I believe this is the first movie not to use actors in its entirety from the world of Jim Henson this is purely puppets and live action trickery on screen. It does uses the voice talents of Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw, Percy Edwards and the story is narrated by Joseph O'Conor. Made on a budget $25m it went on to make $41.4m at the box office which without marketing could be the difference between a loss and a profit. That to me sounds like a close run thing. We have a new entry on the Tri-Critic Sync Challenge ok its on the outer scoring with a 7 point different but it just about clings on with a 7.2 from IMDb and very close to me with 79% from Rotten Tomatoes. If you know the plot to this one you can already work out how my brain is ticking about trying to string this one together into a paragraph.
OK Here goes, on the planet of Thra two races were born when the Crystal of Truth shattered into two main shards. The two races are Skeksis and urSu. The Skeksis are a vulture like creatures who are corrupt and seek power and are using the shard to extend their own lives. Whilst the peaceful have found their homes in the Valleys. They have kept a lone surviving Gelfling alive with urSu them as the Skeksis had heard a prophecy that one would destroy them. So, they killed them all, the urSu send the Gelfling to retrieve a small shard of the crystal as the stars are aligning which means the Crystal can be repaired and made whole again. Which the Skeksis fear so send weird crab like beetle things called Garthim to capture Jen. Jen goes to Aughra who has many shards and he has to choose which one just as the Garthim crash through the windows and destroy Aughra’s home and planet following mystic thing. Jen flees and later bumps into another Gelfling called Kira and they do some weird mind melding thing and decide to team up to head to the Skeksis’ castle to return the shard to the crystal. Meanwhile the urSu have began their journey to the castle themselves to have their own destiny revealed to them.
Will stop there as everything is heading to the castle and I didn’t mention about the chancellor Skeksis being banished who seeks out Jen for his own means as well. This movie was not about the story really this was about pushing the boundaries of cinema and this is one of the few movies that did that and told a story at the same time. There have been overs, such as many 3D movies and the death of Freddy Kruger there were other movies that used other technology and animation and CGI and failed. They failed because of the lack or poor story. This had both, there are lots of little creatures here and there and the world feels real. The weird rabbit rider things have been used elsewhere and the story is telling something from another world so no not everything is going to look like people in a mask. This is a whole new world and I am sure if this film didn’t exist then Labyrinth would equally not be in existence. Does that one films makes another make this movie great. No but this movie should be acknowledged for its part in cinema history and I for one appreciate it. Adults and kids can watch this together with neither side knowing what is going on for parts of the film but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment if you let it. Give it a go.
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