The Dark Crystal (1982)
Directed by Jim Henson
On another planet in the distant past, a Gelfling embarks on a quest to find the missing shard of a magical crystal and restore order to his world, before the grotesque race of Skeksis find and use the crystal for evil.
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What critics compared The Dark Crystal to
As screenwriter Neil Gaiman tells the story, Mirrormask came about when Lisa Henson contacted him about creating a new movie in the mode of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystaltwo Jim Henson fantasy features that failed at the box office but have reached family-classic on VHS and DVD.
Gaiman and McKean's mandate from the Jim Henson Co. was to create something in a similar vein to The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, movies which bombed on initial release but have steadily grown in popularity over the years.
Borrowing heavily from The Wizard of Oz, and to a lesser extent from Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia, co-creators Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (collaborating with The Jim Henson Group, who made The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth in this genre during the 1980s) develop a simplistic tale of good and evil, and of a quest that doesn't have many interesting intermediate points between its beginning and its conclusion.
Combining elements of Dali surrealism, Cirque du Soleil, Eyes Wide Shut‘s anonymous orgy scene, The Brothers Quay’s mannequin-infatuated stop-motion shorts, Adam Jones’s videos for Tool, The Wizard of Oz, two prior Henson projects ( Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal), and Gaiman’s own Sandman comic series, this children’s fantasy about the bond between parents and children is a stylistic smorgasbord bloated with literary and cinematic influences.
The Green Knight reminded me in subtle ways of a lot of other films I’d seen – Darren Aronofksy’s The Fountain , Robert Eggers’ The Witch , even Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal as just a few examples – while at the same time feeling unlike anything I’d seen before.
With inspiration from films such as Willow , The Dark Crystal , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , The Green Knight is a slow-burning, character study.
Lowery has cited multiple films that influenced him over the years as he worked to bring The Green Knight to life onscreen: Willow , Bram Stoker's Dracula , The Dark Crystal , Marie Antoinette , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , a 1928 French silent film by Carl Dreyer.
Films like Excalibur, The Dark Crystal, The Princess Bride and especially Labyrinth rank as four of my all-time favorites, and any fantasy spectacular echoing them even slightly automatically raises my eyebrows to their maximum breaking point.
In a way it’s a throwback to what fantasy movies were before Peter Jackson, reminiscent of now rather dated work like Willow, Legend, or The Dark Crystal.
It’s very reminiscent of the darker breed of children’s films from the 1980s like “The Dark Crystal” (which makes sense, considering The Jim Henson Company are producers of it), and more contemporarily, it has obvious echoes of Laika’s recent output.
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Part The Dark Crystal 1982), part Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and all Disney, Raya is a fun-filled escapade for the whole family.
Movie buffs may feel like Raya has taken 80 percent of its beats from other animated stories, from The Lion King to The Dark Crystal .
It’s like the old Jim Henson movies The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
Cameron even borrows his metal suit and the drop ship from Aliens , the love story from the Pocahontas legend, the remote control gimmick from The Matrix , the imposing stature of the Na’vi from Jar Jar Binks, and the plant designs are cobbled from basic tropical leaves and the forest of The Dark Crystal .
And there are many echoes of other entertaining movies in this respect, from silent Metropolis through the lived-in equipment and crab-like machine troops of the Star Wars trilogy and RoboCops ED 209, the rubbled future of The Terminator and many a post-apocalyptic picture, the feel and mythic quest of The Dark Crystal, the embattled insects of Antz, even the symbology of Dan Browns Robert Langdon franchise.
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It’s all strangely cute, and draped in a ragged cloak, the Gorn looks more like a creature from The Dark Crystal rather than a bloodthirsty killing machine.
The monsters look like low-budget versions of the Skekses from The Dark Crystal (or Henry Hyde from the U.S. Congress, in a cross-dressing phase).