In 1982, Jim Henson proved he was more than just "the Muppet guy" with an epic fantasy
about the struggle for power and survival in a fantastical land.
Decades later, the story is continuing with a Netflix miniseries, so there's no better
time to delve into the untold truth of The Dark Crystal.
Perhaps the least popular sketch in Saturday Night Live history is the Season 1 recurring
bit "The Land of Gorch."
It featured fantastical and grotesque monster creations with names like Scred and Ploobis.
Although it stemmed from the minds of Jim Henson and company, it lacked that signature
Muppet magic.
After one year, all parties involved decided it would be best to end "The Land of Gorch."
While "Gorch" wound up a bizarre footnote in SNL lore, it directly inspired one of Henson's
most triumphant works.
In the seventies, Henson developed a deep appreciation for the work of fantasy illustrator
Brian Froud, an English artist with an affinity for bringing exquisitely detailed fantasy
beings to the page.
Around the time that Henson got into Froud's work, Froud was thinking about turning his
creatures into a puppet-based film, so he happily accepted a 1977 invite from Henson
to visit his workshop in England.
Once Froud saw the highly detailed "Land of Gorch" puppets, he knew Henson was the man
to bring his illustrations to life, and the two creators agreed to make a fantasy film
together.
The Dark Crystal is one of the first live-action narrative films with no visible humans in
the cast.
It's also one of the few in which characters speak languages invented by linguists specifically
for the project.
Children's fantasy author Alan Garner provided some helpful suggestions for The Dark Crystal
team based on some ancient languages.
For example, a language created for the Skeksis was based on an offshoot of ancient Egyptian.
The one used by the Pod People is a take on Serbo-Croatian, spoken in parts of the former
Yugoslavia.
Producer Gary Kurtz has noted that people who are fluent in Polish, Russian, and other
Eastern European languages say that they can recognize some of the words.
For the sake of realism, The Dark Crystal filmmakers opted not to create a new language
whole cloth from scratch.
As Kurtz explained to Starlog Magazine,
"Certainly, it's much easier to make up nonsense sounds, but you can sense it if it doesn't
have any basis in reality.
In a real language, there are certain repeatable phases and a structure which makes the sounds
mean something."
The Dark Crystal held its first test screening in Washington, D.C., in March 1982.
Jim Henson figured the plot would be clear enough through the characters' actions and
tone, but the test audience didn't think so, and neither did executives overseeing the
project.
They thought they had an expensive flop on their hands, and that they'd spent $25 million
on a baffling, impenetrable experimental film.
Henson had no choice but to follow the directives of the people in charge and dub the movie
into English.
"I don't like this."
Screenwriter David Odell had to essentially compose a whole new script, with dialogue
that not only told the story but matched up to the puppets' mouth movements.
Then Henson had to hire a whole new cast of voice actors, then have editors sync their
words with the finished visuals.
In total, it took four months to make The Dark Crystal's audio track workable.
In creating a vast and elaborate fantasy world on par with Westeros or Middle-earth, Jim
Henson and his collaborators developed a wealth of background stories and other ideas for
The Dark Crystal.
There've been many video games, comics, and books continuing the story of the Gelflings
and the Skeksis, but a follow-up film never materialized.
In 2006, The Jim Henson Company announced the beginning of production on Power of the
Dark Crystal, a sequel set centuries after the first film.
It was to follow a girl made of fire who teams up with a rogue Gelfling to swipe a shard
of the Crystal to reignite a dying sun.
Producer Lisa Henson told MTV that it was based on the sequel idea discussed two decades
earlier by Jim Henson and Dark Crystal screenwriter David Odell.
Samurai Jack creator Genndy Taratakovsky signed on to direct the sequel, which would have
combined computer-generated animation with live-action animatronics.
But alas, it wasn't meant to be.
In 2012, Tartakovsky told IndieWire,
"We did visual designs, we did a script, we started testing things.
We were always a couple of dollars short, and it just kind of fell apart."
In August 2019, Netflix debuted one of the most hotly anticipated and long-awaited projects
in recent memory: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel miniseries to The Dark
Crystal.
It all started to come together around 2011, when Clash of the Titans director Louis Leterrier
took some meetings with the Henson Company.
He had watched The Dark Crystal on the Titans set constantly for inspiration, prompting
the company to ask him to helm its Dark Crystal sequel project.
He was excited about what happened before the events of the film, prompting the company
to change course and make a prequel miniseries instead of a sequel film.
Filmmaking technology has significantly progressed in the past few decades, so Leterrier had
many more tools at his disposal when making Age of Resistance than Jim Henson did back
in 1982.
But Leterrier is such a superfan of the original film that he vowed to use practical effects
as much as possible.
"The canvas is much bigger, but the feeling is the same."
While some CGI technology was implemented, it was only to digitally remove puppeteers
from footage of action-heavy scenes.
But there's still a lot that can be accomplished with puppetry, and Age of Resistance is just
one indicator of The Dark Crystal's long legacy.
"And now the prophecy is fulfilled."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.