You remind me of the babe! - Labyrinth (1986)

"What babe?"
"The babe from that Jim Henson movie with David Bowie and young Jennifer Connelly, co-written by Terry Jones, where George Lucas was a producer and also co-writer on!"

Great little '80s movie, with quite some talent involved (seriously: look at that list of names). Does anyone know specifically which bits of the story are Lucas'?

 

Perhaps this'll get more replies if you put 'labyrinth discussion thread' in the title, however more entertaining and now stuck in my head that song is. What kind of magic spell to use...
anyway. i'm not sure, i didn't actually know he was involved! That's interesting. The Labyrinth odd in that it's a movie rarely referenced (outside of the occasional 'david bowie's bulge' joke) and yet most people seem to know it (I'm 23 so it should be before my time, but i watched it on VHS a LOT as a kid). The disney channel show Gravity Falls was going to have an episode that would have been a plot-sized parody of it, but disney execs said no one would get the jokes .

 

I think it's achieved some sort of cult status and kids today still come across it - I work in TV, and one of my assistants spotted a random person in some footage who was almost a dead ringer for Ludo:



(Sorry, can't post a picture of the freakish looking woman, but it was uncanny)

What surprised me, though, was that the guy who picked it wasn't even born when Labyrinth was released, and I didn't remember Ludo's name, but he did. He wasn't some sort of film geek, either, so I imagine a lot of these films get a new life every few years.

Anyway, has to be done:



Count Yubnub - any objection to adding 'Labyrinth (1986)' to the thread title? Just for a bit of clarification.

 

You can change the title to "Labyrinth (1986) discussion thread" or something like that if you like, and then add "You remind me of the babe" as the first sentence of the OP.

I figured that "You remind me of the babe" would be funnier as a thread title, and everyone who would know the answer to my question would instantly recognize the quote anyway, but since 2 out of 2 posters have now commented on that, I guess you're right that we might as well make this a general Labyrinth discussion thread. It's a joint Henson Studios/LFL production, so it belongs here, after all.

Me neither!

As a side note, Terry Jones' involvement was a bigger surprise to me personally. What's especially surprising there is that the wikipedia entry on the movie suggests that Jones' early scripts were much darker than the eventual movie turned out to be and not as humorous, which is weird--one would think anything written by him would be supremely silly. This is a Monty Python guy, after all.

Dammit, I totally forgot to make a bulge joke in my OP. "Starring Jennifer Connelly and the bulge in David Bowie's pants."

BTW, the CG owl in the beginning of the movie may have the very first time someone tried to do a real-live animal using CGI in a feature movie, right?

 

Well I like the thread title. Threw me right back to the song.

I know Henson and GL were very good friends and collaborators. We have Henson to thank for introducing GL to Frank Oz. Yoda could have been very different otherwise. I'm not particularly fond of Labyrinth as a movie, but I am impressed with the amount of work that was put into it. There's some behind the scenes footage of GL visiting the set and being thoroughly amazed by what Henson had been up to.

 

There's a retrospective bit on the DVD/Blu-ray--I'm not sure when it was filmed, I'm guessing about a decade ago--which includes George Lucas, and he talks very highly of Henson and his team, saying that they were the absolute height of the art of puppeteering, and so on.

(Of course I realize that's what people do, on those behind-the-scenes things on DVD/BRs--they praise their collaborators into high heaven. Anyway...)

 

I knew exactly what movie the thread title came from. Love Labyrinth.

 

There seemed to be a little pocket of these fantasy/fairy tale films in the 1980s - Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story, Return to Oz, The Dark Crystal, Dragonslayer - not to mention more adult fantasy adventure films like Conan the Barbarian and the magnificent Excalibur. It's not much of a stretch to suggest that SW was largely responsible for them getting the green light.

Unfortunately, a lot of them bombed at the box office, as did many a slipshod sci-fi film trying to cash in the the Star Wars dollar. Pity, really - CGI gave such ideas a new life in the 1990s, but the need for solid storylines got left behind. It wasn't until LOTR that genuine, well-written fantasy made its way back into the mainstream.

 

"Willow" deserves a mention here, considering it's another LFL production. Also "Legend" comes to mind. But yeah SW might very well be partially responsible for those films getting a green light.

Harry Potter.

 

Don't forget Krull...if for no other reason than James Horner's AMAZING music score (same can be said for Willow).

 

Just watched Labyrinth the other night. Read the new Henson biography for some fresh info abt Lucas's involvement.

 

Ooohhh... you're talking a few weeks apart in late 2001, but quite right. I'll leave my opinions about HP at the door.

 

Well, yeah, obviously Harry Potter was being made regardless of whether the LOTR movies were being made--they were capitalizing on the books' success. But I suspect that the success of the HP books/movies did influence the success of other books/movies--I'm pretty sure that without HP, no Twilight (*) or Percy Jackson, possibly no Pirates of the Caribbean.

But yeah, maybe I shouldn't have included HP in "well-written fantasy." Just talking about how influential the HP franchise was.


(*) And, by extension, no 50 Shades of Grey, but that's another story .

 

There are two lunchboxes that stick out from my childhood. The first was Rambo: First Blood Part II (back in the days when they marketed R-rated movies to children. Gotta love the 80's), and the second was Labyrinth. I adored that Labryinth lunchbox, and I didn't even care when people made fun of me because it was pink.

In short, I love the hell out of this movie.

 

I own this book, which is a very large collection of conceptual design drawings and sketches for goblins by Brian Froud, along with hilarious notes by Terry Jones. Highly recommended for diehard fans of the movie!



Also, check out this brief spoof with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman. It's not nearly quite as funny as they probably thought it was going to be while making it, it's still worth checking out--if only for how Palmer has her mouth half-open all the time just like Jennifer Connelly does in the movie:

 

I knew exactly what this post was about by the title hahaha I loved the Labyrinth as a kid and it was actually on TV here not long ago and it was great to watch it again.......it's up there with the Princess Bride as my favourite all time movies

 

Harry Potter isn't a well written fantasy?

hmmm, well opinions vary I suppose.

Anyway: Labyrinth> brill film etc etc

 

I like Labryrinth, though never saw this in the theater - I remember when this came out in '86. At the time, I felt this was more for kids & dismissed it, but ended up seeing it years later on DVD. And, after seeing this, I do agree it's a great fantasy film w/good puppets/prosthetics, as well as a solid story. Not a huge David Bowie fan, but I liked his music & role in this as well.

 

I love this movie and love Terry Jones's script.

 

krull was one of fav movies as a kid. i re-watched legend recently as well. unfortunately i only saw labyrinth once and haven't seen it since. i wish it was on netflix.

 

I had such an 80's kid crush on Jennifer Connelly.

Come to think of it, I still do..........

 

We watched it in out High School Mythology class. The music is catchy. I really think it sucks movies like this bombed out at the box office, because they are better than most of the dreck that grossed a lot. Probably remembered more than most of the movies that year.

 

Not necessarily his finest moment, but I thought it was appropriate, for this forum, at least.



The term 'legend' gets tossed around in pop culture quite a bit - David Bowie was one of those few who truly were the real deal.

R.I.P.

 

It's a tragedy to lose a guy as talented as Bowie.

 

He was truly a genius. Had to watch Labyrinth again last night. What a trip, talk about 80's flashbacks. I loved him in it.

But Space Oddity (Major Tom) is still one of my favs