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What with all the science fiction movies I tend to highlight, both in the Marathon and otherwise, you might think I have a problem with it’s sister genre fantasy. It’s true that I’m generally not a fantasy guy, but it doesn’t mean I’m unfamiliar with it. I’ve read Lord of the Rings, Earthsea, The Black Cauldron, Dragonriders of Pern, and even modern fantasy stories like Harry Potter and the Dresden Files. So I know all about high elves, low dwarves and middle men, all right? The ways of wizardry are not foreign to me. I just prefer science fiction, and since sci-fi and horror tend to be so closely linked, that’s usually where my loyalties lie.
The 1980s, aside from being a great time for sci-fi movies, was also pretty awesome for fantasy movies too. The Princess Bride, Legend, Willow, Labyrinth, Conan the Barbarian..if you could dress up a few dudes in robes and swords, rotoscope some lightning effects and film it in the woods or some dank ass castle, then you had a fantasy film on your hands. The sky was the limit really, because at the time investing in a movie didn’t run the risk of bankrupting the entire film industry. Want to do some Lord of the Rings ripoff? Go ahead. Want to do a mind-bending child’s dream like Time Bandits? Why not? Throw as much crap on the wall and see what sticks. Hollywood gets some breathing and keep that hunger for improvement and we, the consumers, get a variety of things to choose from. Which is exactly what I like, and it’s what’s best for business in my opinion.
Case in point: The Dark Crystal, the brainchild of Jim Henson, who you might recognize as the guy responsible for the Muppets and Sesame Street, otherwise known as the foundations of your educational development. Here we an example of high fantasy at its most blatant: a fantastical world filled with inhuman creatures (including the short unassuming creatures that you would never expect to be the heroes that turn out to be the heroes), some kind of mystical MacGuffin that somehow keeps the world from shitting itself that the hero must journey to find, and the horrible evil force that would be the obstacles for our hero to overcome (in this case the Skeksis, the despicable vulture-like counterparts to the wise and noble Mystics). Pretty basic stuff really, except every single character, every single creature in fact, is a puppet. Which may not seem like a big deal, in this world of computer generated images, but it’s really only a film that could have been made then. No studio in Hollywood today would even consider throwing money at a movie that features no actual humans in it, and certainly not enough to really do it justice. In the wild & wonderful 80s however, it was totally possible, and it looks pretty damn impressive. Not perfect, Jen and Kira in particular seem rather unexpressive compared to the rest of the cast, but still a level of craft that defines why Jim Henson, Frank Oz and the rest are considered masters of their craft.
If you were a kid who grew up with the fantasy movies of the past, like The Neverending Story, The Black Cauldron or even the Bakshi Lord of the Rings and you haven’t seen it already, then you should place it on your queue. If you’ve got kids (very kid-friendly Marathon this year, I guess), then this is prime material for expanding their horizons. And if you don’t fit either category, watch it anyway. It’s really cool.
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