Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 80: Jim Henson's Labyrinth

Episode Date: February 2, 2018

Jeremy, Chris, and Benj have only 13 hours in which to discuss 1986's Jim Henson/George Lucas/David Bowie Muppet-style cult classic movie musical Labyrinth… oh, and also, the games based on it.

This week in Retronauts, they're dangers untold and hardships unnumbered. We have fought our way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City. a delightful, micro-sized episode of Retronauts, I am Jeremy Parrish, and there's some people here with me. Talk, people. I'm Chris Sims, and you remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power. What? What power? The power of voodoo. Oh, okay. And also suffering fools with patience. Ben Edwards, and whatever Chris said. Ben Jibwards, who does not have any lines of dialogue memorized. He is our toby. Dance, magic dance. Oh no, he is our Bowie. How about that? Yeah.

Yes. And so this episode, it's a little something different. It's something I've been wanting to do ever since taking Retronauts full time and have just not found the inclination or opportunity to do it. And that is talk about things that are video game related, but not necessarily focus on the games themselves. Expand into other classic media, things that we grew up with and have fond memories for, and that do have some video game ties. But, you know, maybe the video game aspect of it is not the most. interesting thing to talk about. And in this case, we're talking about the Jim Hinson, George Lucas, David Bowie collaboration, known as Labyrinth, a fine movie, one that I found out in reading and doing my research was a tremendous financial flop. It made back like half its budget, which is heartbreaking because it's so good. But it has become a cult classic and is beloved by a generation of people. I actually just in an episode of my movie fighters'

about the Beastmaster. And we discovered that the Beastmaster did an episode of my movie fighters podcast about the Beastmaster. And we discovered that the Beastmaster did. make its money back. It was made for a budget of around $9 million and ended up making, I think, $20 in 1982. But I suspect that Labyrinth is in a similar position of getting its money back and its fame through showing on HBO and VHS and TBS and the Watch Fox movie machine. Yeah, from what I read, this movie made back half its budget. It was made on a budget of $25 million in 1986, which is... That's a lot, right?

It's not. Back then, it was, that was kind of like a mid-budget movie. I mean, they were... Wow, that's a mid-budget movie. Movies were starting to come in at like the $100 million mark at that point. I mean, considering how good that movie looks, which it really does, thanks largely the fact that it's almost entirely practical effects. Right.

We'll talk about that. Like, that's, I mean, that's a respectable budget for that film. Right. But unfortunately, it only made 12.5 million in theaters during its theatrical run. So that's a huge flop. was a major disappointment. That was like a string of Lucasfilm disappointments. You know,

you had Willow and Howard the Duck and then Labyrinth. So things were looking kind of bad for old George. Things got better eventually. Did they, though, did they actually get better? Okay. To the point where he could like give $7 billion to charity, yes.

That is true. Yeah. So you're putting the blame for this movie on George Lucas and not Jim Henson? No, I think it was just like, I think the appeal of this movie was very difficult. to communicate. And it was, it's a pretty strange movie, which is what makes it so interesting. It's like, it's a movie no one else would make now because this was a huge financial flop.

Oh, if you have not seen it recently. This movie, this movie survived, you know, like you said through HBO, through VHS, like people gradually, you know, they would watch it at sleepovers or see it at a friend's house or see it on TV and would be like, oh, this, this is interesting. And, you know, the songs in the movie are all earworms. It's one of those things that people might not actively seek out, but When they see it, they can't help it stop and be intrigued by it. It's such a fascinating movie and so good.

If you have not seen it lately, it is weirder than you remember. And not a lot of movies can live up to that claim. Now that I've watched it with an adult eye as opposed to a child's eye, I'm like, wow, this is a sexy movie in a weird kind of like creepy dad kind of way. Like, no one else could have pulled off the role of Jared, Jarrett, besides David Bowie. Like, he's very intimidating, very sexual, like, looming over this 14-year-old girl in a way that, like, I can't imagine that working in any other context. But with him, it doesn't seem quite so predatory. There is, like, this intriguing sexual appeal to him. And I can see why this movie has a certain cachet with some people.

I feel like this is a movie about, in some ways, a metaphor for a sexual awakening. And for many people, it was a literal sexual awakening. Yeah, I have to imagine that David Bowie swanning around in his leather pants with his... His very bulging leather pants. Basically looking like Tina Turner and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with incredible eyeliner was the source of quite a few awakenings. I think so. I think this game, or this game, this movie, you watch it when you're like 10. 11, 12 years old, and it's like a litmus test for where you're going to land on the sexual

spectrum. Like, I know a lot of, I've seen, you know, just through Tumblr blogs and people talking on social media and writing articles, like, a lot of women were like, oh, David Bowie. And a lot of boys were like, oh, David Bowie. And I was like, oh, Jennifer Connolly. So, like, it's kind of a good, you know, like those things that divide out coins when you roll the coins down to them. Like, this figures out which slot you're going to go into. I have a strange history with this movie, which is that... That was not an intended metaphor, by the way. Sorry. Yeah.

I have a strange history, which is that I did not see it. Despite being a huge Jim Henson fan and growing up in the 80s, I did not see it until I was in high school. And I was in a big Jim Henson kick, and I wanted to be a puppet, puppeteer. And I almost went to New York to try out for Sesame Street. Wow. Because I had this Kerm of the Frog puppet that I modified and I was making videos with it. You know, your shirt is actually Oscar the Grouch colored.

I can't really do an Oscar voice. Hi, hole, this is probably not Oscar. Yeah. Hi, hole, this is Oscar the Grouch. All right. So, yeah, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, so I first experienced it as like an 18-year-old, I guess. And at that time, I thought, man, this is really cool, but the music is cheesy and stuff.

I didn't like it that much at the time. But, you know, the puppetry and the practical effects are tour-to-force top-notch puppetry. You know, like the best, like the best puppet creatures ever made. But then I watched it again, I don't know, like 10 years ago when I was older, you know, 20 something. And then I thought, man, this is really awkward. It's weird that David Bowie likes this 14-year-old girl and stuff. And then I just watched it again yesterday. And I thought, I don't know what I thought was so weird about this.

It's, you know, it's cool. You know, I don't see anything. It didn't feel awkward anymore. I don't know what's changed about me. Roy Moore. Yeah. What? No, not several ways.

Sorry. I honestly think that the, a thing that keeps it watchable and interesting and keeps it from seeming predatory is that David Bowie is playing opposite Jennifer Connolly, but not playing David Bowie adult man. He's playing King, King Jareth the Goblin King. Yeah, who is very much not, like, like, he's recognizably human in appearance, but like seems very fairy tale. in a way that I think helps to blunt what in a less well-made movie and less well-cast movie would come off as, like, predatory in the way that a lot of fairy tales do when you're an adult. Yeah, like, this movie would not work with anyone besides David Bowie in that role, and it definitely would not hold up if they had gone with some of their original casting ideas,

which includes Michael Jackson. Yeah. That would have been such a mistake in ways that no one could have predicted. But David Bowie, like, there is this sort of almost otherworldliness about him. That was his entire schick in the 70s. He was, you know, he was Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars. Like, he was the visitor from another planet. He was the man who fell to Earth.

So, yeah, you're right. Like, he doesn't come across as like, oh, my God, why is his, why is her uncle hitting on her? It's not like that. He's got the crazy teased up, updo wig and the, like, the outfit that's kind of Rinfair and also kind of like biker punk. Like it's, it's just so strange. And he's doing like these magic tricks and singing around and hanging out with little puppet goblins and stuff.

Like everything about this movie should be gross and horrible and weird. But it, you know, then it has that element of Jim Hinson about it, which gives it a certain innocence. And also Brian Froud, the visual designer and kind of like the creative lead on this movie who has this sort of like, I don't know, like an almost. like, you know, Shakespearean vision of what goblins and fairies should be, like, Queen Mab kind of thing. Like, they're not necessarily your friends, but they're weird and otherworldly.

There's some Mory Sondack to it, to the point that Mory Sondack was like, hey, guys, you don't have my permission to do this, and I'm going to hit you with a C&D. So, yeah, like, it pulls together all these disparate influences, and everything about it should be a disaster, but it's not. And yeah, it's a really fascinating movie to go back and watch. I think one of the interesting pieces of David Bowie's contribution in particular is that there is that scene, it's the scene where they sing the Babe with the Power, where it starts off and it's David Bowie hanging out with a bunch of goblin, goblins, and he looks like he belongs with them in a way that is partially because he looks so comfortable. And it's that same, you know, it's the Jim Henson trick of people.

People act like the Muppets around them are just other people. But he blends into that scene so well that it's like, oh, right, he's Jarrett the Goblin King, of course. David Bowie is a Muppet. How about that? We never knew. Never knew. He's always been a Muppet. I think the Bowie was a brilliant casting decision.

I think I wish that they had, I don't like that first song, the Magic Dance number. It really throws you out of the. The picture You remind me It's a babe What babe With the power Power

Who do You do Do what Remind me at the babe So my baby Crying What could What could I do

My baby's love Had gone You left my baby Blue Nobody do But the rest of the music I think it's important, though, to kind of set up an element of innocence and whimsy to the goblins. Like, it could be really, like, it could have gone a different way, because here is the goblin king who abducts a baby and sort of taunts and torments a teenage girl to, like, come to his lair in order to rescue her son or her step-sibling.

Like, they could have been really dark, but instead, you know, the first thing, when you see Jarrett and his element, it's dancing around and kind of. vamping and glamping and singing with goblin puppets and throwing a stuffed baby around into the air. So, yeah, I feel like that scene needs to be there to sort of diffuse the movie and keep it from going in bad directions. Yeah, too dark or something. I read that Terry Jones did the screenplay or the original screenplay, the Monty Python veteran. And I read something about that he sent the screenplay off to Jim Henson and it came back and then he said

Jareth sings and he's like, what? Like he didn't expect the musical element to come into it. Yeah, but once they cast David Bowie, they were like, we got to have some songs in here. And Bowie wrote like five original compositions for this movie. Which really makes me wonder what it would be like

if 1982 Michael Jackson had written songs for this movie instead. Because it would have been a completely different... It would have been creepy as well. Like, I'm sorry. 82 Michael Jackson hadn't gone really like where what happened to you like that point there were there were rumors that he was kind of weird and outlandish but peak Michael Jackson but you know still peak peak peak oh yeah like getting getting those songs like the same ideas of songs filtered through like off the wall era Michael Jackson as opposed to post thin white Duke era David Bowie would have been a very different feel and like I'm I am kind of fascinated by that idea. I think I had the opposite experience that Benj did in terms of my relationship to this movie because it was one of the few movies that we owned on VHS when I was a kid.

And so we watched it all the time, particularly because my sister, whose name was Sarah, very much identified with the idea of an older sister who wanted the Goblin King to come and abduct her little brother and hide him in the center of a lot. Yeah, I was the little brother. I think she would have much referred to hanging out with David Bowie than me. Yeah. Okay, so just a quick note here to say we are going to talk about video game stuff in a while, but I feel like I don't have to justify talking about the movie because Bob has done some episodes, like the recent Animaniacs episode, where he just talks about mostly the cartoons and then some video game stuff. So you're in for a penny and a pound, folks.

But yeah, my, oh, sorry. We haven't talked about Jennifer Connolly yet, though. Was it awkward for Jimmy? Henson to direct this 14-year-old doing a sexual awakening, like you put it, you know. That's what I always was curious about. So, like, how does, uh, he has a, he had a daughter, you know, he has a daughter, he has a son. But it's not really played like that.

It's all subtext. She's not like sitting there going, oh, David Bowie. It's nothing, it's nothing overt like that. It's, it's really, I would say the biggest theme of the movie, the sexual awakening is, is, like, a secondary aspect that is kind of an undercurrent that. that is maybe unavoidable considering the way David Bowie looks. But it's not really about that. It's about her growing up.

It's about her coming to terms with the end of childhood in a metaphorical sense. And, you know, putting aside, literally putting aside childish things. Like there's a scene where she has to, you know, reconcile the fact that she has all these things that she loves that she keeps in her bedroom and that they're just weighing her down and keeping her from growing up. Oh, the hoarder monster? Yeah, the junkly. He's the creepiest part of that. the movie for me as a kid. Yeah, because, you know, she's just, like, turning Sarah into herself by giving, like, putting, all, piling all the things that Sarah loves, like

her stuff dolls and her books and things like that. Like, piling on those on her and turning her into an effigy of herself. And as a kid who, like, probably all three of us and like a lot of our listeners, uh, I was into action figures. I was into comic books. I was into, to video games, which are very much things where you gather things. Like, you know, you don't just go get, you don't even just go get like a cobra commander. You get all the different cobra commanders and you get all the different G.I. Joes. And you have to get all the different comic books if you have any kind of collector mentality. And so even as like a, like a six-year-old, like I could understand this idea of those things becoming a burden in a way that I don't think I would have if it had been explained to me in any other way.

Right. And that scene really resonated with me. And I love the fact, the thing I genuinely love about Labyrinth is the fact that that idea of having to put aside your childish things is not the end of that discussion. Because at the end of the movie, Hoggle is a doll. Well, everything in the Labyrinth is, you know, this is clearly a fantasy that she has like a vision based on the things in her life. Yeah. Like David Bowie, Jareth, is based on, if you look, there's a, there's newspaper clippings of, her mother who was a stage actor, meeting, I don't know if it's David Bowie or someone who just

happens to be played by David Bowie, but there's a photo clipping with her mother, who, by the way, has passed away. And like, she lives with her stepmother, the evil stepmother, who's actually not that bad a person. She just cares about her stepdaughter. But, but, yeah, like, all of these things are drawn from her, her memory. Yeah. And this idea of not just having to leave things behind, but having to change your relationship with them. And knowing that, like, all of these things that you loved can weigh you down, but that you can also move past them and still have them as part of your past

and still go to revisit them is like a really mature way to look at growing up. Yeah. And really, I think, influential for like a generation of kids who saw that and grew up to a host nostalgia podcast about old video games.

Yeah. I mean, at the end, she's back in, you know, she's solved the labyrinth and gotten back her brother and she's in her room and she sees a vision of her friends from the labyrinth

talking to her, like kind of sadly saying, oh, well, I guess this is time for us to go. But if you need us, and she's like, oh, yeah, I'll need you sometimes. Don't go away forever. Like, there's still a place in my life for these things, these, these elements of whimsy. Like, I'm not totally outgrowing that. You can, you can move past a thing without forsaking it is an interesting piece of that story. Okay. So we haven't actually really talked about what Labyrinth is, like as a description. I mean, obviously it's a movie. It's got puppets and David Bowie. But, oh, by the way, my experience with the movie was that I saw it in the theaters. my mother was a big David Bowie fan and she was like, hey, we're going to go see this movie. She did that sometimes.

She would just like take us to movies that she wanted to see saying, like, you're going to go see a movie. And, you know, so that's how I saw Princess Bride and all these other kind of like cult favorites because she was kind of tuned into that. It was like, this is my kind of thing. So we went to see Labyrinth. And yeah, I was like, oh, this movie is crazy. I was probably in fifth or sixth grade at that point. And so like I said, you know, I was like, I had a huge crush on Jennifer Connolly for the longest time. and I still think she's awesome.

But, you know, I saw it still kind of, you know, as a kid, and then I've revisited it a few different times through the years. And each time, you know, like every five, ten years, I go back and watch it again. And I'm like, oh, there's something more to this than I realized at the time. It's a very multi-layered movie. But the premise of the movie is there is a girl named Sarah who is kind of, you know, she's 14.

She's kind of at that awkward threshold between childhood and growing up. and her mother has passed away and her father has remarried and she feels like, oh, my life is miserable. She has a stepbrother named Toby that she has to take care of while her parents go out and, you know, go on a date or whatever. And she just feels so put upon. Everything is terrible. My evil stepmother hates me. Blah, blah, blah, blah. No one loves me. So she's babysitting her brother. Her brother is being, you know, a baby. He's crying. He's unhappy. There's a lightning storm outside. So he's freaked out. And she's like, I wish the goblins would take you away and all of a sudden it gets quiet. And that's because the

Goblins came and took the baby away. And the King of the Goblins appears to her in the guise of David Bowie, looking very beguiling, who's spinning, crystal balls, doing this crazy juggling routine. Yeah, pretty much. This is very anime. This is such an anime movie. It is. But he's like, okay, I've taken your brother, so

isn't that great? And she's like, no, you can't do that. I didn't mean it. And he said, too late, what's said to said? So, you can come to the Central of the Labyrinth. You have 13 hours. And if you don't make it, then he becomes a goblin forever. So she travels into the labyrinth, makes friends,

learns about herself, eventually confronts David Bowie, sorry, Jarith, and confronts her inner demons and wins her brother back. So that's the general... And then there's some Ludo on the way.

Yes. Udo is Spanish for a game. Really? Cool. Like Ludoography. Yes. Yeah, so,

so like that description makes it sound like kind of a goofy movie. And I guess it is, but it's what happens inside the labyrinth. Like, like I said, it was, you know, the visual design was all Toby Frow or David Fraud. No. Toby Frowd. Brian Frowd was his son, who was cast as the baby and his name was supposed to be like Jackie or Mikey or something, but he would only respond

to his own name. So he ended up being renamed in the movie, Toby. Yes. So this movie followed pretty much immediately after the production of the Dark Crystal. And the Dark Crystal, if you've ever seen it is a movie that I would say that is Henson's tour to force. It is a movie created entirely with puppets. There's not a single human being visible in that movie. It is a crazy, dark, gothic, otherworldly drama featuring evil spirits and, like, conjunctions of sons and mysticism and like a crazy woman with one eye. It's a, it's a wild, wild movie. And it was very, very dark. And people were like, wow, this is Jim Henson. This isn't like the Muppet show at all. So he decided to do

something a little lighter with his follow-up movie. And that ended up being labyrinth, which I guess was maybe too light, but also too dark. And I don't know. For some reason, people just didn't really go out and see it, even though it starred David Bowie right after the album fame, which was the peak of his commercial success. But even he wasn't enough to sell that movie to people. Yeah. What was it, 86?

Yeah, it was when the movie came out. The funny thing is, I saw the dark crystal when I was, like, little, and it terrified me, especially the eyeballs popping out of her head and she could see from a distance or something. I've actually never seen it. Really? Yeah. I think you'd enjoy it.

It just doesn't. I probably would. It doesn't resonate with me. I thought that the little gelfling creatures were ugly and just horrifying little. I guess, I guess if you don't like the looks at the protagonist, it's hard to. Yeah, it's hard to identify. with it. But obviously it is a technical tour to force in every way.

Yeah. And no one did puppetry better than Jim Henson and directing it. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, Labyrinth, you know, dials it down a little bit, but it still has tons of puppetry and all kinds of crazy maneuvers. Like the fire dance, where you have

these like four or five creatures whose bodies can break apart and they can like juggle their own heads and reattach themselves. That took like 50 puppeteers to create. It's crazy. the amount of practical effects that went into this movie. And there is no CG except at the very beginning

where they have like the opening credits is like an owl flying around the word labyrinth. And it was very cool for the time. It doesn't look realistic, but... Well, I did that back then. Yeah, I mean, I didn't realize that was a computer effect until I saw it many years later and I was like, oh, that's CG. How about that?

The one that always gets me is the handwall. The hand thing. Which is like a different kind of puppetry than I think people might be used to from Jim Henson. but not only that all the hands like go apart and then come together to form the faces, but that they form different

kinds of faces that are recognizably different characters is I think mind-blowing and again also terrifying for me as a child. I mean it is a well like just a shaft with hands sticking out of it and she falls into it and they grab her so there's like

all these hands grabbing a teenage girl again this could be this could be so bad But it's not. Like the entire time you're not thinking, oh, gross, they're like manhandling this girl. You're like, whoa, she's in this crazy situation and there's like bizarre hands talking to her and she's trying to decipher the riddle of what they're saying. That's one of the scenes that Terry Jones said he wrote that was from his original screenplay. And then he was really surprised at how he didn't expect how they would turn it into just like a masterful hand puppetry thing, you know.

It's such an imaginative movie. I mean, like the just little moments. It's like there's the rock that looks like David, like it's a rock formation, and it looks like David Bowie's face, but then the camera pans, and it's like these three rocks, and it's just when they happen to line up from a certain angle, they look like David Bowie. Yeah, it's crazy. Just like, it's full of creativity, yeah. And the puppets are all different sizes.

There's like Sarah's friends, you know, you have basically a dwarf and there's, you know, there's a little person inside the costume, but then they have like five people, I think. We're using remote controls to control the face. And he's the most expressive and convincing character. It's crazy. That's Hoggle. Yep. Hoggle.

It's very, even today, very difficult to believe that Hoggle is puppetry and not just a very unfortunate-looking person in makeup. Because he looks extremely realistic. Yeah, he's very convincing. And then there's, you know, Sir Dittamus, who is just like a Muppet. He's just, you know, pure Muppet. You can pretty much see the strings. His hands move the way Kermits do. But he's riding a dog around.

Like, he's not standing, you know, the puppeteer is not standing behind a wall. Like, he's riding around on a real dog doing his puppet stuff. You're like, how did that happen? And then there's Ludo who's enormous. He's got to be like five people inside of there just to fill out the space. Yeah, like, it's amazing. Just the sheer amount of creativity that went into this. And you really feel like some of these characters were designed, you almost wonder if, like, did they invent these characters just to see, like, how they could

meet the challenge of rendering this character, or was it just a matter of, like, they came up with the characters and the designs that fit best into the world, and then it was Henson's job to say, I got to figure this out. I read that in the Terry Jones thing, I read, he said that he had this stack of sketches by Brian Froud, and he would, whenever he needed a new character, he'd shuffle through the stack of sketches and find one he liked and then write lines for it or something. So I think a lot of those were created by Brian Frowd, and then, you know, characterized by Terry Jones and Jim Henson and the puppeteers, of course, too.

So it is incredible the sheer number of characters and puppets in that movie. Like, every scene is some new crazy thing. Like, there's one scene where this giant door comes together and becomes a huge, like, robot night thing, piloted by Goblin. The Battle of the Goblin City. Yeah, like. But then on the other hand, you have, like, a tiny little worm. Yeah, the worm's like, come inside, have a spot of two, meet the misses. Yeah.

And it's like, it's a tiny little puppet, but it has this, like, I don't know what it's like fiber optic or something hair on it. So it's like super animated, even though there's almost like no substance to this little tiny worm puppet. It's just a work of love. To pull it back to the usual remit of retronauts, I think one of the pieces of enduring appeal about Labyrinth was that structurally it does a better job of capturing kind of the ideal. progression format that a generation of kids was getting familiar with from video games, because it does start in a labyrinth, but the maze element of the movie really goes away after a certain point, and it just becomes a path. Like, you know, she's on the, on the ridge at the beginning, and there's the clock with the 13 hours, which is all, like, super dope. And you get that beautiful mat painting of the labyrinth surrounding the Goblin City. Don't tell me that's a mat painting.

I want to believe it's real. I love Matt paintings, though. Like, Matt paintings are, like, my favorite thing in movies, and no one does them anymore, and they should because they're beautiful. I don't care if it looks fake. We know it's fake because we're watching a movie. Real life doesn't move at 24 frames per second, folks. Exactly. But it does for me.

Shut your eyes checked. That initial, like, getting through the labyrinth part is really only, like, kind of the first stage or level of the movie. And then, you know, you've got the, the, the, the. riddle doors and you've got the tunnel with the big, like a thing that is absolutely like a boss from an NES game. It's the big warring drill thing. I am pretty sure that you fight that

the cleaners. You pretty much fight that thing in one of the pathway, the story paths of Final Fantasy 6. You are attacked by this tunnel armor thing that it's called tunnel armor and it like is a huge burrowing machine and you have to like zap it with lightning and

catch its magic when it retaliates. Yeah, so what Chris is getting at, I think, is that this would be perfectly adapted to video games. This game or this movie, sorry, I keep saying game. Are you saying it's influenced by video games? I don't think, I don't think it was influenced by video games. This was so early in the existence of video games. No video games really did this, but this, this movie is a JRP, like, Sarah ventures into a labyrinth. Yeah.

And there's like, there's an effeminate, you know, androgynous villain who has strange magic power. and a strange allure that seems to be able to speak directly to her. There's an objective at the end. And she forms a party. And there's even betrayal within the party. Hoggle betrays her. But then ultimately realizes, no, this is my friend. I regret what I've done and I need to join her side.

This is every freaking JRP ever. This movie is a JRP. Are you saying Jim Henson invented the JRP? I am. It's the Jim role-playing game. The Jim. The Jim. The Jim H.R.P.G.

RPG. If anything, I think the, if there's any kind of game influenced structural format, I feel like it's from the same thing that influenced JRP's, which is tabletop role-playing games, because it's very much, like, in this way that it's very much a J-R-PG, it's very much a D&D game, because it starts out in a dungeon, and then you kind of get bored of being in the dungeon until you move to set pieces. Yeah, but the thing is, I can't imagine that the people who created this movie really had any experience with things like D&D.

I mean, they were all of an older generation at that point. Like, D&D was very popular in the late 70s among, you know, like teenagers and college students. And I feel like, you know, the people who made The Muppet Show were just a couple years, a few years too old for that. I'm too busy. Like, they had careers at the time that D&D hit a bit. I don't know, because the people making the Muppet Show in Sesame Street in the early 70s, they wore a bunch of weirdos. And we do know that for sure. Yeah, I just have trouble imagining, like, you know, Frank Oz and, uh,

Carol, what's her face, who does Big Bird's voice, like sitting down to do an RPG session, yes. Yeah, Carol Spinney and Jim Hinson are born in the 30s, I think. Yeah, they were. Frank Oz may be born in the 40s. I don't remember, but they, you know, and there were some younger of the Muppeteers. I mean, realistically, this is just drawing on the traditional classical fantasy structure, you know, the fellowship of the ring, that sort of thing. Like, there's nothing really, you know, video gameish about it. But video games do pull from that as well.

But it's just, like, everything about this just falls so perfectly into the games you'd be seeing starting a few years later coming out of Japan for Super Famicom, Super NES, and PlayStation. Like, like, if you told me that, you know, the people who created Final Fantasy a year after this movie came out were, like, huge Labyrinth fans, I would say, oh, of course. No wonder. I mean, even the music, like the, especially not the David Bowie stuff, but the stuff by Trevor Jones, which is all like synthesizer, you know, kind of electronic or rock, like, you could use some of those as boss themes in a final fantasy game. Like, it would work. It's just, it just really, maybe that's a big part of like that genre's appeal for me. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is like labyrinth. Well, where's my, where's my Jennifer Connolly? I think we're I think we're Well, I think what we're all getting at all getting at, is that we're all getting at, is that. It's a movie whose appeal is still very easy for, like, audiences that are into the same kind of stuff that we're into 32 years later.

It's still, like, there's an appeal to it that I think makes it a great modern day fairy tale because it's, you know, it's very much structured as a fairy tale that just happens to have taken place in 1986 instead of a long time ago in a galaxy faraway. Is that a thing? Something like that. Yeah. I've heard that one. Yeah. So it all fits. And I do think, to answer your question, bench, I do think it lends itself pretty interestingly to video games.

I mean, it's full of interesting set pieces with unique visual design. Like the final confrontation that Sarah has with Jarrett takes place in a, like, full-sized room construction of MC Escher's, what's the name of that drawing? I don't remember the name of it. but I know that M.C. Escher's... It's the one with the staircases. You know the one. And it's like playing with perspective and Sarah looks up and she sees her brother like sitting on the side of a wall, bouncing a ball that like bounces sideways and that it kind of rolls off and then falls in some physically impossible direction.

Like it's just, it's imaginative and it's cool. And I've seen that in video games. Like there's a part in Chrono Cross where you go to like this place between dimensions and realities. And it's pretty much an Escher painting. You know, I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. I remember this while. I was thinking, I was just watching that this morning and I was thinking it's doubly terrifying because David Bowie won't stop singing stuff.

She's like so confused. He should like, I believe you, the heart and the tears. You know, like all this. Like random little snippets of. Please just cut that part out and make it. I believe you. Can you believe he's the musician in the group? It's amazing.

It comes through. I can do music. world you precious pray you starve near exhausting everything I've done

I've done for you I move the stars with no one you've run so long you've run so far your eyes You know what I'd love to do someday?

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And Saratiana. And you are listening to Riggles Pits. Yeah, and a ham horn. And we have a new podcast. You can find our show exclusively on the Podcast One app on Podcast One Sports. and don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Every Thursday, we're going to sit around and we're going to talk about the things that really excite us like life, comedy, sports, a lot of sports,

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and medium three-topping handmade pan pizzas are $7.99 each. It's pandemonium. Fantastico. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Prices participation and charges may vary. All right, deep in your eyes, it kind of pale, you know, open and closed within your eyes, I'll place the sky within your eyes. All right. So we've talked about the movie. Now let's talk about the video games because this is Retronauts. It is the classic video game podcast. And actually, there is a really cool game to have come out of Labyrinth. It sadly is not a JRP. But it's a graphical adventure game. And in a lot of ways, kind of like the template for everything LucasArts would do once it became LucasArts. I think it was still Lucasfilm games at the time, 1986, 87. Yeah, I think you're right.

So there was that one. And then there was another one that came out of Japan. Actually, let's talk about. talk about the one that came out of Japan first, because it's the slider game. It was a Famicom game, you know, Japanese NES. And apparently, based on, you know, what Dr. Sparkle dug up about the game for it on Crontindo, the Contindo video series, it looks like it was designed, developed by Atlas, which, you know, they make RPGs and they make Etrin Odyssey, a game series about going into a labyrinth. It's called Sikaiju no make you in Japan, which means labyrinth of the world tree, I don't think it's, actually I think it's a coincidence, but it is interesting. For the purposes of the podcast, it's a conspiracy. How far does this go? But yeah, the

Famicom game is, I don't know, it's very much kind of what you would expect of a Famicom game in 1987, which is sort of like how Sarah was the borderline between childhood and adulthood. This game came out when Famicom software was at the borderline between simplistic and substantial. And it tries to be substantial, but the underpinnings are still pretty simplistic. So it's not really that satisfying to play. But, like, it does an okay job of interpreting the idea of a labyrinth. Like, you are actually running around through a top-down labyrinth, and as you collect little hearts, they're laying around the labyrinth, you build up a meter, and eventually you can

summon one of your friends, Hoggle or Ludo or Sardidimus, to join you. and the currency is little plastic necklaces. Like, oh, that's nice. They took that from the movie. How quaint. And also there is a real-time element to it. You have 13 hours, which I think is like, you know, one minute is one second of real-time to complete the game. And instead of having a life meter, when an enemy attacks you, you lose time.

And you have to, like, find, I think, crystal balls or something. Some token from the video. Yes, exactly. You can't see, but Chris is actually juggling crystal balls on his finger. Plus on those frisigi tracks. Yeah. So it's kind of like gauntlet. You just run out of time instead of energy.

Yeah, kind of. And also it's only one player. And there is an accessible end as opposed to gauntlet, which is 100 stages and no one has ever been crazy enough to get to the end. Yeah, it just kind of loops, I think. Right. This game looks fascinating and I've never played it. But I think it's telling that two of the Labyrinth games we're talking about, or Japanese only, They must have loved this movie in Japan.

Do you think it did well in Japan? I don't know. I mean, there is the fact that every JRP is a labyrinth, so clearly. Clearly it did. No, I can see this doing pretty well. It has a lot of things that I think, just as an outsider, I feel like they would resonate with a Japanese audience. You know, you have a pretty strong yet young female protagonist. You have this ethereal androgynous villain.

You have, you know, a crazy setting. You have magic. You have, like, I don't know. There's, there's, like, the labyrinth itself is almost alive, which kind of gets into the whole like Shinto animism thing where everything has a spirit inside of it. You're going deep. I am. I'm BSing at this point.

But I could definitely see this movie having found an audience over there. And so, yeah, you do have the Famicom game, which, was published by I forgot to write it out. Activision? No, they published the game in the U.S. I think whoever published it in Japan had to license it from Activision, like

license the property, even though this game has nothing to do with the American game. You said there was a second Japan-only game, but it was really really hard for me to find information on this game. And from what I can tell, it was a PC-801-slash-sharp

X-1 rendition of of the Lucasfilm games version of Labyrinth. So it looks a little different, but it uses the same mechanics like the text wheel and everything like that. And the screenshots that I've been able to find look pretty much like a PC-801 rendition of a Commodore 64 games.

So I think it's the same game. It was just converted for the Japanese audience by pack-in video, which, you know, that's never a good thing. But hopefully they weren't, didn't do too bad a job of it. and Japanese audiences still got a nice version of labyrinth. But there is the one we really want to talk about,

which is the Lucasfilm Games labyrinth, which of course Lucasfilm Games would make a game based on a Lucasfilm movie. But this was actually the first time that had happened. They had never done that before. Everything Lucasfilm Games had published to that point had been like Ballblazer, Rescue and Frectalis, that sort of thing, like original creations. This was the first time that they said,

what if we drew from our boss's library and catalog of movies? And after this, you started seeing Star Wars games and things like that from them. Indiana Jones and the... The fate of Atlantis. Yes, the fated of Atlantis. That's the one. It's a good game. So anyway, yeah, I've been talking a lot.

So someone else take over. Well, the Commodore 64 game is like, it's sort of the prototype of the Lucasfilm Adventure games of Labyrinth we're talking about. And it's sort of obscure. I don't think it's sold well or as very. very well or widely known. But when I was doing an article about the history of Habitat, which is an early, one of the first online multiplayer kind of graphical chat worlds that also developed by Lucasfilm,

it looks very similar to this labyrinth game. And so I asked Randy Farmer, one of the creators of Habitat, if it was drawn from Labyrinth. And what did he say? I wrote it on the show notes. They shared the same core animation engine developed by Charlie Kellner, Eric Wilmender, and Ron Gilbert. Most of the staff touched the project in various ways. We shared a lot of code. Yeah, so it's fascinating to me that it looks almost exactly like, you know, there's this section of text on the top part of the screen, which is where in Habitat and later Worlds Away, which played off of that, is where your chat bubbles pop up over your head.

And it was just like that in labyrinth, you know, scrolling. Except instead of being other players, it was Hoggle talking to. Yeah, it was Hoggle talking to. Or like the playing cards or the people who always tell you, one tells you the lie and one tells you the truth. Like they managed to integrate all these movie elements into this graphical adventure space, which is really cool. It looks so, there's something about that the style of this game that just draws you into it. I've never actually played it, but I've played, you know, I've played a recreation of Habitat. And it just looks like you're going into a world in a way that was never created before,

like an implementation of a virtual world in 2D that was like, you could tell it's one of the first times they ever did something like that. Yeah. One of the things that kind of always stuck in my craw about the TV series, Halting Catch Fire, which I really liked, but like this company put together basically Habitat in like 1983 in the TV show. I was like, no, LucasArts did that years later, you liars, you lying liars who lie. But, I mean, it does show kind of like, you know, the creator's knowledge of video game history.

And Habitat never really launched as a product, did it? Yeah, it became Club Carrebe that came out around, I think Habitat was 86. And I think Club Carrebe eventually relaunched like 90, and it was way too late for that Commodore-based service that became AOL later called QLink. there was a secret like most people don't know this but there's a precursor to Habitat called games computers play done for the Atari 800 around 85 or so that's probably the first multiplayer game but I digress this is a tangent so let's talk about it is but but Labrith does draw on on the concept of Habitat you're right like I didn't realize there was a connection until you said it but now that you say it I'm like oh

yes of course but what I do really like is okay so this game was designed by David Fox, and it had early consultation from Douglas Adams, the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And Douglas Adams, of course, had worked on a few graphical adventures. He worked on The Hichikers Got to the Galaxy and also on, was it bureaucracy, I want to say? I don't know. And so he had experience with text adventures, and he offered them advice on how to make this game funny and give it, you know, like appeal. But the game actually begins as a text adventure. You start playing Labyrinth and you like go to a movie theater and buy popcorn and stuff.

And then like as the movie starts, it becomes a graphical adventure. And Jarrett the King of Goblin starts talking to you while a tinny rendition of the music starts to play. And he's like, you have 13 hours. You have to come save the baby. Yeah, that blows my mind. That intro is brilliant. Yeah, it's really cool. Because for one thing is this is like one of the greatest games ever made and no one here is play.

I mean, I would, it is a game that I can highly recommend just like, there's a YouTube video of a guy getting through it in like 25 minutes. And it's well worth checking out. The intro is amazing. First of all, because it's very Douglas Adams. Like, there's a bit where you go into the movie theater and you go to buy popcorn. And your options are, there's regular popcorn, chilled popcorn, unpopped popcorn. Yeah. organic barbecue popcorn.

Some weird flavor of popcorn. And then the girl behind the counter is like, oh, I'm sorry, we're out of everything except chilled popcorn, which is the worst thing in the world. But yeah, the Wizard of Oz transition, the fact that it is a game based on Labyrinth that opens with you, the player, you know, you put in your name and choose your avatar, which of course is... And also your gender. You can't choose race, but you can choose your favorite color, which I'm

I think affects the color of the app that you're wearing. Yeah. But you're either male or female. Yeah. But you go to see Labyrinth. You go to the movie theater to see Labyrinth and then... As yourself. Yeah, as yourself.

And then David Bowie shows up and pulls you into the movie in a very, like, really interesting. With his balls. Hello. It's me, David Bowie. He had to pull you into the movie. That doesn't really sound like David Bowie, but okay. Hello. I'm David Bowie.

I used to do a really good David Bowie. Anyway, Anyway, so yes, it's a very cool introduction. And, yeah, the game itself incorporates a lot of elements of the movie. And it does a really good job of interpreting, you know, Labyrinth, the film as a video game. And not having actually played it, I don't know, like, if you've seen the movie, does it become super easy? Because everything is just taken straight from the movie. My guess is probably not.

I'm sure there is, you know, some sort of, it's probably like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where it's based on source material. And if you know the source material, you kind of have an idea of what you need to do. But, you know, then the solution is like, you know, feeding someone no tea or something like that. I get the impression that it's, it's similar with the same characters, but since you're a different protagonist, it's not, I don't think it's going to follow the exact path. Yeah, I don't think you have the exact same stake in it. You don't have to rescue your brother, but you do have 13 hours of game time. Yeah. To get out of the. movie world. To fall in love with David's movie.

Fall in love with David Boy. But it pulls all of the very recognizable set pieces from the movie. You start in the endless hallway where there's a secret door with clues on the wall telling you, hey, there's a door here. And he's not peeing, but he's still like, you're never going to get through. You meet Hoggle. You

deal with the doors to the castle or a certain death. The well of hands is in there. The big door with the knocker in its mouth is in there. Like, all the hits are in the Labyrinth game. really cool way. Yep. And maybe the biggest innovation about this game, you know, even more so than the cool Wizard of Oz introduction is the fact that it introduces a sort of creative

solution for the idea of the text parser, which would be refined for the Scum Engine with Maniac Mansion the following year. But in this game, you have a context sensitive noun wheel and verb wheel. So at the bottom of the screen, you can basically, like, cycle through the nouns and verbs that are available for a given situation. So it's not like in, you know, text adventures where you're just sitting there typing, like, every verb you can think of and every noun you can think of and worrying about, like, how do I conjugate this? How do I combine? Like, what's the grammar here? There's none of that. It's just, like, noun verb, and you're not going to have an infinite list of things or, like, a shot in the dark. You have a certain number of things you can

you can combine. And again, this would be refined for the Scum engine and that text parser that those games created. But you can see them sort of moving toward that and innovating toward that. And again, this was LucasArts' first adventure game. And like right out of the park, they came up with something that was really clever and greatly simplified things for casual players, which of course, some of the magazines at the time, if you've read some of the reviews of this game, they're like, this game is too simplistic. It's too clumsy. like this is not a real adventure game but you know people are always resistant

to change and I want this to be less fun right they're always resistant a certain part of the gaming audience is very resistant to anything that makes a game more accessible for more casual players but that's what this game was and it makes sense because it was based on what is ostensibly a kids movie

so yeah I think it was a great choice and the it definitely sowed the seeds of what would become some of the greatest adventure games of all time. The thing I really liked about the the little noun and verb wheels is that it's, it allows them to do things that you would never have come up with because it's not just like move or take or or talk. There's compliment and insults are in there.

Congratulate are in there. Like that's really like it allows them to give you more tools to explore the game with, without you having to know, in the very arcane way of text adventures, that you need to type this specific command at this. Right. It's like they give you a different toolbox, depending on which area you're in. And you have to figure out, like, which tools do I use here, but you only have to work within that box.

So you're not just flailing around blindly. It's a really, I think it's a really great design. I like what they came up with, for Scum. But just watching this parser in action, I'm like, that's really clever. And I would really love to see another game do something like this. I can't think of any other that ever has. Yeah, I don't think so. And that's a shame.

It's amazing. I'm going straight home and playing this game. I think you should and report back on it. I will. I will. I think about it or something. Yeah. All right.

Well, I guess that's all. There's not really too much more to say about the Labyrinth game unless I'm missing something. I think we've said what we need to say about the movie. Yeah. The last thought is that Jennifer Connolly is awesome. She is. Although I have never seen Requiem for a dream because a friend of mine who was like, like heard me say, oh, I need to see Requiem

for a dream. And they're like, you like, you like Jennifer Connolly, right? And I said, yeah, they were like, don't ever watch this. It will just, it will destroy you. Just watch the Rocketeer again. Yeah, yeah, that was great. I saw that in the theater. And she was in what? One of the Hulk movies, I don't know. She's in the Eric Bono movie. She is in a beautiful mind. She was in a beautiful mind.

Yeah, yeah. Jennifer Connolly's great. David Bowie was great. RIP. Jim Henson was great, RIP. Brian Frowd, still great. So it's just a bunch of-hull died, everybody. I'm sorry to be the one How dare you? Well, Brian Henson's still alive. He did the voice, didn't he? Jim Henson's son. Yeah, I think you're right.

So it's just a bunch of awesome people put together in this movie. Yeah, I guess such. Jim Henson, Brian Froud, David Bowie, Jennifer Connolly. George Lucas. George Lucas. Even though he was fresh off of Howard the Duck. Yeah. If you have not seen this movie, I, like, saying that it holds up isn't quite right,

but saying that it's absolutely. worth watching, I think does. And also saying that it's like no other movie is also correct. It is one of these just like, how did this come out of Hollywood? Right alongside I'm interested earlier, Princess Bride. Like, it's just no other movie has quite done this. It's still unique in the pantheon of Hollywood. Here's a weird comparison.

If you like Housou, but you wanted to be like a Western fairy tale, Labyrinth is that movie? I could, you know, I could actually see Studio Jubilee doing some sort of Rindic That would be cool. Like they adapted Tales of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, RIP, by the way.

I could see them saying, hey, what about this crazy movie? Like, there was a manga adaptation of Labyrinth about 10 years ago. There's a sequel. There was a sequel from Tokyo Pop. Yeah. There's a return to Labyrinth.

I read about that. Yeah, it was a manga adaptation. very good. But it existed, and, like, there's still love for this movie and for good reason. It's really, it's just like nothing else. And I strongly recommend people check it out if they haven't. We kind of spoil the text, but we have not at all spoiled the experience of this movie. Yeah, it's all experience. Like, you, you just have to watch it and be like, this really existed. This happened. It's a visual feast. It is. And I think it is a really good movie about just the process of growing up.

I'm sure this movie was one of the things that helped for me to just normalize the idea that, oh, yeah, stories can be about women, too. It doesn't always have to be about a dude, and they are just as interesting and just as sympathetic, which is something that, you know, sadly, people are still having trouble accepting. You know, I hadn't really thought about it, but yeah, circa in 1986, a fantasy movie about a kid going on a quest, like starring Jennifer Connelly. Right.

There were lots of movies about kids going on Quest, but it was, you know, like River Phoenix or Sean Astin or someone. It wasn't Jennifer Connolly. So this movie, again, you know, that's, I was sure the fact that this was a financial flop at the box office did not help encourage people to say, oh, we should put girls in more movies. But, yeah, I think there's some value in that. Anyway, so that was Labyrinth, everyone. Go out and watch it by the soundtrack. I just picked it up on vinyl a few months ago, and it's so good. It's so 80s, but it's like David Bowie, I don't even know.

The guy who voices Elmo sings on one of the songs, okay? So, yes, that's right. That's the song I like the best. The Fire Dance song? Yeah, that's the coolest one in my team. Don't got no problem. Ain't got no soupy. Ain't got no close to worry about.

Ain't got no real estate or joy up on my day and I'm going to say. Oh, my head. with the chillies butt in the land I like the more I like the more traditional David Billy songs like underground and as the world falls down those are great. Anyway, there's just, there's got to be something

in this movie that you will see and love, even if there's parts of it that you're like, what the hell? So again, great movie. And if you have the chance to check out the video game, I'm sure it's on like archive.org or something, do that too, because it seems interesting. And I need to play it, like Benj. Anyway, so for Retronauts, I have been and continue to be Jeremy Parrish.

You can find Retronauts on all your favorite pod applications, such as iTunes and Podcast One's app. let's see the podcast lives at retronauts.com whereas I also live at retronauts.com and on Twitter as Gamesbyte. So follow me, follow us. It's great. I don't know. We're supported through Patreon. It's cool. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. It makes rambling discourses like this possible. I would not be able to bring these guys into my home and give them whiskey if you didn't support us. And coffee. Yes, all these good things. Anyway, guys, tell us about yourselves. Pimp yourselves. I'm Chris Sims. You can find all of my stuff by going to T-H-E-S-B-B-com, the Invincible Superblog. That is my homepage,

and it's got links to the common books that I write and the columns that I write here and there on the web, and the other podcasts that I do, including War Rocket Ajax, movie fighters, where we have recently talked about the Beast Master,

and the Sailor Moon and Zeno Warrior Princess podcast, Sailor Business, and Zina Warrior Business. Also, one final tip. If you have not seen Labyrinth and Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hausu,

that's a great double feature. That's a good night, everybody. And if you have seen one of them, watch the other because you will like it. And I'm Benj Edwards. You can read more about my stuff at Benjedwards.com, and I have a new podcast called

The Culture of Tech, the culture of tech.com. And support me on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Benj Edwards. All right. And that wraps it up for this episode. Thanks everyone for listening. Go listen to some David Bowie.

And we'll be back on Monday with a full-length episode and in two weeks from right now with another micro bye no one can blame you for walking away

too much rejection on no love injection life can be easy it's not always well Don't tell me truth hurts a little girl Because I hunt's like hell

But down in the underground You'll find someone true Down With Domino's week-long carry-out deal You can carry out large three-topping pizzas And now, Medium, three-topping handmade pan pizzas for 799 each. It's fantastic. News. Cut, cut. Puns? You mean pans? Calling all panatics for two layers of cheese on

crispy golden crust. So grab your panty packs, because Domino's large three-topping pizzas and medium three-topping handmade pan pizzas are 799 each. It's pandemonium. Bandastico. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Price's participation and charges may vary. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first

Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Bryant don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder.

I'm Ed Donahue.