The Dark Crystal

The Plot

 * Another World, Another Time... In the Age of Wonder. A thousand years ago, this land was green and good, until the Crystal cracked. For a single piece was lost; a shard of the Crystal. Then strife began, and two new races appeared: the cruel Skeksis... the gentle Mystics.

1,000 years ago the crystal cracked, and the spirits of the UrSkek were divided into the peaceful Mystics and the evil Skeksis. A prophecy was written that stated if a Gelfling healed the crystal, the world would be renewed and the UrSkek would be reunited. Due to the prophecy, the Skeksis hunted down and killed all the Gelflings.

The last Gelfling left on Thra, a male named Jen, was saved and raised by the Mystics. Jen is sent by his dying master on a journey to heal the Dark Crystal. If Jen succeeds, the world will be saved; but if Jen fails, the Skeksis will rule the land forever. On his quest to The Castle of the Crystal, Jen meets Kira, another Gelfling. The two must battle the evil Skekis and save Thra.

Production Notes:
When Jim Henson began work on The Dark Crystal in 1977, he had no story, just a sense of the kind of fantasy world he wanted to create. Henson was beginning to visualize the creature that would inhabit this world of good and evil when he discovered The Land of Froud, a collection of drawings by Brian Froud. Henson immediately contacted Froud, who agreed to act as the projects conceptual designer.


 * Brian Froud: "(Henson) was, I think, looking for something different to the style he had been working in and it's interesting to discover how different it was. Whereas the Muppets are very simple bold shapes, what I designed was very complex and complicated. I was responsible for the conception of an entire world, a world that had never been seen before. I had to design everything. Not only the general look of the world - from skies to the landscapes - but down to the smallest details which included things like knives and forks, pots and pans, the everyday minutiae details of the creatures of that lived in this world."

Once Henson and Froud had developed their ideas into a storyline. David Odell was commissioned to write the screenplay. In July 1979, Henson moved the project's pre-production planning from New York to London, where he could simultaneously supervise production of the fourth season of The Muppet Show. It was here that creative supervisor Sherry Amott assembled the 60-member animatronic fabrication group who sculpted, molded, sewed and cared for the project's elaborate puppet cast.

The Dark Crystal was filmed at the EMI Elstree Studios in London. While the puppeteers who operated the main characters were drawn from the ranks of the Muppeteers, the Mystics and many of the other creatures were brought to life by a specially recruited group of mimes, actors, dancers, acrobats and clowns. All of these artists performed their craft on sets that, although scaled to the puppet's size, were built up off the floor to allow them enough clearance to operate their characters unhindered. (The puppets were controlled through a variety of radio, mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems.)

In addition to the state-of-the-art puppets, special visual effects also played a crucial role in bringing the world of The Dark Crystal to life.


 * Gary Kurtz, producer: "We started with special effects very early on. We knew we would have to have some miniatures, some matte paintings, a lot of optical composite work and some blue screen work. We decided to build the Dark Crystal Castle in two miniature sizes, one about 10th scale and one about 25th scale so that we could build a fairly large landscape with mountains and terrain and put the castle in the middle. In addition to the matte paintings, we did several key miniatures which were matched in with live-action foregrounds and with cloud tank skies. We also did some composite work, which was very unique in that we did some superimpose of creatures that were matched into positions with some special holdout mattes that gave us a slightly ethereal feeling."

The test screenings of The Dark Crystal had the Skeksis speaking a language based on ancient Greek and Egyptian, specially created for them by linguist Alan Garner. Jim Henson stated, "My whole approach to this film is visual. I wanted as little dialogue as possible because I believe the story is stronger that way. Dialogue becomes a crutch. If you have all these alien-looking creatures, why should they be talking in English? An early concept was to have the Skeksis just making noises, but in a way you knew what they were saying." Gary Kurtz responded to the non-English version stating, "The audience thought that they were missing something. Actually, they didn't need to understand the Skeksis' dialogue at those points. The translation of what was being said is really quite banal. The strength of those scenes was instinctively knowing what's going on...But the Skeksis scenes were quite long. You had to concentrate. The audience wasn't prepared to do that." The response of the test audiences led to the replacement of the Skeksis language with English dialogue.

Reviews

 * "An elaborate fantasy - a cross between Tolkien and the Brothers Grimm." - Leonard Maltin
 * "Jim Henson Created a Brilliantly detailed universe with a fairy tale adventure story." - The Motion Picture Guide
 * "An Ambitious, technically superb venture into fantasy." - The Universal Story
 * "A dazzling technological and artistic achievement!" - Variety
 * "The Dark Crystal is fantastic!" - Boston Globe

Trivia

 * The names of many characters, races and places are not mentioned in the film but in the novelization and have since become canon.


 * After its dismal box-office performance, Universal abdicated video rights to CBS/Fox Video. The rights to this film eventually reverted back to the Jim Henson Company, who released it again in the early '90s during their partnership with Disney. Late in the '90s, during their partnership with Sony, Henson again released Dark Crystal under the Columbia TriStar banner. Columbia TriStar continues to own the video rights, and has put the film out in regular DVD format, as well as a Superbit version and two-disc Special Edition.