The Gleflings Vs. the Skeksis

Newsweek, December 17, 1982

It takes some optical adjustment to sort out the strange beasties that populate The Dark Crystal. They include the Skeksis (villainous and vulture-like creatures with bad table manners); the Mystics (gentle, wise and droopily decrepit, with armadillo tails); the Garthim (the Skeksis' militia, a metallic mix of beetle and crab; the Podlings (button-faced ethnic types, clearly derived from happy but oppressed southern European peasant stock); Aughra (a one-eyed hag who's into astronomy, fierce but benevolent); Fizzgig (a scene-stealing canine, Toto with extra teeth); the fleet Landstriders (towering catfish on stilts); and most important, Jen and Kira, the Gelflings (immediately identifiable by their humanoid features as our hero and heroine, he looks like Dondi and Bruce lee reconstituted as a 12-year-old elf, she like Mia Farrow after too much plastic surgery.)

Welcome to Jim Henson's world of wonders, a fantasy pastiche without a single human in it. Henson and his gifted designer, Brian Froud (of "Faeries" fame), run some wild visions across the screen, but even young kids will quickly recognize the story line as a meltdown of every Mythic Quest from the Greeks to Tolkien to George Lucas. There's an ancient prophecy to be fulfilled and a young hero armed with a magical crystal shard who must journey to a dark castle where, at the time of the Great Conjunction, he must save a divided, dying world. Totas of a tender age may be nightmare prone from this encounter; the reptilian Skeksis, who drain and drink the vital fluids of their victims, don't behave like Muppets, though Henson and codirector Frank Oz make sure that no permanent harm befalls the good guys. What grownups will make of this depends on your susceptibility to the genre. As drama, "The Dark Crystal" comes fully alive only at its rousing climax, and is hampered by the Ken Doll blandness of our hero. As a bestiary, however, it is bountiful-a prodigious and amusing parade of things that do much more than go bump in the night.

Main index page

Dark Crystal main index page