The Great Conjunction

Jim Henson’s The Dark Crys­tal was an epic under­tak­ing for Hen­son and com­pany in the early 80’s. It also remains one of my favorite movies of all time. Despite the high pro­duc­tion qual­ity of the film the dif­fi­culty in cre­at­ing The Dark Crys­tal was partly due to the mechan­ics of mim­ic­k­ing real­is­tic move­ment with intri­cate hand pup­pets, some­thing that had never been con­veyed suc­cess­fully despite prior attempts and experimentation.

Pre-production

Before pro­duc­tion was to begin, Hen­son part­nered with Gary Kurtz, who served as pro­ducer on Star Wars and Brian Froud, con­cep­tual artist, to bring the story to life. The next step was brain­storm­ing and out­lin­ing how The Dark Crys­tal was going to be cre­ated within their pro­jected bud­get. Accord­ing to Froud in an inter­view about the Mak­ing of Dark Crystal;

There were so many dif­fer­ences of opin­ion and so many com­pro­mises had to be made to accom­mo­date the char­ac­ters to the phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions of the human body. But every­thing did turn out all right in the end.

Recog­ni­tion

The film opened on Decem­ber 17^th, 1982 with a final bud­get of $15 mil­lion, funded and dis­trib­uted by Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios. Crit­ics either hailed it as a “bit­ter­sweet spec­ta­cle” or noth­ing more than an “overblown pup­pet show”. Through my eyes it was some­thing that broke the mold and pushed the bound­aries beyond con­ven­tional Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions. It’s some­what unset­tling that movies that sel­dom break any molds gar­ner critic appraisal and yet “unique” films with a sense of vision — espe­cially inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tions — rarely receive wide­spread recog­ni­tion. Henson’s The Dark Crys­tal, while fan­tasy in nature, was also an explo­sion of col­ors, tex­tures and cul­ture. As you watch the film you appre­ci­ate the amount of work that went into research­ing the char­ac­ters, his­tory and spe­cial effects.

Spe­cial Effects

In an age before CGI (or Com­puter Gen­er­ated Imagery), The Dark Crys­tal uti­lized extremely detailed and yet com­pli­cated pup­petry. In some scenes, peo­ple small in stature were used for the Gelflings and full-sized actors for many of the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters. Like any Hen­son pro­duc­tion this was needed to envoke a sense of real­ism and yet, with the addi­tion of lay­ered pup­petry, it gives the illu­sion that the crea­ture on screen is liv­ing and breath­ing. These meth­ods, if used prop­erly, can be very suc­cess­ful in film­mak­ing, but it’s also noth­ing new. Since the advent of film, peo­ple have dressed up in cos­tumes to rep­re­sent crea­tures plucked from their creator’s imag­i­na­tions. How­ever, in recent times, film­mak­ers have added more real­ism by cou­pling the cos­tume with noth­ing more than gad­getry (for the eyes, limbs or other pro­tru­sions) cov­ered in mate­r­ial such as latex, foam or fur which is usu­ally con­trolled by radio receivers or computers.

The Dark Crys­tal will for­ever remain in my mind as one of the movies which influ­enced by own inter­ests in pup­petry and spe­cial effects. As a kid I must have sat down and watched it a few hun­dred times and never, even to this day, have I grown tired of repeated view­ings. It’s a clas­sic in my opin­ion as far as Hen­son and fan­tasy films are con­cerned and should be a part of anyone’s movie col­lec­tion, whether you be a die-hard fan­tasy or science-fiction film aficionado.