Hey, do you remember the dark crystal?

Hello and welcome to Hey, do you remember? Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose tinted glasses to see how it holds up.

I'm Chris.

I'm Donna.

I'm Carlos.

And today we're revisiting the Dark Crystal.

Thank you. I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting the Dark Crystal. Usually, the concept art for a film is generated based on a script or, at the very least, a premise.

But in the case of the dark crystal, it was actually the other way around.

The project's long and arduous journey to the big screen began in 1976, when Jim Henson was flipping through a book called Once Upon a Time, which profiled

15 artists who focused primarily on the realm of fantasy. And there was one artist in particular

that caught Henson's attention, Brian Froud. When a compendium of his artwork, The Land of

Froud, was published the following year, Henson didn't just see paintings and illustrations

that seemed

complementary to the type of characters he was known for creating. He saw a fully realized world

that he wanted to translate into live action. The two creators struck a deal to develop a feature

film together, and their first step was pages and pages and pages of concept art. Character

designs, costumes, landscapes, Henson felt that the more

he understood about this universe, the more the story that wanted to be told would reveal itself.

That story would later be derided in some circles for being a somewhat derivative and

uninspired version of more notable works in the fantasy genre, specifically J.R.R. Tolkien.

But that's not really what Henson was pulling from at all. According to him and some of his

key collaborators on this film, the main source of inspiration for the Dark Crystal's narrative

...