Coraline (2009) celebrates its 15th anniversary this week with a theatrical run, where audiences don plastic 3D glasses (rather than button eyes) and enter this still-effervescent and unsettling adventure into the Other World. But who, exactly, is this 3D re-release and remaster for?

Back in 2009, Coraline was production company Laika’s first-ever stop motion film shot in 3D, a painstaking and meticulous process helmed by director Henry Selick, then-lead animator and now Laika CEO Travis Knight, and cinematographer Pete Kozachik. Watching behind-the-scenes footage from the film feels like its own leap into an Other world, filled with our blue-haired heroine’s tiny stitched sweaters, clay hands and drawers of facial expressions, and a cherry blossom orchard whose petals are made from popcorn. 

In theaters, the film retains all the excitement and subtle horror of its predecessor, if richer in color and scope with the enhancement of the 3D images. Perhaps you already know the story, 15 years later: We follow Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning), an intelligent young girl whose family’s recent move from snowy Michigan leaves her isolated but curious about her creaky and rain-laden Oregon home. Coraline soon finds a mysterious door to a magical Other world that shifts from an enchanting and fulfilling fantasy to a sinister and unsettling nightmare. 

Enhanced, still, by Fanning’s persnickety and determined characterization of Coraline and the grotesque images that embed elements of terror into the children’s story, Coraline will always deserve a theatrical run to celebrate the sheer artistic prowess of claymation filmmaking. It’s also a distinctly human feat made more impressive, relevant, and appreciated in the face of artificial intelligence art and other threats to creative work. Even if that point is belabored, it’s still true. And with Coraline’s 3D remaster, the depth of this powerful type of filmmaking becomes more explicit in the theater. 

As A. O. Scott described the film’s 3D release in 2009, “The glasses you put on are an aid to seeing what’s already there,” a sentiment that rings true 15 years later. The Pink Palace Apartments, where Coraline and her family live, loom larger; the enchanting tunnel to the Other World unfurls farther; and the dancing mice tootle-toot tangibly across the screen. Then, of course, are the characteristic jump-out-of-your-seat moments, like when a sharp needle pierces the screen in the film’s title credits, or when Mr. Bobinski catapults from his top-floor apartment and nearly lands upon Coraline’s gardening shears (and your face). 

These shocking moments are infrequent, a realization I found only slightly and childishly disappointing, as with the existence of 3D I often anticipate more of those jolting moments than the subtlety at play here. More despairing, however—and the reason I pose my opening question—is the infuriatingly excessive and materialistic campaign that arrived alongside the film’s re-release. Perhaps such blatant and barefaced greed is common alongside art; artists make their art, and any company or artist that can commodify it, will. Maybe this critique, too, is so common that it feels hollow. It feels hollow to write. I express this dissatisfaction knowing it invites an eye roll or a shrug about my own or others’ complicity in the system that we often endorse and participate in. 

And yet. Why must Stumptown Coffee produce a Coraline-themed cold brew? Do we all need to go out and purchase “I Heart Mulch” mugs to be like Coraline’s mother, an avenue we can follow because it is conveniently located on Laika’s website? Should we all buy Coraline’s silk pajamas and themed sneakers from Converse, and throw a party? Does the newly pressed button-eyes vinyl record tell people who visit my house something about the person I am and the art I appreciate?

This materialism, perhaps obviously, diminishes the labor intensity and pure artistry of claymation. But it also contradicts the subtlety of the 3D rendering itself. That precision is the defining aspect of this re-release, and it remains relevant because it resists those flashy and satisfactorily made-for-3D shots and instead places the viewer in the real-time shoes of the animators. 

But as I waited for the film to start in my theater, I was inundated with repetitive reminders of the things I could buy after watching the movie. My moviegoing experience became an opportunity to revel in the excess outside the theater, rather than celebrate the miracle within it.

I tire of the things and the objects and the stuff and the eventual hollowness that they will embody. It would have been enough to buy the ticket, watch the movie, and love it alone.

Retrospective Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers

Image Courtesy of Laika