First contact:
initial reactions to MirrorMask
by
Elizabeth A. Allen
July, 2005
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First contact: |
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I was creaming my jeans over MM before I'd seen a frame of footage. Take a peek into the workings of a twisted imagination in this excerpt from my diary.
July 6, 2005 I currently pine for a movie I haven't seen. The movie debuts at the end of September, but I have read the script-and-storyboard book in Porter Square Books... The movie is MirrorMask, screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, production by the Jim Henson Company. I picked up the book because, frankly, with its allusions to mirrors and masks and slippery dreaming realities, it reminded me of a story I never wrote... Plus I know Gaiman writes dark fantasy, and Jim Henson, well, is inextricably associated with Labyrinth for me. With such origins, the film looked very promising. Promises fulfilled beyond my wildest dreams when I opened the book. MirrorMask features a fifteen-year-old girl who makes a thoughtless wish that endangers a family member. In order to save her family member, she then must journey through a dream world populated by weird characters... Along the way, she learns how to live outside of her imaginary world and also to be a responsible adult. Hmmm, this sounds familiar -- that's because MirrorMask has the exact same plot as Labyrinth! The broad similarities between Labyrinth and MirrorMask are enough to make me want to see it. But I have a particular interest in MirrorMask because it has explicit and specific debts to Labyrinth. ... ...Conventional wisdom says that [Labyrinth] was an overwrought artistic splatter, tedious, draggy and poorly acted... Apparently, though, Labyrinth influenced someone's artistic development besides mine. Gaiman and McKean thought it was cool enough to "talk to" in the form of their own film MirrorMask... ...More and more, MirrorMask looks like the sequel to Labyrinth that never was. Thus I eye it with ambivalent curiosity. |
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MirrorMask
(c) 2004 by Jim Henson Co. |