Labyrinth...I'm gonna need your guys help on this one... (Spoilers...)

That would be awesome, cause she kinda sounded like she knew what she was talking about in Pans, (Although, on the whole I have a looooot of quams with that one in general, mostly unanswered questions, (that is, unless you answered them in the missing wrap up))

Anyways, yah, I'd been wanting to get around to this one for a while, and I mean I thought I would love it, and everyone I've ever heard talk about it loves it. So I'm seriously just wondering wtf?

I wonder if it's just one of those childhood things, where everyone just grew up loving this movie and thats sorta stuck...

Actually yeah - the dividing line between Pan's Labyrinth and Labyrinth is extremely thin.   They share a lot of the same problems - most everything maul2 just said about Labyrinth applies to Pan's Labyrinth as well.  Both movies are a lot of cool visuals in service of a story that doesn't hold together.   

And fairy tales - which both movies pretend to be - should be the simplest, most straightforward kinds of stories, all about action and consequence and overcoming a problem and learning a lesson therefrom.   

But instead, both Labyrinths are a collection of near-random events that meander about until they decide to roll the credits and let you get on with your life.    It's odd that the Henson people didn't sue del Toro for plagiarism.

Last edited by Trey (2010-05-31 23:21:03)

Alright I'll give yah that yes, Ludo is awesome. But you know, it's the same as Pan's the creatures on thier own are awesome, it would just be great if they had a point.

But honestly (Despite the fact that she's like, 16 in Labyrinth) she really doesn't do much for me.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2010-06-01 00:02:56)

Target.

In response to Maul2's original query:

Okay, here it is, the first time I lay myself open to being wrong on the interwebs in my writing. How critical I am of a story seems to depend on how seriously a movie takes itself; Pan’s Labyrinth was a serious Film with a capital F, with no puppets that looked like foam balls with slits for mouths or googly eyes singing wacky songs that would appeal to small children. It did, however, have graphic violence making some edgy statement about how mean fascists were during the 40’s. That is seriously the only coherent message I can get from this obviously-not-child oriented-movie.

I place Labyrinth on the same level that I do Muppet Treasure Island. You want to poke holes in those stories, I’m not going to stop you. I will still dance around my mother's living room with my little brother, who is the most serious 21 year old astrophysics major I have ever known, singing “Dance Magic, Dance,” and sit in unabashed wonder of various prop/puppet design and David Bowie’s mullet/package/contact juggling.

Aside: Yes, I know that’s actually Michael Moschen inelegantly standing behind David Bowie as though in a middle school talent show, I still learned to contact juggle because of that movie. I also quote Muppet Treasure Island on an almost daily basis. Still feelin’ pretty cool.

I agree, through some combination of an 80’s synth pop soundtrack/ musical landscape and a blatantly cartoon ensemble, the stakes never seem that high in Labyrinth. This movie suffers in part from what I call “The Goonie Phenomena”; if you saw Goonies before the age of 10 or so it has a special place in your heart and makes you (like me) squeal and clap at appropriate moments. If not, you don’t understand why other people seem to care so goddamn much. It has more to do with emotional bond one created when they first watched the film. I don’t care for “Legend,” but I can see where you could be very fond of it, having grown up with it, I didn’t see it until college.   

In defense of the Labyrinth screenplay, Sarah goes through exactly the kind of transformation I believe is necessary to make a story worth watching. In the beginning she is an inexcusably whiny bitch, she literally throws herself down on her bed, sobbing “I hate you” into her pillow, referencing her rather reasonable seeming step-mother, who wants her to babysit her burden of an infant half-brother, cutting into her valuable reciting poetry in the park and putting on lipstick time. I found that laughably over-dramatic even at the height of my spoiled upper-middle-class over-dramatic whitegirlness.       

She comes to understand the gravity of what she has done, and at first it is about whether or not she’s gong to get in trouble, but it becomes more than that...she is a better person, she redeems herself, she is happy to see her intact baby brother.

I’m not saying it’s not formulaic, I’m saying it’s a kid’s movie that for some reason graphically showcases some spandex-clad glam rock genitalia. Sarah has an arc, while Pan's Ofelia does not. Sarah could live forever as a queen at mulleted David Bowie’s contact juggling side, but she goes through a bunch of shit, and saves the baby she that she actively despised and wished kidnapped and gone forever, beginning this whole kerfuffle with her self-centered bullshit. (And it makes sense that if some magic poem made it so that he could come and take the baby, some magic poem should make it so he had no power over her. Through-lines and consistency are neat.)

Meanwhile, Pan’s Labyrinth demonstrates no character arc, nobody does anything they wouldn’t have done in the beginning by the end. Except the Fawn, who decides that her negligence and getting his friends killed did not prove, as he said it would, that she had been tainted from too much exposure to the mortal realm. Ofelia did not learn a fucking thing, other than “if I fail a trial through shear carelessness, I’ll get a second chance...oh, and the step-father that was mean to me in the beginning is even meaner now that I’m an orphan. Grand."

I feel like Pans Labyrinth was initally praised for its VFX, but in all honesty the story and everything else  was kinda boring and lame IMO. And even if they are "kids movies" I've seen better/stronger ones.

Geez, guys. Manners much? Since nobody else has stated the obvious, I'll go for it:

Goddamn, Cloe.

Oh yeah, welcome to the forums, Cloe.