I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how much I loved the movie Coraline.  The beauty of the stopmotion filming and effects was unmatched in any recent movie.  The way Henry Selick brought this incredible story by my favorite author, Neil Gaiman, to life was amazing to watch.  The 3D experience made it that much more mindblowing.

Anyway, while looking for information on the movie I found this interview with Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick.  It was interesting to read how the whole thing came about.  The interviwer asked Neil Gaiman about how scary the story can be, and Gaiman gave this really insightful answer:

In a good way. Honestly, I believe that you need your bad guy to be bad. You need your monster to be monstrous, you need something for a kid to go up against. Otherwise you’re in that bleak dull Disney Channel fiction in which somebody thinks that they weren’t invited to the birthday party, but at minute 18 they discover it was all a mix-up and they really were and there is not conflict and there is no evil and there’s nothing to fight and there’s nothing to win and nothing was ever at risk and everybody gets to hug! And that’s not what you send people out into the world with! You don’t arm them with that. Arm them with the idea that yes, there are monsters out there, but you can defeat them. In my experience, “Coraline” is so much more scary for adults. Adults are watching a film about a child in danger, kids are watching a film about somebody brave doing something cool.