Labyrinth!

The Jim Henson operation was riding high in 1986 when Labyrinth hit the big screens. This was actually their second big fantasy film (if you don't count The Muppets), following the critical acclaim of The Dark Crystal. This time Jim Henson wanted to blend puppets and people in a believable way in an unbelievable story. We have a modern fairy tale with many of the classic elements, a story about a young woman coming into her adulthood and resisting the rigors of that adulthood. That friction creates stress in her home and eventually danger for her baby half-brother, a child she loves yet also resents. 

The young woman is portrayed by Jennifer Connelly in a very early role. The late and great David Bowie is the star of this vehicle, lending his peculiar talents to a role as the Goblin King. Other than the baby brother played by artists Brian Froud's young son, the rest of the cast are puppets of various and sundry kind. I like much if not most of the movie a great deal, but it gets too cute by half in places. 

The Labyrinth is a failed opportunity. That failure was due to the fact that movies like this need to make money and to do that they need a happy ending. While one could have logically given Labyrinth a satisfying ending, it wasn't what one might have deemed necessarily happy. The young girl has an exotic experience in which she must learn to put away her childhood and grasp the powers and responsibilities of adulthood. She has been resistant for a host of reasons, not the least of which is unresolved grief for her mother, and jealousy of her little brother. She feels shoved out of the warm tidy nest and wants to stay. But that cannot be, and through trial and tribulation she learns better. 

That's a pretty good solution to a fairy tale narrative, but it doesn't ring with huzzahs. To get that Henson sticks on an abominable ending which to some degree undermines the hard-won lessons of the film. He wanted everyone to smile as they left the theater, and he should have trusted his work to simply fulfill them. Because of this last-minute lack of confidence in his narrative and in his audience, he allows the story to feel incomplete. 

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The Dark Crystal!

The Dark Crystal from 1982 is a darn good fantasy movie from the folks who gave us The Muppets. That technology is used for good to tell the story of a strange world which has been dominated for a millennia by an evil species called the "Skekis" and an equally good species called the "Mystics". A great crystal powers the system and now it's time for a great convergence in the heavens and things are about to change. The agent of that change will be a "Gelfling" named Jen who along with his love Kira quest to find the "Shard", a broken off piece of the titular crystal. The movie then is a quest with our little heroes trying to live long enough in a very strange world to keep it from ending. 

My impression is that Jim Henson wanted to do something a bit edgier after more than a few years of The Muppet Show and well over a decade on Sesame Street. You can't be scary in those places, only gleeful and hopeful. This is a darker story with a potentially less happy ending. To get the look he wanted, Henson turned to Brian Froud, a British artist who was very comfortable with fantasy of a darker sort. Henson both performed and directed this movie, sharing duties with Frank Oz who did likewise. 

If the movie can be faulted on any front, it's that it's a bit spare on story. Jen is given his mission at the very beginning, finds the Shard almost immediately, meets Kira pretty soon thereafter and then it's just waiting for the finale. A few more red herrings might've beefed it up a bit, but I guess for a movie like this, such diversions were extremely labor intensive. One fun character in the movie is Aughra, a crone who monitors the heavens and has possession of the Shard. Things really pop when she shows up, the characterization of her by Frank Oz is delightful. 

The movie did well enough in the marketplace and is fondly remembered. It didn't generate a sequel though talk of such has been ongoing for decades. A prequel was eventually produced for NexFlix. There have been novels and comics, so The Dark Crystal hasn't been forgotten. In fact, it might be said it struck a chord. But Henson and company were not done with fantasy films, but that would have to wait a few more years with a little project called Labyrinth. More on that tomorrow. 

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