Muppet Watch: The Dark Crystal (1982)

Watched:  05/02/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Jim Henson

I remember seeing The Dark Crystal (1982) in the theater as a kid and it absolutely blowing my mind.  

Fantasy films were certainly a thing for kids in the wake of Star Wars, and Henson was already everywhere, from The Muppet Show to Empire Strikes Back.  But all of those fantasy films, that were live action, always starred humans.  I mean, understandably so.  

But for 90 minutes, Henson and Co. managed to create a world that had not a person in sight, a world both grounded in physical reality and utterly fantastic.  Taking what he'd learned from his many years of shows, commercials, movies, etc...  and getting his feet wet with things as different as Sesame Street and Emmet Otter, and enlisting artist Brian Froud, he cooked up this world. 

Now, the legacy of the movie is really the visuals - the incredible work done with art, sets, puppetry, optical FX and imagination.  It's both entirely artificial and completely tactile.  While I can see the humans underneath now, at the time, it was a complete illusion I bought into.

And that's kind of what you need to weigh it on.  I like Dark Crystal, but I can't say the story does much for me - I appreciate it more as a swing for the fences visual extravaganza than anything that sticks with me because of Jen's journey.

For a team who brought to life such specific characters with The Muppets, only, really, the Chamberlain and Augrha in this movie feel specific.  Jen is a fantasy-movie male lead weenie, and largely ineffective.  Kira is Swiss Army knife of exposition and powers who is "nice" and "girl".  And the Skeksis and Mystics are largely fungible.  

Yet, the set-up is complex it requires both a narrator and the ability to hear Jen's inner-monologue.  And the end is very "I guess that happened".  Which is fine!  But maybe not narratively thrilling.  

And...You can feel the lack of experience in this form of storytelling to some degree as our heroes are responsible for turning everyone around them into cannon fodder.  Not a thing you note as a kid, but as an adult, yeah, Jen and Kira get people and animals killed, enslaved, etc...  in large numbers.  And their one moment of reflection leads right into "okay, let's enlist these ugly rabbit things".

The idea that the world would be healed and *was* by movie's end blew my mind as a kid.  It's gorgeous.  As is the entire movie.  

And, most importantly - the movie is blessedly short.  It does not drag on unnecessarily.  It gets in, does its thing, and gets out.  

In that way, it's a beautiful gem of a movie.  

I'm glad it exists, I was glad to see it for the first time in years.  And, having previously processed the movie's shortcomings, watching it again I was better able to just sit back and watch.

*which is such a weird trope, I kinda wonder if it's part of why I never liked fantasy much and abandoned it as an adolescent male