Retrospective Film Review

Labyrinth (1986) • 35 Years Later

A teenage girl is given 13 hours to solve a labyrinth and rescue her baby brother when her wish for him to be taken away is granted…

Jim Henson and artist Brian Froud so enjoyed working on The Dark Crystal (1982) together that they agreed to reunite for a “lighter weight picture”, which became Labyrinth. Canadian children’s author Dennis Lee was duly hired to write a novella that Monty Python’s Terry Jones could adapt into a screenplay, but despite Lee retaining a story credit, his work was mostly discarded by an unimpressed Jones, who instead crafted one of his own inspired by Froud’s concept art.

Henson’s ambitions for Labyrinth didn’t align with Jones’s quirkier vision, however, so in truth the shooting script included many contributions from the likes of executive producer George Lucas (Star Wars), writer-director Elaine May (The Heartbreak Kid), and writer Laura Phillips (Fraggle Rock). Over two years, an estimated 25 treatments and drafts of the script were completed, with the finished product something of a hodgepodge trying to…