Back to the 80s 2: The Dark Crystal (Dir Jim Henson and Frank Oz, 1h30m, 1982)

 The 1980s fantasy movie is unrivalled-this is the decade that would give us Labyrinth, Willow, Highlander, The Princess Bride, Excalibur, Heavy Metal, Conan the Barbarian and Conqueror, Time Bandits, The Never Ending Story, Legend and Krull. It is an era of practical special effects, of high fantasy and adventure, of matte paintings, of English quarries and ruins standing in for dragon's lairs and castles, of daring do, despicable villains, and outlandish friends and foe alike. The strangest, most otherworldly, and most magnificent of those films would come, though, from a familiar source, a storyteller already beloved around the world.

At its heart, The Dark Crystal is a film about good and evil-on the side of good, our two Gelfling (elf-life creatures), heroes, Jen (voiced by Stephen Garlick, performed by Henson) and Kira (voiced by Lisa Maxwell, performed by Kathryn Mullen) must journey to reform the titular Dark Crystal, travelling through outlandish worlds. Against them are pitted the Skeksis (puppeterred and largely voiced by Henson and his team), cold, cruel and murderous vulture-like creatures that have, afraid of a prophecy that threatens their doom at the hands of a Gelfling, massacred and drained them of their essence to stay young, now plotting to enslave the world at the next conjunction of the world's three suns.

With Irish playwright, Joseph O'Conor's narration, and Trevor Jones' score, so we are introduced, with impressive brevity and Henson and Gary Kurtz (the co-writer of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back)'s script that places us in the thick of the action, to the imposing castle of the Skeksis, and Henson's positively fairytale atmosphere, with spectacular visuals married to Kurtz and Henson’s recapturing of the cadences of Grimm's Fairytales. We are told of the cracking of the crystal and how it has marred the land-not a new theme in Henson's often fiercely environmentalist work, though Jim dipped into new age work Seth Speaks for influence here-and sundered its rulers into two races. This is not a world of magic and heroes, but one of darkness, and desperation, a dying world falling ever more under the claw of cruel and power hungry rulers, and our heroes' battle against this ever encroaching darkness to heal the crystal will drive the narrative.

Step forward Brian Froud, Dark Crystal's secret weapon. Already famous for his collaboration with fellow fantasy artist, Alan Lee, on the book Faeries that reached 4th on the NYT bestsellers list in 1978, Henson had essentially headhunted him for the film, and the gamble paid off. What is more, Froud's concepts for the film-evoking Arthur Rackham and other 19th Century English illustrators-match Henson's story, and the talents of the Jim Henson Creature shop, perfectly. Thus, the film is given a timeless quality, matching then-cutting edge puppeteering technology with designs that hark back to an age before cinema of storybooks and fairytales.

Thus we are introduced to Jen, one of the few surviving Gelflings and the Mystics, docile and kind creatures who have taken up an almost monastic existence since the sundering of the crystal, and Jen is quickly tasked by their dying leader, the Master (voiced and performed by Brian Meehl), to find the missing shard of the crystal, and reunite it with the rest to heal the world. Against this we are introduced proper to the Skeksis, gearing up for a power struggle as their current emperor. a genuinely horrifying thing of a puppet approaches death, Dying, so the Master Mystic also vanishes from the world, and Gen begins on his adventure, whilst, caught in the Skeksis power struggle so the cunning Chamberlain (voiced by Barry Dennen, performed by Frank Oz) is banished.

What is immediate, from Dark Crystal's opening half hour is its scale and spectacle; the castle of the Skeksis is a colossal set, steeped in faded grandeur, the creatures that inhabit it are individually costumed-each Skeksis has a role, and an appearance to match, from the Chamberlain's Tudor ruff, to the colossal and imposing General, to the glittering Treasurer and augmented Scientist. These are characters with history, years before the expansion of novels, and decades before the much loved but prematurely felled prequel series. These are creatures with lives, and ambition, breathed into life by puppeteers, and it's arguable that Henson never bettered his craft beyond Dark Crystal. Jen and the Mystics, for their part, add an important humanist element to the film, of an ageing and purposeless group finding new purpose in raising a child.

What is more is the near-humanity, the still-impressive puppeteering on Jen and Kira gives us two protagonists that, for Kermit and Fozzie Bear, have no equal in puppeteering cinema as a lead duo, for to cast human actors in this film would be to break the spell. And what a spell-cast, as many films of the era were, by Industrial Light and Magic, it feels like a practical prototype of the fantasy films of the 1980s (most of the films listed above post-date The Dark Crystal by years in some cases), the use of matte paintings to create colossal, and often forbidding landscapes for the Skeksis to rule over and our heroes to pick through, together with the cutting-edge puppets essentially transport the viewer to another world-only Willow, six years later, and $10 million dollars more comes close to allowing us, the audience, to fully escape into another world of fantastical creatures and curious sights, steeped in history.

Jen quickly finds a guide in the odd, and magnificently rendered figure of Aughra (voiced by veteran English actress Billie Whitelaw, performed by Oz), who helps him find the missing shard within her possessions, and who adds an unexpected depth and a history, in her colossal and imposing planetarium, only for the beetle-like Garthim, colossal and imposing puppets, to crash through the windows and take her hostage, Jen escaping out of a window, and quickly meeting another Gelfling, in the form of Kira, who unexpectedly "dreamfasts" with Jen, thus learning each other's memories (and giving the film the chance to quickly flesh out their histories). They, together with Fizzgig, another in the long line of Henson's odd beasts, soon travel across the land together.

No sooner, however, has Jen been brought to the village of Podlings that raised Kira than the Garthim return, kidnapping great swathes of the hapless and agrarian creatures, only halted in their path by the sudden appearance of the Chamberlain. With Jen and Kira escaping, and coming across a ruin containing petroglyphs of the prophecy, so they hurry to the castle, pursued by the Chamberlain, the stage set for a final battle between the Skeksis and the two Gelflings, a final confrontation between good and for the fate of this world.

At its heart, Dark Crystal is a film about this clash between the agrarian, the under-trodden fey and the farmers, and the industrial, the rapacious; a masterful co-opting of the same narrative pieces that underpinned Lord of the Rings, but made ever more mystical and outlandish. More than any Henson work but the Muppets themselves, Dark Crystal feels personal to the film-maker and puppeteer, a project that lays bare his philosophy, his ambition, and skill as a film-maker, writer and storyteller. There is something generational about the film; not till the release of Jackson's trilogy would The Dark Crystal have a cinematic rival in creating an entire world, and breathing life into it. Whilst other fantasy films of the period may be more ambitious, or more narratively focused, few come close to the heart, and the boldness of The Dark Crystal

Nor would Jim Henson make a more daring piece of cinema-whilst The Dark Crystal did not exactly underperform, its post-production and lack of marketing as Lew Lord, long Henson and the Muppets' financial champion's business empire broke up would leave Henson footing much of the bill for a film that fascinated and enthralled many, but was regarded as lacking a human touch. Labyrinth, four years later, would redress the balance, but be somewhat beholden to its two human stars, rather than fully embracing its fantasy world, and end up making several million dollars less. Both films have now enjoyed, as with much of Henson's non-Muppet work, a critical reappraisal, and now tower over 80s fantasy.

Both, undeniably, are excellent films, but, whilst both of them transports you to another world, there is something otherworldly, truly escapist, truly miraculous about Dark Crystal, not merely in its story-telling, or its heroes battling against seemingly all powerful and insurmountable odds. The Dark Crystal is the best project Jim Henson ever made-for an hour and a half, we leave our world and journey to another, a world of lifelike and outlandish creatures, brave heroes, and despicable villains, in a vivid and spectacular tale that has lost none of its power, and only grown more magical, poignant, exciting, and more timeless with the passing decades.


Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

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