Conception and writing Labyrinth started as a collaboration between director
Jim Henson and conceptual designer
Brian Froud following their previous collaboration,
The Dark Crystal. According to Froud, he and Henson decided to have human characters as the lead roles in order to make
Labyrinth "more accessible and immediate" than
The Dark Crystal, which had featured only puppets. Henson explained that they structured
Labyrinth "in a way that the human is really carrying the whole picture" and acts as a "bridge" between the fantastical puppets and the audience. Wishing to avoid similarities to
Ridley Scott's original fairy tale film
Legend, which was in development near the same time as
Labyrinth, Henson and his team made significant changes to
Labyrinth's main characters and story. Jones envisaged Jareth as a "hollow man" and is destroyed by Sarah reaching the Labyrinth's centre.
Casting and filming According to Henson, Jareth was at one stage going to be a creature in the same vein as his goblin subjects, which were portrayed through the use of
puppets and
animatronics produced by Henson's
Creature Shop. Deciding that the role should be filled by a live actor, Henson initially considered offering it to
Simon MacCorkindale or
Kevin Kline. After
Labyrinth score composer
Trevor Jones proposed the idea of using
contemporary music for the film, Henson decided he wanted a big, charismatic pop star to sing and act as the Goblin King, Henson's first choice was Bowie, whom his sons
Brian and
John convinced him to offer the role to as they believed Bowie would have the most lasting appeal with audiences. and felt that his "other-worldliness" and energy would be a good match for the fantastic creatures and settings planned for the film. "I wanted to put two characters of flesh and bone in the middle of all these artificial creatures," Jim Henson explained, "and David Bowie embodies a certain maturity, with his sexuality, his disturbing aspect, all sorts of things that characterize the adult world." Expounding that Jareth "must have something attractive and menacing about him" and be both "positive and negative at the same time", Henson said that Bowie "had the advantage of being able to be seductive, threatening, scary", Froud similarly felt that Bowie was the perfect choice to play Jareth, writing that his "
protean persona" made him well-suited to the role, as "Jareth needed to be a mercurial figure who would constantly throw Sarah off balance emotionally." While
Labyrinth was made as a film that would appeal to children, Henson also hoped Bowie's presence and musical contributions would make the film more accessible to older demographics. Henson met Bowie in the summer of 1983 to seek his involvement, as Bowie was in the U.S. for his
Serious Moonlight Tour at the time. During a meeting in New York on 18 June 1984, Henson showed Bowie some of Froud's concept art to pique his interest in the film. "That impressed me for openers," Bowie later said, "but he also gave me a tape of
The Dark Crystal, which really excited me. I could see the potential of adding humans to his world of creatures". Henson continued to pursue Bowie for the role of the Goblin King, developing the character with him in mind and sending him each revision of the script for his comments. and Bowie's deal was set on 15 February 1985. Henson stated that Bowie acted his scenes as written in the script while occasionally contributing ideas, and "needed very little direction, because his own characterization [of Jareth] was always right on." However, Bowie initially had difficulty acting with the puppet characters, as the characters' voices did not come from the puppets themselves but from off-stage which he found disorientating. Bowie completed many of his scenes in two or three takes, except for very technical scenes or those involving complex puppets. Bowie enjoyed making the film, stating, "
Labyrinth was great fun to do". Henson wanted Jareth to have a visible skill with which to express his magical powers, and said that Moschen's work was "as close to real magic as anything that I really know." he is a dream figure who reflects her inner "romantic turmoil." Froud sought to reflect this in the character's outfits and appearance, and drew upon classic "romantic dangerous" figures from a range of literary sources. In his afterword to the 20th-anniversary edition of
The Goblins of Labyrinth, Froud wrote that Jareth references "the
romantic figures of
Heathcliff in
Wuthering Heights and a brooding
Rochester from
Jane Eyre" and the "transfiguring"
Scarlet Pimpernel. Jareth's costumes are intentionally eclectic, drawing on the image of
Marlon Brando's leather jacket from
The Wild One as well as that of a medieval
knight "with the worms of death eating through his armour" from ''
Grimms' Fairy Tales''. and
riding crop, as Froud regarded Jareth as "the proud
lord of the manor, lord of his goblin domain, with his hounds at his feet, ready to go hunting for human souls." Jareth's cloak was designed by costume designer
Vin Burnham. The design of the character's countenance and hairstyle went through various stages. Henson revealed, "For a while, we thought we'd give [Bowie] lots of
prosthetic make-up, and horns", while Froud said at one stage they attempted to make Jareth's hair look "
wolf-like and feral". They eventually settled on "just the wild
Kabuki hair", For the ballroom scene, Froud and costume designer Ellis Flyte fashioned Jareth a velvet
tailcoat shot with blue, black and silver, and embroidered with broken jewels and mirrors on the front and shoulders. Worn underneath this was a silver silk satin shirt with a
jabot, and black leggings printed with a silver
snakeskin pattern. Froud's son
Toby, who as an infant played
Labyrinth's character of the same name, stated that the Goblin King is meant to be a sexual icon and a temptation to Sarah, alluding to "the dark
fairy in folklore [who] are meant to be tempting." This fact was accentuated by a prominent
codpiece added to Bowie's costumes. According to puppeteer coordinator Brian Henson, the codpiece had to be reduced from its original size after the studio reviewed the
rushes from the first scene shot with Bowie and deemed his costume inappropriate. The codpiece was reduced for Bowie's subsequent scenes. However, due to Jim Henson's dislike for reshooting, Bowie's first scene (the "Blind Beggar" scene) was not reshot. Brian Henson further expanded on the sexual symbolism of the codpiece: "Sarah is at a point in her life where she's a child but she's becoming a woman, she's in that cusp period, and the character of Jareth is sort of an aggressive, adult, masculine sexuality, that is both terrifying to her and very attractive to her. So yes, it's definitely part of the storytelling that he should have this codpiece that's a masculine, sexual image".
Personality According to Brian Froud, Jareth is a
Romantic hero, a rebel, and an outsider. Brooding and discontent, Jareth has reluctantly inherited his position and runs his kingdom under duress, according to David Bowie. Brian Henson described Jareth as a "
Peter Pan type of character" who is "locked in a sort of teenage sensibility ... He's a little petulant and unpredictable and he's spoiled rotten". However, Jareth "learns his lesson", Henson said, remarking that
Labyrinth is a coming of age for both Sarah and Jareth.
Music Jareth is the only main character to sing in
Labyrinth. Bowie performed as the character three of the five songs that he wrote for the film: "
Magic Dance", "
As the World Falls Down" and "Within You". "Magic Dance", which has been described as a "bouncy pop" song, is performed along with dance by Jareth and his goblins to cheer up baby Toby at the castle. The
dialogue starting with the phrase, "You remind me of the babe," that occurs between Jareth and the goblins at the beginning of the song is a direct reference to an exchange between
Cary Grant and
Shirley Temple in the 1947 film
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.
Cinemaps: An Atlas of 35 Great Movies authors Andrew DeGraff and A.D. Jameson suggest the significance of this reference is that
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer is about a teenage girl's
crush on an older man, just as Sarah is infatuated with the fictitious Goblin King. "As the World Falls Down", which
Rolling Stone described as a "sparkling, subdued
ballad", soundtracks a
dream sequence at a
masquerade ball. Though Jareth does not perform the song directly, he mouths the words of the song to Sarah as they are dancing towards the end of the sequence. Henson wanted the song to be "fairly old-fashioned in its sentiments", according to Bowie. Jareth sings "Within You" at the film's climax before his final confrontation with Sarah at the top of his castle. "I had to write something that sounded like stone walls and crumbling power," Bowie said of the song, describing its overall effect combined with the film's visuals as "very tragic and slightly disturbing." Calling the song "haunting and touching" whilst being the character's most villainous song, Sean Rehbein of
Keen Gamer wrote that it "looks into his motivations, and brings forth his vulnerabilities ... as Jareth realizes all his plans haven't worked, and his game is seen as nothing but wicked, instead of charming, by Sarah."
Labyrinth: The Ultimate Visual History authors Paula Block and Terry Erdmann suggest Jareth's mournful repeated line at the end of the song, "I can't live within you", is his acknowledgement that he exists only in Sarah's imagination, which she is on the verge of leaving behind. Henson described the owl as "vaguely...the symbol of the Goblin King." and marked the first use of a realistic CGI animal in a film. == In
Labyrinth==