will too!
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Have you seen the original or the remastered version of the film?
If you liked this article and would like to receive notifications of new articles, please feel welcome to follow History and Headlines on Facebook and X!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. HarperCollins, 2012.
Gaiman, Neil. Neil Gaiman/Chris Riddell 3-Book Box Set: Coraline; The Graveyard Book; Fortunately, the Milk. HarperCollins, 2015.
The featured image in this article is of a film poster, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by either the publisher or the creator of the work depicted. It is believed that the use of scaled-down, low-resolution images of film posters to provide critical commentary on the film in question, not solely for illustration where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information on a website intended for educational purposes hosted on servers in the United States qualifies as fair use under the copyright law of the United States.
