YMMV / The Dark Crystal

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance can be found here.

1982 Film

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The Skeksis, life draining tyrants who destroyed an entire race to preserve their lives or senile old aristocrats who are desperately trying to keep their own identity, but their other halves sent an agent to prevent this from happening.
  • It's possible to see Jen as a Decoy Protagonist, with Kira as the real chosen one and hero of the story, given how little Jen actually does to advance the plot by himself and how Kira is almost always the one who saves them and even sacrifices herself when Jen cocks up the shard-inserting job at the end. The narrator did, after all, say Jen was the chosen one "at this time".
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The idea of only female Gelflings having wings isn't as bizarre as it sounds, as there are some real life insects (such as the fig wasp) where only the females have wings. Although that's usually because the male either isn't as important to the species' propagation as the female (as in the case of fig wasps), or the male gets something else to compensate, such as a stinger.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: At least at the time it was released. Reading through contemporary criticism of the film, you can't help but sigh as so many of them completely miss the film's point of not being for kids despite being a Jim Henson film starring puppets (Henson had a lifelong fight against the idea that puppets are just for kids, even saying it's healthy for kids to be scared sometimes). Luckily, it's since become much better regarded as we've gotten a better idea of what Henson was trying to do, and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance vindicated the film further by undoubtedly finding a large audience.
• Award Snub: How in the blue blazes did the film not get a Best Original Score nomination from the Academy Awards?
  • Bafflingly, despite its groundbreaking use of puppets and animatronics and its elaborate costume and set design the movie didn’t get any nominations for those categories. One does wonder how it would’ve fared against the likes of Gandhi, ET The Extraterrestrial and especially Blade Runner.
• Awesome Music: The WHOLE soundtrack by Trevor Jones, especially the main theme. There's a reason one of the options on the DVD was to play the movie with only the music as audio.
• Badass Decay: In the series, the Skeksis are each killing machines and viciously talented in their respective fields. By the time of the film, however, their society has atrophied to the point where only skekTek the Scientist can be described as having retained his full abilities. Even skekSil the Chamberlain, depicted in Age of Resistance as a master manipulator and a silver-tongued devil, is not as convincing or psychologically devastating as he once was.
• Complete Monster:
  • skekSo, the instigator of the Gelfling genocide. For more of his wonderful deeds, see here.
  • In the novelization, by A.C.H. Smith: skekUng the Garthim Master, who lacks the honor and sportsmanship of his movie counterpart, was a driving force behind the genocide of the Gelfling race as the creator and lord of the Garthim warriors. Becoming the new Emperor, skekUng has podling slaves drained for essence and sends the Garthim to recover the surviving Gelflings, as well as massacre the podling village in their path, or take survivors to be drained as slaves. Later having the Gelfling Kira sent to be drained, skekUng loses his mind with power and becomes gradually paranoid. At one point, he even considers killing one of his fellow Skeksis and plots to exterminate all of Thra's life with the Garthim to reign supreme.
• Creepy Awesome: The Skeksis are grotesquely decaying, hedonistic, genocidal vulture-like humanoids, but their distinct presence and instantly recognizable designs have made them long-time fan favorites.
• Cult Classic: The film was a modest grosser at the box office and is considered as one of Jim Henson's most underrated works. It has developed a steady cult and an Expanded Universe in books and comics in the years following since its release, so much so that a prequel series was eventually made. Much of the praise goes to the film's striking visuals and interesting creature designs, its lore and worldbuilding, its impressive puppetry and for being an uncommon example of a fantasy work that revolves around entirely fantastical beings and settings (as opposed to being a more generic Medieval European Fantasy with the usual Standard Fantasy Races).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Chamberlain is beloved in the fandom for being an intelligent, distinctive and memorable villain who's masterfully portrayed and acted, who even has his own mini-arc in returning to the power he lost. In the prequel, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the creators have noticed this and skekSil is a major character with chances to show just how smart and dangerous he truly is.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Yes, the Crystal is healed and so is Thra, and Jen and Kira and the Podlings are free to live out their lives in peace. But the Mystics and Skeksis as the individuals they became effectively perish, the Gelfling race is down to two, the UrSkeks are travelling onwards with half of their own dead and gone, the fundamental issues with their race that set all of this in motion in the first place are still there, and Thra's history is forever bloodier for their arrival. (We only have the Skeks's word there's only two Gelflings left — if there was a prophecy leading to attempted genocide, you can bet many Gelflings would have gone into hiding.)
• Evil Is Cool: The Skeksis are fondly remembered as one of the strong points of the film. They each have distinctive designs, personalities, numerous character moments, and many many moments of indulgent evil. The prequel would go on to give them further development and screen time even fleshing out the less developed ones like the Emperor and Scroll-Keeper.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The movie was the highest-grossing box office release for the year (1983) in Japan, and it even got a spin-off in the form of a manga series published by Tokyopop there.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Skeksis are a combination of birds and reptiles. While this seemed far fetched at the time, a few decades later in Real Life, scientists would learn that dinosaurs (especially therapods) also had a combination of reptilian and avian features.
• Moral Event Horizon: Skek-Tek (the scientist) crosses it when he drains the life force out of the innocent podlings, and tries to do the same to Kira. Tellingly, he's the only one of the Skeksis who actually dies.
• Narm Charm:
  • The film is not known for the nuance of its dialogue, but some of the blunt and occasionally very workmanlike lines are part of the film's broad charm.
  • The film was very ambitious with its puppetry, to the point of overreaching, but the occasional Special Effects Failure and Unintentional Uncanny Valley reaction are likewise viewed by fans as part of the film's unique character.
  • Fizzgig's pathetic howling when clinging for its life near the climax.
• Rooting for the Empire: Jen and Kira are pretty bland as far as protagonists go and are arguably the two least visually interesting puppets. Contrast the menacing, unique, and colorful Skeksis (who many argue are actually less creepy than the Gelflings), and this trope is something of a no-brainer.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Nude Jen in the opening is the only time a character looks like a bad puppet.
  • Ditto for Kira using the sling to take out the Crystal bat.
  • The Garthim. They are meant to stand on many legs, but you can clearly see the two much fatter human legs in the costume doing all the work. It doesn't help that a lot of the times the actors under the suits are just lazily dragging their legs as opposed to at least making it look like they're all moving like crab legs.
  • Human shapes crouching on stilts are a bit too visible concerning the Landstriders.
• Spiritual Successor: Labyrinth, MirrorMask, and others. Highly influential within the fairytale branch of fantasy's evolutionary tree. Not to mention the world of practical puppeteering.
• Squick: The Chamberlain near the beginning gives us a glimpse of what a Skeksis looks like completely naked. It's not pretty.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The Skeksis have the potential to be this, especially if you love vultures.
  • skekUng becomes oddly handsome when he temporary becomes younger after drinking podling essence.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Gelflings look just close enough to humans to be slightly eerie given the limitations of their facial expressions and other movements, even though their appearance was intended to make them more relatable. The podlings also fall a little into this. By contrast, the Skeksis, Mystics, Garthim and other characters simply look like living creatures whose expressions are real enough to not be as jarring.
  • The Urskeks themselves with their perpetual Prophet Eyes and appearing as the closest to resembling humans, but with branch-like extensions on their heads and no visible change of expression add to this.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The urskeks are supposed to be seen as having made up for the problems they caused by resurrecting Kira and explaining what happened while stating that they didn't intend for so much turmoil to happen. However, they don't actually explicitly apologize and the fact that they leave afterwards instead of staying to help fix everything makes them look like uncaring jerks.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Jen serves more as a pillar in the story rather than the focus and works as a way of allowing the Audience a grounded view into the fantastical world of Thra. The Gelfling puppets are less outrageous and expressive than the Mystics and Skeksis and work as a Lead You Can Relate To while the Skeksis dark inhuman antics provide an interesting contrast. Ultimately it is Kira who moves the story by her hand rather than Jen and her still living family gives her journey more tangible stakes.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: SkekEkt the Ornamentalist. Word of God says this is exactly what they were aiming for with all of the Skeksis.
• Vindicated by Cable: A rather underwhelming theatrical release but it did much better in syndication and DVD — enough to warrant two Expanded Universe prequels in other media.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Admit it, the effects and world building on display here are darn impressive. The Dark Crystal was the first production from what is known today as Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and in the years to come, the workshop, originally based in England, would be used to create complex puppets and animatronics for movies and TV series.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Probably not for really little kids, though. Even though Jim Henson and Frank Oz directed this movie, it's no Sesame Street or The Muppet Show. The story is pretty dark for a Jim Henson production, with some scenes that can be considered unsuitable for young viewers, like when the Skeksis drain the Podlings (and Kira) of their vital essence. Henson said that he intended the film to be a throwback to the fairy tales of The Brothers Grimm, as he felt it was unhealthy for children to never be scared.
• Woobie Species: Almost all the species of Thra count as this, due to the sorry state of the place. Even the Skeksis are a Jerkass Woobie species.

Comic Books

• Complete Monster: Dark Crystal: Beneath the Dark Crystal: In this sequel to the original film, the Fire That Stays is an immortal Fireling, a subset of the Gelfings that are beings of flame. The Fire That Stays has become cynical, thinking the Firelings have become weak and decadent. After the Firelings were almost destroyed in an event known as the Great Dim, the Fire That Stays becomes convinced that the Firelings must be subjected to an apocalyptic event to become strong again. The Fire That Stays kidnaps the children of Fragors, giant ant creatures, and orders them to attack the Firelings or he will harm their children. After the Fireling princess Thurma frees the Fragors' children and the Fragors turn against him, the Fire That Stays summons a giant tidal wave to destroy the Fireling kingdom.

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