Week One: The Dark Crystal

Year: 1982,

Directors: Jim Henson & Frank Oz,

Nostalgia Score: 5/5,

Most Recent Watch: At least once a year, for as long as I can remember. 

It's hard for me to express how much I love The Dark Crystal. It has been one of my favorite movies for as long as I can remember, and I think it's an absolute masterpiece. When I sit down and hear the opening musical score it immediately brings a smile to face. Admittedly, the plot and dialogue are nothing special, but I don't really think The Dark Crystal is about narrative anyway. It's about building and exploring another world. There's just so much creative talent packed into every little on-screen detail, it's mind-boggling.

My primary emotion while watching this movie is utter delight, and if my memory serves me correctly, that was pretty much always the case. It's not just that everything looks cool. It's knowing that people intentionally designed and made all of these cool looking things. Every movie is made by people of course, but with The Dark Crystal it's more than just sets, and costumes, and cinematography, and editing. It's the physical bodies of the characters themselves and the entire world they're living in. The whole movie is a giant world-building and special effects exercise, and I find that really impressive.

I probably owe a lot of these feelings to the fact that my childhood VHS of The Dark Crystal included included a behind-the-scenes documentary that would play after the credits. It seemed nearly as long as the actual movie itself, but despite that, I watched it every single time. And when I showed the movie to friends I made them sit and watch the documentary every single time. All of the creature designs were just so strange and magical that I was intensely curious about how people could possibly make such interesting things. I never got tired of watching how the artists made those creatures and I never got tired of watching how the puppeteers animated them either. I know it sounds super corny, but I don't know how to describe the whole process except as magic. The fact that all of these artists worked together and made this fictional alien planet seem so real and so tangible is just magic.

My favorite primary characters to watch are, without a doubt, the Skeksis. They look so corrupted and ostentatious. If you gave an artist nothing but the words 'corrupted,' 'ostentatious,' and maybe 'vulture' they'd be almost guaranteed to hand you back a drawing of one of these guys. Not to mention, that the costumes designed for these puppets tell a story all by themselves. Their robes (and their palace too, for that matter) look like things that were once beautiful, but that have since decayed. Underneath all of that dust and grime, there are jewels and rich fabrics. It's like the Skeksis don't understand that their things aren't beautiful anymore. Everything about the way they look communicates the idea of a fall into evil so effectively. We know, just by looking at the Skeksis, that they weren't always like this.

It's even more impressive because all of that meticulous attention carries over into the entire movie. I could very happily watch The Dark Crystal without any dialogue, because at this point, most of my attention is spent trying to catch glimpses of my favorite little creature puppets flopping around in the background. There are several scenes where the camera pans through the environment, lingering over all these neat alien plants and animals just going about, minding their own business. In particular, I've always liked how lively the trees and flowers are in this movie. There are things that look like plants, or even like part of the landscape, that suddenly come to life and move around. This is used to great effect in a short vignette where a small otter-like creature chases some bugs into a little cave, only to be eaten because the cave was actually something else's mouth. Then there are other fun, weird things scattered throughout the movie. For example, some of the animals move quickly by rolling instead of running or hopping like real animals would. And often, these type of peripheral details are on screen even when the main characters are in the frame. All of that imagination and effort, just for the background! There are just so many neat special effects crammed into this movie.

Despite the fact that I'm just as entertained by the visual artistry of this film as I was when I was a kid, the biggest thing that I've noticed watching it as an adult is how uninspiring the actual story is. The Chosen One trope is possibly the most worn out character arc in the entire fantasy genre, and The Dark Crystal literally tells you, right at the beginning of the film, that this is going to be about The Chosen One. Overall, Jen is kind of a boring dude and honestly, he doesn't seem all that bright either. In the beginning of the movie, the audience occasionally gets a little internal monologue from Jen's perspective. This helps narrate the action and was probably intended to keep kids engaged during otherwise pretty quiet scenes, but they make Jen seem really oblivious and kind of stupid. I never understood why Kira, raised by the Podlings (who look like a cross between a Cabbage Patch Doll and a potato), seemed to be so much smarter and more knowledgeable about the world than Jen, who was raised by the supposedly wise and scholarly Mystics. 

However, although I do enjoy complaining about the profusion of convenient prophecies and orphaned boys in fantasy fiction, The Dark Crystal kind of makes it work because, after all, it is a family movie. The simple and timeworn plot means that kids immediately understand what's going on and because the film is so visually unique it doesn't really need a nuanced and intelligent plot to catch your attention. Furthermore, as boring as it is, The Chosen One trope is easy to relate to. What shy, imaginative kid hasn't wished that they were destined for great things? There's a reason it pops up so often, especially in children's fantasy fiction. And if you are familiar with the trope (as most people are without even realizing it) there is that element of satisfaction when things go the way they're supposed to.

That particular combination of a simple plot with seriously imaginative special effects, means that The Dark Crystal manages to be both comfortingly familiar and yet, beautifully weird. It's also a great example of an honest-to-God family movie because it will keep kids watching without talking down to them and will keep adults entertained without hidden innuendoes and references. As you might be guessing by now, I could keep going on about this movie for forever. There's so much fun trivia that I haven't even begun to touch on, but then this would morph into a Dark Crystal fan blog. So, bottom line, I loved The Dark Crystal as a kid and I still love it as an adult. Like I said, it's a work of art.