Dark Crystal, how it show have ended by dreamtrove

CINEMA

Dark Crystal, how it show have ended

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Thursday, March 24, 2011 04:48
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:37 PM

I waited 30 years to see this movie, because someone said to skip it at the time, I think we saw ET instead. But I finally got around to watching it. Some amazing puppets. Writing problems. At first I thought "Well, once you've put that much work into the puppets, you can't alter the storyline" which is a problem, but more serious was the dialogue, mostly, and the narration. The story arc itself was not really problematic, a few little issues:

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At the very end, when Kira is drained briefly, she loses a little essence, so now she's only 99% Kira, and everyone forgets about it. Then, she dies, and I think "Ah, now is when someone remembers that a drop of her essence is still in the bottle, and runs and gets it and brings her back to life, maybe with the aid of the crystal conjunction thingie." But no, we get a hokie deus ex love will find a way solution that doesn't even make story sense.

The other twist I was waiting for was "Finally, we are whole again, no longer split into two beasts. We will rule like Gods! And crush you pesky mortals!" I mean, there's always a "what can go wrong" or "how can things get worse" angle to writing that makes for more interesting situations.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Wednesday, March 23, 2011 6:09 PM

STEGASAURUS

I think you're judging by today's movie standards. This was a movie made mostly for kids, but designed so that the whole family could watch within the confines of early to mid 80s movie formulae. It was a completely different world where none of our world's physics or rationale have any place. Following your opinions, we should have seen the Garthem's innards spill all over the floor when they collapsed. We should have seen more violence during the fight between the Garthem and the Land Striders. We should have seen the Skeksis drain and consume Augra's essence. We didn't because that's not what the writers and creators were going for back then.

Hokey by today's standards, even for a children's movie? Sure. But in my opinion, it's still an awesome movie to introduce children into the fantasy genre. It's still one of my favorite movies of all time, and IIRC the last one Jim Henson made.

-Steg

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Thursday, March 24, 2011 4:48 AM

DREAMTROVE

Steg.

I'm amazed this thread got a comment. I'm very familiar with the genre, this is about the last one I hadn't seen, and I don't think that this is about that. It's just good writing sense. The only real flaw in the Dark Crystal is that it is so focused on the amazing puppetry that it's not focused on the nitty gritty of writing.

It's almost the opposite of your typical hollywood film, where every attention is paid to the detail, but story arc flaws drag it down: Here, instead, the story arc itself is pretty good, again, for, as you say, a kids movie of the early 80s fantasy world. It's weak when it comes down to individual lines and narration and the occasional plot twist. Details just not worked out by the makers who were focused elsewhere.

I found myself really wanting to enjoy the world without being dragged down by the storyline, like I felt in Avatar, the last tree-killer (I don't know what to call Avatar, but I mean the Cameron Film) I wanted more of the feeling I had in Nausicaa (which came out the same year at Dark Crystal in manga form, and two years later as a film.) There's really one point in Dark Crystal where the world is really working for me, when they're walking through the jungle and creatures are getting eaten by other creatures. Adjoining scenes too. The creatures are truly wonderful.

And yes, weak dialogue is endemic to the genre, I still felt forgetting about Kira's essence in the bottle was a just an error, and when they do it twice in the laboratory, I figured it was intentional, and they intended to remember it later, and you can see why I was sure by the end, and yet we're handed something more along the lines of what happens at the end of Percy Jackson.

Also, there were some dark films, the idea that they're questing to united these split creatures, (which everyone has to have figured out by this point, because Henson does hit you over the head with it if you missed it the first couple of times) if instead that turns out to have been not the best idea in the world would be a nice twist. I felt that the "we are greatful gods" ending would be so expected by anyone walking this after star trek the original generation, that a twist is almost expected.

It was a lot of fun though.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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