Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind on this episode. Ooh,
Speaker 1: this is our look at the nineteen eighty six fantasy
Speaker 1: musical Labyrinth, starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connolly, one of
Speaker 1: my all time favorite movies. This episode originally published nine thirteen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Let's venture in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormack. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about a childhood classic, I think for many people roughly
Speaker 3: our age or between our ages, the nineteen eighty six
Speaker 3: musical fantasy film Labyrinth, starring Jennifer Connolly 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 Robes 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 1: I had kind of forgotten about the ping pong until
Speaker 1: 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, they're 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 achieve adult independence, but also
Speaker 3: at the same time to regress into childhood and avoid
Speaker 3: all responsibilities, like you know, hiding in her bedroom with
Speaker 3: her dolls and costumes. And thus her challenges in the
Speaker 3: 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. But in the end she emerges much more
Speaker 3: successfully 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 Jarreth are
Speaker 3: somewhat difficult to schematize.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is a movie that I've seen so
Speaker 1: many times over the years, as a child, as an adult,
Speaker 1: you know, as a parent, and so forth, and no
Speaker 1: matter what phase of my life I am in, I
Speaker 1: never completely get the details on how she defeats Jareth,
Speaker 1: but I never doubt the victory like it's the emotional
Speaker 1: accuracy of it feels one hundred percent there. This is
Speaker 1: a film that will come back to this, I think
Speaker 1: over and over again, but I think it speaks more
Speaker 1: on an emotional level than it does on a logical level.
Speaker 1: And I can't help but assume that that is one
Speaker 1: of the factors playing into the disconnect between the way
Speaker 1: the adult world reacted to this film when it came
Speaker 1: out in eighty six and the way scores and scores
Speaker 1: of children reacted to it over the years is they
Speaker 1: 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: that it's a movie full of muppets. This is a
Speaker 3: Jim Hinson production, so the fantasy elements and characters are
Speaker 3: achieved through the use of some of the best puppetry
Speaker 3: ever committed to film. Labyrinth came out a few years
Speaker 3: after Hinson's previous fantasy movie, The Dark Chris from nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two, which I would say personally is probably the
Speaker 3: high watermark for puppetry driven movies, Like I don't know
Speaker 3: what could really be said to surpass it, and it's
Speaker 3: interesting to compare the two films. We might also discuss
Speaker 3: that more as we go on. But coming back to
Speaker 3: what you were saying, Rob, about the way children reacted
Speaker 3: to Labyrinth versus the way a lot of adults did.
Speaker 3: I also, yeah, I get the impression that for a
Speaker 3: lot of people who were kids in the eighties, Labyrinth
Speaker 3: was just part of the common texture of childhood, as
Speaker 3: uncritically accepted and culturally canonical as Star Wars or Et
Speaker 3: or the mainline muppets like Kermit and Miss Piggy.
Speaker 1: Was that your experience, Rob, Yeah, I mean I don't
Speaker 1: remember how exactly Labyrinth was initially introduced into our lives.
Speaker 1: I think maybe we rented it from the video store
Speaker 1: on VHS, but we liked it so much that we
Speaker 1: purchased a VHS CU of Labyrinth. We watched it so
Speaker 1: many times that we broke the VHS tape and we
Speaker 1: actually had to go take it to be repaired.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what repaired.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had it repaired. I don't know who did
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. You know what the price point was,
Speaker 1: I assumed cheaper than buying a new VHS tape. So
Speaker 1: it was repaired and returned to us. But after that,
Speaker 1: the audio and the tape was warped from there on out.
Speaker 1: So part of me still sort of pines for a
Speaker 1: certain like electronic warping sound to be present in the
Speaker 1: film even when it's not.
Speaker 3: What does the fire Gang song sound like when it's
Speaker 3: even more discombobulated, it sounds weirder and more threatening? Okay,
Speaker 3: I know, as if that were possible. How about you,
Speaker 3: do you remember how Labyrinth came into your life show? Well, actually,
Speaker 3: I'm this is weird because I feel like I should
Speaker 3: know for sure one way or another about this, but
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of movies like that where
Speaker 1: they're just I mean, it's really a film like this
Speaker 1: becomes a part of the atmosphere. You can't help but
Speaker 1: breathe it in, and you have no idea how it
Speaker 1: originally came into your house. I just seep through the walls.
Speaker 3: But I will have some more things to say about
Speaker 3: it when we get back to I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: when we talk about the critical reception. I do remember
Speaker 3: being surprised by some things about it when I saw it,
Speaker 3: either for the first time ever in my life or
Speaker 3: for the first time as an adult, whichever that was.
Speaker 3: You know, when I saw it in my thirties, it
Speaker 3: wasn't exactly what I expected, And maybe we can talk
Speaker 3: about some reasons for that when we get into some
Speaker 3: stuff about the critical reception. Yeah, but don't misinterpret me.
Speaker 3: I love LAB. I mean, it's just it's a trip.
Speaker 3: There's not there's not really anything like it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: The closest I could compare it to, I guess is
Speaker 3: The Dark Crystal. But actually that's a totally different kind
Speaker 3: of story, totally different kind of world and movie.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: There there really just is nothing like Labyrinth they can
Speaker 3: think of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it is. It's in many ways,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss. It's a it was the logical next
Speaker 1: step after Dark Crystal, but it and it is as
Speaker 1: ambitious a film in some respects in its use of
Speaker 1: groundbreaking puppetry, you know, pushing the boundaries of what puppetry
Speaker 1: can do, while also looking to puppetry's past and finding
Speaker 1: things to uh, you know, to to to utilize and reinvent.
Speaker 1: But it is a very different story. It's a very
Speaker 1: different like entertainment product in its own way. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of those differences and similarities as
Speaker 1: we go here. All right, Well, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: hear just a little trailer audio for Jim Hinson's Labyrinth.
Speaker 4: Try Star Pictures announcing the collaboration of three extraordinary talents
Speaker 4: Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets and Dark Crystal.
Speaker 1: Where you go what I ate like that?
Speaker 4: George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars saga m and
Speaker 4: one 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 2: There's nothing to be afraid of a world.
Speaker 4: Where anything seems possible and nothing is what it seems.
Speaker 1: Everything I've done, I've done for you.
Speaker 4: I move the stars with no fun the world of Labyrinth.
Speaker 1: All Right, if you want to go watch Labyrinth or
Speaker 1: rewatch Labyrinth before proceeding with the rest of this podcast episode,
Speaker 1: well more power to you. This one is widely available
Speaker 1: in all formats and the special This is one of
Speaker 1: those releases where I feel like the special editions just
Speaker 1: keep rolling out. The limited editions. Steal book from shout
Speaker 1: Factory looks really good. I was just getting some social
Speaker 1: media ads about this the other day, and I feel
Speaker 1: like it's one of these things where I don't own
Speaker 1: Labyrinth on any like a special edition physical media release,
Speaker 1: but I'm always tempted to get one, And each time
Speaker 1: they roll out a new and I'm like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is the one, This is the one I should get.
Speaker 1: That they keep upping the ante. But yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a number of been a number of releases, and again
Speaker 1: that shall Factory product looks really nice. You know.
Speaker 3: I wonder if to people out in the disc publishing world,
Speaker 3: is it especially movies that have nostalgic tie ins to
Speaker 3: people's childhood that are most likely to get bought up
Speaker 3: with these like big elaborate special edition Blu rays and
Speaker 3: boxes that you know, the special cases and the posters
Speaker 3: and all the accessories that come with them. I would
Speaker 3: have to think that nostalgia is a big driver in
Speaker 3: selling these kind of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would guess so. But then again, I look
Speaker 1: at my own experience and I think the most money
Speaker 1: I've ever paid for a Blu Ray was for a
Speaker 1: special edition of Fool Cheese Conquest that came with a
Speaker 1: special slipcase. And I can't quite explain why, because this
Speaker 1: is not a movie I watched as a child. I
Speaker 1: don't have that kind of deep nostalgia for it. But
Speaker 1: I have a certain depth of nostalgia for the film,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, it's like I had to have it,
Speaker 1: you know. Maybe it's like the fomo of a special
Speaker 1: release slipcase and you're just like some I've missed this,
Speaker 1: I must have it. Yes, I will pay extra for
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, it has a prized place in the drawer
Speaker 1: where I keep the discs. All right, well, let's get
Speaker 1: into the folks involved in the creation of this picture,
Speaker 1: starting at the top, of course, with Jim Henson. This
Speaker 1: is the first time we've really talked about Jim Henson
Speaker 1: on the show before, you know, in depth. You know,
Speaker 1: work comes up time and time again, and I'm blanking
Speaker 1: on to what extent we've ever discussed something that the
Speaker 1: Creature Shop was involved in. It's possible the Creature Shop
Speaker 1: has come up directly in an episode or two, But
Speaker 1: at any rate, Jim Henson is the director, he has
Speaker 1: a story credit. He is also an uncredited Goblin performer.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of Goblin performances in this puppetry wise,
Speaker 1: he lived nineteen thirty six through nineteen ninety Easily one of,
Speaker 1: if not the most important puppeteers of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: I recently watched the excellent twenty twenty four documentary Jim
Speaker 1: Hinson idea Man. This was directed by Ron Howard, and
Speaker 1: I believe it's currently streaming on Disney in most places.
Speaker 1: And this documentary does a really great, really entertaining job
Speaker 1: of discussing Hintson largely from the standpoint of his ambition
Speaker 1: and his dreams, also getting you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: into his personal life, his family life, and of course
Speaker 1: his professional life being like the main focus because it's
Speaker 1: about you know, how all these ideas he had ultimately
Speaker 1: the limited amount of time he had to pull them off.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like he was a guy that's just constantly
Speaker 1: coming up with concepts that so many things that didn't
Speaker 1: even come to fruition, Like he really had all these
Speaker 1: plans for a nightclub at one point. Yeah, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'd seen these some illustrations, some concept art that he'd
Speaker 1: put together for this at the Center for Puppetry Arts
Speaker 1: in a museum display years ago. But they get into
Speaker 1: in the documentary as well. New York's Hottest Club is
Speaker 1: muppet essentially. Like even one of the things that they
Speaker 1: drive home in that documentary is that even you know,
Speaker 1: early on he was drawn more to the power of
Speaker 1: television than he was to puppetry itself, though of course
Speaker 1: puppetry became his core performance medium. And yeah, he continued
Speaker 1: to push the boundaries of what was possible with puppets,
Speaker 1: the sorts of audiences that could be reached through puppets
Speaker 1: sometimes like initially like rebelling against you know, a box
Speaker 1: that he helped draw for himself, like going from becoming
Speaker 1: you know, the creator of Sesame Street in this you know,
Speaker 1: huge property for children, and then breaking out in doing
Speaker 1: something like The Muppet Show and beyond and again, you know,
Speaker 1: incorporating diverse traditions of puppetry along the way related performance
Speaker 1: styles and pushing into new frontiers of things like animatronics,
Speaker 1: which we see in this film, and even you know,
Speaker 1: late in his career got a little bit into into
Speaker 1: CGI and looking at what computer generated imagery could do,
Speaker 1: though often through sort of the guise of puppetry, like
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of like computer animated face that
Speaker 1: is controlled 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 1: I believe it is? Yeah, I believe that's like early
Speaker 1: I would argue, largely effective CGI. It maybe doesn't look
Speaker 1: as cool now as it did when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: but it still looks pretty good. It's not you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like it mostly it's yeah for eighty six
Speaker 1: especially Yeah. So, of course, Hinson is famous for his
Speaker 1: Muppet bassed shows again, particularly Sesame Street and all the
Speaker 1: various series and films to spin off of the Muppet Show.
Speaker 1: But of course his creative output also includes the excellent
Speaker 1: Storyteller series we've referenced on the show before, both the
Speaker 1: first season and then the Greek season. I still hold
Speaker 1: those up as excellent. Nineteen eighty two's Dark Crystal, and
Speaker 1: of course eighty six is Labyrinth. This would prove to
Speaker 1: be his last full length of feature film directorial effort
Speaker 1: before his untimely death in nineteen ninety at the age
Speaker 1: of fifty three.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I guess this brings us back to the
Speaker 3: comparison between Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. I love them both,
Speaker 3: though I think the Dark Crystal is a little more
Speaker 3: impressive to me just because of the format of its
Speaker 3: storytelling and its ambitions in that regard, in that The
Speaker 3: Dark Crystal has no human characters in it. You know,
Speaker 3: the Dark Crystal is not a like a fairy tale
Speaker 3: integrated with our world as a kind of you know,
Speaker 3: bridge fantasy from regular life like Labyrinth is, the Dark
Speaker 3: Crystal is like a mythology that has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with Earth, and there are no humans and no Earth
Speaker 3: history and no Earth technology. It's just this totally different
Speaker 3: world and everything in it is pure imagination.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's otherworldly, and and in fact that
Speaker 1: the initial cut was maybe a little too otherworldly for
Speaker 1: some test audiences because they had all these constructed languages,
Speaker 1: so the sketchies are speaking a strange tongue and so forth,
Speaker 1: and they had to do like subsequent you know cuts
Speaker 1: where they added actual like English language dialogue to the picture. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the Dark Crystal was certainly like aiming for
Speaker 1: something epic and strange and wonderful and achieve that. And
Speaker 1: so Labyrinth seems to be an attempt to make something
Speaker 1: that has the same vision and the same you know,
Speaker 1: like level of detail going into every nook and cranny
Speaker 1: of the picture, but also calibrating all of that more
Speaker 1: towards like pure popular entertainment, you know, music, humor, whimsy,
Speaker 1: and built everything around relatable human actors, one a youth
Speaker 1: 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 and protagonist, and also
Speaker 3: orienting the story a little. I mean, you could say
Speaker 3: in both cases that probably the primary marketing was directed
Speaker 3: towards kids. But the Dark Crystal is pretty as the
Speaker 3: title would imply, dark and Labyrinth I think is probably
Speaker 3: you would argue, a little bit more kid friendly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you still I certainly know people in
Speaker 1: real life who are like, yeah, I never liked Dark Crystal.
Speaker 1: It was too scary for me. It's too scary for
Speaker 1: me now. And that will come into play here in
Speaker 1: a second, because when Labyrinth came out in eighty six,
Speaker 1: it was famously a commercial and critical failure. It was
Speaker 1: it was one of a certified bomb, you know, and
Speaker 1: one that apparently, according to that documentary, hit Hintson really hard.
Speaker 1: You know. He ultimately was able to you know, to
Speaker 1: roll with the punches and you know, move on to
Speaker 1: the next thing. But I think, you know, everybody put
Speaker 1: a lot of love into Labyrinth and were really bummed
Speaker 1: out when critics didn't like it and when audiences didn't
Speaker 1: come out to see it. But of course, says is
Speaker 1: sometimes the case with films like this, the children did
Speaker 1: end up seeing it. They might not have seen it
Speaker 1: at the theater. Their parents might not have taken them,
Speaker 1: but they ended up renting it or seeing it on television.
Speaker 1: They told each other about it, they watched it, and
Speaker 1: rewatched it. They grew up with it, and as such,
Speaker 1: it has built up this cult following over the years,
Speaker 1: and it has become this much beloved film that is
Speaker 1: you know, does not in any way tarnish the careers
Speaker 1: of those involved, but is sometimes like one of the
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and yeah, And like I said, you
Speaker 1: grow up with them, and sometimes you do reevaluate these things,
Speaker 1: but maybe they do have an advantage because they've been
Speaker 1: with you so long. And if it's a film like Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's you know, its flaws are not
Speaker 1: enough to defeat that fire that was implanted in you
Speaker 1: early on with the film. But again, the grown up
Speaker 1: world of film critics did not feel the same way.
Speaker 1: I was reviewing some of these, and it's interesting. So
Speaker 1: Leonard Malton, a mere four years before he was killed
Speaker 1: by Grimlins and Grimlins two, he gave one of the
Speaker 1: very few favorable like mainstream reviews for Labyrinth. Ebert gave
Speaker 1: one that I think he gave it two out of
Speaker 1: two stars total. And you know, like a like a
Speaker 1: generally like an Ebert review, it's you know, it's not
Speaker 1: unkind it it points out things he really likes, but
Speaker 1: ultimately it doesn't see the logic in the picture. And
Speaker 1: then Gene Siskel his review, if you want to dig
Speaker 1: that one up, is one of the most brutal film
Speaker 1: reviews I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: I don't mad.
Speaker 1: He is mad. Not only does he not like Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: he seems to have hated everything about it and everyone
Speaker 1: 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 it bothered him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well that definitely holds true when you look
Speaker 1: at Ciskel's review of Elabyrinth. Yeah, he called it quite
Speaker 1: awful and visually ugly, which I mean, you know, say
Speaker 1: what you will about Jim Henson pictures, and you know
Speaker 1: you don't have to like them. But I mean, generally
Speaker 1: most people acknowledge that there's a lot of, you know,
Speaker 1: great visual design that goes into these things. But you know,
Speaker 1: 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. Tolerance for
Speaker 3: ugly beautiful, like to see the beauty in designs that
Speaker 3: are meant to be ugly but capture ugliness in an
Speaker 3: exquisite way, which a lot of this movie does. It
Speaker 3: has monsters in it that are not supposed to be like,
Speaker 3: you know, Hoggle is not supposed to look super attractive,
Speaker 3: but Hoggle looks wonderful. And the goblins are not supposed
Speaker 3: to look like attractive people. They look like goblins, but
Speaker 3: they are beautiful goblins. I feel like Ciskel is just
Speaker 3: not approaching the movie with a tolerance for that kind
Speaker 3: of ambition at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, critics hated it, and people who listen
Speaker 1: to critics, you know, probably decided, well, maybe we'll skip
Speaker 1: this one since everyone seems to hate it so much
Speaker 1: or dislike it or find it lacking. And I was
Speaker 1: reading an article or a chapter rather in The Wider
Speaker 1: Worlds of Jim Henson. It's a book that came out
Speaker 1: years back. There's a part in it by the author
Speaker 1: Tom Holst, and it's titled Finding Your Way through the Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: and he points out that some parents are also thought
Speaker 1: to have kept their kids away due to negative experiences
Speaker 1: bringing them to see the Dark Crystal. Earlier, folks had heard, oh,
Speaker 1: the Dark Crystal is going to be, you know, from
Speaker 1: the maker of the Muppets in the Sesame Street, and
Speaker 1: it was maybe a little too scary, and so that
Speaker 1: might have kept them from going out to see Labyrinth
Speaker 1: when it came out, for fear that there would be
Speaker 1: a similar experience. Finally, this is another thing that Holst
Speaker 1: points out. You can also look at Labyrinth in the
Speaker 1: way it connects though to various other themes explored in
Speaker 1: other Hinson projects, including some of his short film works,
Speaker 1: that some of those did have buppets and some of
Speaker 1: them didn't. But these different themes include a fractured view
Speaker 1: of time, the theme of being trapped, a film as
Speaker 1: a metatext, and the trappings of superficiality. So those are
Speaker 1: all worth keeping in mind as we continue to discuss
Speaker 1: 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 chilly reception it
Speaker 3: got from critics and people pointing out all of these
Speaker 3: things that are arguably flaws with it, flows 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 a long for the ride.
Speaker 3: Like clearly Jeene Siskel was, he did not agree to
Speaker 3: be along for the ride. It's almost in this regard.
Speaker 3: I was thinking the inverse of a movie we talked
Speaker 3: about a few weeks ago, Ridley Scott's Legend. Legend is
Speaker 3: a movie made of amazing parts, but somehow it is
Speaker 3: less than the some of those parts. Something about it
Speaker 3: just doesn't quite click as a story overall. Labyrinth, on
Speaker 3: the other hand, I think has I mean, of course,
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 1: I was thinking about something along these lines when I
Speaker 1: was swimming laps this morning that like, for me, a
Speaker 1: movie is often like a Frankenstein's monster, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's made from the most beautiful pieces
Speaker 1: imaginable and that you can't even see the stitch work,
Speaker 1: and and then other times it's ghastly the stitches are
Speaker 1: are raw and apparent, you know, and there are other
Speaker 1: like design problems. But at the end of the experiment,
Speaker 1: if the creature can rise up and it has something
Speaker 1: like you know, cohesive life to it, then like then
Speaker 1: you buy it, like that that's the thing it has.
Speaker 1: It has to be able to walk out of the laboratory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if it does, then yeah, the movie like works
Speaker 1: at least on some sort of level that I can
Speaker 1: get behind. And it's it's interesting because you sometimes you
Speaker 1: do have a a beautiful monster that's there on the slab,
Speaker 1: But if the spark doesn't happen, if it doesn't rise up,
Speaker 1: then you know, 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 Montster next Door.
Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely all right, let's see other folks involved here.
Speaker 1: A story credit goes to Dennis Lee born nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: He'd previously worked as a composer on Fragile Rock and
Speaker 1: we would continue to work in the music department and
Speaker 1: as a composer on subsequent Hintson projects. He is also
Speaker 1: an author and poet for children. Some of his poems
Speaker 1: were adapted into the nineteen ninety two TV movie Alligator Pie.
Speaker 1: And then, of course we have a screenplay credit to
Speaker 1: Terry Jones, who have nineteen forty two through twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the legendary Monty Python writer, director, performer, and medieval historian.
Speaker 1: Jones worked on an early draft of the screenplay, and
Speaker 1: he retains the credit here, though I'm to understand only
Speaker 1: some of his original ideas remain. But I've always felt
Speaker 1: that you still get a very strong Pythonian vibe off
Speaker 1: 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 money Python in this beast.
Speaker 1: I feel like the specific things that feel like Terry Jones,
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong on this, you know, this
Speaker 1: is often the case the most authentic thing and a
Speaker 1: work is actually the most fake, and so forth. But
Speaker 1: I always get a strong Terry Jones vibe from the
Speaker 1: part where where Hoggle is spraying the fairies because and
Speaker 1: then we find out it's because fairies bite. Yes, that
Speaker 1: feels very Terry Jones. And then the logic puzzle of
Speaker 1: the door guardians that we hear we encounter later on,
Speaker 1: that also feels very Terry Jones. And I again could
Speaker 1: be wrong in.
Speaker 3: Both of those cases, No, I agree with you there.
Speaker 1: So. Jones apparently worked off a novella by Dennis Lee,
Speaker 1: as well as the drawings of artists Brian Frowd who
Speaker 1: will come back to But the shooting script apparently had
Speaker 1: a number of different fingerprints on it. You had like
Speaker 1: Jim Henson, of course, producer George Lucas, Fraggle, writer Laura Phillips,
Speaker 1: and also writer Elaine May. Anyway, Terry Jones is best
Speaker 1: known for his work with Money Python. He co directed
Speaker 1: Holy Grail in seventy five, Money Python and the Holy Grail,
Speaker 1: and directed both Life of Brian and seventy nine and
Speaker 1: the Meaning of Life in eighty three, followed by various
Speaker 1: works including nineteen eighty nine's Eric the Viking. He wrote
Speaker 1: numerous fiction and nonfiction books, including nineteen eighty's Chaucer's Knight,
Speaker 1: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary. All right, of course,
Speaker 1: as we've been saying, this is a David Bowie film.
Speaker 1: David Bowie, who lived nineteen forty seven through twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: plays Jareth the Goblin King. Again. We previously talked about
Speaker 1: David Bowie in our episode on The Man Who Fell
Speaker 1: to Earth, and here we return once more to what
Speaker 1: would become one of his most iconic film roles. And
Speaker 1: rather than revisit everything we said before, I thought we
Speaker 1: might instead just sort of position Labyrinth within his filmography
Speaker 1: and his discography. So in the case of the latter,
Speaker 1: it falls between his nineteen eighty four album Tonight and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven's Never Let Me Down.
Speaker 3: Now. I love David Bowie, but I don't know either
Speaker 3: of these albums. I don't think I've ever listened to them.
Speaker 1: I had never listened to them before. I'd listened to
Speaker 1: them both at least a couple of times through each
Speaker 1: while researching and doing notes for this episode, because, like
Speaker 1: the former, was long considered and I think maybe. It
Speaker 1: is still considered one of his lesser albums and was
Speaker 1: poorly received, though it was apparently re released with new
Speaker 1: instrumentation and the deletion of a track titled Too Dizzy.
Speaker 1: But again, I didn't listen to the original version of
Speaker 1: the album. All I have is this, I believe, the
Speaker 1: new version that's on the streaming platforms to listen to,
Speaker 1: and you know I can't compare, but you know I
Speaker 1: didn't hate it. The reggae elements are interesting. The title
Speaker 1: track is a duet with Tina Turner, and he collaborated
Speaker 1: with Iggy Pop on some of the tracks as well.
Speaker 1: And then Never Let Me Down was an attempt apparently
Speaker 1: to sort of course correct, but was also poorly received.
Speaker 1: Even though you have a track, there's one track, Shining Star,
Speaker 1: which features a rap by Mickey Rourke. I would think
Speaker 1: that would be successful, but I don't know. But again,
Speaker 1: I listened to this all the way through and I
Speaker 1: didn't hate anything. I really liked the track Bang Bang,
Speaker 1: which is an Iggy Pop cover. Oh and then Time
Speaker 1: Will Crawl. It is also one that I thought was
Speaker 1: pretty good, but Bowie himself would end up distancing himself
Speaker 1: from both of these albums later on, so you could
Speaker 1: sort of see this as like, at least from his standpoint,
Speaker 1: you know, this was kind of like a low point
Speaker 1: in his creative output. Now on the film front, this
Speaker 1: one occurs after John Landis's nineteen eighty five thriller Into
Speaker 1: the Night and Julian Temple's Absolute Beginners the same year,
Speaker 1: and he'd follow it up with nineteen eighty nine's The
Speaker 1: Last Temptation of Christ. So it's interesting that while the
Speaker 1: mid eighties are not considered the high point of his
Speaker 1: musical output, in Labyrinth, at least he busts out one
Speaker 1: of what would become his most iconic roles ever, and
Speaker 1: also a soundtrack album's worth of material. I think put
Speaker 1: five tracks into total that I think has stood the
Speaker 1: test of time, Like these are beloved songs today, even
Speaker 1: though at the time, again the movie was was not
Speaker 1: a critical or financial success. And it's I don't think
Speaker 1: he ever performed a single one of these songs live,
Speaker 1: you know. I think he, like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: just kind of like rolled with the punches and just
Speaker 1: moved on from Labyrinth, even though it would go on
Speaker 1: to generate this kind of love and this kind of
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, I mean this is one of those things where
Speaker 1: and we kind of got into this a little bit
Speaker 1: with in the episode of The Man Who Fell to Earth,
Speaker 1: like these tendencies might also ultimately benefit the character, because
Speaker 1: what is Jareth Jarreth is he is a tyrant. He
Speaker 1: is a like a manchild who has apparently grown perhaps
Speaker 1: from infancy into this position of great power without any
Speaker 1: checks and balances in place. And so yeah, maybe he
Speaker 1: does kind of check out at times because he can.
Speaker 1: He can do so he's a little bit aloof you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's vain, but he's also vulnerable. He's charismatic and
Speaker 1: can also be quite cruel. Like there are a number
Speaker 1: of 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 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, ultimately he's of the fairy folk
Speaker 1: in his own way. Now, one thing that I was
Speaker 1: thinking about is that the character of Jareth is never
Speaker 1: fully explained here in the final cut of the film,
Speaker 1: you know, And I've read that like Hinson and Lucas
Speaker 1: kind of like went back and forth on the final edit,
Speaker 1: where Hinson would have more dialogue and Lucas would cut
Speaker 1: dialogue and then they'd kind of like find the balance.
Speaker 1: So maybe an earlier cut they went into this, but
Speaker 1: you don't really know like what he is or why
Speaker 1: he's there, Like he's the king of the goblins, but
Speaker 1: he's obviously or presumably not a goblin himself. And apparently
Speaker 1: at some time, at some points in pre production, they
Speaker 1: intended for Jaiff to be a more darkly satanic, more
Speaker 1: in line with what Legend does with darkness, and knowing
Speaker 1: what Legend was going to do with that character, they
Speaker 1: kind of went in a different direction. But I've read
Speaker 1: that in an earlier draft of the script it was
Speaker 1: revealed that Jareff was once a mortal who solved the labyrinth.
Speaker 1: And then I also have a labyrinth Bestieri by St. Binde,
Speaker 1: and she writes that Jarref himself was a changeling, so
Speaker 1: he was brought into the Goblin in realm as an
Speaker 1: infant to serve as the heir to the previous Goblin ruler.
Speaker 1: I guess it's because, you know, goblins need a ruler,
Speaker 1: and none of them want to do it themselves, Like
Speaker 1: can't we steal a baby to do this? Can't we
Speaker 1: train a baby to do this? And the answer is yes,
Speaker 1: that's 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, They're 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 1: I think he gets bored, and I think he gets
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of anxiety there. You know,
Speaker 1: we see like his boredom often turns into cruelty, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he is also deeply invested in the theft of this baby.
Speaker 1: And the acquisition of Sarah. I think because he feels
Speaker 1: like like there's incompleteness in his life and in the
Speaker 1: of his reign, like he needs fresh blood, he needs
Speaker 1: an air, He needs someone who loves him, as opposed
Speaker 1: to just the goblins, who certainly serve him. But I
Speaker 1: think love would be a strong word, and that's where
Speaker 1: Sarah comes in. Sarah's, of course, played by Jennifer Connolly
Speaker 1: born nineteen seventy Academy Award winning actress whose credits as
Speaker 1: a child actress date back to a nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: episode of Rhaldahl's anthology series Tales of the Unexpected. It's
Speaker 1: one I don't think I've seen this one, but it's
Speaker 1: titled Stranger in Town. It stars Derek Jacoby, and I
Speaker 1: included it still from it here you can see a
Speaker 1: very young Jennifer Connolly standing there next to a Derek
Speaker 1: Jacoby in a ridiculous, I don't know, some sort of
Speaker 1: a jester or magician costume. Yeah, a cross between the two, okay.
Speaker 1: She also pops up in the music video for Duran
Speaker 1: Durand's Union of the Snake from nineteen eighty three. I
Speaker 1: think she's supposed to be like a cult member or
Speaker 1: something cool. And she followed this up with a small
Speaker 1: role in Sergio Leoni's Once Upon Time in America. That's
Speaker 1: an eighty four oh, and then Dario Argento's Phenomena in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five opposite Donald Pleasants. Joe, I still haven't
Speaker 1: 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 chimpanzee and
Speaker 3: swarms of insects that are controlled by a psychic and
Speaker 3: I don't know, because it's a it's a Jallo film,
Speaker 3: so it has like murders at a Swiss boarding school,
Speaker 3: of course, and I don't know. I can't describe it all.
Speaker 3: But it does involve Donald Pleasants and a chimpanzee and
Speaker 3: insects and murder mysteries, and Jennifer Connelly is the main character.
Speaker 1: All right. So these are essentially the credits that led
Speaker 1: into her playing Sarah in Labyrinth at the age of fourteen,
Speaker 1: at least in the early stages of the production, and
Speaker 1: her subsequent credits would include the likes of nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one's The Rocketeer ninety eight s Dark City, two thousand's
Speaker 1: Requiem for a Dream two thousand and one, A Beautiful
Speaker 1: Mind two thousand and threes, Hulk, twenty fourteen's Noah, and
Speaker 1: 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 Connelly is always great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I've really enjoyed her on snow Piercer. Now.
Speaker 1: Sarah's parents are only briefly in the film, but as
Speaker 1: the only other two adult humans present, they deserve mention.
Speaker 1: Shelley Thompson born nineteen fifty nine places Sarah's stepmother, Canadian
Speaker 1: actor and director whose credits also include eighty five episodes
Speaker 1: of Trailer Park Boys.
Speaker 3: Really Yeah Wow.
Speaker 1: And then Sarah's father is played by Christopher Malcolm, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen forty six through twenty fourteen, a Scottish born
Speaker 1: actor of stage and screen who actually originated the role
Speaker 1: of Brad in the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show,
Speaker 1: which will become The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And he
Speaker 1: appears in Richard O'Briens nineteen eighty one follow up to
Speaker 1: Rocky Horror Shock Treatment. And he also had small roles
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty's Superman two and The Empire Strikes Back.
Speaker 1: And he has a role in Highlander, a role that
Speaker 1: I think I always forget that this features into the
Speaker 1: plot even the slightest. But there's like a vigilante character
Speaker 1: running the streets in Highlander, and Christopher Malcolm plays that vigilante.
Speaker 1: I think he's killed by the Kurgan. It's a very
Speaker 1: forgettable part of the film. Yeah, this one is one
Speaker 1: that felt like an insert from another dimension, Like really
Speaker 1: that was part of this film that I've seen multiple times.
Speaker 1: But I guess so if you say Internet okay. And
Speaker 1: of course there's a long list of Muppet performers and
Speaker 1: voice actors and other creatives. They include the likes of
Speaker 1: Warwick Davis, Kenny Baker, Kevin Klash, Steven Whitmyer, Frank Oz,
Speaker 1: Karen Prell, Dave Goles, Jim Hinson himself of course, and
Speaker 1: his son Brian Hinson born nineteen sixty three, who voices Hoggle,
Speaker 1: who of course is Sarah's. The word friend is thrown
Speaker 1: around a lot, and I guess we'd get there eventually,
Speaker 1: but mostly he just betrays her over and over again.
Speaker 1: But yes, Brian Hinson provides the voice there, but.
Speaker 3: He helps her too, and yeah, it's a you know,
Speaker 3: your friendship is something you grow into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's I just love the parts where he's like,
Speaker 1: he's like, she's my friend and I won't betray her.
Speaker 1: And then jareded is like, Hoggle, I need you to
Speaker 1: poison her, and he's like, all right, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we'll come back to some of these individuals
Speaker 1: as we proceed here, but I will point out that
Speaker 1: among the voice actors, Michael Horden, who lived in nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven through nineteen ninety five, provides the voice of the
Speaker 1: wise Man, the one with the bird on his hat.
Speaker 1: He's also known for his performance as the voice of Frith,
Speaker 1: the sun god, in nineteen seventy eight's Watership Down, and
Speaker 1: his other credits include sixty three's Cleopatra sixty eights Where Eagles,
Speaker 1: seventy three's Theater of Blood seventy five's Barry Lyndon in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two's Gandhi.
Speaker 3: Theater of Blood is Vincent Price movie. Yeah, with almost
Speaker 3: the same plot as Doctor Fibes, except with a more
Speaker 3: overtly comedic Hammi theater orientation Shakespearean theater.
Speaker 1: All right, we mentioned Brian Froud, earlier conceptual designer and
Speaker 1: costume designer born nineteen forty seven English fantasy illustrator who
Speaker 1: had worked with Alan Lee on the nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: book Fairies. His work often calls back to nineteenth century
Speaker 1: and early twentieth century fantasy illustration, particularly like fairytale inspiration,
Speaker 1: and I've heard from friends who have seen him speak
Speaker 1: in the past that he's something of like a true
Speaker 1: believer in fairy folk, Like he doesn't just draw the fairies,
Speaker 1: he knows that they are real. He of course served
Speaker 1: as a conceptual as the conceptual designer on The Dark
Speaker 1: Crystal previously. He also later worked on The Storyteller. His
Speaker 1: other conceptual artist credits include two thousand and three's Peter
Speaker 1: Pan in twenty Sixteenans Pete's Dragon Interesting as well. He
Speaker 1: met his wife Wendy on the set of the Dark Crystal.
Speaker 1: She worked in the creature workshop on that film and
Speaker 1: also on this film as well, and they had a son,
Speaker 1: Toby famously born eighty four, who of course plays baby Toby,
Speaker 1: Sarah's brother in this picture. So real life. Toby has
Speaker 1: gone into work in special effects and animation on such
Speaker 1: films as twenty fourteen's The Box Trolls and the twenty
Speaker 1: 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 1: That's good. I mean his parents were on set. They
Speaker 1: weren't going to allow that to happen. Okay. Alex Thompson
Speaker 1: was cinematographer on this only mentioned it because we brought
Speaker 1: We mentioned him briefly in Legend, same cinematographer as Legend,
Speaker 1: so that's interesting. And then music is a big part
Speaker 1: of this film. Trevor Jones did the score. Born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, South African composer with some very impressive credentials
Speaker 1: going back to the late seventies. His other scores include
Speaker 1: ex Caliber from eighty one, eighty two's The Cinder, The
Speaker 1: Dark Crystal, eighty five's Runaway Train, eighty seven's Angel Heart,
Speaker 1: eighty eight Mississippi Burning, ninety two's Free Jack, as well
Speaker 1: as the Last of the Mohicans, Dark City, and two
Speaker 1: thousand and one s from Hell. And he's still still active.
Speaker 3: I wonder if he's still getting residuals on Free Jack.
Speaker 1: Well, one would hope. Now. I'm not current enough on
Speaker 1: all of his scores, or even most of his scores.
Speaker 1: I've never seen The Cinder, but it's on my list,
Speaker 1: but I think his score for The Dark Crystal is
Speaker 1: really really good. And I love the glistening electronic splendor
Speaker 1: of his work in Labyrinth here fused, of course with
Speaker 1: the musical stylings of David Bowie. And again, yes, David
Speaker 1: Bowie's music is key here as well. It is a
Speaker 1: full fledged musical featuring five original tracks from David Bowie.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to these as we go, but they
Speaker 1: are Underground, Magic, Dance, Chili, Down, as the World Falls
Speaker 1: Down 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 is that I don't know,
Speaker 3: is this song terrifying, horrible, wonderful? What is going on?
Speaker 1: There's a lot to process with Chili Down, I think.
Speaker 1: I think all of us who began watching Labyrinth as
Speaker 1: a child are still trying to figure out how we
Speaker 1: feel about Chili Down, and of course the sights and
Speaker 1: traumas that accompany it. Like if you went into this
Speaker 1: film having found the dark Crystal uncomfortable, then the Chili
Speaker 1: Down sequence is basically like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but luckily the rest of Labyrinth doesn't have quite the
Speaker 1: same flavor.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But it is that track Underground that plays with the
Speaker 3: opening credits for the CGI Owl because it's got these
Speaker 3: lines that are, uh, these are quite memorable. It says
Speaker 3: it's only for forever, it's not long at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, which fits nicely into this treatment of time
Speaker 1: in this picture. But yeah, I love the score when
Speaker 1: it hits us, the score that transitions into Bowie's Underground,
Speaker 1: a track that's going to play again in the closing credits. Yeah, lyrically,
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a song that really captures
Speaker 1: both Sarah's emotional state and the temptations of the Goblin King.
Speaker 1: You know, it just feels emotionally on point as we
Speaker 1: enter in at first, not necessarily not really into the
Speaker 1: world of the Labyrinth just yet, but into the real world,
Speaker 1: into the mundane world that Sarah finds herself trapped in.
Speaker 1: Like this is a film that's ultimately about her being
Speaker 1: trapped in a fantasy world, but in the beginning she
Speaker 1: 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 think,
Speaker 3: rob Let me know if you disagree. I think she's
Speaker 3: supposed to be rehearsing for a play, and she's apparently
Speaker 3: in costume for that, but either way, she's practicing some
Speaker 3: kind of lines. She's trying to memorize something from a book,
Speaker 3: and as she runs and dances through the park, she
Speaker 3: says her lines, and the lines go like this. They
Speaker 3: are important because they recur throughout the film. She says,
Speaker 3: give me the child through dangers untold and hardship's unnumbered.
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, thunder cracks. 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.
Speaker 1: 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 Didimus later in the story,
Speaker 3: or is that a different dog?
Speaker 1: Oh? You know, I'm not sure if we're I mean,
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, and it really works because the more we see
Speaker 1: of Sarah's real life, we realize that, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: she's she's not to discount her displeasure or her emotions,
Speaker 1: you know, because of course these are gonna be gonna
Speaker 1: be very subjective and all. But like, you know, she
Speaker 1: is what you know. She is in what to all
Speaker 1: appearances would look like a very comfortable house and a
Speaker 1: very comfortable life, but that is not how she feels.
Speaker 1: She feels very set upon. She feels that she is
Speaker 1: trapped here and desperately 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 there are
Speaker 3: sort of multiple levels of conflict. Sarah is very frustrated
Speaker 3: and put upon. She resents being asked to babysit when
Speaker 3: she should be out living her own life. But then
Speaker 3: her stepmother says, basically, well, if you had plans, you
Speaker 3: could have told me, I'd like for you to go
Speaker 3: out and have dates in a social life, And it's
Speaker 3: almost like the fact that her stepmother is not being
Speaker 3: more unreasonable further enrages Sarah, and she runs upstairs yelling,
Speaker 3: pouting that apparently she can't do anything right. And I
Speaker 3: like this relatively complex depiction of teen angst because it
Speaker 3: feels real to me, like the conflict is not one
Speaker 3: dimensional or about just a single subject. Instead, it seems
Speaker 3: that Sarah is living in a stew of many conflicting
Speaker 3: emotions and desires, all of which are thwarted at the
Speaker 3: same time, Like she wants to be an adult and
Speaker 3: have independence and self determination, but feels like something is
Speaker 3: preventing her. But also there are signs that she wants
Speaker 3: to go the other way and regress into the self
Speaker 3: centered mind space of childhood and just be free of
Speaker 3: all responsibilities and all cares about others. And we see
Speaker 3: this in the way that she hides in a room
Speaker 3: and finds solace in her collection of stuffed animals, and
Speaker 3: later in the way she unfairly projects resentment onto her
Speaker 3: baby brother. And I think that feeling of complex and
Speaker 3: even mutually exclusive thwarted desires is very relatable to anybody
Speaker 3: who remembers being a teenager themselves, Like, I remember what
Speaker 3: that felt like in a way where it was just
Speaker 3: like everything was confusing and frustrating and nothing felt right
Speaker 3: and there wasn't actually one single cause of it. It's
Speaker 3: just that that's what it's like to be fifteen or sixteen.
Speaker 3: The conflict here isn't just about babysitting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not that your stepmom is telling you
Speaker 1: to go water a stump, yeah yeah, yeah. And so
Speaker 1: of course she goes to her room, and boy, what
Speaker 1: a room it is. I think we've talked about kids
Speaker 1: rooms on the show before, but this is always something
Speaker 1: that I paying a lot of attention to when I
Speaker 1: watch a film. How have you decorated this child's room?
Speaker 1: Did you just print out some stuff from Getty Images
Speaker 1: and you're pretending it's a poster or did you use
Speaker 1: real posters? You know? Is it all fake franchise stuff?
Speaker 1: Does it feel like a child actually lived in this
Speaker 1: room or not? And I think they do just a
Speaker 1: fabulous job with Sarah's room here, with her reality of stuff,
Speaker 1: which is going to be vitally important to the plot,
Speaker 1: of course, but it also needs to feel real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are her music posters? She have like stinging
Speaker 3: on the wall or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also we see in the room. I think it's
Speaker 3: in her room that there's a copy of Where the
Speaker 3: Wild Things Are. That really caught my eye because currently
Speaker 3: 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 1: Oh that's a great one. Yeah, yeah, we read that
Speaker 1: one a lot too.
Speaker 3: She likes to hear 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 1: 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 1: So all right, solid sod.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe as we continue to read it
Speaker 3: over time, she'll she'll find more to love down the
Speaker 3: character sheet. But anyway, Sarah is left to take care
Speaker 3: of Toby while her parents go out, and so she
Speaker 3: discovers at some point that one of her old stuffed animals.
Speaker 3: I think it's named Lancelot. It's like a teddy bear
Speaker 3: named Lancelot has been taken from her room and given
Speaker 3: to the baby, and this makes her even more angry.
Speaker 3: And then the baby's crying and she doesn't know how
Speaker 3: to make him stop, which again, you know, is a
Speaker 3: relatable feeling. It does create this feeling of helplessness. And
Speaker 3: while in the middle of all these frustrations about to
Speaker 3: 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 met. 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 listen she's gonna
Speaker 3: say the words. Such an odd and surprising choice, the
Speaker 3: way we just smash cut to goblins with no previous
Speaker 3: introduction or even indication that they exist. Everything up to
Speaker 3: this point has been fully realistic, no fantasy elements at all,
Speaker 3: and so the first time we see anything magical is
Speaker 3: an absolutely unexpl did smash cut. It almost reminds me
Speaker 3: of the moment in The Exorcist when Reagan is at
Speaker 3: the doctor's office and she's staring up at the ceiling
Speaker 3: and we smashed cut to the Pazuzu face peering out
Speaker 3: of the darkness. This isn't as evil and menacing as that,
Speaker 3: but it's semi evil and a little bit scary. And
Speaker 3: I love the way that the magic just bursts in
Speaker 3: like that, with no warning at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we don't even really get a clear sense
Speaker 1: of where the goblins are. Are they in the closet
Speaker 1: and are in the walls? Are they just in the
Speaker 1: nether void? You know that's easily accessible, but equally distant,
Speaker 1: distant from you know, our real life at any time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, all this build up is wonderful. I love too,
Speaker 1: how she's self narrating her plight here, including talking about
Speaker 1: one day when Baby was especially cruel to her. Yes,
Speaker 1: which of course is just such a deliciously over the
Speaker 1: top exaggeration of her current circumstance. Yes, the baby Toby
Speaker 1: was cruel to you today, Baby Toby definitely stole your
Speaker 1: 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 Jarreth. 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 1: Yes, yeah, I mean, there's just so many great details
Speaker 1: in this moment and leading up to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love the goblins when they start invading the room. Yes,
Speaker 1: I love Jireth laying out the challenge you have thirteen
Speaker 1: hours in which to solve the labyrinth and making a
Speaker 1: time go weird on her. And then the first of
Speaker 1: what will be kind of a recurring element in the
Speaker 1: film of characters really trying to shoot down her optimism,
Speaker 1: you know, where she says, Okay, I can do this,
Speaker 1: and he's like, it's further than you think, you know,
Speaker 1: And we'll get something similar from Hoggle later on, where
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, it just gets tougher from here on out,
Speaker 1: you know, which These lines seem to like echo a
Speaker 1: sort of adult sensibility that has been handed down to
Speaker 1: 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 like?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's beautiful for starters, but it's also a little
Speaker 1: bit desolate and everything. So many surfaces in the Goblin realm,
Speaker 1: and it varies depending on what section of the labyrinthin
Speaker 1: you're in. So many surfaces look like they have very
Speaker 1: recently been crawled over by some sort of a fairy
Speaker 1: slug that leaves just a little bit of a like
Speaker 1: a glistening sparkle to everything.
Speaker 3: A glittering mucus trail overall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it does, I think, read rather accurately, like
Speaker 1: a fine kingdom that has been ruled too long by goblins. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: upkeep is happening, but it's maybe not as loving as
Speaker 1: it could be.
Speaker 3: Yes. Now. Pretty quickly, while finding her way to the
Speaker 3: to the entrance of the labyrinth so she can get
Speaker 3: Toby back, Sarah runs into someone. She meets, a character
Speaker 3: named Hoggle, who's going to be one of the main
Speaker 3: characters in the movie. When we first meet Hoggle, he
Speaker 3: is urinating into a reflecting pool.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so that's I guess an inauspicious beginning. But
Speaker 3: it's sort of a difficult meeting. At first. Hoggle is
Speaker 3: not inclined to be very helpful to her. Instead, he
Speaker 3: is busy poisoning fairies I think, like dusting them with
Speaker 3: some like fairy insecticide.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. He is exterminating fairies. He is not helpful.
Speaker 1: He is grumpy. Hogle is interesting because Hogel is not
Speaker 1: maybe not objectively cute, but you do grow to love him.
Speaker 1: He is a character that will betray Sarah over and
Speaker 1: over again and really struggles to muster any true sustaining courage.
Speaker 1: But you know eventually he's going to get there. But
Speaker 1: you do have to be patient with him on that journey.
Speaker 3: That's right. And he does sort of disappear and reappear
Speaker 3: repeatedly throughout the story.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Is that right you some definitions? Absolutely? So, Yeah, in
Speaker 1: some respects, you could think of the labyrinth here as
Speaker 1: more of a maze. But I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: if the ruler of this room calls it a labyrinth,
Speaker 1: I guess we have 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 turn and
Speaker 3: where to go. But when Sarah first gets into the labyrinth,
Speaker 3: it's interesting that the first real challenge she faces is
Speaker 3: that she can't find anywhere to turn. It just seems
Speaker 3: like one endless corridor. And so she has a wonderful
Speaker 3: little scene where she discusses this with a worm who
Speaker 3: tells her he's like, ah, yeah, I can't tell you.
Speaker 3: I can't help you. I'm just a worm. But then
Speaker 3: he does provide some helpful advice because she discovers that
Speaker 3: there are gaps in the walls that she can move
Speaker 3: through to make turns and find new ways to navigate
Speaker 3: through them, but they're hidden by optical illusions. And I
Speaker 3: love the effects used here because from what I can tell,
Speaker 3: there's 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 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think it's just a complete practical illusion
Speaker 1: 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 we should just
Speaker 3: pick out some of our favorite moments. As Sarah is
Speaker 3: navigating the labyrinth and its challenges and the people she
Speaker 3: meets along the way. One thing I know you wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about was the riddle of the doors who
Speaker 3: with the dogs guarding them?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, these guys are a lot of fun. I
Speaker 1: covered these on the Monster fact a while back there.
Speaker 1: They're delightfully weird enough on their own, of course, two
Speaker 1: headed doglike humanoid creatures that are fixed behind shields, kind
Speaker 1: of in the manner of double headed European playing cards.
Speaker 1: It's already a wild design. But then the scenario gets
Speaker 1: even wilder because we find out, of course, that one
Speaker 1: door leads to the castle at the center of the
Speaker 1: labyrinth and the other one leads to Bubbabubum certain death.
Speaker 1: The lower heads have no idea what's going on, which
Speaker 1: door is which the upper heads do, but Sarah is
Speaker 1: only permitted to ask one of them. Furthermore, one of
Speaker 1: the two guardians always tells the truth, while the other
Speaker 1: one always lies. So Sarah faces a conundrum here. How
Speaker 1: can she find out which door is which? How can
Speaker 1: she risk asking the wrong guardian and being lied to?
Speaker 1: And this is really fascinating because the scenario here, of course,
Speaker 1: instantly invokes what is known as the liar's paradox. If
Speaker 1: a liar tells you they are lying, then they are
Speaker 1: telling the truth. Consider the statement, this sentence is a lie.
Speaker 1: If that statement is true, then it's false. If it's false,
Speaker 1: then it's true.
Speaker 3: Right, Hence that it's a paradox, it's self contradictory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now the scenario that Sarah is facing here, I
Speaker 1: have to admit that I really have to do some
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics to make sense of the riddle here. I
Speaker 1: think when I was younger, at one point I did
Speaker 1: like settle down and think about it long and hard
Speaker 1: enough to where it clicked. But for the most part
Speaker 1: here I just really have to trust that the film
Speaker 1: is not lying to me when it tells me that
Speaker 1: this is the correct answer. But I did research it
Speaker 1: a little bit. As John Touri points out in the
Speaker 1: paper objective falsity is essential to lying an argument from
Speaker 1: convergent evidence published in Philosophy Studies twenty twenty one, Sarah
Speaker 1: here is engaging in what is called answer laundering. The
Speaker 1: truth and the lie dependably cancel each other out in
Speaker 1: this scenario, provided to Rey stresses that lies cannot be
Speaker 1: true because the answer laundering she engages here is of course,
Speaker 1: she asks one of the guards what the other guard
Speaker 1: would say in reaction to her question, and she uses
Speaker 1: that answer 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 telling 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 1: It's a piece of gay. So Terry points out that
Speaker 1: the riddle here of the four guards is a variant of,
Speaker 1: or seems to be a variant of the Knights and
Speaker 1: Knaves logic puzzle from Raymond Smullian's nineteen seventy eight publication
Speaker 1: What is the Name of this Book? Yeah, This scenario
Speaker 1: closely resembles what we see in Labyrinth. It involves a
Speaker 1: knight and a knave otherwise indistinguishable, who guard a fork
Speaker 1: in the road? Which what are you going to take.
Speaker 1: Dare you ask these two men, given that one is
Speaker 1: secretly a noble knight and one is secretly a vile nave.
Speaker 1: The solution, again is via answer laundering. You ask which
Speaker 1: path the other individual would say is the correct one,
Speaker 1: and then you can use that to determine which is
Speaker 1: the correct way. Sarah guesses correctly, but of course Sarah
Speaker 1: 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 1: I believe so.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, So she goes through the door and
Speaker 3: then immediately falls down a trapdoor into and there's like
Speaker 3: a so the pit she falls into. It's kind of
Speaker 3: funny 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 that
Speaker 3: actually that would be in return to Oz and then
Speaker 3: feel right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, great sequence, a very inventive use of
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 3: eventually Oh here she meets back up with Hoggle again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Rescued by Hoggle, they make a deal over some jewelry, right.
Speaker 3: I think there are some additional 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 1: Yep, yep, and they gets some limited amounts of wisdom
Speaker 1: from this character.
Speaker 3: Somewhere around here also is where we meet another one
Speaker 3: of the lovable friend to care aracters who become a
Speaker 3: part of Sarah's gang. This is Ludo. Ludo is initially
Speaker 3: caught in a trap and hanging upside down and being
Speaker 3: badgered by a bunch of goblins. Ludo is like a
Speaker 3: large sort of sasquatch type creature with sort of curving
Speaker 3: horns on his head, who appears very monstrous but in
Speaker 3: fact is actually quite sweet natured.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or if you're Gene Siskel, this is a ripoff
Speaker 1: of Chewbacca. What a ripoff?
Speaker 3: Because he has fur?
Speaker 1: Is that it?
Speaker 3: I guess he's big and has fur, therefore is Chewbacca.
Speaker 1: 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 1: With the nibbler sticks. Great sequence. And oh and then
Speaker 1: this is where they're doing the hobby horse technique here
Speaker 1: for the little guys running around. 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 She
Speaker 3: like gets the goblins all fighting each other until they
Speaker 3: run away, and then she frees him, and after that
Speaker 3: Ludo is friend. Now in this sequence, Hoggle runs away,
Speaker 3: but he'll show back up again later. I think somewhere
Speaker 3: around in here is where Sarah ends up running into
Speaker 3: the fire Gang.
Speaker 1: Yes, the fire Gang or the Fieries. Oh, These are
Speaker 1: creatures that have always been pure nightmare fuel to me.
Speaker 1: They're a band of musical bird like goblinoids with like
Speaker 1: bright you know, orange and fire colored feathers, fur somewhere
Speaker 1: in between. And they have disturbing natural abilities in the
Speaker 1: realms of pyrokinesis as well as dismemberment. They can rip
Speaker 1: their bodies apart and reattach them at will willy nilly
Speaker 1: in various positions. They can even connect their limbs together
Speaker 1: into new monstrous shapes. It's a sequence full of body, heart,
Speaker 1: dance music, Menace Mayham. It is a lot to process,
Speaker 1: but it is a musical number. The song here is
Speaker 1: David Bowie's Chilli Down. If you listen to the soundtrack
Speaker 1: Slash Score album, you get to hear Bowie singing on
Speaker 1: it a little bit of belief. But in the film
Speaker 1: it is performed by Kevin Klash born nineteen sixty as
Speaker 1: the voice of Elmo, the original voice of Elmo. He's
Speaker 1: the voice of the main fiery. Then you have Danny
Speaker 1: John Jules born nineteen sixty a British actor, dancer and
Speaker 1: singer who is also a member of the Blood Pack.
Speaker 1: In Blade two, he voices Fiery four, the really dangerous
Speaker 1: looking one. Then you have Charles Oggins, a British actor,
Speaker 1: dancer and choreographer who also choreographed this scene as well
Speaker 1: as the excellent magic dance scene from earlier. And then
Speaker 1: also you have actor Richard Bodkin doing a voice as well.
Speaker 1: So just some horrifying, freaky goblinoid creatures here performing a
Speaker 1: very wild song. And this whole sequence of course escalates
Speaker 1: into them deciding they need to dismember Jennifer Connelly. Sarah,
Speaker 1: they need to rip her head off, because you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to throw other people's heads, even though they throw
Speaker 1: each other's heads around earlier, Like they don't even follow
Speaker 1: their own rules. They're just pure creatures 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 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Pull harder.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: always like really struck me about this scene. It's like
Speaker 1: it's two different realities clashing. Their reality is one of
Speaker 1: just fun dismemberment. It's easily reversible and you can play
Speaker 1: with it. It's a good time for everybody, but Sarah
Speaker 1: is from a world where dismemberment is permanent. It is
Speaker 1: permanent and fatal, and they just don't understand that. Why
Speaker 1: don't you want to take your head off? What is
Speaker 1: the 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. This is the
Speaker 3: one where we get to see inside the Goblin Castle
Speaker 3: where David Bowie's hanging out. Toby is there with all
Speaker 3: the goblins. He's sort of crying. It looks like Toby's
Speaker 3: not having a great time, but the goblins are all partying,
Speaker 3: and I guess this song is sort of about how
Speaker 3: Toby's going to become one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great sequence, a great song. Bowie
Speaker 1: seems to be having a great time as Jareth here
Speaker 1: with throwing the baby around and just so many Goblin
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. When I was watching it here, I said to
Speaker 1: my son, he was watching with me. I was like,
Speaker 1: why doesn't this goblin just get a cup? Like they're
Speaker 1: not charging by the cup here, This is just this
Speaker 1: seems to be free for any goblins. But now he's like,
Speaker 1: it's just so much easier if I just lay down
Speaker 1: underneath it on the floor and just catch straight droplets
Speaker 1: of the stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the cup requires too much arm exercise. It's difficult.
Speaker 1: It's goblin, I guess. Yeah, so at any rate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fire Gang is something else.
Speaker 3: Yes, But Sarah does eventually escape the fire Gang with
Speaker 3: the help of Hoggle. I think Hoggle like throws down
Speaker 3: a ladder to her from the top of a top
Speaker 3: of a wall to help them get away, or maybe
Speaker 3: a rope. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And so she's able to escape and doesn't
Speaker 1: get ripped to pieces.
Speaker 3: But Hoggle and Sarah end up in the Bog 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 1: Yeah, for the rest of your life. And I've long
Speaker 1: puzzled over that, like how did it works? How does
Speaker 1: it permanently taint you like that? Does it change your biology?
Speaker 1: What would it look like in like Dungeons and Dragons rules?
Speaker 1: Is it like a permanent like disadvantage to all charisma
Speaker 1: 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 get out without touching the cursed water,
Speaker 3: and at one point they need to cross a bridge,
Speaker 3: but their path is blocked by a feisty little character
Speaker 3: who will later become part of our group of friends.
Speaker 3: This is Surditymus, who I think is either supposed to
Speaker 3: be a fox or some type of dog, though it's
Speaker 3: sort of confusing because he's a muppet who is an
Speaker 3: anthropomorphic fox or dog, but he rides a dog. He's
Speaker 3: got a dog that is a dog and he rides
Speaker 3: the dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of the Pluto Goofy paradox once more.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, Sirditamus is kind of a reap, a cheap
Speaker 3: sort of character. He's like, he's very small, and feisty
Speaker 3: and thinks himself very chivalrous and he's always itching for
Speaker 3: a fight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a lot of fun. He's he's always down
Speaker 1: to joust, but his mount of course frequent as not,
Speaker 1: 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 Dinimus. 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 Sirditimus, that he can just
Speaker 3: grant permission and still keep his vow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he's like, oh yeah, sure granted. They're like
Speaker 1: 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 1: That's right, And of course this will come into play
Speaker 1: in one of the big climaxes 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like this is one of Jared's temptations
Speaker 1: to her, like this is what your life could be
Speaker 1: if you just loved me and stayed with me here
Speaker 1: in this realm. And so it's this dreamy but also
Speaker 1: frightening sequence, you know, it is it feels like some
Speaker 1: sort of a weird trip, you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: great sequence, but it's not like there are there are
Speaker 1: a lot of uncanny elements to it. They're creepy masks,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of typical I guess, you know, period
Speaker 1: mass that the other dancers are wearing. They're Also there's
Speaker 1: a feeling of actually being like drugged, of reality being
Speaker 1: slowed down because she is drugged. But we have to
Speaker 1: remember if she ate a poisoned peach and that's how
Speaker 1: she's entered into this realm. And it's this feeling of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now the hallucination is upon her, and can she recognize
Speaker 1: it for the hallucination it is and break free from it?
Speaker 1: And in the midst of this, of course, we have
Speaker 1: another musical number, we get as the World Falls Down,
Speaker 1: which I mean, no big surprise. I love all of
Speaker 1: these songs, so I will also say this one is
Speaker 1: a great one. But but yeah, it's It has a
Speaker 1: nice dreamy air to it, a nice dancing and slow
Speaker 1: motion within a 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 she
Speaker 3: wakes up in a sort of a garbage world, a
Speaker 3: giant 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: little like trinkets and baubles and toys to I think
Speaker 3: this is part of a different type of temptation we
Speaker 3: were talking about earlier about her like multiple different desires
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the movie, and this is the
Speaker 3: temptation to just sort of regress, to go back into
Speaker 3: childhood and just obsess over over little trinkets and selfish
Speaker 3: toys and collecting little magic, glittering things. And the lady
Speaker 3: of the junk world is trying to tempt her into
Speaker 3: that fate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great sequence. It's also perhaps a little
Speaker 1: bit frightening because we you know, she goes into what
Speaker 1: seems to be her child room and it seems like
Speaker 1: maybe she's back, but then imburse the junk lady, and
Speaker 1: the junk Lady has this enormous backpack of stuff that
Speaker 1: has just seemed to like crush and wither her. And
Speaker 1: there is this scene where Sarah's seated in front of
Speaker 1: her mirror in her childhood room, but the junk Lady
Speaker 1: is bringing her all over things, and at least visibly
Speaker 1: from an a visible sense, piling up like a pile
Speaker 1: of things behind Sarah's back, as if constructing her own
Speaker 1: backpack that will eventually wither and crush her. You know, like,
Speaker 1: here are your earthly possessions. They are meaningful in and
Speaker 1: of themselves, and this is what you should cling to.
Speaker 1: You know, forget what they might represent. That's not important.
Speaker 1: 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 is. She meets up with
Speaker 3: and is rescued by her group of friends, including Hoggle, Anderditimus, and.
Speaker 1: Ludo, and so from here, basically to get to the
Speaker 1: Castle of the Center of the Center of the Goblin City,
Speaker 1: they're like two more obstacles. First there's like the gate,
Speaker 1: which has a big automaton in it, and then there
Speaker 1: is the Goblin City. The automaton battle is a sequence
Speaker 1: that I've always found to be very visually impressive. You know,
Speaker 1: I really like the creature design here, but it also
Speaker 1: has always felt like kind of a natural bathroom break.
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's something about it that it shouldn't.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's boring, but it is not as
Speaker 1: exciting as it should be.
Speaker 3: Hoggle is actually this is one where we get to
Speaker 3: see Hoggles brave though he's the one who defeats the
Speaker 3: Goblin mech.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually it's absolutely essential from that standpoint, But
Speaker 1: I don't know, I've always found something was lacking here.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we passed that test and now the party
Speaker 1: is united. Everyone's behind Sarah. But they have to move
Speaker 1: through the Goblin City, and that's where they are met
Speaker 1: with the Goblin army and we get this enormous battle.
Speaker 1: It's a real blast, a mad cap, slapstick battle for
Speaker 1: the ages, featuring every goblin you've seen in the film
Speaker 1: thus far. Just hordes of goblins of varying types, all
Speaker 1: sorts of shenanigans, explosions, sword fights, ludo calls the rocks.
Speaker 1: 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 1: So they get through that, and then it's time for
Speaker 1: the final showdown with Jarreff in Jareth's stronghold, and we
Speaker 1: get the scene where we see versions of this in
Speaker 1: a lot of pictures, right, and a lot of stories.
Speaker 1: Sarah has to go in alone. She has to confront
Speaker 1: Jareth alone. Her friends can't help her in this part
Speaker 1: of the quest, and so they say goodbye to her
Speaker 1: and she ventures into this mc escher world of you know,
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, this was another I think there's a poster in
Speaker 1: her room to this effect as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we get a song here, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is within you. That is it's really great
Speaker 1: because it's threatening, it's very threatening in places, but it's
Speaker 1: also very vulnerable in places. And Bowie's vocal performance here
Speaker 1: is great too, because you have these parts of it
Speaker 1: where he's very firm and commanding, and then other bits
Speaker 1: where his voice is like trailing off and growing weak,
Speaker 1: like almost like he is dying while singing it. Because
Speaker 1: this is all, of course Jared's final appeal to Sarah,
Speaker 1: like please, you know, just fall in line, you know,
Speaker 1: be here with me, don't defy me. And no, Sarah
Speaker 1: is going to stick to her guns and she is
Speaker 1: going to do what it takes to defeat Jarreff. What
Speaker 1: exactly that is I still have questions about, but 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 Jarref. 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 hardship's 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: of it is that the time that she had to
Speaker 3: rescue Toby by and Jarreth is defeated, and so she
Speaker 3: gets to go back home with Toby.
Speaker 1: Thirteen o'clock, I believe, I think, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's thirteen pm.
Speaker 3: Or am, But I like how there's an ending where
Speaker 3: she sort of reconciles her earlier frustrations with Toby, Like
Speaker 3: she you know, repents of her earlier scapegoating of Toby
Speaker 3: because Toby wasn't really the problem, you know, she was, Like,
Speaker 3: she's just struggling with herself and her role in life
Speaker 3: at this point, and I think she has some perspective
Speaker 3: on that. But also I like how she ends up
Speaker 3: sort of reconciling her relationship with fantasy. She realizes she
Speaker 3: has to part ways with her magical friends, she has
Speaker 3: to live in this world, but she also needs to
Speaker 3: see them from time to time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So she defeats Jared again, I never doubt this
Speaker 1: on an emotional level, you know what's happening, Like she
Speaker 1: finds the strength to overcome him, and then she's back
Speaker 1: in her room. She sees like the reflection of her
Speaker 1: friends through the mirror, but realize that she can call
Speaker 1: on them when she needs them, and then she does
Speaker 1: and we get like a final big party sequence in
Speaker 1: her room, which is great. Though I've always been disturbed
Speaker 1: by the fact that the Fire Gang members are there, Yes, like,
Speaker 1: why did you invite them? Why did you could have
Speaker 1: maybe just let them go, Sarah, It's right, you don't
Speaker 1: have to keep all of these strange creatures. Maybe let
Speaker 1: the fire guys go off and live their own life
Speaker 1: and oblivion. But no, they're there as well, but they
Speaker 1: seem to be well behaved. They're not trying to pull
Speaker 1: anybody apart.
Speaker 3: I invited the bog of eternal stench here it's in
Speaker 3: my sink now.
Speaker 1: And we once more get the theme song underground and
Speaker 1: we roll back. We see that the owl, the animal
Speaker 1: form of Jarreff, has like been watching through the window
Speaker 1: and then takes off and flies away into the night.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, it is. It's like I say, very like
Speaker 1: 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 1: I could not disagree with Ciskel more on Labyrinth. I
Speaker 1: mean the thing. It really was challenging to talk about
Speaker 1: Labyrinth here in some respects because you could go on
Speaker 1: and on, or I could go on and on about
Speaker 1: just about any moment in the picture. There's always something
Speaker 1: interesting going on in the set design or in the costuming,
Speaker 1: in the particular dialogue choices that are in play lyrics
Speaker 1: to the songs. There are some weird lyrics to these
Speaker 1: songs we didn't even get into. There are also lines
Speaker 1: of dialogue, particularly from David Bowie. Some of them I
Speaker 1: never fully understood, Like I couldn't really understand what he's
Speaker 1: saying until like this viewing of the picture where I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I'm going to turn on the
Speaker 1: captions for a minute, and it's like, oh, he's saying,
Speaker 1: well laugh, And I always thought he said well love.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought that was the line,
Speaker 1: but that's what I've been hearing for decades. Huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the kind of movie where I feel
Speaker 3: like a lot of things, especially and you're watching as
Speaker 3: a kid, can just go right over your head.
Speaker 1: But you know, there are lots of confusing things in
Speaker 1: the world of the Labyrinth. Yeah, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: film in a world full of paradoxes and illusions, and
Speaker 1: it's part of its texture. There was some essay I
Speaker 1: was looking at. Maybe it's the one I sided earlier
Speaker 1: talking about well, some people were confused when they saw
Speaker 1: Jarref when they saw David Bowie's Chariot, and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should be confused when you behold Jared. He is
Speaker 1: supposed to be this alluring and kind of confusing character,
Speaker 1: Like that's 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 1: Right? That? And then also some of the aspects of
Speaker 1: Jariff being a like a sexually alluring character, but in
Speaker 1: a way that makes sense, like he is he is
Speaker 1: like his role is in relationship to Sarah, a young woman,
Speaker 1: and therefore he has these kind of like pop star
Speaker 1: las to him, you know. Yeah, And so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of deliberate choices with the way that he
Speaker 1: has presented as an object of obsession and desire.
Speaker 3: Like would be on a poster on a bedroom wall.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but a bedroom but a poster on the
Speaker 1: bedroom wall that also is directly bordering of the fay
Speaker 1: world and is influenced by the strange energies of the
Speaker 1: fairy folk.
Speaker 3: Yes, why do you think jareded is an owl?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the owl ism is a magical bird
Speaker 1: of the night, so I guess it is a fitting
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, all right, Well, we're gonna gohead and close this
Speaker 1: one out, but we would love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: about Labyrinth. I'm sure a lot of you have thoughts,
Speaker 1: thoughts about things that we discussed in this episode, but
Speaker 1: also again many of the details in the picture that
Speaker 1: we didn't have time to get into, so right in,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you or reminded of stuff.
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