Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
Speaker 3: talking about a childhood classic, I think for many people
Speaker 3: roughly our age or between our ages, the nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: six musical fantasy film Labyrinth, starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie,
Speaker 3: directed by Jim Henson. I was thinking, this is actually
Speaker 3: our second David Bowie film, since we did previously cover
Speaker 3: Nicholas Rogues. The Man Who Fell to Earth, a very interesting,
Speaker 3: very good, but mood withering film about an alien who
Speaker 3: comes to our planet on a mission to save his
Speaker 3: own from catastrophic drought, but gets derailed by our culture's
Speaker 3: infinite and infinitely absorbing distractions like television, alcohol, and table tennis.
Speaker 3: You remember all the ping pong and The Man Who
Speaker 3: Fell to Earth.
Speaker 2: I had kind of forgotten about the ping pong until
Speaker 2: you mentioned it, but that's a solid point.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, while it also stars David Bowie, Labyrinth I
Speaker 3: think is about as different a movie from the Man
Speaker 3: Who Fell to Earth as one could possibly imagine. Bowie's
Speaker 3: film career did have a lot of range. But thinking
Speaker 3: about this actually raised a kind of humorous question for me.
Speaker 3: Are there any similarities between the two movies? And the
Speaker 3: more I thought about it, I thought, actually, there kind
Speaker 3: of are, especially in the overall plot structure and the
Speaker 3: journey of the hero. Both are stories in which the
Speaker 3: hero or heroine is transported to an alien world on
Speaker 3: an originally selfless quest to save their family or a
Speaker 3: family member from a terrible fate, but faces obstacles along
Speaker 3: the way, primarily in the form of temptations to go
Speaker 3: off the path into narcissistic, self indulgent pursuits. So in
Speaker 3: the case of Labyrinth, the heroine is played by a
Speaker 3: young Jennifer Connolly, whose quest is to rescue her baby
Speaker 3: brother from a goblin related predicament of her own making.
Speaker 3: And Connolly's character is I like the character because she
Speaker 3: is smart and brave, but begins the story as a
Speaker 3: very believable teenager, so self pitying and self absorbed, infuriated
Speaker 3: by the inconvenience of having to look after her screeching
Speaker 3: baby brother for an evening and wanting simultaneously to be
Speaker 3: free of her family and to achieve adult independence, but
Speaker 3: also at the same time to regress into childhood and
Speaker 3: avoid all responsibilities, like you know, hiding in her bedroom
Speaker 3: with her dolls and costumes. And thus her challenges in
Speaker 3: the movie reflect these very common and relatable teenage character issues,
Speaker 3: like she's tempted along the way to give into defeatism
Speaker 3: and selfishness in the forms of both self pity and
Speaker 3: self indulgence. In the end, she emerges much more successfully
Speaker 3: than Bowie's character and the Man Who Fell to Earth, though,
Speaker 3: as we were discussing off Mike before recording, the exact
Speaker 3: mechanics of her victory over the goblin King Jarith are
Speaker 3: somewhat difficult to schematize.
Speaker 2: That's right. This is a movie that I've seen so
Speaker 2: many times over the years as a child, as an adult,
Speaker 2: you know, as a parent, and so forth, And no
Speaker 2: matter what phase of my life I am in, I
Speaker 2: never completely get the details on how she defeats Jarreth,
Speaker 2: but I never doubt the victory, like it's the emotional
Speaker 2: accuracy of it feels one hundred percent there. This is
Speaker 2: a film that will come back to this, I think
Speaker 2: over and over again, but I think it speaks more
Speaker 2: on an emotional level than it does on a logical level,
Speaker 2: and I can't help but assume that that is one
Speaker 2: of the factors playing into the disconnect between the way
Speaker 2: the adult world reacted to this film when it came
Speaker 2: out in eighty six and the way scores and scores
Speaker 2: of children reacted to it over the years as they
Speaker 2: grew up with the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we'll have a lot to say about
Speaker 3: this as we go on, But oh, we haven't yet
Speaker 3: gotten to one of the main things you would need
Speaker 3: to know to understand Labyrinth if you've never seen it
Speaker 3: and have no idea of what's going on here, and
Speaker 3: it's a movie full of muppets. This is a Jim
Speaker 3: Hinson production, so the fantasy elements and characters are achieved
Speaker 3: through the use of some of the best puppetry ever
Speaker 3: committed to film. Labyrinth came out a few years after
Speaker 3: Hinson's previous fantasy movie, The Dark Crystal from nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 3: which I would say personally is probably the high watermark
Speaker 3: for puppetry driven movies, Like I don't know what could
Speaker 3: really be said to surpass it, And it's interesting to
Speaker 3: compare the two films. We might also discuss that more
Speaker 3: as we go on. But coming back to what you
Speaker 3: were saying, Rob, about the way children reacted to Labyrinth
Speaker 3: versus the way a lot of adults did. I also, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I get the impression that for a lot of people
Speaker 3: who were kids in the eighties, Labyrinth was just part
Speaker 3: of the common texture of childhood, as uncritically accepted and
Speaker 3: culturally canonical as Star Wars or Et or the mainline
Speaker 3: muppets like Kermit and Miss Piggy.
Speaker 2: Was that your experience, Rob, Yeah, I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: remember how exactly Labyrinth was initially introduced into our lives.
Speaker 2: I think maybe we rented it from the video store
Speaker 2: on VHS, but we liked it so much that we
Speaker 2: purchased a VHS copy of Labyrinth. We watched it so
Speaker 2: many times that we broke the VHS tape and we
Speaker 2: actually had to go take it to be repaired. I
Speaker 2: don't even know I repaired. Yeah, we had it repaired.
Speaker 2: I don't know who did that kind of thing. What
Speaker 2: the price point was, I assumed cheaper than buying a
Speaker 2: new VHS tape. So it was repaired and returned to us.
Speaker 2: But after that, the audio and the tape was warped
Speaker 2: from there on out. So part of me still sort
Speaker 2: of pines for a certain like electronic warping sound to
Speaker 2: be present in the film even when it's not.
Speaker 3: What does the fire Gang song sound like? When it's
Speaker 3: even more.
Speaker 2: Discombobulated, it sounds weirder and more threatening? Okay, I know,
Speaker 2: as if that were possible. How about you, do you
Speaker 2: remember how Labyrinth came into your life? Show?
Speaker 3: Well? Actually, I'm this is weird because I feel like
Speaker 3: I should know for sure one way or another about this,
Speaker 3: but I can only say what I think is the case.
Speaker 3: I think I actually never saw this movie in full
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, and yet I had full
Speaker 3: awareness of it as like a movie that was part
Speaker 3: of the common culture and that everybody liked. And I
Speaker 3: think I really never sat down and saw the whole
Speaker 3: thing until I was an adult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of movies like that where
Speaker 2: they're just I mean, it's really a film like this
Speaker 2: becomes a part of the atmosphere. You can't help but
Speaker 2: breathe it in, and you have no idea how it
Speaker 2: originally came into your house, you know, I just seep
Speaker 2: through the.
Speaker 3: Walls but I will have some more things to say
Speaker 3: about it when when we get back to I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe when we talk about the critical reception. I do
Speaker 3: remember being surprised by some things about it when I
Speaker 3: saw it, either for the first time ever in my
Speaker 3: life or for the first time as an adult, whichever
Speaker 3: that was. You know, when I saw it in my
Speaker 3: in my thirties, it wasn't exactly what I expected, And
Speaker 3: maybe we can talk about some reasons for that when
Speaker 3: we get into some stuff about the critical reception. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but don't misinterpret me. I love Labyrinth. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: just it's a trip. There's not there's not really anything
Speaker 3: like it. The closest I could compare it to, I
Speaker 3: guess is The Dark Crystal. But actually that's a totally
Speaker 3: different kind of story, totally different kind of world and movie. There.
Speaker 3: There really just is nothing like Labyrinth I can think of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it is. It's in many ways,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss, it's it was the logical next step
Speaker 2: after Dark Crystal, but it and it is as ambitious
Speaker 2: a film in some respect in its use of groundbreaking puppetry,
Speaker 2: you know, pushing the boundaries of what puppetry can do
Speaker 2: while also looking to puppetry's past and finding things to uh,
Speaker 2: you know, to to to utilize and reinvent. But it
Speaker 2: is a very different story. It's a very different like
Speaker 2: entertainment product in its own way. Yeah, So we'll get
Speaker 2: into some of those differences and similarities as we go here.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear just a
Speaker 2: little trailer audio for Jim Henson's Labyrinth.
Speaker 4: Tri Star Pictures announces the collaboration of three extraordinary talents,
Speaker 4: Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets and Dark Crystal.
Speaker 3: Where you want what I hay like that?
Speaker 4: George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars Saga, and one
Speaker 4: of the most innovative forces in modern entertainment, David Bowie.
Speaker 4: Together they will take you into a dazzling world of
Speaker 4: fantasy and adventure.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to be afraid of, a world.
Speaker 4: Where anything seems possible and nothing is what it seems.
Speaker 5: Everything I've done, I've done for I move the stars
Speaker 5: of novels.
Speaker 4: The world of Labyrinth.
Speaker 2: All right, if you want to go watch Labyrinth or
Speaker 2: rewatch Labyrinth before proceeding with the rest of this podcast episode,
Speaker 2: well more power to you. This one is widely available
Speaker 2: in all formats and the special this is one of
Speaker 2: those releases where I feel like the special editions just
Speaker 2: keep rolling out. The limited edition steal book from shout
Speaker 2: Factory looks really good. I was just getting some some
Speaker 2: like social media ads about this the other day, and
Speaker 2: I I feel like it's one of these things where
Speaker 2: I don't own labyrinth ons and like a special edition
Speaker 2: physical media release, but I'm always tempted to get one,
Speaker 2: and each time they roll out a new one, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is the one, this is the one.
Speaker 3: I should get.
Speaker 2: That they keep upping the ante. But yeah, there are
Speaker 2: a number of been a number of releases, and again
Speaker 2: that shout Factory product looks really nice.
Speaker 3: You know. I wonder if to people out in the
Speaker 3: disc publishing world, is it especially movies that have nostalgic
Speaker 3: tie ins to people's childhood that are most likely to
Speaker 3: get bought up with these like big elaborate special edition
Speaker 3: blu rays and boxes that you know, the special cases
Speaker 3: and the posters and all the accessories that come with them.
Speaker 3: I would have to think that nostalgia is a big
Speaker 3: driver in selling these kind of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would guess so. But then again, I look
Speaker 2: at my own experience and I think the most money
Speaker 2: I've ever paid for a Blu ray was for a
Speaker 2: special edition of Fool Cheese Conquest that came with a
Speaker 2: special slipcase. And I can't quite explain why, because this
Speaker 2: is not a movie I watched as a child. I
Speaker 2: don't have that kind of deep nostalgia for it. But
Speaker 2: I have a certain depth of nostalgia for the film,
Speaker 2: and for some reason, it's like I had to have it.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe it's like the fomo of a special
Speaker 2: release slipcase and you're just like, somehow I've missed this.
Speaker 2: I must have it. Yes, I will pay extra for
Speaker 2: it on eBay.
Speaker 3: There is something really perversely enjoyable about getting an elaborate, lavish,
Speaker 3: lovingly produced edition of a movie that is grimy and
Speaker 3: gauzy and is just really concerned with pus.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it has a prize place in the drawer
Speaker 2: where I keep the discs. All right, well, let's get
Speaker 2: into the folks involved in the creation of this picture,
Speaker 2: starting at the time, of course, with Jim Henson. This
Speaker 2: is the first time we've really talked about Jim Henson
Speaker 2: on the show before, you know, in depth. You know,
Speaker 2: work comes up time and time again, and I'm blanking
Speaker 2: on to what extent we've ever discussed something that the
Speaker 2: Creature Shop was involved in. It's possible the Creature Shop
Speaker 2: has come up directly in an episode or two, but
Speaker 2: at any rate, Jim Henson is the director, he has
Speaker 2: a story credit. He is also an uncredited Goblin performer.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of Goblin performances in this puppetry wise,
Speaker 2: he lived nineteen thirty six through nineteen ninety easily one of,
Speaker 2: if not the most important puppeteers of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: I recently watched the excellent twenty twenty four documentary Jim
Speaker 2: Henson Idea Man. This was directed by Ron Howard, and
Speaker 2: I believe it's currently streaming on Disney in most places.
Speaker 2: And this documentary does a really, really great, really entertaining
Speaker 2: job of discussing Hinson, largely from the standpoint of his
Speaker 2: ambition and his dreams, also getting the you know, litle
Speaker 2: bit into his personal life, his family life, and of
Speaker 2: course his professional life being like the main focus because
Speaker 2: it's about, you know how all these ideas he had
Speaker 2: ultimately the limited amount of time he had to pull
Speaker 2: them off and yeah, like he was a guy that's
Speaker 2: just constantly coming up with concepts that so many things
Speaker 2: that didn't even come to fruition, Like he really had
Speaker 2: all these plans for a nightclub at one point. Well yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'd seen these some illustrations, some concept art that
Speaker 2: he'd put together for this at the Center for Puppetry
Speaker 2: Arts in a museum display years ago. But they get
Speaker 2: into this in the documentary as well.
Speaker 3: New York's Hottest Club is muppet essentially.
Speaker 2: Like even one of the things that they drive home
Speaker 2: in that documentary is that even you know, early on,
Speaker 2: he was drawn more to the power of television than
Speaker 2: he was to puppetry itself, though of course puppetry became
Speaker 2: his core performance medium. And yeah, he continued to push
Speaker 2: the boundaries of what was possible with puppets, the sorts
Speaker 2: of audiences they could be reached through puppets, sometimes like
Speaker 2: initially like rebelling against you know, a box that he
Speaker 2: helped draw for himself, like going from becoming you know,
Speaker 2: the the creator of Sesame Street in this you know,
Speaker 2: huge property for children, and then breaking out and doing
Speaker 2: something like The Muppet Show and beyond and again, you know,
Speaker 2: incorporating diverse traditions of puppetry along the way related performance styles,
Speaker 2: and pushing into new frontiers of things like animatronics, which
Speaker 2: we see in this film, and even you know, late
Speaker 2: in his career got a little bit into into CGI
Speaker 2: and looking at what computer generated imagery could do, though
Speaker 2: often through sort of the guise of puppetry, like you know,
Speaker 2: some sort of like computer animated face that is controlled
Speaker 2: by like live action puppeteering.
Speaker 3: Is the owl at the beginning of Labyrinth and the
Speaker 3: credit sequence is that CGI?
Speaker 2: I believe it is. Yeah, I believe that's like early
Speaker 2: I would argue largely effective CGI. It maybe doesn't look
Speaker 2: as cool now as it did when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: but it still looks pretty good. It's not you know,
Speaker 2: I feel like it mostly it's yeah for eighty six
Speaker 2: especially Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: Of course, Hinson is famous for his Muppet based shows, again,
Speaker 2: particularly Sesame Street and all the various series and films
Speaker 2: to spin off of the Muppet Show, but of course
Speaker 2: his creative output also includes the excellent Storyteller series we've
Speaker 2: referenced on the show before, both the first season and
Speaker 2: then the Greek season. I still hold those up as
Speaker 2: excellent nineteen eighty two's Dark Crystal, and of course eighty
Speaker 2: six is Labyrinth. This would prove to be his last
Speaker 2: full length feature film directorial effort before his untimely death
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety at the age of fifty three.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I guess this brings us back to the
Speaker 3: comparison between The Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. I love
Speaker 3: them both, though I think the Dark Crystal is a
Speaker 3: little more impressive to me just because of the format
Speaker 3: of its storytelling and its ambitions in that regard, in
Speaker 3: that The Dark Crystal has no human characters in it.
Speaker 3: You know, the Dark Crystal is not a like a
Speaker 3: fairy tale integrated with our world as a kind of
Speaker 3: you know, bridge fantasy from regular life like Labyrinth is.
Speaker 3: The Dark Crystal is like a mythology that has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with Earth, and there are no humans and
Speaker 3: no Earth history and no Earth technology. It's just this
Speaker 3: totally different world and everything in it is pure imagination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's otherworldly, and and in fact that
Speaker 2: the initial cut was maybe a little too otherworldly for
Speaker 2: some test audiences because they had all these constructed languages,
Speaker 2: so the sketchies are speaking a strange tongue and so forth,
Speaker 2: and they had to do like subsequent cuts where they
Speaker 2: added actual like English language dialogue to the picture. So,
Speaker 2: you know, the Dark Crystal was certainly like aiming for
Speaker 2: something epic and strange and wonderful and achieve that. And
Speaker 2: so Labyrinth seems to be an attempt to make something
Speaker 2: that has the same vision and the same you know,
Speaker 2: like level of detail going into every nook and cranny
Speaker 2: of the picture, but also calibrating all of that more
Speaker 2: towards like pure popular entertainment, you know, music, humor, whimsy,
Speaker 2: and build everything around relatable human actors, one a youth
Speaker 2: and the other a very popular musician.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Labyrinth to me seems like it's taking a lot
Speaker 3: of the same creativity and creative energy behind The Dark Crystal,
Speaker 3: but lightening the tone a bit and connecting it to
Speaker 3: the human world with a human protagonist, and also orienting
Speaker 3: the story a little. I mean, you could say in
Speaker 3: both cases that probably the primary marketing was directed towards kids.
Speaker 3: But the Dark Crystal is pretty as the title would
Speaker 3: imply dark and Labyrinth I think is probably you would
Speaker 3: argue a little bit more kid friendly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you still I certainly know people in
Speaker 2: real life who are like, yeah, I never liked Dark Crystal.
Speaker 2: It was too scary for me. It's too scary for
Speaker 2: me now. And and that will come into play here
Speaker 2: in a second, because when Labyrinth came out in eighty six,
Speaker 2: it was famously a commercial and critical failure. It was
Speaker 2: it was one of a certified bomb, you know, and
Speaker 2: one that, apparently, according to that documentary, hit Hintson really hard.
Speaker 2: You know, he ultimately was able to, you know, to
Speaker 2: roll with the punches and you know, move on to
Speaker 2: the next thing. But I think, you know, everybody put
Speaker 2: a lot of love into Labyrinth and were really bummed
Speaker 2: out when critics didn't like it and when audiences didn't
Speaker 2: come out to see it. But of course, as is
Speaker 2: sometimes the case with films like this, the children did
Speaker 2: end up seeing it. They might not have seen it
Speaker 2: at the theater, their parents might not have taken them,
Speaker 2: but they ended up renting it or seeing it on television.
Speaker 2: They told each other about it, they watched it and
Speaker 2: rewatched it. They grew up with it, and as such
Speaker 2: it has it has built up this cult following over
Speaker 2: the years, and it has become this much beloved film
Speaker 2: that is, you know, not this not in any way
Speaker 2: tarnish the careers of those involved, but is sometimes like
Speaker 2: one of the most iconic things they ever did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as I was saying earlier, it's one of those
Speaker 3: movies where, again to sort of interpret my perception of
Speaker 3: its place and culture, it was a movie where you wouldn't,
Speaker 3: even if you were a child, question whether it was
Speaker 3: good or not, or whether there could be anything wrong
Speaker 3: with it. It's just like it's the canon. It is
Speaker 3: the canon of storytelling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and yeah, And like I said, you
Speaker 2: grow up with them and sometimes you do reevaluate these things,
Speaker 2: but maybe they do have an advantage because they've been
Speaker 2: with you so long. And if it's a film like Labyrinth,
Speaker 2: I feel like it's, you know, its flaws are not
Speaker 2: enough to defeat that fire that was implanted in you
Speaker 2: early on with the film. But again, the grown up
Speaker 2: world of film critics did not feel the same way.
Speaker 2: I was reviewing some of these, and it's interesting. So
Speaker 2: Leonard Malton, a mere four years before he was killed
Speaker 2: by Grimlins and Grimy too, he gave one of the
Speaker 2: very few favorable like mainstream reviews for Labyrinth. Ebert gave
Speaker 2: one that I think he gave it two out of
Speaker 2: two stars total, and you know, like a generally like
Speaker 2: an Ebert review, it's you know, it's not unkind it
Speaker 2: it points out things he really likes, but ultimately it
Speaker 2: doesn't see the logic in the picture. And then Gene
Speaker 2: Siskel his review, if you want to dig that one up,
Speaker 2: is one of the most brutal film reviews I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: I'm mad he is mad. Not only does he not
Speaker 2: like Labyrinth, he seems to have hated everything about it
Speaker 2: and everyone in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Actually, so we were reading this off mic and
Speaker 3: this brought up a kind of funny difference between Ebert
Speaker 3: and Siskel. You know, it's not across the board this way,
Speaker 3: but I feel like more often when Roger Ebert didn't
Speaker 3: like a movie, he had a kind of sense of
Speaker 3: humor about it, whereas Gene Siskel was more likely to
Speaker 3: come off as like really offended by the fact that
Speaker 3: a movie was bad like him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well that definitely holds true when you look
Speaker 2: at Cisco's review of Elabyrinth. Yeah, he called it quite
Speaker 2: awful and visually ugly, which I mean, you know, say
Speaker 2: what you will about Jim Henson Pictures and you know,
Speaker 2: you don't have to like them. But I mean, generally
Speaker 2: most people acknowledge that there's a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: great visual design that goes into these things. But you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, everyone's entitled to their opinion.
Speaker 3: I guess you might have different levels of personal tolerance,
Speaker 3: and this might be a very learned thing. Personal tolerance
Speaker 3: for ugly beautiful, like to see the beauty in designs
Speaker 3: that are meant to be ugly but capture ugliness in
Speaker 3: an exquisite way, which a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: this movie does. It has monsters in it that are
Speaker 3: not supposed to be like, you know, Hoggle is not
Speaker 3: supposed to look super attractive, but Hoggle looks wonderful, and
Speaker 3: the goblins are not supposed to look like attractive people.
Speaker 3: They look like goblins, but they are beautiful goblins. I
Speaker 3: feel like Ciskel is just not approaching the movie with
Speaker 3: a tolerance for that kind of ambition at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, critics hated it, and people who listened
Speaker 2: to critics, you know, probably decided, well, maybe we'll skip
Speaker 2: this one since everyone seems to hate it so much
Speaker 2: or dislike it or find it lacking, and I was
Speaker 2: reading an article or a chapter rather in the Wider
Speaker 2: Worlds of Jim Henson. It's a book that came out
Speaker 2: years back. There's a part in it by the author
Speaker 2: Tom Holst, and it's titled finding your Way through the Labyrinth,
Speaker 2: and he points out that some parents are also thought
Speaker 2: to have kept their kids away due to negative experiences
Speaker 2: bringing them to see the Dark Crystal. Earlier, folks had
Speaker 2: heard oh the Dark Crystal is going to be you know,
Speaker 2: from the maker of the Muppets in the Sesame Street,
Speaker 2: and it was maybe a little too scary, and so
Speaker 2: that might have kept them from going out to see
Speaker 2: Labyrinth when it came out, for fear that there would
Speaker 2: be a similar experience. Finally, this is another thing that
Speaker 2: Holst points out. We also look at Labyrinth in the
Speaker 2: way it connects, though to various other themes explored in
Speaker 2: other Hintson projects, including some of his short film works.
Speaker 2: That some of those did have buppets and some of
Speaker 2: them didn't. But these different themes include a fractured view
Speaker 2: of time, the theme of being trapped a film as
Speaker 2: a metatext, and the trappings of superficiality. So those are
Speaker 2: all worth keeping in mind as we continue to discuss
Speaker 2: the movie here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rewatching Labyrinth with this knowledge of its reception history
Speaker 3: is odd and interesting because you have this contrast, like
Speaker 3: the as we've been talking about the Chili reception it
Speaker 3: got from critics and people pointing out all of these
Speaker 3: things that are arguably flaws with it, flaws in the storytelling,
Speaker 3: flaws in the design, flows in the acting, and so forth.
Speaker 3: And at the same time you contrast that with what
Speaker 3: I've been saying about I'm pretty sure I'm right about this,
Speaker 3: the way that so many kids just totally accepted this
Speaker 3: movie as part of the very fabric of childhood. And
Speaker 3: I was trying to think what accounts for that difference.
Speaker 3: And I think Labyrinth is a movie where you could
Speaker 3: easily nitpick a lot of things about it if you're
Speaker 3: not along for the ride. But if you're along for
Speaker 3: the ride, it's just perfect and you don't question anything.
Speaker 3: And so the real question is are you along for
Speaker 3: this ride or not? And what determines if someone will
Speaker 3: be or will not be along for the ride, Like
Speaker 3: clearly Gene Siskel was, he did not agree to be
Speaker 3: along for the ride. It's almost in this regard. I
Speaker 3: was thinking the inverse of a movie we talked about
Speaker 3: a few weeks ago, Ridley Scott's Legend. Legend is a
Speaker 3: movie made of amazing parts, but somehow it is less
Speaker 3: than the some of those parts. Something about it just
Speaker 3: doesn't quite click as a story overall. Labyrinth, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, I think has I mean, of course it
Speaker 3: it also has amazing parts, and you know, great character
Speaker 3: designs and puppetry and all that, but it has a
Speaker 3: lot of specific stuff you could criticize if you were
Speaker 3: so inclined, But if you just take the movie as
Speaker 3: an indivisible whole, the way you a lot of times
Speaker 3: kids take movies as just a totally absorbing experience that
Speaker 3: you don't really think about critically. It would never even
Speaker 3: occur to you that any part of it could be
Speaker 3: less than perfect. It's just the ride you're on, and
Speaker 3: it's it's amazing.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about something along these lines when I
Speaker 2: was swimming lapse this morning that like, for me, a
Speaker 2: movie is often like a Frankenstein's Monster. You know, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes it's made from the most beautiful pieces
Speaker 2: imaginable and that you can't even see the stitch work
Speaker 2: and then other times it's ghastly. The stitches are raw
Speaker 2: and apparent, you know, and there are other like design problems.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the experiment, if the creature
Speaker 2: can rise up and it has something like, you know,
Speaker 2: cohesive life to it, then like then you buy it.
Speaker 2: Like that, that's the thing. It has to be able
Speaker 2: to walk out of the laboratory. Yeah, and if it does,
Speaker 2: then yeah, the movie like works at least on some
Speaker 2: sort of level that I can get behind. And it's
Speaker 2: it's interesting because you have sometimes you do have a
Speaker 2: beautiful monster that's there on the slab, But if the
Speaker 2: spark doesn't happen, if it doesn't rise up, then you know,
Speaker 2: what can you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Labyrinth is getting up and walking, It's it's
Speaker 3: running around, it's dancing, it's taking its head off and
Speaker 3: tossing it to the monster next door.
Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely, all right, let's see other folks involved here.
Speaker 2: A story credit goes to Dennis Lee born nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2: He'd previously worked as a composer on Fraggle Rock and
Speaker 2: We Could would continue to work in the music department
Speaker 2: and as a composer on subsequent Hints and projects. He
Speaker 2: is also an author and poet for children. Some of
Speaker 2: his poems were adapted into the nineteen ninety two TV
Speaker 2: movie Alligator Pie. And then, of course we have a
Speaker 2: screenplay credit to Terry Jones, who have nineteen forty two
Speaker 2: through twenty twenty the legendary Monty Python, writer, director, performer,
Speaker 2: and medieval historian. Jones worked on an early draft of
Speaker 2: the screenplay, and he retains the credit here, though I'm
Speaker 2: to understand only some of his original ideas remain. But
Speaker 2: I've always felt that you still get a very strong
Speaker 2: Pythhonian vibe off of the film.
Speaker 3: Yes, I couldn't tell you exactly what those elements are
Speaker 3: off the top of my head, but I can feel
Speaker 3: the ghost of Monty Python in this beast.
Speaker 2: I feel like the specific things that feel like Terry Jones.
Speaker 2: And I could be wrong on this, you know, this
Speaker 2: is often the case the most authentic thing and a
Speaker 2: work is actually the most fake and so forth. But
Speaker 2: I always get a strong Terry Jones vibe from the
Speaker 2: part where where Hoggle is spraying the fairies because we
Speaker 2: find out it's because fairies bite. Yes, that feels very
Speaker 2: Terry Jones. And then the logic puzzle of the door
Speaker 2: Guardians that we hear we encounter later on. That also
Speaker 2: feels very Terry Jones, and I again could be wrong
Speaker 2: in both of those cases.
Speaker 3: No, I agree with you there So.
Speaker 2: Jones apparently worked off a novella by Dennis Lee, as
Speaker 2: well as the drawings of artists Brian Froud who will
Speaker 2: come back to But the shooting script apparently had a
Speaker 2: number of different fingerprints on it. You had like Jim Henson,
Speaker 2: of course, producer George Lucas Fraggle, writer Laura Phillips, and
Speaker 2: also writer Elaine May. Anyway, Terry Jones is best known
Speaker 2: for his work with Money Python. He co directed Holy
Speaker 2: Grail in seventy five, Monty Python and The Holy Grail,
Speaker 2: and directed both Life of Brian and seventy nine and
Speaker 2: The Meaning of Life in eighty three, followed by various
Speaker 2: works including nineteen eighty nine's Eric the Viking. He wrote
Speaker 2: numerous fiction and nonfiction books, including nineteen eighty's Chaucer's Knight,
Speaker 2: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary. All right, of course,
Speaker 2: as we've been saying, this is a David Bowie film.
Speaker 2: David Bowie, who lived nineteen forty seven through twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: plays Jareth the Goblin King Again. We previously talked about
Speaker 2: David Bowie in our episode on The Man Who Fell
Speaker 2: to Earth, and here we return once more to what
Speaker 2: would become one of his most iconic film roles, and
Speaker 2: rather than revisit everything we said before, I thought we
Speaker 2: might instead just sort of position Labyrinth within his filmography
Speaker 2: and his discography, So in the case of the latter,
Speaker 2: it falls between his nineteen eighty four album Tonight and
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven's Never Let Me Down Now.
Speaker 3: I love David Bowie, but I don't know either of
Speaker 3: these albums. I don't think I've ever listened to them.
Speaker 2: I had never listened to them before. I had listened
Speaker 2: to them both at least a couple of times through
Speaker 2: each bill while researching and doing notes for this episode, because,
Speaker 2: like the former was long considered and I think maybe
Speaker 2: it is still considered one of his lesser albums and
Speaker 2: was poorly received, though it was apparently re released with
Speaker 2: new instrumentation and the deletion of a track titled Too Dizzy.
Speaker 2: But again, I didn't listen to the original version of
Speaker 2: the album. All I have is this, I believe the
Speaker 2: new version that's on the streaming platforms to listen to,
Speaker 2: and you know, I can't compare, but you know, I
Speaker 2: didn't hate it. The reggae elements are interesting. The title
Speaker 2: track is a duet with Tina Turner, and he collaborated
Speaker 2: with Iggy Pop on some of the tracks as well.
Speaker 2: And then Never Let Me Down was an attempt apparently
Speaker 2: to sort of course correct, but was also poorly received.
Speaker 2: Even though you have a track. There's one track, Shining Star,
Speaker 2: which features a rap by Mickey Rourke. You I would
Speaker 2: think that would be successful, but I don't know. But again,
Speaker 2: I listened to this all the way through and I
Speaker 2: didn't hate anything. I really liked the track Bang Bang,
Speaker 2: which is an Iggy Pop cover. Oh and then Time
Speaker 2: Will Crawl is also one that I thought was pretty good.
Speaker 2: But Bowie himself would end up distancing himself from both
Speaker 2: of these albums later on, so you could sort of
Speaker 2: see this as like, from his standpoint, you know, this
Speaker 2: was kind of like a low point in his creative output.
Speaker 2: Now on the film front, this one occurs after John
Speaker 2: Landis's nineteen eighty five thriller Into the Night and Julian
Speaker 2: Temple's Absolute Beginners. The same year, and he'd follow it
Speaker 2: up with nineteen eighty nine's The Last Temptation of Christ.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting that while the mid eighties are not
Speaker 2: considered the high point of his musical output, in Labyrinth,
Speaker 2: at least he busts out one of what would become
Speaker 2: his most iconic roles ever, and also a soundtrack album's
Speaker 2: worth a material I think, with five tracks in total
Speaker 2: that I think have stood the test of time, like
Speaker 2: these are beloved songs today, even though at the time,
Speaker 2: again the movie was not a critical or financial success,
Speaker 2: and it's I don't think he ever performed a single
Speaker 2: one of these songs live, you know. I think he,
Speaker 2: like a lot of people, just kind of like rolled
Speaker 2: with the punches and just moved on from Labyrinth, even
Speaker 2: though it would go on to generate this kind of
Speaker 2: love and this kind of an audience.
Speaker 3: I think Bowie's presence in this movie is very interesting
Speaker 3: to analyze. On one hand, he is, you know, he's
Speaker 3: David Bowie, so he's captivating whenever he's on screen. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, he seems a little checked out. Did
Speaker 3: you feel the same way, Like it seems like he's
Speaker 3: his engagement with the material and in his scenes is
Speaker 3: often it seems quite muted and like he's he's a
Speaker 3: little bit hazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things where
Speaker 2: and we kind of got into this a little bit
Speaker 2: with in the episode of The Man Who Fell to Earth,
Speaker 2: Like these tendencies might also ultimately benefit the character, because
Speaker 2: what is Jareth Jareth is he is a tyrant. He
Speaker 2: is like a manchild who has apparently grown perhaps from
Speaker 2: infancy into this position of great power without any checks
Speaker 2: and balances in place. And so yeah, maybe he does
Speaker 2: kind of check out at times because he can. He
Speaker 2: can do so, he's he's a little bit aloof you know,
Speaker 2: he's vain, but he's also vulnerable. He's charismatic and can
Speaker 2: also be quite cruel. Like there are a number of
Speaker 2: sort of paradoxes with this guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's villainous, he can be cruel, but he's also
Speaker 3: a little bit dreamy at a i don't know, a
Speaker 3: slightly reduced state of consciousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, ultimately he's of the fairy folk
Speaker 2: in his own way. Now, one thing that I was
Speaker 2: thinking about is that the character of Jared is never
Speaker 2: fully explained here, not in the final cut of the film,
Speaker 2: you know, And I've read that like Hinson and Lucas
Speaker 2: kind of like went back and forth on the final edit,
Speaker 2: where Hinson would have more dialogue and Lucas would cut
Speaker 2: dialogue and then they'd kind of like find the balance.
Speaker 2: So maybe an earlier cut it went into this, but
Speaker 2: you don't really know like what he is or why
Speaker 2: he's there, Like he's the King of the Goblins, but
Speaker 2: he's obviously or presumably not a Goblin himself. And apparently
Speaker 2: at some time, at some points in pre production, they
Speaker 2: intended for Jareth to be a more darkly satanic, more
Speaker 2: in line with what Legend does with darkness, and knowing
Speaker 2: what Legend was going to do with that character, they
Speaker 2: kind of went in a different direction. But I've read
Speaker 2: that in an earlier draft of the script it was
Speaker 2: revealed that Jareth was once a mortal who solved the Labyrinth.
Speaker 2: And then I also have a Labyrinth bestiari by St. Binde,
Speaker 2: and she writes that Jareth himself was a changeling, so
Speaker 2: he was brought into the Goblin realm as an infant
Speaker 2: to serve as the heir to the previous Goblin ruler.
Speaker 2: I guess it's because goblins need a ruler, and none
Speaker 2: of them want to do it themselves, Like can't we
Speaker 2: steal a baby to do this? Can't we train a
Speaker 2: baby to do this? And the answer is yes, that's
Speaker 2: how they live their lives.
Speaker 3: I have a question, which is is it fun to
Speaker 3: be the Goblin King? I see the goblins having fun,
Speaker 3: They're you know, horsing around the getting into all kinds
Speaker 3: of mischief, But David Bowie seems to be just kind
Speaker 3: of languidly presiding over all the mischief. Is he having
Speaker 3: fun being Goblin King?
Speaker 2: I think he gets bored and I think he gets
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of anxiety there. You know,
Speaker 2: we see like his boredom often turns into cruelty. And yeah,
Speaker 2: he is also deeply invested in the theft of this baby,
Speaker 2: in the acquisition of Sarah. I think because he feels
Speaker 2: like like there's incompleteness in his life and in the
Speaker 2: stability of his reign, Like he needs fresh blood, he
Speaker 2: needs an air, He needs someone who loves him as
Speaker 2: opposed to just the goblins, who certainly serve him. But
Speaker 2: I think love would be a strong word. And that's
Speaker 2: where Sarah comes in. Sarah is, of course, played by
Speaker 2: Jennifer Connelly born nineteen seventy Academy Award winning actress whose
Speaker 2: credits as a child actress date back to a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two episode of Rhaldahl's anthology series Tales of the Unexpected.
Speaker 2: It's one. I don't think I've seen this one, but
Speaker 2: it's titled Stranger in Town. It stars Derek Jacoby, and
Speaker 2: I included it's still from it. Here you can see
Speaker 2: a very young Jennifer Connolly standing there next to a
Speaker 2: Derek Jacoby in a ridiculous, I don't know, some sort
Speaker 2: of a jester or magician costume. Yeah, a cross between
Speaker 2: the two, okay. She also pops up in the music
Speaker 2: video for Duran Durand's Union of the Snake from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three. I think she's supposed to be like a
Speaker 2: cult member or something cool. And she followed this up
Speaker 2: with a small role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a
Speaker 2: Time in America that's an eighty four l and then
Speaker 2: Dario Argento's Phenomena in nineteen eighty five opposite Donald pleasants Joe.
Speaker 2: I still haven't seen this one, so you'll have to summarize.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to summarize the plot of Phenomena. It involves.
Speaker 3: It involves like, I think, a super intelligent chimpanze and
Speaker 3: swarms of insects that are controlled by a psychic and
Speaker 3: I don't know, because it's it's Jallo film, so he
Speaker 3: has like murders at a Swiss boarding school, of course,
Speaker 3: and I don't know. I can't describe it all. But
Speaker 3: it does involve Donald pleasance and a chimpanzee and insects
Speaker 3: and murder mysteries, and Jennifer Connolly is the main character.
Speaker 2: All right. So these are essentially the credits that led
Speaker 2: into her playing Sarah in Labyrinth at the age of fourteen,
Speaker 2: at least in the early stages of the production, and
Speaker 2: her subsequent credits would include the likes of nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one's The Rocketeer, ninety eight's Dark City, two thousands, Requiem
Speaker 2: for a Dream two thousand and one, is a Beautiful
Speaker 2: Mind two thousand and threes, Hulk, twenty fourteen's Noah, and
Speaker 2: the TV series Snow Piercer.
Speaker 3: I think she's great in all those later movies, By
Speaker 3: the way, some of the ones I remember really standing
Speaker 3: out to me were like Dark City, and all that.
Speaker 3: But you know, I remember liking her even in movies
Speaker 3: that I liked less overall, Like I remember thinking A
Speaker 3: Beautiful Mind is just kind of some some oscar bait.
Speaker 3: But you know, Jennifer Connolly is always great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I really enjoy on snow Piercer Now. Sarah's
Speaker 2: parents are only briefly in the film, but as the
Speaker 2: only other two adult humans present, they deserve mention. Shelley
Speaker 2: Thompson born nineteen fifty nine plays Sarah's stepmother, a Canadian
Speaker 2: actor and director whose credits also include eighty five episodes
Speaker 2: of Trailer Park Boys.
Speaker 3: Really Yeah Wow.
Speaker 2: And then Sarah's father is played by Christopher Malcolm who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen forty six through twenty fourteen. A Scottish born
Speaker 2: actor of stage and screen who actually originated the role
Speaker 2: of Brad in the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show,
Speaker 2: which become The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and he appears
Speaker 2: in Richard O'Brien's nineteen eighty one follow up to Rocky Horror,
Speaker 2: Shock Treatment, and he also had small roles in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties Superman two and The Empire Strikes Back, and he
Speaker 2: has a role in Highlander, a role that I think
Speaker 2: I always forget that this features into the plot, even
Speaker 2: the slightest. But there's like a vigilante character running the
Speaker 2: streets in Highlander, and Christopher Malcolm plays that digilante. I
Speaker 2: think he's killed by the Kurgan. It's a very forgettable
Speaker 2: part of the film. Yeah, this one is one that
Speaker 2: felt like an insert from another dimension, Like really that
Speaker 2: was part of this film that I've seen multiple times.
Speaker 2: But I guess so if you say Internet okay, And
Speaker 2: of course there's a long list of Muppet performers and
Speaker 2: voice actors and other creatives. They include the likes of
Speaker 2: Warwick Davis, Kenny Baker, Kevin Klash, Stephen Whitmeyer, Frank Oz,
Speaker 2: Karen Prell, Dave Goles, Jim Hinson himself, of course, and
Speaker 2: his son Brian Hinson born nineteen sixty three, who voices Hoggle,
Speaker 2: who of course is Sarah's. The word friend is thrown
Speaker 2: around a lot, and I guess we'd get there eventually,
Speaker 2: but mostly he just betrays her over and over again.
Speaker 2: But yes, Brian Hinson provides the voice there, but he.
Speaker 3: Helps her too, and yeah, it's a you know, your
Speaker 3: friendship is something you grow into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's I just love the parts where he's like,
Speaker 2: He's like, she's my friend, I won't betray her. And
Speaker 2: then Jared is like, Holdtle, I need you to poison her,
Speaker 2: and he's like, all right, I'll do it. So anyway,
Speaker 2: we'll come back to some of these individuals as we
Speaker 2: proceed here, but I will point out that among the
Speaker 2: voice actors, Michael Horden, who lived in nineteen eleven through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, provides the voice of the wise Man,
Speaker 2: the one with the bird on his hat. He's also
Speaker 2: known for his performance as the voice of Frith, the
Speaker 2: sun god in nineteen seventy eight's Watershipped Down, and his
Speaker 2: other credits include sixty three's Cleopatra, sixty Eights Where Eagles Dare,
Speaker 2: seventy threes Theater of Blood, seventy five's Barry Lindon. In
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two is Gandhi.
Speaker 3: Theater of bloods eventsent Price movie, Yeah, with almost the
Speaker 3: same plot as Doctor Fibes, except with a more overtly
Speaker 3: comedic Hammi theater orientation Shakespearean theater.
Speaker 2: All right, we mentioned Brian Froud earlier conceptual designer and
Speaker 2: costume designer born nineteen forty seven English fantasy illustrator who
Speaker 2: had worked with Alan Lee on the nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 2: book Fairies. His work often calls back to nineteenth century
Speaker 2: and early twentieth century fantasy illustration, particularly like fairytale inspiration.
Speaker 2: And I've heard from friends who have seen him speak
Speaker 2: in the past that he's something of like a true
Speaker 2: believer in fairy folk like he doesn't just draw the fairies,
Speaker 2: he knows that they are real. He of course served
Speaker 2: as a conceptual as the conceptual designer on The Dark
Speaker 2: Crystal previously, he also later worked on The Storyteller. His
Speaker 2: other conceptual artist credits include two thousand and three's Peter
Speaker 2: Penn in twenty sixteen's Pete's Dragon Interesting as well. He
Speaker 2: met his wife, Wendy on the set of The Dark Crystal.
Speaker 2: She worked in the creature workshop on that film and
Speaker 2: also on this film as well, and they had a son,
Speaker 2: Toby famously born eighty four, who of course plays baby Toby,
Speaker 2: Sarah's brother in this picture. So real life. Toby has
Speaker 2: gone onto work in special effects and animation on such
Speaker 2: films as two thousand and fourteen's The Box Trolls and
Speaker 2: the twenty nineteen series The Dark Crystal, The Age of Resistance.
Speaker 3: Oh nice, but yeah, you actually do get to see
Speaker 3: a real baby crying in this movie though. I was
Speaker 3: watching close when the Goblin King Jarrett starts like throwing
Speaker 3: him really high up in the air. That is a doll.
Speaker 3: That's not the real baby.
Speaker 2: That's good. I mean his parents were on set. They
Speaker 2: weren't going to allow that to happen. Okay. Alex Thompson
Speaker 2: was cinematographer on this. I only mentioned it because we
Speaker 2: brought We mentioned him briefly in Legend, same cinematographer as Legend,
Speaker 2: so that's that's interesting. And then you know, music is
Speaker 2: a big part of this film. Trevor Jones did the score.
Speaker 2: Born nineteen forty nine, South African composer with some very
Speaker 2: impressive credentials going back to the late seventies. The other
Speaker 2: scores include ex Caliber from eighty one, eighty two's The Cinder,
Speaker 2: The Dark Crystal, eighty five's Runaway Train, eighty seven's Angel Heart,
Speaker 2: eighty eights, Mississippi Burning, ninety two is Free Jack, as
Speaker 2: well as the Last of the Mohicans Dark City, and
Speaker 2: two thousand and one is from Hell and He's Still
Speaker 2: still active.
Speaker 3: I wonder if he's still getting residuals on free Jack.
Speaker 2: Well, one would hope. Now I'm not current enough on
Speaker 2: all of his scores, or even most of his scores.
Speaker 2: I've never seen The Cinder, but it's it's on my list.
Speaker 2: But I think his score for The Dark Crystal is
Speaker 2: really really good, and I love the glistening electronic splendor
Speaker 2: of his work in Labyrinth here fused, of course, with
Speaker 2: the musical stylings of David Bowie. And again, yes, David
Speaker 2: Bowie's music is key here as well. It is a
Speaker 2: full fledged musical featuring five original tracks from David Bowie.
Speaker 2: We'll come back to these as we go, but they
Speaker 2: are Underground, Magic Dance, Chili Down, as the World Falls Down,
Speaker 2: and within You.
Speaker 3: I say, possibly the opening track Underground is the most
Speaker 3: memorable for me, like as a good song. But what's
Speaker 3: the most memorable just as an experience. I think it
Speaker 3: might be Chili Down? Which is that? I don't know,
Speaker 3: is this song terrifying, horrible, wonderful? What is going on?
Speaker 2: There's a lot to process with Chili Down. I think
Speaker 2: I think all of us who began watching Labyrinth as
Speaker 2: a child are still trying to figure out how we
Speaker 2: feel about Chili Down, and of course the sights and
Speaker 2: traumas that accompany it. Like if you went into this
Speaker 2: film having found the Dark Crystal uncomfortable, then the Chili
Speaker 2: Down sequence is basically like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but luckily the rest of Labyrinth doesn't have quite the
Speaker 2: same flavor.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But it is that track Underground that plays with
Speaker 3: the opening credits, with the CGI owl, because it's got
Speaker 3: these lines that are uh, these are quite memorable. It
Speaker 3: says it's only for forever. It's not long at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, which fits nicely into this treatment of time
Speaker 2: in this picture. But yeah, I love the score when
Speaker 2: it hits us, the score that transitions into Bowie's Underground,
Speaker 2: a track that's going to play again in the closing credits. Yeah, lyrically,
Speaker 2: I think it's a It's a song that really captures
Speaker 2: both Sarah's emotional state and the temptations of the Goblin King.
Speaker 2: You know, it just feels emotionally on point as we
Speaker 2: enter in at first, not necessarily not really into the
Speaker 2: world of the Labyrinths just yet, but into the real world,
Speaker 2: into the mundane world that Sarah finds herself trapped in
Speaker 2: like this is a film that's ultimately about her being
Speaker 2: trapped in a fantasy world, but in the beginning she
Speaker 2: is trapped in her mundane life.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the action begins in a beautiful outdoor location.
Speaker 3: Actually the place that's almost shockingly green. It's this park
Speaker 3: with a small river running through it, stone bridges, lush grass,
Speaker 3: and these dark, shadowy trees. I am pretty sure this
Speaker 3: was shot at a place called west Wycombe Park in
Speaker 3: the UK. I looked it up to do some comparison.
Speaker 3: But in the foreground of this shot we get the
Speaker 3: animated owl from the credits, which has become a live
Speaker 3: action owl, which settles on a granite obelisk. And then
Speaker 3: in the background, our heroine, Sarah played by Jennifer Connelly
Speaker 3: comes running into the scene over one of these low
Speaker 3: stone bridges, and when we first meet her, she's dressed
Speaker 3: in a costume, a sort of a Renaissance era gown
Speaker 3: with a garland in her hair. And I think this
Speaker 3: is meant to be a kind of fake out, like
Speaker 3: we might assume that the movie takes place in another
Speaker 3: time period, but no, it turns out she is I
Speaker 3: think rob Let me know if you disagree. I think
Speaker 3: she's supposed to be rehearsing for a play, and she's
Speaker 3: apparently in costume for that, but either way, she's practicing
Speaker 3: some kind of lines. She's trying to memorize something from
Speaker 3: a book, and as she runs and dances through the park,
Speaker 3: she says her lines, and the lines go like this.
Speaker 3: They are important because they recur throughout the film. She says,
Speaker 3: give me the child through dangers untold and hardship's unnumber.
Speaker 3: I have fought my way here to the castle beyond
Speaker 3: the Goblin City to take back the child that you
Speaker 3: have stolen for my will is as strong as yours,
Speaker 3: and my kingdom is as great. And then she starts
Speaker 3: to stumble. She can't remember the next line, and she
Speaker 3: struggles for a bit and then eventually gets the book
Speaker 3: out of her pocket and looks at it and remembers
Speaker 3: the next line is you have no power over me.
Speaker 3: After she gets the line, thundercracks, a rainstorm is beginning,
Speaker 3: and a nearby clock tower strikes at seven o'clock and
Speaker 3: Sarah realizes, oh, she is late for something. So we
Speaker 3: get to see her run back through the park through
Speaker 3: a neighborhood through sort of downtown area of a small
Speaker 3: town in the rain to get back home, and her
Speaker 3: adorable shaggy dog Merlin is with her. By the way.
Speaker 3: He's one of these mop like dog breeds, sort of
Speaker 3: more fur than body. I don't know what breed that is,
Speaker 3: but I love Merlin. Question is Merlin the same dog
Speaker 3: as Ambrosious, the dog of Sir Didymus later in the story,
Speaker 3: or is that a different dog?
Speaker 2: Oh? You know, I'm not sure if we're I mean,
Speaker 2: in a sense, definitely, but in terms of dog actors maybe.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I know it's not part of the main
Speaker 3: fantasy setting, which is the real draw of the film.
Speaker 3: But for some reason, I also really love the real
Speaker 3: world locations at the beginning of the movie, the park,
Speaker 3: the town, and the storefronts, the rainy neighborhood. I think
Speaker 3: they look wonderful and they're this interesting mix of dreary
Speaker 3: but lovely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it it really works because the more we
Speaker 2: see of Sarah's real life, we realize that, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like she's she's not to discount her displeasure or her emotions,
Speaker 2: you know, because of course these are gonna be going
Speaker 2: to be very subjective and all, but like you know,
Speaker 2: she is what she is in what to all appearances
Speaker 2: would look like a very comfortable house and a very
Speaker 2: comfortable life, but that is not how she feels. She
Speaker 2: feels very set upon. She feels that she is trapped
Speaker 2: here and deserally wants escape.
Speaker 3: Yes, so, and when we see that conflict immediately when
Speaker 3: Sarah gets home, she's confronted on the porch by her stepmother.
Speaker 3: Sarah is late. She was supposed to be home to
Speaker 3: babysit her little brother Toby so her father and stepmother
Speaker 3: could go out for the evening, and there are sort
Speaker 3: of multiple levels of conflict. Sarah is very frustrated and
Speaker 3: put upon. She resents being asked to babysit when she
Speaker 3: should be outliving her own life. But then her stepmother says, basically, well,
Speaker 3: if you had plans, you could have told me I'd
Speaker 3: like for you to go out and have dates in
Speaker 3: a social life. And it's almost like the fact that
Speaker 3: her stepmother is not being more unreasonable further enrages Sarah,
Speaker 3: and she runs upstairs, yelling, pouting that apparently she can't
Speaker 3: do anything right. And I like this relatively complex depiction
Speaker 3: of teen angst because it feels real to me, like
Speaker 3: the conflict is not one dimensional or about just a
Speaker 3: single subject. Instead, it seems that Sarah is living in
Speaker 3: a stew of many conflicting emotions and desires, all of
Speaker 3: which are thwarted at the same time, Like she wants
Speaker 3: to be an adult and have independence and self determination,
Speaker 3: but feels like something is preventing her. But also there
Speaker 3: are signs that she wants to go the other way
Speaker 3: and regress into the self centered mind space of childhood
Speaker 3: and just be free of all responsibilities and all cares
Speaker 3: about others. And we see this in the way that
Speaker 3: she hides in a room and finds solace in her
Speaker 3: collection of stuffed animals, and later in the way she
Speaker 3: unfairly projects resentment onto her baby brother. And I think
Speaker 3: that feeling of complex and even mutually exclusive, thwarted desires
Speaker 3: is very relatable to anybody who remembers being a teenager themselves,
Speaker 3: Like I remember what that felt like in a way
Speaker 3: where it was just like everything was confusing and frustrating
Speaker 3: and nothing felt right and there wasn't actually one single
Speaker 3: cause of it. It's just that that's what it's like
Speaker 3: to be fifteen or sixteen. The conflict here isn't just
Speaker 3: about babysitting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not that your stepmom is telling you
Speaker 2: to go water a stump. Yeah yeah, yeah. And so
Speaker 2: of course she goes to her room, and boy, what
Speaker 2: a room it is. I think we've talked about kids
Speaker 2: rooms on the show before, but this is always something
Speaker 2: that I pay a lot of attention to when I
Speaker 2: watch a film. How have you decorated this child's room?
Speaker 2: Did you just print out some stuff from Getty Images
Speaker 2: and you're pretending it's a poster or did you use
Speaker 2: real posters? You know? Is it all fake franchise stuff?
Speaker 2: Does it feel like a child actually lived in this
Speaker 2: room or not? And I think they do just a
Speaker 2: fabulous job with Sarah's room here, with her reality of stuff,
Speaker 2: which is going to be vitally important to the plot,
Speaker 2: of course, but it also needs to feel real.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What are her music posters? She have like staying
Speaker 3: on the wall or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But also we see in the room. I think
Speaker 3: it's in her room that there's a copy of Where
Speaker 3: the Wild Things Are. That really caught my eye because
Speaker 3: currently my daughter is obsessed with Where the Wild Things Are?
Speaker 3: She calls it Max Boat you know, Max gets in
Speaker 3: a boat goes across the ocean.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a great one. Yeah, yeah, we read that
Speaker 2: one a lot too.
Speaker 3: She likes to here where the wild things are, like
Speaker 3: while she's eating, she's having dinner, and she wants us
Speaker 3: to read it to her while she's having dinner, which
Speaker 3: we indulge in sometimes.
Speaker 2: And what's her favorite wild thing?
Speaker 3: Well, honestly, I think it's Max. She likes Max. He's
Speaker 3: the king of the wild things. He's the one who
Speaker 3: says it's time to let the wild rump us begin.
Speaker 2: So all right, solid solid.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe as we continue to read it
Speaker 3: over time, she'll she'll find more more to love down
Speaker 3: the character sheet. But anyway, Sarah is left to take
Speaker 3: care of Toby while her parents go out, and so
Speaker 3: she discovers at some point that one of her old
Speaker 3: stuffed animals I think it's named Lancelot. It's like a
Speaker 3: teddy bear named Lancelot has been taken from her room
Speaker 3: and given to the baby, and this makes her even
Speaker 3: more angry. And then the baby's crying and she doesn't
Speaker 3: know how to make him stop, which again, you know,
Speaker 3: is a relatable feeling. It does create this feeling of helplessness,
Speaker 3: and while in the middle of all these frustrations about
Speaker 3: to boil over, Sarah suddenly gets an idea, a terrible idea,
Speaker 3: an idea that seems to be related to the book
Speaker 3: or the play that she's been memorizing. She gets the
Speaker 3: idea to, I think, sort of say a magic spell
Speaker 3: from whatever the story is that makes goblins come and
Speaker 3: take a child away. And this actually leads to one
Speaker 3: of my favorite little stylistic choices, one of my favorite
Speaker 3: editing moments in the movie. So when she's trying to
Speaker 3: remember the words to say to summon the goblin magic
Speaker 3: and remove Toby from her life, suddenly, with no warning
Speaker 3: at all, we just cut to a bunch of goblin
Speaker 3: faces waiting with baited breath for her to say the words.
Speaker 3: They're like yelling at each other, like know listen She's
Speaker 3: gonna say the words. Such an odd and surprising choice,
Speaker 3: the way we just smash cut to goblins with no
Speaker 3: previous introduction or even indication that they exist. Everything up
Speaker 3: to this point has been fully realistic, no fantasy elements
Speaker 3: at all, and so the first time we see anything
Speaker 3: magical is an absolutely unexpected smash cut. It almost reminds
Speaker 3: me of the moment in the Exorcist when Reagan is
Speaker 3: at the doctor's office and she's staring up at the
Speaker 3: ceiling and we smash cut to the Pazuzu face peering
Speaker 3: out of the darkness. This isn't as as evil and
Speaker 3: menacing as that, but it's semi evil and a little
Speaker 3: bit scary. And I love the way that the magic
Speaker 3: just bursts in like that with no warning at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't and really get a clear sense of
Speaker 2: where the goblins are. Are they in the closet, and
Speaker 2: are in the walls? Are they just in the nether void?
Speaker 2: You know that's easily accessible, but equally distance distant from
Speaker 2: you know, our real life at any time. But yeah,
Speaker 2: all this build up is wonderful. I love too how
Speaker 2: she's self narrating her plight here, including talking about one
Speaker 2: day when baby was especially cruel to her, Yes, which
Speaker 2: of course is just such a deliciously over the top
Speaker 2: exaggeration of her current circumstance. Yes, the baby Toby was
Speaker 2: cruel to you today, Baby Toby definitely stole your stuffed animal.
Speaker 3: So anyway, she does eventually remember the words to say,
Speaker 3: and then the magic descends, Toby disappears, he is gone,
Speaker 3: and instead she is now faced with David Bowie playing
Speaker 3: the Goblin King Jerreth. He appears in Toby's room and
Speaker 3: she quite quickly regrets that she sent Toby away. You know,
Speaker 3: she wants him back, but Jared says, at first I
Speaker 3: think he says she can't have him back, and then
Speaker 3: finally he says, okay, she can only have him back
Speaker 3: if she makes it to his castle at the center
Speaker 3: of the Great Labyrinth before midnight, and if not, Toby
Speaker 3: will become absorbed into the Goblin Horde. He will just
Speaker 3: become goblin.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I mean, there's just so many great details
Speaker 2: in this moment and leading up to it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I love the goblins when they start invading the room. Yes,
Speaker 2: I love. I love Jared laying out the challenge you
Speaker 2: have thirteen hours in which to solve the Labyrinth and
Speaker 2: making a time go weird on her, and then the
Speaker 2: first of what will be kind of a recurring element
Speaker 2: in the film of characters really trying to shoot down
Speaker 2: her optimism, you know, where she says, Okay, I can
Speaker 2: do this, and he's like, it's further than you think,
Speaker 2: you know, and we'll get something similar from Hoggle later on,
Speaker 2: where he's like, yeah, it just gets tougher from here
Speaker 2: on out, you know which, These lines seem to like
Speaker 2: echo a sort of adult sensibility that has been handed
Speaker 2: down to Sarah and is reflected in the fantasy world here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So suddenly we're in a different place. We
Speaker 3: have been taken to the Goblin Kingdom. We're not in
Speaker 3: Sarah's house anymore. How would you describe the esthetics of
Speaker 3: the Goblin Kingdom? What is this world?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's beautiful for starters, but it's also a little
Speaker 2: bit desolate and everything. So many surfaces in the Goblin realm,
Speaker 2: and it varies depending on what section of the labyrinth
Speaker 2: you're in. So many surfaces look like they have very
Speaker 2: recently been crawled over by some sort of a fairy
Speaker 2: slug that leaves just a little bit of a like
Speaker 2: a glistening sparkle to everything.
Speaker 3: A glittering mucus trail overall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it does, I think read rather accurately like
Speaker 2: a fine kingdom that has been ruled too long by goblins. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: upkeep is happening, but it's maybe not as loving as
Speaker 2: it could be.
Speaker 3: Yes now pretty quickly. While finding her way to the
Speaker 3: entrance of the labyrinth so she can get Toby back,
Speaker 3: Sarah runs into someone. She meets, a character named Hoggle,
Speaker 3: who's going to be one of the main characters in
Speaker 3: the movie. When we first meet Hoggle, he is urinating
Speaker 3: into a reflecting pool. Yeah yeah, but so that's I
Speaker 3: guess an inauspicious beginning. But it's sort of a difficult
Speaker 3: meeting at first. Hoggle is not inclined to be very
Speaker 3: helpful to her. Instead, he is busy poisoning fairies, I think,
Speaker 3: like dusting them with some like fairy insecticide.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, he is exterminating fairies. He is not helpful.
Speaker 2: He is grumpy. Hoggle is interesting because Hoggle is not
Speaker 2: maybe not objectively cute, but you do grow to love him.
Speaker 2: He is a character that will betray Sarah over and
Speaker 2: over again and really struggles to muster any like true
Speaker 2: sustaining courage. But you know eventually he's going to get there,
Speaker 2: but you do have to be patient with him on
Speaker 2: that journey.
Speaker 3: That's right, And he does sort of disappear and reappear
Speaker 3: repeatedly throughout the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, he's difficult to count on for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, when Sarah first goes into the quick question
Speaker 3: of terminology, should we continue to call it the labyrinth
Speaker 3: or should we call it a maze? I think I
Speaker 3: recall from our episodes on the Minotaur that technically a
Speaker 3: labyrinth is one in which there is only one path
Speaker 3: and it does lead ineluctably to the ending. Is that
Speaker 3: right you.
Speaker 2: By some definitions? Absolutely? So, Yeah, in some respects you
Speaker 2: could think of the labyrinth here as more of a maze.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I mean, if the ruler of
Speaker 2: this room calls it a labyrinth, I guess we have
Speaker 2: to respect his goblin word choices.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess that's true. In any case, it does
Speaker 3: not seem that this is a place where you just
Speaker 3: continue walking and you will eventually get to the end.
Speaker 3: You have to make choices about where to where to go.
Speaker 3: But when Sarah first gets into the labyrinth, it's interesting
Speaker 3: that the first real challenge she faces is that she
Speaker 3: can't find anywhere to turn. It just seems like one
Speaker 3: endless corridor. And so she has a wonderful little scene
Speaker 3: where she discusses this with a worm who tells her
Speaker 3: he's like, ah, yeah, I can't tell you. I can't
Speaker 3: help you. I'm just a worm. But then he does
Speaker 3: provide some helpful advice because she discovers that there are
Speaker 3: gaps in the walls that she can move through to
Speaker 3: make turns and find new ways to navigate through the maze,
Speaker 3: but they're hidden by optical illusions. And I love the
Speaker 3: effects used here because from what I can tell, there's
Speaker 3: no real trickery going on except that they just like,
Speaker 3: for example, we'll have a gap in the walls of
Speaker 3: the maze that from the perspective we're looking at it
Speaker 3: totally blends in with the wall behind it, so you
Speaker 3: can't even tell their two separate walls.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I think it's just a complete practical illusion
Speaker 2: that they depend on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now we don't have time to talk through the
Speaker 3: entire plot seen by scene, but maybe maybe we should
Speaker 3: just pick out some of our favorite moments as Sarah
Speaker 3: is navigating the labyrinth and its challenges and and and
Speaker 3: the people she meets along the way. One thing I
Speaker 3: know you wanted to talk about was the riddle of
Speaker 3: the doors. Who with the dogs guarding them?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, these guys are a lot of fun. I
Speaker 2: covered these on the monster fact a while back. They're
Speaker 2: they're they're delightfully weird enough on their own, of course,
Speaker 2: two headed dog like humanoid creatures that are fixed behind shields,
Speaker 2: kind of in the manner of double headed European playing cards.
Speaker 2: It's already a wild design. But then the scenario gets
Speaker 2: even wilder because we find out, of course, that one
Speaker 2: door leads to the castle at the center of the
Speaker 2: labyrinth and the other one leads to Bubba Bubom stain
Speaker 2: and death. The lower heads have no idea what's going on,
Speaker 2: which door is which the upper heads do, but Sarah
Speaker 2: is only permitted to ask one of them. Furthermore, one
Speaker 2: of the two guardians always tells the truth, while the
Speaker 2: other one always lies. So Sarah faces a conundrum here.
Speaker 2: How can she find out which door is which? How
Speaker 2: can she risk asking the wrong guardian and being lied to?
Speaker 2: And this is really fascinating because the scenario here, of course,
Speaker 2: instantly invokes what is known as the liar's paradox. If
Speaker 2: a liar tells you they are lying, then they are
Speaker 2: telling the truth. So you can consider the statement this
Speaker 2: sentence is a lie. If that statement is true, then
Speaker 2: it's false. If it's false, then it's true.
Speaker 3: Right, hence that it's a paradox it's self contradictory.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now the scenario that Sarah is facing here, I
Speaker 2: have to admit that I really have to do some
Speaker 2: mental gymnastics to make sense of the riddle here. I
Speaker 2: think when I was younger, at one point I did
Speaker 2: like settle down and think about it long and hard
Speaker 2: enough to where it clicked. But for the most part,
Speaker 2: I just really have to trust that the film is
Speaker 2: not lying to me when it tells me that this
Speaker 2: is the correct answer. But I did research it a
Speaker 2: little bit. As John Tourre points out in the paper
Speaker 2: objective falsity is essential to lying an argument from convergent
Speaker 2: evidence published in Philosophy Studies twenty twenty one, Sarah here
Speaker 2: is engaging in what is called answer laundering. The truth
Speaker 2: and the lie dependably cancel each other out in this scenario,
Speaker 2: provided Toy stresses that lies cannot be true because the
Speaker 2: answer laundering she engages here is, of course, she asks
Speaker 2: one of the guards what the other guard would say
Speaker 2: in reaction to her question, and she uses that answer
Speaker 2: to figure out which way is which.
Speaker 3: But that makes sense because you know either way that
Speaker 3: will point you to the wrong door. If you ask
Speaker 3: the truth telling guard what the other guard would say,
Speaker 3: they will truthfully tell you that the other guard will
Speaker 3: lead you to the wrong door. And if you ask
Speaker 3: the lying guard what the truth tells guard would say,
Speaker 3: they will lie and tell you the wrong door. So
Speaker 3: either way that indicates which door is the wrong one.
Speaker 3: So by elimination you know which is the right one.
Speaker 2: It's a piece of gay. So Terry points out that
Speaker 2: the riddle here of the four guards is a variant of,
Speaker 2: or seems to be a variant of the Knights and Knaves,
Speaker 2: a logic puzzle from Raymond Smulliam's nineteen seventy eight publication
Speaker 2: What is the Name of This Book? Yeah, This scenario
Speaker 2: closely resembles what we see in Labyrinth. It involves a
Speaker 2: knight and a nave otherwise indistinguishable. Who guard a fork
Speaker 2: in the road? Which road are you going to take?
Speaker 2: Dare you ask these two men given that one is
Speaker 2: secretly a noble knight and one is secretly a vile nave.
Speaker 2: The solution, again is via answer laundering. You ask which
Speaker 2: path the other individual would say is the correct one,
Speaker 2: and then you can use that to determine which is
Speaker 2: the correct way. Sarah guesses correctly, but of course Sarah
Speaker 2: gets cocky and she gets the trap door for her efforts.
Speaker 3: It almost indicates that she got it wrong, but I
Speaker 3: think she did get it right.
Speaker 2: I believe so. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So she goes through the door and then
Speaker 3: immediately falls down a trapdoor into and there's like a
Speaker 3: so the pit she falls into. It's kind of funny
Speaker 3: that there are all these hands poking out the walls,
Speaker 3: you know, like they like stop her from falling, and
Speaker 3: they say they're helping hands, and they form faces that
Speaker 3: talk out of the gloved hands. So it's kind of
Speaker 3: a weird creepy scene. It reminds me of something actually
Speaker 3: that would be in Return to Oz and they feel right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, great sequence, a very inventive use of
Speaker 2: hand puppetry. Yeah, there's nothing else like it.
Speaker 3: But they ask her if she wants to go back
Speaker 3: up or to go back or to go all the
Speaker 3: way down, and for some reason she chooses down. So
Speaker 3: that ends up dropping her into an oubliette where she eventually,
Speaker 3: oh she here. She meets back up with Hoggle again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Rescued by Hoggle, they make a deal over some jewelry, right.
Speaker 3: I think there's some addition negotiations with Jareth down here.
Speaker 3: I think this is the sequence where they have to
Speaker 3: run from this like nightmare device that's chasing them down
Speaker 3: a tunnel, threatening to grind them into the wall. But
Speaker 3: they eventually they bust through and find a ladder up
Speaker 3: to the surface, after which they talk to like a
Speaker 3: snoozy old wise man who I think is sort of
Speaker 3: a dog but also is a human and then has
Speaker 3: a bird on his head.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, and they gets some limited amounts of wisdom
Speaker 2: from this character.
Speaker 3: Somewhere around here also is where we meet another one
Speaker 3: of the Lovable Friend characters who become a part of
Speaker 3: Sarah's gang. This is Ludo. Ludo is initially caught in
Speaker 3: a trap and hanging upside down and being badgered by
Speaker 3: a bunch of goblins. Ludo is like a large sort
Speaker 3: of sasquatch type creature with sort of curving horns on
Speaker 3: his head, who appears very monstrous but in fact is
Speaker 3: actually quite sweet natured.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or if you're Gene Siskel, this is a ripoff
Speaker 2: of Chewbac. What a ripoff?
Speaker 3: Because he has fur? Is that it I guess he's
Speaker 3: big and has fur, therefore is Chewbacca.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Ludo's great, Ludo's a gentle giant.
Speaker 3: You love him, Yes, lovable. Sarah rescues Ludo from being
Speaker 3: harassed by the goblins.
Speaker 2: With the nibbler sticks. Great sequence. And oh and then
Speaker 2: this is where they're doing the hobby horse technique here
Speaker 2: for the little guys running around.
Speaker 4: It's great.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, so they've got like these
Speaker 3: little monsters attached to the ends of sticks that they're
Speaker 3: using to bite Ludo with. But then she frees him.
Speaker 3: She she like gets the goblins all fighting each other
Speaker 3: until they run away, and then she frees him, and
Speaker 3: after that Ludo is friend. Now in this sequence, Hoggle
Speaker 3: runs away, but he'll show back up again later. I
Speaker 3: think somewhere around in here is where Sarah ends up
Speaker 3: running into the fire Gang.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Fire Gang or the Fieries. Oh, these are
Speaker 2: creatures that have always been pure nightmare fuel to me.
Speaker 2: They're a band of musical bird like goblinoids with like
Speaker 2: bright you know, orange and fire colored feathers fur somewhere
Speaker 2: in between, and they have disturbing natural abilities in the
Speaker 2: realms of pyrokinesis as well as dismemberment. They can rip
Speaker 2: their bodies apart and reattach them at will willy nilly
Speaker 2: in various positions. They can even connect their limbs together
Speaker 2: into new monstrous shapes. It's a sequence full of body horror,
Speaker 2: dance music, Menace Mayham. It is a lot to process,
Speaker 2: but it is a musical number. The song here is
Speaker 2: David Bowie's Chili Down. If you listen to the soundtrack
Speaker 2: Slash Score album you get to hear Bowie singing on
Speaker 2: it a little bit of belief. But in the film
Speaker 2: it is performed by Kevin Klash born nineteen sixty. Know,
Speaker 2: you know as the voice of Elmo, the original voice
Speaker 2: of Elmo. He the voice of the main Fiery. Then
Speaker 2: you have Danny John Jules born nineteen sixty a British actor,
Speaker 2: dancer and singer who is also a member of the
Speaker 2: Blood Pack in Blade two. He voices Fiery four, the
Speaker 2: really dangerous looking one. Then you have Charles Oggens, a
Speaker 2: British actor, dancer and choreographer who also choreographed this scene
Speaker 2: as well as the excellent magic dance scene from earlier.
Speaker 2: And then also you have the actor Richard Bodkin doing
Speaker 2: a voice as well. So just some horrifying, freaky goblinoid
Speaker 2: creatures here performing a very wild song. And this whole sequence,
Speaker 2: of course, escalates into them deciding they need to dismember
Speaker 2: Jennifer Connolly Sarah. They need to rip her head off,
Speaker 2: because you're not supposed to throw other people's heads, even
Speaker 2: though they throw each other's heads around earlier, Like they
Speaker 2: don't even follow their own rules. They're just pure creatures
Speaker 2: of chaos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are the lines where they're like trying to
Speaker 3: pull her head off? They're like, Eh, it's not coming off.
Speaker 3: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Pull harder?
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's one of the things that I think
Speaker 2: always like really struck me about this scene. It's like
Speaker 2: it's two different realities clashing. Their reality is one of
Speaker 2: just fun dismemberment. It's easily reversible and you can play
Speaker 2: with it. It's a good time for everybody. But Sarah
Speaker 2: is from a world where dismemberment is permanent, is permanent
Speaker 2: and fatal, and they just don't understand that. Why don't
Speaker 2: you want to take your head off? What is the
Speaker 2: matter with you? Now?
Speaker 3: You mentioned that there was an earlier part of the
Speaker 3: movie that featured a musical number called the Magic Dance.
Speaker 3: I didn't remember exactly where this came, but this is
Speaker 3: the one where we get to see inside the Goblin
Speaker 3: Castle where David Bowie's hanging out. Toby is there with
Speaker 3: all the goblins. He's sort of crying. It looks like
Speaker 3: Toby's not having a great time, but the goblins are
Speaker 3: all partying, and I guess this song is sort of
Speaker 3: about how Toby's going to become one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great sequences, a great song. Bowie
Speaker 2: seems to be having a great time as Jareth here
Speaker 2: with throwing the bait be around and just so many
Speaker 2: goblin shenanigans as well. This is a goblin packed musical number.
Speaker 3: You got a goblin doing the Barney gumbel, like laying
Speaker 3: down with his mouth under the tap of the beer keg.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I was watching it here, I said to
Speaker 2: my son he was watching with me, I was like,
Speaker 2: why why doesn't this goblin just get a cup? Like
Speaker 2: they're not charging by the cup here? This is just
Speaker 2: this seems to be free for any goblins. But now
Speaker 2: he's like, it's just so much easier if I just
Speaker 2: lay down underneath it on the floor and just catch
Speaker 2: straight droplets of the stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the cup requires too much arm exercise. It's difficult.
Speaker 3: It's goblin mode, I guess. Yeah, so at any rate, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the fire Gang is something else, Yes, But Sarah does
Speaker 3: eventually escape the fire Gang with the help of Hoggle.
Speaker 3: I think Hoggle like throws down a ladder to her
Speaker 3: from the top of a top of a wall to
Speaker 3: help him get away, or maybe a rope. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so she's able to escape and doesn't
Speaker 2: get ripped to pieces.
Speaker 3: But Hoggle and Sarah end up in the Ball of
Speaker 3: Eternal Stench. This is a place Hoggle has been threatened
Speaker 3: with before. I think that, you know, it's like, if
Speaker 3: he doesn't do what Jarreed, the Goblin King says, he's
Speaker 3: going to be cast into the Bog of Eternal Stench.
Speaker 3: The premise is that the bog smells very bad, and
Speaker 3: if any part of your body touches the liquid in
Speaker 3: the bog, you will stink forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the rest of your life. And I've long
Speaker 2: puzzled over that, like how it works. How does it
Speaker 2: permanently taint you like that? Does it change your biology?
Speaker 2: What would it look like in like Dungeons and Dragons rules.
Speaker 2: Is it like a permanent like disadvantage to all charisma
Speaker 2: roles or something I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now here in the bog of Eternal Stench, they're
Speaker 3: trying to get out without touching the cursed water, and
Speaker 3: at one point they need to cross a bridge, but
Speaker 3: their path is blocked by a feisty little character who
Speaker 3: will later become part of our group of friends. This
Speaker 3: is Serditimus, who I think is either supposed to be
Speaker 3: a fire or some type of dog. Though it's sort
Speaker 3: of confusing because he's a muppet who is an anthropomorphic
Speaker 3: fox or dog, but he rides a dog. He's got
Speaker 3: a dog that is a dog, and he rides the dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of the Pluto goofy paradox once more.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, Sir Dinamus is kind of a reap, a
Speaker 3: cheap sort of character. He's like, he's very small and
Speaker 3: feisty and thinks himself very chivalrous and he's always itching
Speaker 3: for a fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a lot of fun. He's always down to joust.
Speaker 2: But his mout, of course, frequently is not as we'll see.
Speaker 3: So Sarah Ludo and Hoggle are trying to trying to
Speaker 3: get through this place, and I think they get blocked
Speaker 3: at a bridge by Sir Dinymus. But I think Sarah
Speaker 3: is the one who figures out that Sir Dinimus is saying,
Speaker 3: no one may pass this bridge without my permission, so
Speaker 3: she realizes she can just ask his permission. It seems
Speaker 3: this has never occurred to Sir Didymus, that he can
Speaker 3: just grant permission and still keep his vow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, He's like, oh, yeah, sure, granted. They're like
Speaker 2: all right, good, let's go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so they're like leaving. Now there is an
Speaker 3: interesting thing here where we discovered that Ludo is not
Speaker 3: only friend to Sarah, he is also friend to rocks.
Speaker 3: Because there's one point where Sarah is sort of like,
Speaker 3: I think a bridge collapses underneath her. She's dangling over
Speaker 3: the bog by hanging onto a tree branch, and she
Speaker 3: is saved when Ludo summons his rock friends to emerge
Speaker 3: up out of the earth so that she can use
Speaker 3: them as stepstones to cross the water.
Speaker 2: That's right, and of course this will come into play
Speaker 2: in one of the climaxes of the picture.
Speaker 3: Now there is up here somewhere we get one of
Speaker 3: the Hoggle betrayals, because Hoggle gives Sarah a poisoned peach
Speaker 3: that the Goblin King gave to him, and this turns
Speaker 3: this sort of sends Sarah into a trance where she
Speaker 3: experiences a magic masquerade ball where she is she is
Speaker 3: tempted to divert from her mission to save Toby and
Speaker 3: instead just sort of, I don't know, becomes some kind
Speaker 3: of evil queen of magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like this is one of Jared's temptations
Speaker 2: to her, like this is what your life could be
Speaker 2: if you just loved me and stayed with me here
Speaker 2: in this realm. And so it's this dreamy but also
Speaker 2: frightening sequence, you know, it is it feels like some
Speaker 2: sort of a weird trip, you know, it's it's a
Speaker 2: great sequence, but it's not like there are there are
Speaker 2: a lot of uncanny elements to it. They're creepy masks,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of typical I guess, you know, period
Speaker 2: masks that the other dancers are wearing. They're also there's
Speaker 2: a feeling of actually being like drugged, of reality being
Speaker 2: slowed down because she is drugged. But we have to
Speaker 2: remember if she ate a poisoned peach, and that's how
Speaker 2: she's entered into this realm. And it's this feeling of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: now the hallucination is upon her, and can she recognize
Speaker 2: it for the hallucination it is and break free from it?
Speaker 2: And in the midst of this, of course, we have
Speaker 2: another musical number, we get as the World Falls Down,
Speaker 2: which I mean, no big surprise. I love all of
Speaker 2: these songs, so I will also say this is a
Speaker 2: great one. But yeah, it has a nice dreamy air
Speaker 2: to it, a nice dancing and slow motion within a
Speaker 2: silver prison kind of a song.
Speaker 3: Now, Sarah does not fully succumb to these temptations, and
Speaker 3: she does wake up in a different place. She wakes
Speaker 3: up in a sort of a garbage world, a giant
Speaker 3: junkyard that seems to lie outside of the Goblin City,
Speaker 3: and she meets a character who is like a junk
Speaker 3: trader woman who I think is trying to like Sarah's
Speaker 3: memory seems only partially intact at this point, and she's
Speaker 3: not fully aware of what she was supposed to be doing,
Speaker 3: and this junk trader woman is like offering her up
Speaker 3: a little like trinket and baubles and toys to I
Speaker 3: think this is part of a different type of temptation
Speaker 3: we were talking about earlier about her like multiple different
Speaker 3: desires at the beginning of the movie, and this is
Speaker 3: the temptation to just sort of regress, to go back
Speaker 3: into childhood and just obsess over over little trinkets and
Speaker 3: selfish toys and collecting little magic, glittering things. And the
Speaker 3: Lady of the junk World is trying to tempt her
Speaker 3: into that fate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great sequence. This also perhaps a little
Speaker 2: bit frightening, because you know, she goes into what seems
Speaker 2: to be her childhood room and it seems like maybe
Speaker 2: she's back, but then imburse the junk Lady, and the
Speaker 2: junk Lady has this enormous backpack of stuff that has
Speaker 2: just seemed to like crush and wither her. And there
Speaker 2: is this scene where Sarah's seated in front of her
Speaker 2: mirror in her childhood room, but the junk Lady is
Speaker 2: bringing her all over things and at least visibly from
Speaker 2: an invisible sense, piling up like a pile of things
Speaker 2: behind and Sarah's back, as if constructing her own backpack
Speaker 2: that will eventually wither and crush her, you know, like,
Speaker 2: here are your earthly possessions, and they are meaningful in
Speaker 2: and of themselves, and this is what you should cling to,
Speaker 2: you know, forget what they might represent. That's not important.
Speaker 2: Here's your stuff. Just focus on your stuff.
Speaker 3: But fortunately, while being weighed down with these things that
Speaker 3: I think, in the view of the movie, don't really matter,
Speaker 3: all these trinkets and treasures, she is saved by the
Speaker 3: things that do matter, which are her friendships. She starts
Speaker 3: to kind of realize something is wrong. The place is
Speaker 3: sort of crumbling, and she's like climbing out of this
Speaker 3: false room prison, and she meets up with and is
Speaker 3: rescued by her group of friends, including Hoggle and Didymus
Speaker 3: and Ludo.
Speaker 2: And so from here, basically to get to the castle
Speaker 2: at the center of the center of the Goblin City,
Speaker 2: they're like two more obstacles. First there's like the gate,
Speaker 2: which has a big automaton in it, and then there
Speaker 2: is the Goblin City. The automaton battle is a sequence
Speaker 2: that I've always found to be very visually impressive. You know,
Speaker 2: I really like the creature design here, but it also
Speaker 2: has always felt like kind of a natural bathroom break.
Speaker 2: I don't know there's something about it that it shouldn't.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's boring, but it is not as
Speaker 2: exciting as it should be.
Speaker 3: Hoggle is actually this is one where we get to
Speaker 3: see Hoggle. You're brave though he's the one who defeats
Speaker 3: the Goblin mech.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually it's absolutely essential from that standpoint, But
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've always found something was lacking here.
Speaker 2: But anyway, we passed that test and now the party
Speaker 2: is united. Everyone's behind Sarah. But yet they have to
Speaker 2: move through the Goblin City and that's where they are
Speaker 2: met with the Goblin army and we get this enormous battle.
Speaker 2: It is. It's a real blast, a mad cap slapstick
Speaker 2: battle for the ages, featuring every goblin you've seen in
Speaker 2: the film thus far. Just hordes of goblins of varying types,
Speaker 2: all sorts of shenanigans, explode usions, sword fights, Ludo calls
Speaker 2: the Rocks. I always enjoy watching this sequence.
Speaker 3: It's a great thing when he calls the Rocks for help,
Speaker 3: and then we get to see boulders rolling uphill to
Speaker 3: attack the goblins.
Speaker 2: So they get through that, and then it's time for
Speaker 2: the final showdown. With Jarreth in Jared's stronghold, and we
Speaker 2: get the scene where we see versions of this in
Speaker 2: a lot of pictures, right, and a lot of stories.
Speaker 2: Sarah has to go in alone, she has to confront
Speaker 2: Jarreth alone. Her friends can't help her in this part
Speaker 2: of the quest, and so they say goodbye to her
Speaker 2: and she ventures into this mc escher world of you know,
Speaker 2: mind bending paradoxical staircases.
Speaker 3: That's right, And it's not just a comparison. She basically
Speaker 3: literally is in the MCEs you're drawing with the staircases
Speaker 3: and the doorways going in every direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was another I think there's a poster in
Speaker 2: her room to this effect as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we get a song here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is within You. That is is really great
Speaker 2: because it's threatening, it's very threatening in places, but it's
Speaker 2: also very vulnerable in places. And Bowie's vocal performance here
Speaker 2: is great too, because you have these parts of it
Speaker 2: where he's very firm and commanding, and then other bits
Speaker 2: where his voice is like trailing off and growing weak,
Speaker 2: like almost like he is dying while singing it. Because
Speaker 2: this is all of course, Jarreff's final appeal to Sarah,
Speaker 2: like please you know, just fall in line, you know,
Speaker 2: be here with me, don't defy me. And but no,
Speaker 2: Sarah is going to stick to her guns and she
Speaker 2: is going to do what it takes to defeat Jarreff.
Speaker 2: What exactly that is I still have questions about but
Speaker 2: she doesn't.
Speaker 3: Well, I checked. So what she does to defeat him
Speaker 3: is she remembers the words, which is interesting because that's
Speaker 3: the same thing she did to get into this trouble
Speaker 3: in the first place. By remembering the words, the lines
Speaker 3: from the Goblin story. That's how she got Toby kidnapped
Speaker 3: by the goblins. Remembering the lines from the story is
Speaker 3: also how she defeats Jarreth. She says she has the
Speaker 3: same lines she was reciting at the very beginning of
Speaker 3: the story when she says, through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered,
Speaker 3: I fought my way here to the castle beyond the
Speaker 3: Goblin City, and so on and so on. It goes
Speaker 3: on several more sentences, but it ends with her remembering
Speaker 3: the final line that she couldn't remember at the beginning.
Speaker 3: My kingdom is as great and you have no power
Speaker 3: over me. She repeats this, you have no power over me,
Speaker 3: And then I think the clock chimes midnight or one
Speaker 3: whatever it is that the time that she had to
Speaker 3: rescue Toby by and Jareth is defeated, and so she
Speaker 3: gets to go back home with Toby.
Speaker 2: Thirteen o'clock, I believe, think I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: thirteen pm or.
Speaker 3: Am, But I like how there's an ending where she
Speaker 3: sort of reconciles her earlier frustrations with Toby, Like she
Speaker 3: repents of her earlier scapegoating of Toby because Toby wasn't
Speaker 3: really the problem, you know, she was. Like she's just
Speaker 3: struggling with herself and her role in life at this point,
Speaker 3: and I think she has some perspective on that. But
Speaker 3: also I like how she ends up sort of reconciling
Speaker 3: her relationship with fantasy. She realizes she has to part
Speaker 3: ways with her magical friends, she has to live in
Speaker 3: this world, but she also needs to see them from
Speaker 3: time to time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So she defeats Jarreth again. I never doubt
Speaker 2: this on an emotional level, you know what's happening, Like
Speaker 2: she finds the strength to overcome him, and then she's
Speaker 2: back in her room. She sees like the reflection of
Speaker 2: her friends through the mirror. But realizes she can call
Speaker 2: on them when she needs them, and then she does
Speaker 2: and we get like a final big party sequence in
Speaker 2: her room, which is great. Though I've always been disturbed
Speaker 2: by the fact that the Fire Gang members are there, Yes, like,
Speaker 2: why did you invite them? Why did you could have
Speaker 2: maybe just let them go, Sarah, It's right, you don't
Speaker 2: have to keep all of these strange creatures. Maybe let
Speaker 2: the fire guys go off and live their own life
Speaker 2: and oblivion. But no, they're there as well, but they
Speaker 2: seem to be well behaved. They're not trying to pull
Speaker 2: anybody apart.
Speaker 3: I invited the bog of eternal stench here it's in
Speaker 3: my sink now.
Speaker 2: And we once more get the theme song underground and
Speaker 2: we roll back. We see that the owl, the animal
Speaker 2: form of Jared, has like been watching through the window
Speaker 2: and then takes off and flies away into the night.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful. It is. It's, like I say, very like
Speaker 2: emotionally and visually beautiful, satisfying conclusion to the picture.
Speaker 3: So in the end, you agree with Ciskel that it's awful,
Speaker 3: ugly and terrible.
Speaker 2: I could not disagree with ciscl more on Labyrinth. I mean,
Speaker 2: it really was challenging to talk about Labyrinth here in
Speaker 2: some respects because you could go on and on, or
Speaker 2: I could go on and on about just about any
Speaker 2: moment in the picture. There's always something interesting going on
Speaker 2: in the set design or in the costuming, in the
Speaker 2: particular dialogue choices that are in play lyrics to the songs.
Speaker 2: There are some weird lyrics to these songs we didn't
Speaker 2: even get into. There are also lines of dialogue, particularly
Speaker 2: from David Bowie. Some of them I never fully understood,
Speaker 2: Like I couldn't really understand what he's saying until like
Speaker 2: this viewing of the picture where I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to turn on the captions for a minute,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh, he's saying, well laugh. And I
Speaker 2: always thought he said well love. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I thought that was the line, but that's what I've
Speaker 2: been hearing for decades.
Speaker 3: Huh. Yeah, this is the kind of movie where I
Speaker 3: feel like a lot of things, especially when you're watching
Speaker 3: as a kid, can just go right over your head.
Speaker 2: But you know, there are lots of confusing things in
Speaker 2: the world of the Labyrinth. Yeah, you know, it's a
Speaker 2: film in a world full of paradoxes and illusions, and
Speaker 2: it's part of its texture. There was some essay I
Speaker 2: was looking at. Maybe it's the one I started earlier
Speaker 2: talking about, Well, some people were confused when they saw Jared,
Speaker 2: when they saw David Bowie's charif, and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: you should be confused whole Jared. He is supposed to
Speaker 2: be this alluring and kind of confusing character, Like that's
Speaker 2: that's intentional.
Speaker 3: It was the confusion like why isn't he a goblin
Speaker 3: like the others? Like why are the goblins ruled over
Speaker 3: by a rock star who with a human form?
Speaker 2: Right? That? And then also some of the aspects of
Speaker 2: Jariff being a like a sexually alluring character, but in
Speaker 2: a way that makes sense, like he is he is
Speaker 2: like his role is in relationship to Sarah, a young woman,
Speaker 2: and therefore he has these kind of like pop star
Speaker 2: elements to him, you know. Yeah, And and so there
Speaker 2: are a lot of deliberate choices with the way that
Speaker 2: he is presented as an object of obsession and desire, Like.
Speaker 3: Would be on a poster on a bedroom wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but a bedroom but a poster on the
Speaker 2: bedroom wall that also is directly bordering the fay world
Speaker 2: and is influenced by the strange energies of the fairy folk.
Speaker 3: Yes, why do you think Jared is an owl?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the owl is a is a magical
Speaker 2: bird of the night, so I guess it is a
Speaker 2: fitting animal form.
Speaker 3: The owl is dangerous, the owl is inscrutable, the owl
Speaker 3: is yeah, yeah, it seems like it's got secrets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well, we're gonna gohead and close this
Speaker 2: one out, but we would love to hear from everyone
Speaker 2: about Labyrinth. I'm sure a lot of you have thoughts,
Speaker 2: thoughts about things that we discussed in this episode, but
Speaker 2: also again, many of the details in the picture that
Speaker 2: we didn't have time to get into, so right in
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you. A reminded The
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast, with core episodes in Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. And
Speaker 2: if you want to see a full list of the
Speaker 2: movies we've done over the years on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: go to letterbox dot com. That's l E. T T
Speaker 2: E R B O x D dot com. Our user
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Speaker 2: ym podcast.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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