![]() It’s why I think I’m still enthralled by this film, instead of the Skeksis just being a point of film-induced trauma from my childhood. Besides, a story about the last living beings of a race, set to save the world and bring forth something called the Great Conjunction? Yeah, that’s the fantasy stuff that we all crave!īut that part about how the film is very high concept, but gives the least amount of information possible? That’s the most interesting thing to me, at least as an adult, about The Dark Crystal. It’s scary in a really direct and purposeful way, it’s funny and filled with humor children tend to like, and it gives a really good reading of a high fantasy world with the most minimal of additional information. However, beyond the insurmountable talent involved in the creation of it, The Dark Crystal is sort of the pinnacle in 1980s fantasy for kids. A task that the puppeteers manage with flying colors, though it was quite taxing on them. No, because they were meant to be the closest to humans, their expressions and gait of their walk needed to be very specific and relatable. Which is not to say that the Gelflings, tiny by comparison, were the easy ones to perform. And there was a distinct lack of vision possible when operating the puppets, so many performers had monitors on their chests so they could see what they were doing. Henson, himself, said he could only hold a Mystic puppet in a single position for 5-10 seconds at a time. Which is not to mention the sheer size of them. The Chamberlain Skeksis, alone, had 21 different electronic components! Often taking two, sometimes three, puppeteers to operate, the urRu and the Skeksis were horribly heavy with all their electronics. Marketed as the first live-action film without human beings on screen, The Dark Crystal was touted as “a showcase for cutting-edge animatronics.” Which it most certainly was! It contained some of the most groundbreaking technology in both hands and facial expressions that Henson and company ever put together. Really great stuff!)Īnd then there’s the puppets themselves. I had one of his art books growing up and never tired of flipping around it. (His illustrations are truly amazing, by the way. Known for his elaborate and stunning art of faeries, dwarfs, and other woodland creatures, Froud brought an otherworldly vibe to the vision shared by Henson and Oz. Because building an entire fantasy world like this one would take a lot more than 25 pages! It was at this point that Jim Henson pulled in illustrator Brian Froud to work on designs for the puppets. Once a lot of the small changes (mostly names) happened from Henson’s original story, the actual refining process of the plot started. As the story evolved, philosophical elements from Jane Roberts’s Seth Material began to form the base of the story - especially where Aughra and the urRu (aka, The Mystics) were concerned. Like, the land was originally called Mithra, which was later shortened to what we know it as today: Thra. Among a few other, smaller things that would be adapted, but not thrown out. Including the epic quest, three main races of very distinctly different creatures, the unification of two of those races, and the Crystal itself. And I, for one, would love to read it - even if it’s messy.Īs the jumping off point for the film, The Crystal included some major elements that would remain. As a 25-page story that Henson wrote and shared with his cohorts, The Crystal held all the eventual plot tidings of the final film. Lubin and Henson’s own short-lived, but recurring, SNL sketch, The Land of Gorch, that served as major inspiration points for The Crystal. And it was a mix of an illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll’s poetry by Leonard B. ![]() Unique in this way, every creature in The Dark Crystal is a puppet, created and operated by the great people at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Thra, itself, is a world with no humans, unlike many of the stories that Jim Henson and company set out to tell throughout his career, and even long after. A journey that they succeed at, though the future of Thra remains unknown to us. Within a tight 93 minutes, the general audience was transported to the dying land of Thra and introduced to the last living Gelflings, who go on an epic journey to save their world. Directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, with a script by David Odell, The Dark Crystal is burned into the brains of many millenials - myself included. Which is how, in 1982, we saw the theatrical release of The Dark Crystal. Given the stories that he set out to tell in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s deeply unsurprising that Jim Henson apparently thought it was unhealthy for children to never be afraid. By Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |