Muppets vs Creatures

Quotes

 * Jim Henson spoke with Judy Harris in 1982 for Cinefantastique magazine about the difference between "Muppets" and "creatures".


 * Harris: When I talk with people at Henson Associates now, they practically blanch if you use the term Muppets in connect with The Dark Crystal. What is the difference between what you consider Muppets and what The Dark Crystal is, and have you coined a term for what the creatures in The Dark Crystal are?


 * Henson: No, we haven't, and a number of people say "you really should have a term for that" but at the moment we're saying creatures.


 * Harris: Well, what is it that they're not Muppets?


 * Henson: Well, to me the Muppets are sort of fuzzy, bright colored, cute, lovable caricatures that we know from The Muppet Show. Fraggle Rock also drops under the term Muppets.


 * Harris: Is it - I remember in the interview that you did with Fred Clarke over Labor Day, he sort of labored the point that The Dark Crystal wasn't heavily into humor. Is that why you don't want it to be called a Muppet movie - because it's more dramatic and adventure-oriented than...


 * Henson: Well, no, it's no so much the humor, but I have a feeling that the characters are just not Muppets at all. We hesitate to call them puppets even. I think of puppetry as being something more -- see, I love puppetry and what puppetry is, which is related to ... stylization, simplicity, boiling down to - it's a wonderful form and I really love it. But with The Dark Crystal, instead of puppetry we're trying to go toward a sense of realism - toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive and we're mixing up puppetry and all kinds of other techniques. It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself.


 * Brian Henson spoke on the subject of animatronic creatures (of Farscape and the Dark Crystal) versus the Muppets in a 2005 radio interview on WKRB West in Salt Lake City, UT.
 * Henson: It is tough to tell what is animatronic and what's not. If a puppet is trying to look like it really truly is alive – and if you were to cut it they would bleed – then that's [a creature]. But a Muppet is different - they really are proper puppetry. You know it's felt and ping-pong balls, and that's why you're enjoying it. animatronic creatures are much more life like and real...animatronics are trying to achieve a very perfect illusion...[The Muppets] are not asking the audience to believe that this is really happening, instead you're saying this is a show, these characters are to entertain you.