Fantasy and Puppetry in Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth

	Jim Henson’s films The Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth were Henson’s attempt to move away from the children’s television genre that Henson was now known for. These movies incorporated the mysterious and bizarre world of fantasy and the world of endless possibilities, puppetry. Henson’s movies may have both been set in a fantasy genre, but there are distinct differences that are found when you examine The Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth.
	The world of fantasy has captured the minds of children and adults for centuries. The ability for someone to imagine a world that does not exist in the present and may be not even the past or future give the dreamer a certain sense of satisfaction. The dreamer is able to live almost vicariously through the world that has been created before them. This poses a problem for some however. Parents have scorned the idea of fantasy world being taught to children. These parents believe that the tales do not posses a truth about the real world that they live in, therefore not allowing the child to learn what life is really about. The truth that we do discover is the truth of our own imagination. J. R. Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings and other fantasy novels, explains that the fantasy brings the truth about our imagination out. The real concern that children have in fantasy, according to J. R. Tolkien, is whether the child knows what is wrong and right, good or evil. Fantasy allows us to relate to others that have the same fantasies and feel like we are part of society.
	The Dark Crystal is a complete fantasy. Henson created an entire world that was filled with strange creatures that were scary compared to Miss Piggy and his other Muppets that the audience was so used to seeing. Henson said that “In theory, when you are given total freedom to design a new world, a world that has never been seen before, you think you can create it in a totally different way than out world is.” (Tasker, 1). This world that they did create had its own mystical landscape, its own past history, and most of all a world with out human beings. The element of human beings being present in the movie is a key difference between The Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth. Dark Crystal’s cast was made completely of puppets. The reason that Henson used the puppets is because puppets lack human attributes. The puppets can create a world that looks so foreign because we do not identify with the humans that are not shown. However, it can be argued that the lack of humans in Dark Crystal was the downfall of the movie. Viewer are used to seeing the puppets interact with humans in Henson’s works, so when viewers did not see the trademark interaction, they were drawn away from the movie. 
Roger Ebert said that it is very hard for fantasy films of this sort to produce scripts that do the production justice. This was the case with Dark Crystal the production of the movie was amazing, “out of this world,” but the script lacked action and strength. The element of the weak script is also a factor in the shortcomings of the movie. 
After creating the world of The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson took on another fantasy film, The Labyrinth. This movie would prove to do better than the last attempt at a fantasy film, but would not fair as well as Henson’s other productions. The Labyrinth gained strength where Dark Crystal lacked. Labyrinth had a cast of actors and puppets, what the viewers are familiar with  in Henson productions, that allowed the view to relate to the human counterparts in the story. Even though Labyrinth is a fantasy film, it is not entirely based in a fantasy world. It has been compared to the world of Alice in Wonderland. The story begins in the “real” world and then continues in the fantasy world with goblins and creatures foreign to the “real” world, then ending in the “real” world once more. This element also helped the movie fair better, since the viewers once again related better to the world of humans. 
Roger Ebert spoke about the movie in a review saying that the problem with the movie was that it was too long and that without a strong plot long to pull us through, it just becomes a series of incidents. I believe that this is true of Labyrinth. Sarah does this and then that, almost dies, and almost gets trapped. Sarah is put in so many positions that eventually it really does not matter to us whether she wins or loses.   
The basic fantasy genre that is addressed in Dark Crystal and Labyrinth could be produced with such skill and reality due to the incorporation of puppets. If you think about a fantasy movie that you have seen, there is a very high chance that you will see some type of puppet in the story. The puppets are used with fantasy so much because of the ability of the puppet to be modified and created to look like things that we thought only existed in our imaginations. Without puppetry in fantasy it would be hard to take the human look and nature away from the character and not pull the connection between the view and the human actor. Even thought two major fantasy films by Jim Henson shared the common thread of puppetry and fantasy, they are still proven to be different due to the use or lack there of human actors. One could say that Craig would have agreed with the view of fantasy on keeping the actor behind the scenes, but that is a different essay.