Formal Pan's Labyrinth Evalution: Lunsford et al. P. 268

Pan's Labyrinth is a powerful movie that doesn't just make you think, it shatters your illusions and your perspective of what a movie is "supposed" to be. It is a unique and a rare movie that will wow people for years to come. It is one of the best movies that ever came out in years.

For hundreds of years in countless stories from "Cinderella" to "Lord of the Rings" the plot usually conform with what people want it to be. "There is no knight in shining armor to save you", says it all. There are one key element that makes Pan's Labyrinth what it is. Without that element, the movie will vanish in the countless stacks of B-budget movies in history. The element is reality. It's a movie that goes in the opposite direction. Normally, movies that relies heavily on myths and fairy tales has very predictable story lines to follow. The hero(or heroine) saves the day and gets the girl(or guy) basically summarizes fairy tales.

In Pan's Labyrinth, "happily after ever" doesn't happen. That is what makes the movie special. It's unpredictable. If you were watching a batman movie or a superman movie, and when you arrive to the scene when they battle their arch-nemesis, let me ask you this question: "Who wins?" Of course, the answer is the hero. Movies of Pan's Labyrinth's caliber, it would be very difficult to predict it, thus making it more fascinating because you won't know what happens next, because it doesn't follow the rules of people's views of what "it should be" in movies. But what if the hero dies in the movie? An elderly woman sprints and saves a boy scout from an incoming car. These examples never happens in many movies. The point is, movies follow the society's view on how movies should end in their fantasies. Pan's labyrinth went the opposite way and did it in a way nobody expected.

Pan's labyrinth is reality. Ofelia dies, when normally fairy tales calls for her being saved at the last minute. She wasn't saved. That's one major part of the story that sets the table for it all. The picture shows reality as it is, no matter how much we don't like it or deny it, it happens anyway. Pan's labyrinth showed things that we don't want to happen, but happened anyway. Ofelia was shot by her stepfather. The doctor was shot in the back. A young man was bashed in the nose repeatedly and the movie showed every bit of it.

A lot of people denies reality. They stubbornly cling to their idea of illusion. They can't accept what happened in front of their eyes, may it be the hero who gets killed early in the movie because he accidentally trips and falls in a shark pit. They require the main character to lead the movie, to save the day, to give the dramatic one-liners. They require walking off in the sunset at the end, the children to never die, and that good always triumphs over evil. Those people probably won't like Pan's Labyrinth, but in other ways they will love the movie if they ever watch it.