Last week I saw Jim Henson's 1982 film The Dark Crystal for what was essentially the first time. Yes, I'd seen bits and pieces of it for years -- my best friend's mom was a big fan and it seemed to be on a lot when I was at his house. But this was my first time watching it from start to finish, believe it or not (I think when I was little I found it both boring and scary).
It made me think of Avatar, that film I didn't want to see and ended up seeing anyway. I found myself comparing the two films in several ways. There's the obvious storyline comparison, both of them being extremely archetypal hero-saves-strange-world myths (Avatar having been compared to everything from Dances With Wolves to Fern Gully). There's the strange-new-world-itself comparison. And then there's the actual physical (or "physical") enactment of that world -- Henson with puppets, Cameron with computers -- that I thought about the MOST.I listened to the Fresh Air interview with James Cameron (twice), and watched the "making-of" documentary on The Dark Crystal, so I feel like I have some background on both, and the similarities continue. Both films created an entire ecosystem worth of plants, animals, and landscapes. Both ecosystems involved interesting combinations of plants and animals, blurring the lines between those distinctions. Both director/auteurs did way more research, development, and design of said ecosystem than anyone will ever see or notice. But I just can't get over the fact that, while James Cameron and his team achieved simply AMAZING effects with their creature design and their motion capture technology, Jim Henson also managed to achieve amazing effects, AND it was almost 30 years ago, AND everything he made is also tangible. Someone actually had to MAKE all that stuff.
Look at that world! (I think the end of this clip is part of what scared the crap out of me as a small child; I didn't remember much, but I remembered THAT part. ;o)
Yes, it's true -- someone also had to make all the stuff for Avatar, and create textures, and physically sculpt (there was probably some sculpting involved, right, digital artists?) and computer sculpt, and animate, and it probably took hours and hours and hours and hours. BUT again, I can't get over the fact that someone (several someones) built and operated all those amazing puppets, and actually had to, you know, deal with stuff falling off and breaking and getting wet and etc. They had to first design the world, and THEN figure out how to make it happen, within the realm of physical possibility. I mean, there are landscapes in The Dark Crystal, like the scenes by the riverbank, where they first had to conceive of what it should look like, and THEN go find things to make it out of -- whether it was sculpting rocks in certain formations, or finding real vegetation and altering it to give the effect they were looking for. They built this stuff with their HANDS.
I mean, look at these puppets. Just look at them.
And not only did they build this stuff with their hands, but they also had to animate them with their hands -- or legs or entire bodies, in most cases. Live for each take. And Henson and crew were already doing lots of complicated stuff with cable-controlled or radio-controlled puppet parts, so that there were a whole lot of people working on each creature. And this was only the early '80s; I remember watching shows on Henson's effects in the late '80s/early '90s, and there was already some motion-cap-to-live-computer-puppetry going on. I can't help thinking that if he hadn't died so early (stupid pneumonia!), he would have made some amazing innovations or even beaten Cameron to the extreme-motion-cap punch.
And the stories of both are rather silly anyway (sorry, Mr. Henson!), since it's the details that make the experience, in both cases. It's fun to compare the two: extreme hi-tech vs. extreme lo-tech (plus hi-tech-for-its-time).
Who do YOU think wins this fight?
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