This month’s What’s the Difference? is on Coraline.
This is another in the long line of books and movies I haven’t yet gotten to. The best I have on Coraline is that one of my writers’ group friends is a big fan of the book.
Okay, tenuous link.
Look, if you want me to read and watch everything, you’re going to have to invent more hours in the day.
In 2009, artisanal stop motion animation house Laika released their first feature film, Coraline. Based on Neil Gaman’s book of the same name, the film follows a young girl stumbling into a fantastic ‘other’ world to become a sneak-up scary kids movie classic. But how did the film adapt the realistic elements of the book into the visual whimsy of a creative juggernaut making its mark in Hollywood? It’s time to ask, What’s the Difference?
Written for the screen and directed by Henry Selick, of The Nightmare Before Christmas fame, both the book and the movie draw lines between Coraline’s worlds of fantasy and reality. The book is able to make it more distinct thanks while the movie is all stop motion whimsy, all the time. So what changes need to be made to the story to account for that Laika trademark look?
Tyson Adams 