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THE DARK CRYSTAL
Rating: 
USA. 1982.
Directors – Jim Henson & Frank Oz, Screenplay – David Odell, Story – Jim Henson, Producers – Jim Henson & Gary Kurtz, Photography – Oswald Morris, Music – Trevor Jones, Visual Effects – Roy Field & Brian Smithies, Miniature Effects – Ian Wingrove, Special Effects – Ian Scoones, Animatronics Creature Supervisor – Sherry Amott, Production Design – Harry Lange. Production Company – Henson Associates.
Voices:
Stephen Garlick (Jen), Lisa Maxwell (Kira), Barry Dennen (Chamberlain), Billie Whitelaw (Aughra), Percy Edwards (Fizzgig), Brian Muehl (Dying Master), Joseph O’Connor (Urskeks/Narrator), Michael Kilgarriff (General)
Plot: The evil vulture-like Skeksis and the gentle, wisely urRu Mystics exist in a strange symbiosis – when one is hurt or dies, so is one of the other race. The world’s three suns are reaching a point of eclipse known as The Great Conjunction, which will plunge the world into either good or evil. Jen, the last of the elfin Gelfling race, who was raised by the Mystics, is the only one who can replace a missing shard of the Great Crystal. And so Jen sets out on a journey to prevent the world from falling into total darkness.
Jim Henson (along with creative partner Frank Oz) had had enormous success with tv’s The Muppet Show (1976-81). They spun that success off into two delightful theatrical Muppets films The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Great Muppet Caper (1981). After 1981, Jim Henson began to seek more ambitious creative directions. He brought The Muppet Show to a close and then he and Frank Oz teamed with former Star Wars (1977) producer Gary Kurtz and made a stupendous leap from cutsie cuddliness of Muppetry to breathtaking pure fantasy with The Dark Crystal.
The Dark Crystal is the ultimate extension of Muppetry. It is light years from the clumsy wooden marionettes of Gerry Anderson or even of the glove-puppet Kermit the Frog and the technical artistry of having him ride a bicycle that we saw in The Muppet Movie, it is the creation of a complete, three-dimensional, wholly-artificial world in incredible, breathtaking detail – all sans humans. The Dark Crystal is maybe one of the few films that comes anywhere near attaining the complexity of high fantasy as represented by J.R.R. Tolkien, David Eddings, Stephen Donaldson et al in a single film. One scene panning along a riverbank as the flora and fauna come to wriggling, squawking life is amazing. The depth of adult emotions that Jim Henson and co invest the creatures with is remarkable – the blank faces of the Gelflings are inexpressive but a scene drifting down a river with Jen and Kira making music is an incredibly tender one, and the violence of her death or the fear shown on the face of the Podlings as they are drained is startling. Henson and David Odell’s modest if elementary script is weakened by simplistic voice-over narration – but the emotions engendered, the dazzling texture of the background and often adult tone make for one of the most stunning of modern fantasy films.
The Dark Crystal was not a huge success when it came out, partly because some protested against the quite adult nature of the film – the scariness of the Skeksis, the violence – partly also because the film came out not long after and was overshadowed by the massive success of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). If nothing else, The Dark Crystal is worth seeing as an exercise in ranking imagination and the unlimited technical realisation of it. The depth of detail put into the design of this world and sets is stunning.
In recent years, the Henson company have started making plans for a sequel to be entitled The Power of the Dark Crystal (2011).
Without Frank Oz, Jim Henson went on to direct Labyrinth (1986), another similar venture into high fantasy containing a breathtaking fantasy world and range of non-human creations, which was produced by George Lucas. Frank Oz went onto a career as a mainstream comedy director with the likes of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), What About Bob? (1991), HouseSitter (1992), Bowfinger (1999) and The Score (2001). Oz’s other forays into fantasy were the killer plant musical Little Shop of Horrors (1986), the excellent children’s film The Indian in the Cupboard (1995) and the remake of The Stepford Wives (2004). Screenwriter David Odell stayed with the genre and later wrote the scripts for Supergirl (1984) and Masters of the Universe (1987) and directed Martians Go Home (1990).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2013
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