- This episode of "Messed Up Origins" was brought to you by NordVPN. (lighthearted music) (thunder claps) What's up, SoloCups? My name is Jon Solo, and I'm coming at you
today from my new home. As many of you know, last
month I made the move from Florida back to Illinois, then I spent a few weeks in purgatory trying to establish the
next chapter of my life. It's been a long month and a half of moving, planning, and moving again, but the good news is I'm finally settled in my new apartment, hence the new couch and background. I really can't express
how much I appreciate your guys' patience throughout
these past few weeks, so I thought I'd pay you back by unpacking the origins of a story I see requested more than
almost any other, Coraline. Well, it's partly to show my appreciation and partly because it's October. Halloween is this month
so it's only appropriate that we cover something spoopy. Now, you probably noticed
I put Part 1 in the title, and that's because the Coraline movie is based on a chapter book of
the same name by Neil Gaiman. And it's a little bit too
long to cover in one episode, at least if I wanted the
episode to be any good. So this one is going to
be two-parter, Solo Cups! Today I'm gonna give a
brief summary of the movie followed by a breakdown
of the first six chapters, and next week we'll cover
the remaining chapters, as well as some of the real-life
inspiration for the novel. Before we dive into the summary though, I wanna give a quick shout out to this week's sponsor, NordVPN. We all love the internet, right? We use it to improve literally
every facet of our lives, and most of us never go anywhere
without staying connected, whether it's work, the
gym, or the airport. But the trade-off to having instant access to your crush's tweets
and all those juicy memes is you leave your private data accessible to weirdos with bad intentions. That is where NordVPN comes in. They keep you and your
browsing history safe. Sort of like an online firewall. So when you are at work,
the gym, the airport, or just hanging out under a bridge, you won't have to worry. At least about your private data. If you're just chilling under a bridge, there may be other aspects of your life you have to get in order. NordVPN is great. You can have up to 6
simultaneous connections at once, they have 5,000 servers in 60 countries, and they don't log any of your data. They also offer 24/7 customer support and have a 30 day money-back guarantee if you somehow aren't
happy with their service. If you want to get a whopping 70% off your NordVPN membership and an extra month for free, just go to NordVPN.com/JonSolo and use code JonSolo at checkout! And now, ladies and gentleman, it's time for us to get started. As always don't forget to give
that like button some love if you haven't already, subscribe with notifications turned on to be one of the first to
know when Part 2 drops, and most importantly, enjoy. (funky music) The movie opens with a
young girl named Coraline and her family moving into an
apartment in a very old house. Due to her neighbors
being totally wackadoo and her parents working around the clock, Coraline finds herself alone
and bored most of the time. But one night, she
discovers that a tiny door which she previously thought
was sealed off by bricks, is actually a portal to an "other world" that's far more colorful
and fun than the real one, and is complete with a
pair of other parents who show her all the
attention she lacks at home. However, things in this "other world" aren't quite what they seem, and her other mother
turns out to be a witch, known as the Bedlam, who
traps children in her house, sews buttons into their eyes
and collects their souls. Just to reiterate this
IS somehow a kid's movie. Coraline manages to escape
this terrifying world, but she's forced to venture back after learning the Bedlam
abducted her parents. Our heroine then challenges the Bedlam to a sort of scavenger hunt, where she has to find the eyes of the bedlam's other victims as well as her parents or she'll be trapped in
the other world forever. With the help of an overly-sarcastic cat and a magic stone that she
was given by her neighbors, Coraline finds each eye in a
different part of the world, as well as her parents
stuck in a snow globe. Realizing that even if she wins fairly, the Bedlam still won't let her go, Coraline chucks her cat-friend at the witch's face to distract her, grabs the snow globe, and
escapes back to her world. However, the adventure
isn't over just yet. The Bedlam's weird, scary hand also managed to escape and it's up to Coraline
to conquer the evil force once and for all. She ventures out to the old well on the edge of her property
to discard the key, but the hand follows her
out there and attacks her. Fortunately, her neighbor Wybie shows up in the nick of time to save her and help her destroy the hand and they throw it down the well together. In the end, Coraline's
parents finally come around and open up their minds
to having some more fun, and that strange little community
lives happily ever after. I mean, given the dark
nature of the story, it probably wasn't happily ever after, but I didn't know how
else to end that summary. Which by the way, I realize
wasn't a perfect synopsis but many of the details
I just glossed over, I'll be expanding on as
I break down the book. And speaking of, I'm
sure you guys are ready to get into the book,
so let's do just that. (funky music) So, the book opens pretty
similar to the movie, with Coraline exploring
every nook and cranny of her new home. She also has the same wackadoo
neighbors as in the movie, the former actresses
Miss Spink and Forcible, as well as the crazy
man who lives upstairs and trains circus mice. But in the book his name is Mr.
Bobo instead of Mr. Bobinksy and we don't learn that
until the very end. There's also some differences
regarding the magic door. To start, she actually finds it in the very first sentence of Chapter 1. And in this version, it's not a tiny door hidden behind wallpaper, but rather, a "big, carved, wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room." Later on in the chapter, she
convinces her mom to unlock it, only to find out it's been bricked up from when the house was
converted into apartments. Her mom then walks away
without bothering to lock it because "what's the point?" Of course there was a point though, and that night when Coraline
was lying awake in bed, she heard the door creak open. Then, when she went to see what it was, she saw an eerie looking
shadow speed down the hall. Now Coraline's way braver
than I was as a kid, so she followed the shadow
to the drawing room, where she found the door slightly ajar, but still sealed up with bricks. Then she closed the
door, went back to bed, and had a dream where little black shapes with red eyes and sharp
yellow teeth sang her a song. We are small, but we are many, We are many, we are small, We were here before you rose, We will be here when you fall. Not creepy at all. The next day, Coraline continues wandering around the property and has some strange
interactions with her neighbors. First, there's Mr. Bobo,
who delivers a message from the mice, saying
"Don't go through the door." What's interesting about this is that when he tells her that in the book, she acts like she doesn't
know what he's talking about. But in the movie, she goes "Oh, the one behind the wallpaper?" I'm not sure why that change was made. Maybe they thought it'd
be too contradictory and confusing for the kids watching, but that's just a guess. Coraline then has some tea with Miss Spink and Forcible and they read her tea leaves, which apparently predict
that she's in great danger. To protect her from this danger, Miss Spink gives her a little
stone with a hole in it from a jar that's sitting on their mantel. You might remember that this
happens much later in the movie and the stone is seemingly
carved out of old taffy. Now for those curious about what this stone is supposed to be, let me shed some light on this mystery. Small stones with naturally-created
holes in their centers are called hag-stones, witch stones, serpent-eggs, or adder stones and were once thought to possess
several magical properties. By looking through the hole, one could supposedly see through
witch disguises and traps. they could be used as a
cure for certain illnesses, prevent nightmares,
and were generally worn as a charm to protect
against witchcraft and evil. The reason they were called
adder stones has to do with how people thought they were made. An adder is a kind of snake and many believed the stones
were the hardened saliva of a large numbers of
serpents massing together, with the perforations being
caused by their tongues. Just a bit different than being carved out
of old, expired taffy. So the next day, when Coraline's
alone and bored at home, she unlocks the bricked-up
door once again. But this time, the door isn't bricked up. This time it opened up to a large, dark hallway that apparently smelled "very old and very slow." So no bright blue light and wacky funhouse
tunnel, in this version. Naturally, Coraline
entered the dark hallway because why wouldn't you
walk right into something that you thought was
both ancient and alive? And on the other side, she found a house that
looked exactly like hers with a few subtle differences,
including brighter colors and more sinister looking paintings. And it's in this house that
she meets her other mother. A woman that looks almost
exactly like her mother but she has paler skin,
is taller and thinner, and has buttons for eyes. The other mother is
also far more nurturing than her real mother and made
Coraline a delicious lunch. The girl was starving, so she sat down with both of her other parents and ate as much as she could. Then after lunch, she went to her room where she found the singing rats from her dream waiting under her bed and met the other Mr. Bobo, who was even stranger in
this world than the last. Then Coraline went exploring
and as you might expect, things only get stranger from here. (funky music) Soon after going outside, Coraline runs into a black cat that she also found
sneaking around her property in the real world. Only in the "other world" he talks and he sounds about as pretentious as you'd imagine most cats to be. After a brief and irritating
conversation with him, she walks down to the OTHER Miss Spink and Forcible's apartment, where she watches the
oddest theater performance she'd ever seen, alongside an
audience of Scottish terriers. There's some bad music playing, some nonsensical dialogue
that sounds like it came straight out of Wonderland, and it ends with a knife-throwing stunt. Coraline is chosen to
stand in front of a target with a balloon on her head, while a blindfolded Miss Forcible throws a knife at the balloon and pops it. Personally, I liked
this version a lot more than the ridiculous musical performance and trapeze act they for
some reason replaced it with in the movie, but that's just me. After sitting back down, Coraline learns from one
of the dogs in the audience that this act goes on literally
forever, so she walks out. Afterward, she returns
to her other parents, who are waiting for her in the garden with huge, totally not-terrifying
smiles on their faces. The couple then tells Coraline that she could stay in their world always and forever if she agrees to have buttons sewn into her eyes. It's worth noting here, this is only Coraline's first
visit to the other world, as where in the movie, they don't propose this
until her third visit. They stretched it out because the movie had to
be longer than 45 minutes. Well, Coraline rejects this tempting offer pretty much instantly. Can't imagine why, then returns through the
magic door to her real home, and locks it behind her. What's odd about when she gets back to the real world, though is that her parents are
no where to be found and they still hadn't
returned by the next night. Around 4:00 a.m. the following morning, Coraline is woken up by the
black cat swatting at her face. Then she follows him down the hall to a full-length mirror and when she looks into it, she sees her parents staring back at her with great fear in their eyes. While she didn't like it, Coraline knew immediately
what she had to do. She changed out of her pajamas, grabbed some candles for
light and apples for food, and put the stone the old
ladies gave her in her pocket. Also, while getting
ready for her adventure, she tells the cat a little story. One I really like, actually, and I wish they included it in the movie because it has a great message. To put it simply, one
day when she was walking through a "wasteland" with her dad, they stepped on a wasp nest and her dad told her to run away while he stayed behind
so he would get stung and she wouldn't. Then, after they both
got away from the wasps her father realized he
dropped his glasses, so he had to go back and find them. And this is where my favorite
line of the book comes in. "He said that wasn't brave of him, just standing there and being stung. It wasn't brave because he wasn't scared. It was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave. When you're scared but
you still do it anyway, that's brave." That message repeats several times throughout the rest of the story and if there's any moral to
be gathered from Coraline, this is it. So I was really disappointed
when I watched the movie and the only reference to it
was a single line of dialogue. - [Coraline Voiceover]
Be strong, Coraline. - It just seems like a missed opportunity to convey something really
positive and encouraging to the kid-audience the movie
was supposedly intended for. Anyway, Coraline ventures
back to her other home where she confronts her other mother who, of course, denies all responsibility. The mother then orders a rat to bring her the key to the magic door, she locks it, and then drops
the key in her apron pocket, instead of swallowing
it like in the movie. Then, being that she doesn't
have much of a choice, Coraline then goes to
sleep in her other room. The next morning Coraline
changes from her nightgown into some of the clothes
that were in her other closet and when she puts the
magic stone in her pocket, she comments that her
head cleared up a little, as if she had come out
of some sort of fog. Ah, the power of the adder stone. She starts to explore the property with her partner in crime, the black cat and while doing so learns that the other mother didn't
recreate everything perfectly. She only made as much as she had to in order to fool Coraline. Because she's a lazy (bark) Coraline also learns from the cat that the other mother
is called the bedlam, a word that means a scene
of uproar and confusion or a mental institution. How appropriate. When Coraline gets back in the house, the Bedlam proposes they do
some mother-daughter things. Play some games, do some embroidery, sew buttons into her eyes, the usual. But Coraline says no and
the Bedlam gets furious. She picks up Coraline, carries her kicking and
screaming down the hallway, and throws her into a dark
place behind a mirror, leaving the girl shrouded in
darkness and completely alone. And that SoloFam, will do it for Part 1
of Coraline Explained. Make sure to comment your
thoughts on it down below and especially to tune in next week when I break down the
second half of the book, as well as some truly fascinating
behind the scenes info, that will no doubt enhance
the way you watch the movie. In the meantime don't forget
to hit that like button, subscribe so you don't
miss the next episode, and share this video with any other die-hard
Coraline fans you know. I'd also recommend following
me on social media. That's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, for regular updates about what
content you can expect next and what I'm up to between episodes. Until next time, everybody. My name is Jon Solo and
remember, Jon shot first. (creepy violin music)
