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Franchise as a whole
- Outlived Its Creator: Jim Henson died eight years after the release of The Dark Crystal, and the film didn't have a live-action puppetry follow-up for nearly four decades, but it grew enough of a cult following and eventually got a Netflix prequel with puppets in 2019, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, in addition to a number of books and comic books.
- What Could Have Been:
- A sequel to the film called "Power of the Dark Crystal" was planned for a long time. Set hundreds of years after the events of the first movie, Jen and Kira would have been the rulers of a peaceful new world which fell into darkness when a mysterious girl made of fire, together with a Gelfling outcast, stole a shard of the legendary Crystal in an attempt to reignite the dying sun at the center of the planet, resulting in the Mystics and Skeksis appearing once more. After being stuck in Development Hell for years, the project was officially cancelled in movie form before being resurrected again in the form of a 12-issue comic miniseries by Archaia Entertainment.
- Genndy Tartakovsky was pegged to do a prequel to the film in the mid-2000's, which, despite his dedication to strictly adhere to practical effects and puppetry, was dismissed by Frank Oz as pointless. The project eventually fizzled and almost completely faded. Eventually, it morphed into The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Between then and now, in late 2013, Penguin Young Readers held a contest
for a prequel novel set in the Dark Crystal universe; the contest was won by Joseph M. Lee with The Ring of Dreams. Lee later wrote four prequel novels.
1982 Film
- Acting for Two:
- skekSo and skekZok are both voiced by Jerry Nelson and performed by Jim Henson; Henson also performed Jen.
- skekUng and Fizzgig are performed by Dave Goelz.
- Frank Oz performs skekSil and Aughra.
- Kiran Shah performs Jen, Kira and Aughra as their body actors.
- urSu and urZah are both performed by Brian Muehl.
- Joseph O'Conor voices both the narrator and UngIm.
- Channel Hop: The movie was initially set to be distributed by Associated Film Distributionnote like The Muppet Movie was; but after the one-three punch of Raise the Titanic!, Can't Stop the Music, and The Legend of the Lone Ranger, AFD was essentially executed and its remaining backlog, including The Great Muppet Caper and this film, were sold to Universal; currently, the Jim Henson Company owns the rights and licensed it out to Shout! Studios for recent media releases; it previously went through Thorn EMI Video (then successor HBO Video), then through Disney's Jim Henson Video label in the mid '90s, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (a remnant of the Henson/Sony partnership in the late 90s). Universal still owns theatrical distribution rights to the film, and they re-released the film through Fathom Events.
- Completely Different Title: The film is titled El cristal encantadonote in Latin America. If it was correctly translated, it should be "El Cristal Oscuro".
- Creator's Pest: A. C. H. Smith grew to find the podlings annoying while writing the novelization. He originally wrote a scene where a cafe full of them goes over a cliff but Jim Henson wouldn't let him publish it.
- Deleted Scene: The Skeksis Emperor skekSo's funeral and the discussion between urZah and Jen, most notably.
- Dueling Dubs: There are three Japanese dubs for the film. The first was produced for the VHS release in the late 1980s. The second dub premiered in 1991 on NHK. When the film was released on Blu-ray years later, a third dub was produced. In both the VHS and Blu-ray releases, the late Miyako Aso voiced Aughra.
- Looping Lines: During post-production of the film, all of the characters' lines had to be re-recorded, with Steve Whitmire (the Scientist) and Brian Muehl (the Master) being the only actors to serve as both puppeteers and voice actors.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: The Scientist's bionic eye is made from a toy TIE Fighter.
- Playing Against Type: Compare this movie to other Jim Henson projects. Yeah.
- Real-Life Relative: In the Italian dub, Fiamma Izzo voices Kira and her late father Renato Izzo is the ADR director.
- Referenced by...: In After Midnight, Wade describes the potential appearance of aliens as "Real Dark Crystal shit."
- What Could Have Been:
- As seen in some of the DVD extras, the Skeksis were originally going to speak an "alien" language. This was kept up through the first preview, which was a disaster. Henson was convinced that the visuals alone would be plenty to figure out what the Skeksis were saying, but was proven wrong when he showed a rough cut of the Chamberlain's banishment to Muppet Show writer Jerry Juhl, who was soon begging him to have them speak English so people could understand what the hell was going on. All Mystic and Skeksis vocals were dubbed in between the first and second showing for executives. A lot of Skeksis words were kept in the novelization.
- The Podlings were supposed to have many eyes coming out of their heads (since they were based off potatoes), but that looked too unnerving, so it was scrapped.
- Composer Trevor Jones originally planned to write a score using acoustical instruments, electronics and building structures, but those plans were scrapped when Gary Kurtz became involved.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
- See here.
