The Dark Crystal 1982

[6.7/10] Some folks take a quantitative approach when it comes to evaluating movies: “Plus five points for the story, minus three points for the acting,” and so on until they arrive at some final score. I’m not that literal about it, but there’s a version of this we all do when we’re considering what we think about a particular film. Sometimes it’s just a feeling, but the sense of “I liked this thing; I didn’t like that thing” and stacking up those likes and dislikes until you reach an ultimate conclusion stays with us all..

And then you come to a film like The Dark Crystal which blows that method up entirely.

I say that because narratively, the movie is a dull mess. It features a generic hero’s journey in a fantasy setting, with derivative shades of everything from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars. Jen, our erstwhile protagonist, is flat and useless, devoid of personality and almost pathologically incapable of doing something worthwhile until the very end of the film. The figures which populate the movie are barely characters. People have quests but not wants. And there’s little sense of cause and effect. Instead, things just sort of happen. In terms of pure plot and character, The Dark Crystal is a risible failure.

But visually, it is an utter triumph. There may be no greater achievement by the artists at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. The character designs are remarkable, with a level of detail and distinctiveness in everyone and everything that moves and makes the film come alive. The production design is stunning, with living swamps and craggy chambers which give the sense of a mysterious ecosystem and ancient civilizations. The grand vistas traversed by our wanderers pluck the wonder of our hearts as we watch these pilgrims trudge across the landscape. There is so much artistry, so much aesthetic imagination, packed into every frame that it all awes even four decades later.

And I have no idea how to reconcile these two aspects of the movie. I am a habitual eye-roller at movies that just exist for the special effects, with perfunctory stories that exist to support bombastic set pieces. (Hello Avatar fans!) And yet, I don’t think Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and company are stooping to such lows. The Dark Crystal seems to be going for something more elemental, aiming to hit on elemental notions of good and evil and the coming of age that comes for all young heroes who burst out into the wider world and are humbled by what they find there.

But the nuts and bolts writing of that tale is downright terrible. There’s ample voiceover and exposition here, and all it accomplishes is the repetition of details already clear to the audience. Maybe studio executives coaxed Henson and his team to hold the viewers’ hands through all of these events with the idea that the film should appeal to a younger demographic. Whatever the reason, half of the spoken dialogue makes it seem like the characters are filling in for the narrator, making obvious declarations about what’s happening without adding any new information or revealing character.

Despite the clumsy setup, you do want to visit the world of the Gelflings, Skeksis, and Mystics. Much of that owes to the impressive set design. Everything from the Skeksis’ rocky castle, to the Mystics’ hippie commune, to the diverse biomes in between has the character missing from the, well, actual characters. But some of it’s the lore of this land, suffused with prophecy, a thousand years of darkness, and hints at a broader, weirder world beyond the story which we only get a few, tantalizing hints at. The Dark Crystal does an awful job of shading in this place with words alone, but makes up for it in the brilliant design work and atmosphere that invites the viewer to stay a spell.

The same goes for the iconic look of the various figures in the film. What the characters lack in dimension from the script, they possess in sheer creativity from their designs and movements. The Gelflings fall into the uncanny valley, but the Skeksis are grotesque and opulent in all the right ways, their insectoid henchman are terrifying both in their cockroach-esque appearance and skittering pace, and the Mystics are soft, slow, and peaceful. To say nothing of the other flora and fauna in the piece -- from the poor, sucked-dry podlings to the lumpy, cantankerous Aughra -- there’s visual panache out the wazoo in everyone the Creature Shop dreamed up.

The Dark Crystal simply can’t find much worth doing with those impressive fantasy residents. The plot is straightforward to the point of boredom -- go put the thing in the other thing to save the world. And the bumps and bruises and secrets along the way come at such a slow pace, and do so little to raise the stakes or reveal something novel, that you’ll spend more time checking your watch along the way to the titular crystal than oohing and aahing at the scrapes and misadventures Jen has before he gets there.

Even then, what the film’s climax lacks in earned catharsis, it makes up for in visual splendor. Seeing the Skeskis and the Mystics fade into one another, reforming an old race of luminous beings, feels momentous even as the screenplay stumbles to the destination. The image of an innocent creature stabbed to death and then brought to life through another’s courage has a moving power, even if the characters involved are flat. There is such life in these images, and these talented puppeteers, that no storytelling blunders could fully blunt their talents.

But how do you judge a film that’s seemingly at war with itself in terms of quality. The story being told and the craft used to bring it to life are inextricable, especially in a film like The Dark Crystal. I don’t know how to balance the sheer terribleness of the one with the sheer transcendence of the other. It is, like the Skeksis and Mystics, something horrible and something beautiful bound up into one. There is a redemptive power in the blend of those two aspects of the same beings in the world of the film, and perhaps the same holds true for Jim Henson’s deeply flawed, but artistically marvelous stab at something no one had ever seen before.