The Dark Crystal Film Review

 

Film fans The Muppets creator Jim Henson is mostly known for making family friendly films and TV shows however people forget that he also made some pretty dark films. With perhaps one of his darkest films being the very film that i'm about to review for you all today and this is a film that I honestly haven't seen at all until right now and so join me as I review the very dark puppet film with that / the film in question being called simply just "The Dark Crystal" enjoy.

The plot of this film is Jen is a Gelfling that is sent on a quest to restore balance to the world of Thra and overthrow the ruling Skeksis by restoring a powerful broken Crystal. In terms of what I personally thought about the plot of this film in all honesty the plot of this film is little bit on the thin side since it does get pretty hard to work what the actual plot of the film is since the original quest was for Jen to find this shard which he does a few scenes later and so after that the characters just sort of go frim one scene to the next for no reason until it's suddenly mentioned that Jen has to restore this crystal by which point's to little to late because the audience is lost on what the plot of the film actually is but that's just what I think anyways and that's just in my very humble and as well as being in my very honest opinion anyways.

Starring in this film is Stephen Garlick as Jen , Lisa Maxwell as Kira , Billie Whitelaw as Aughra and Percy Edwards as Fizzgig. Also starring in this film is Barry Dennen as The Chamberlain , Michael Kilgarriff as The General , Jerry Nelson as The Ritual-Master , Steve Whitmire as The Scientist , Thick Wilson as The Gourmand , Brian Muehl as The Ornamentalist , John Baddeley as The Scroll Keeper , David Buck as The Slave-Master , Charles Collingwood as The Treasurer , Seán Barrett as urZah / The Ritual-Guardian , David Greenaway as urIm / The Healer , Jean Pierre Amiel as urUtt / The Weaver , Hugh Spight as urAmaj / The Cook , Robbie Barnett as urYod / The Numerologist , Swee Lim as urNol / The Herbalist , Simon Williamson as urSol / The Chanter , Hus Levant as urAc / The Scribe and Toby Philpott as urTih / The Alchemist.

In terms of what I personally thought of / about the acting that's featured / presented to us in this film in all honesty the acting that's featured / presented to us in this very film isn't that bad. Which isn't really a surprise since the acting in all of the products that Jim Henson has made (be they for TV or film) have / has always been really good and so its only the naturel that the acting in this particular film is really freaking good as well

Now then boys and girls for some strange reason Jim Henson has a fascination with making dark kids films in the eighties since he also made the film Labyrinth. I honestly have no idea why the late and very great Jim Henson chose to make these dark kids films maybe he just wanted to prove that he could do more then make great content for The Muppets or maybe he wanted to prove to adults that puppets can be taken as seriously as live action actors but either way it's  / it was great to see what this man could do if he wanted to make something that was aimed at a more mature audience.

Now for the life of me I honestly had no idea how they brought / bought the character of Jen to life since from the close up shots he looks like a puppet but then from either the mid shots or shots from far away he looks like he was done by a real person. Well it turns that Jen was actually both done by a puppet and by a human actor since they had stunt person Kiran Shah perform as the character in the long shots and when they did the close up shots Jen was a puppet.

I have to say that it takes alot to really get me wondering how they did certain shots or certain characters in a movie but this film got me wondering how they did the character of Jen and I will say tho that i'm glad that I did find out how they did the character because it's such a simple trick. Heck even Gerry Anderson used this trick in Thunderbirds since in Thunderbirds whenever you would see a close up of a characters hand picking something up you were in fact seeing a real human persons hand and so having Jen be played by a puppet and by a human actor is in my opinion at least an evolution of what Gerry Anderson was doing back when he made Thunderbirds all the way back in he 1965 TV show / series Thunderbirds.

I have to say boys and girls that even the henchmen characters un this film are pretty freaking looking with the Garthim being really creepy to look at. To me what makes the Garthim creepy looking is the fact that there based of of bugs can be really creepy to look at so basing their design of a species of creatures that can be pretty creepy to look at pretty much guarantees that these characters will be memorable and that they will most / more then likely give people nightmares.

This film has a grand total running time of one hour and thirty three minuets and seven seconds and I have to say that this film does feel a tad bit on the long side. This is simply due to the fact / because that / the film film doesn't have much there in terms of actual plot and so there are huge portions of the film which just felt boring to me personally and heck I was so bored that I actually started planning what I hope to review for tomorrow and that should never ever be the case.

Now here is were I would normally talk about any action however since this isn't an action film I have to talk about the villains that are in the film. The Villains of this film are called Skeksis and they look nightmare inducing honestly the birds from The Birds after they got mutated by the T-virus an then they somehow learned to walk all jokes aside these characters do look really creepy but they are pretty ineffective villains since they don't really do that much even tho they vastly outnumber our heroes and so they come across more as an annoyance rather than outright villains , plus it doesn't really help that they are pretty weak villains as well since even tho they know that this person is going to kill them they do very little to actually prevent their deaths and they don't really have an end goal either nor do they have a reason or a motif to actually be evil and so they just come across as being evil for the sake of being evil.

Overall I can't say that this is a bad film because it's not but it's also not the kind of the film that I was expecting from the creator of The Muppets himself Mr. Jim Henson. Now then boys and girls since i've talked about both of the good things that are in this film and as well as both of the bad things that are featured / presented to us in this very film in this very / exact review that means this pretty fun and very freaking dark film gets a total score of a 7 out of 10 from me.

As for where I got all of the mages that I personally used in this very review well then boys and girls I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review from the official Labyrinth fandom wiki page , the official The dark Crystal fandom wiki page , Google Images and the official The Muppets fandom wiki page. With my preferred website to use to get images from this very film that I personally used in this very review being the official The Dark Crystal fandom wiki page just simply due to the fact that nearly all of the images that are featured on the official The Dark Crystal fandom wiki page are fairly high quality and as well as being as fairly high definition as well.