"Return to Labyrinth" Vol. 4 at the printers

[RedPiggy]

Says Jake Forbes. Please let the finale be good. I need me some Labyrinth goodness. *sighs*

 

[bazooka_beak]

Well, FINALLY! It's been so long I forgot about this series

 

[RedPiggy]

A little over a month left to go, people!

 

[Monsoon]

Finally....

 

[RedPiggy]

Five days!

 

[RedPiggy]

Don't let naysayers on imdb.com or amazon.com dissuade you. Those reviews were written by people who apparently could only be satisfied by a huge Jareth/Sarah make-out scene. They miss the entire, the ENTIRE point of the franchise. The ballroom scene of the movie, where Sarah rejects Jareth's fantasy romance, blows the shippiness out of the water. I'm sorry, but it's true. So don't be shocked by how the franchise ends in the mangas. It's true to the spirit of the film. With the exception of maybe the Dark Crystal, a lot of Henson properties have fantastical elements mixed in with reality. Dislike the art or the slowness of volume 1 if you must, but for heaven's sake, don't dislike it because some shippers got angry. Any criticisms that it is half-baked could certainly be pointed to the movie as well. They share pros and cons. The only people who wouldn't be into this would be those who never got into the movie to begin with, or shippers who had their poor little dreams shattered. The franchise never said you'd get what you want, shippers. Deal with it. We've moved beyond Cinderella-style stories, where a girl/woman aspires to wear an impractical dress and slobber over Prince Charming while servants have to wipe her butt. That type of BS has ruined whole generations of females. Labyrinth offers a more complex and thoughtful picture of what it means to be an adult. I heartily recommend it.

 

[GingerSnap]

It's funny, I was on Amazon today, comparing prices so I could order it, and one look at the rating told me exactly how it would end. And I can't wait to read it. I'm sorry, but I just can not understand the appeal of Jareth/Sarah.

But I do have to take issue with what you said about Fairy Tale romance. It hasn't destroyed a generation of girls, because this idealism of having a perfect man wait on you hand and foot has been around forever, and lots of girl and women want romances like this. They don't neccisarily think it real, at least adults don't, and it's just fun escapism. As long as you keep one foot in reality, there really is no harm in it.

That said, Labyrinth is not the place for this sort of idealism. Sarah didn't choose Jareth. Done, end of story. If you want them hooking up and having an OOC romance, read a fanfic. Lord knows there's enough of them.

Wow, I made a good first impression, didn't I?

 

[RedPiggy]

I can agree that it's fun escapism. However, the movie and the mangas are basically digs at stereotypical Disney Princess stories. And I suppose it's not completely accurate that it destroyed a generation of girls. No, I also blame 50s sitcoms for that, LOL. I do believe the Baby Boomer generation was raised with unrealistic ideals and demands and it messed them up, LOL. Yes, that generation will tell you they don't think it's real, but then they whine when things don't go as perfectly as they'd hoped it would, as if, subconsciously, they really DID believe problems are solvable with a quick speech or a deus ex machina.

I can understand wanting a romance. It's a lovely story. Makes you wanna cry with happiness. However, Jim Henson gave shippers the shippy thing in the ballroom scene and Sarah clearly shatters it. I think the moral is quite clear: you can be in love without being incredibly shallow.

I'm not against them being in love with each other. My fanfics have a romantic tension to them. However, reading the complaints about the ending wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the story led up to it and a reader/watcher felt cheated when it didn't happen. On the contrary, there was no canon evidence whatsoever to suggest that anything other than awkward romantic tension would ever occur.

In the movie, Sarah's mom can be seen in an article standing next to David Bowie. In the mangas, we get to see this event (sorta), but with a far more confusing choice of look for the boyfriend. In the movie, Jareth represents Sarah's issues with her mom falling in love with a star and choosing her own shippy fantasy over her own family. He still kinda represents that in the mangas as well.

While Jareth seems to have an independent existence, the fact is he still is a metaphor for her issues, and would a romance based on daddy issues work? Looking at my relatives, I can safely say "no".

I think the thing that upset me most of all was all the griping in the reviews that Jake Forbes says that there are two types of fantasy stories: the "it's a world of its own" (think Dark Crystal) or it's a psychological metaphor/other dimension of reality (think Labyrinth). The reviewers only seem to pay attention to the initial premise that nothing going is real, while ignoring the evidence that suggests it is -- AND completely ignores the ending, which is just as open to interpretation as the movie's ending was. I'm not upset that people didn't like the ending. I'm upset that they're upset about things that didn't happen the way they think it did. They're blasting the mangas on the internet through reviews, when it's quite clear they never had a leg to stand on in the first place. I'm reminded of a teen review in a newspaper once where the kid griped that Phantom of the Opera had "too much singing". It kinda makes you want to strangle the kid, screaming, "WHAT DO YOU THINK MUSICALS ARE?"

And, at the risk of getting this paragraph deleted, but this really bothers me, LOL: if Sarah weren't white, EVERYONE would be angry that her fantasy is basically to be some ... how to put it ... plaything for the rich and powerful white guy. There would be no end to the griping that yet again, the only hope of a better life they have is to be some white guy's love slave. And yet, listening to the shippers, it's precisely what they wanted from her. Sarah's fantasies about Jareth, both in the movie and in the mangas, are understandable. However, it's revealed he wanted more (though inconsistently, as near the end he almost feels like he'll "settle" for it if he gets nothing else).

I'm still as confused as Mizumi why Jareth chose Sarah over Mizumi. It's highly arguable that Sarah was less shallow than Mizumi. All Mizumi wanted was Jareth's love (and the high of uniting their powers, so to speak). Sarah's a kid who freely trades her brother for some play with Teddy time. And MIZUMI'S shallow?

Still, it's almost like Jake Forbes wrote the last volume to lead into my ficverse, so he can't be all that bad, LOL.

 

[MrBloogarFoobly]

I applaud the author for his story choices. Without a doubt, he was aware of what the fans wanted - and he did not give it to them. He knew where the story was SUPPOSED to go, regardless of what the audience wanted to see. He knew that Jim Henson had established the Sarah/Jareth relationship - that of a hapless lover and an uninterested muse.

 

[Monsoon]

I did want them to end up together. But Jareth's love was shown as selfish. I think that it was better that they didn't end up together. Jareth just wanted to get his way. To me, that's not love.

I respect JF's choice of the plot. I just didn't care for it, and I thought there were too many things that didn't make sense.

The art ? I don't think it suited the series. The covers were far nicer.