As a class,  we produced a slideshow analysing how far Pan’s Labyrinth uses, develops and challenges the conventions of the fantasy film genre using its own repertoire of elements. To understand the conventions of the fantasy genre, we compared the film against a corpus of texts including Shrek, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings.

The Conventional Features of Pan’s Labyrinth:

• One convention that Pan’s Labyrinth follows is that the main characters of the film widely draw inspiration from the generic archetypes of the fantasy genre. For example, Ofelia, the film’s protagonist, is both: a very unsuspecting hero that comes from an ordinary world and is thrust by external forces into an extraordinary world, like Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring; and a traditional fairy-tale princess, like Fiona from Shrek.
• The film centres itself around key locations from the fantasy genre, namely the forest surrounding the manor and the King of the Underworld’s royal throne room. Forests feature prominently in the corpus we set out to analyse Pan’s Labyrinth against, including The Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter, the forest housing Shrek’s swamp, and the Fangorn Forest in The Lord of the Rings. In the final moments of the film, we see Ofelia complete her journey and travel to the Underworld, awakening in the majestic throne room of a royal palace. Castles and palaces are an iconic and integral setting in the fantasy genre, emphasising the idea that the story of Pan’s Labyrinth, while dark and at times twisted, is still a fairy-tale.
• Finally, Pan’s Labyrinth features a special, ornate blade as one of the most important parts of its iconography, in the form of the dagger that Ofelia takes from the Pale Man’s dining room. An example from our corpus could be the Sword of Gryffindor from Harry Potter, but the most obvious comparison to draw would be Excalibur in The Sword in the Stone, a fantastical weapon uniquely obtained by the protagonist of the film.

How Pan’s Labyrinth Differs From The Wider Genre:

• In Pan’s Labyrinth, the character of the faun at first glance seems to act as the generic wise older mentor figure that introduces the protagonist to a new world, but Del Toro twists this convention by adding a potentially dark, sinister element to the character. While characters like Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings and Dumbledore from Harry Potter are kind and endearing, the faun is openly hostile to Ofelia. Where his counterparts in the fantasy genre endlessly support the protagonist, the faun both provokes and abandons Ofelia throughout the movie. He is described by del Toro as ‘a creature that is neither good or evil… like nature’.  
• At it’s core, Pan’s Labyrinth is a lot more intimate than most other films in the fantasy genre. It replaces grand battles between vast armies with an extremely personal conflict between Ofelia and her step-father, Captain Vidal, and chooses to mainly focus in on their feelings and perspectives instead of those of a large band of side characters. The generic climax of a fantasy film often includes an awe-inspiring action set piece, featuring hundreds of fierce combatants clashing over the fate of their known world, for examples look no further than the Battle of Pelennor Fields in the Return of the King, or the Battle of Hogwarts in The Deathly Hallows Part II. However, Pan’s Labyrinth subverts this convention by having the finale take place between just two speaking characters, Ofelia and Vidal. Furthermore, del Toro avoids a dramatic battle completely, instead having a single gunshot end the confrontation, and ultimately Ofelia’s life.
• Additionally, despite the fact that she is reborn in the Underworld to live without pain or suffering, the fact that Ofelia dies at the end of the film is a subversion of the genre in of itself. Usually, the generic plot of a fantasy film ends with the protagonist winning the day, often with some sacrifice, but always with glory and honour. Pan’s Labyrinth ends on a sombre note, with the image of Ofelia laying still on the cold stone of the labyrinth still freshly ingrained in the mind of the viewer, without glory, and without honour.