The Dark Crystal Review

I've seen this 500 times at least just like labyrinth. Guess I'm a sucker for classic fantasy, go figure.  I really love the dark crystal it has alot of special meaning to me. I've watched it many times and have searched for metaphorical meaning in it like the olde bardic tradition of studying a story for insight and I think there's alot to offer with this tale. It gives it alot of replay value to see new meaning in the events. This movie is filled with mystery and magick.

The Dark Crystal is a 1982 British American fantasy film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz and stars Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw and Percy Edwards. It's a tale of ancient magic and good vs evil set in the form of an adventure of the last of a dying race of elf-like humanoids called gelfling. the main character is a gelfling who is prophesized to be the one who can return balance to their world after the evil race of vulture people called the skeksis take over the world ruling with the power of the dark crystal. They find out about the prophesy and kill all of the gelfling minus 2 who escaped and we're raised by different races of people one with small gnome like forest dwellers and one with a bizarre race of druidic wizard creatures that look like lizard/tortoise humanoid type things. As you can tell it's very nature and ancient pagan based with alot of fantastical creatures based loosely on real animals but the creatures in the dark crystal are definitely unique only minor things are relatable to reality most of the creatures are completely imagined to create the world of the dark crystal.

Most all the creatures are puppets or animatronics, some are people dressed in costumes. For this reason some of the movement like speaking and walking make it quite obvious this is only a puppet the movement looks very fake and lifeless at certain moments while at others look real as ever. It can be slightly inconsistent they may have had difficulties or puppeteers that weren't as experienced as others which is a Shame because the creatures and the story is so incredible that the technological inferiority of the time makes the quality of the film suffer but there is still a unique charm to those old puppet fantasy films. It's the viewers decision whether the fact that this is pretty much an all puppet movie is a hinderence to it or not. All in all the story and the aesthetic of the world and the creatures that inhabit is just superb. It's one of the best fantasy films of all time. It progresses just fine there's a balance of dialogue and action and it's all filled with great mysticism that makes it very very special indeed.