Similar movies to "The Dark Crystal".

Johnboy

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If your a fan of the Dark Crystal, i recommend the following other Dark Cryswtal-like films you might enjoy:

" Labyrinth".
" The Princess Bride".
" Willow".
" Clash of the Titans".
" Hercules (Disney)".
" The Fifth Element".
" Harry Potter Movies".
" Lord of the Rings Trilogy".
" The Wizard of Oz".
" Return to Oz".
" Willy Wonka".
" City of Lost Children".
" The Last Unicorn".
" The Secret of NIMH".
" Mulan".
" Krull".
" Dark City".
" Princess Mononoke".
" Rock and Rule".
" The Flight of Dragons".
" The Hobbit".
" Wizards".
" Legend".
 

alorindanya

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There are also:

"Time Bandits"
"The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"
 

Laszlo

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IMO there are no similar movies to DARK CRYSTAL.
Every other movie has also humans in it...
 

DerekJ

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Laszlo said:
IMO there are no similar movies to DARK CRYSTAL.
Every other movie has also humans in it...
And more specifically to the point:

" Labyrinth".
I saw DC more times than I could keep track of, and I believe the first thing I said walking out at the end of "Labyrinth" encapsulated the second movie so perfectly, I have rarely wasted the description on any other movie unless truly merited:
"...What a MESS!" :eek:

A movie that looked like it literally couldn't decide whether it wanted to be Dark Crystal II, "Outside Over There" (as Jim was into Dark Children's Stories at the time), Lewis Carroll, Ridley Scott's "Legend" (see below--yep, this was only the beginning), or David Bowie on the Muppet Show, tried for all of them at once--often in the same scene--and looked like it had its tone determined daily by whatever Jim happened to be thinking that morning...

And for those who liked the somber, overly-earnest fantasy style of DC, the jokiness of the script and performers didn't help things any either:
Farty-noise jokes in a post-DC fantasy film?--A "Human bowling-alley" joke straight out of a Popeye cartoon?--Oh, Jim, Jim, JIM... -_-

" Return to Oz".
Brian, Shmian, this one must be seen if only as a warning, to emphasize how Sets Aren't Everything:
This one flails in all directions, hits everything but the target, schizophrenes disturbingly between shmaltz and strategic child-terrorizing, and is one of the few exceptions to the 80's-Fantasy Rule (see below).

" City of Lost Children".
If you want Weird French ala Juenet, go rent his one sane film, "Amelie"--with all its self-indulgences in just the right places--and pretend this one never existed. You'll thank me for this.

" The Fifth Element".
" Mulan".
(Do you, like, work for IMDb, and crank out those loopy computer-generated "recommendations"?--We're still trying to figure out what some of these have to do with the header.) :confused:

" Dark City".
(Yep--Definitely going with the "Computer-generated IMDB" theory here...

" Krull".
Okay--NOW we're starting to get some "Crystal" resemblance: :excited:
As you may note from the list, name almost any fantasy film from the 80's, and somewhere there's a cult-fan audience for it.
And just on the "So somberly earnest in its good-hearted, old-school, latex-creatures-and-big-sets 80's-fantasy intentions, you gladly give up and buy into it" scale, it's the only one to rank a 99% behind DC--Almost nothing else comes close.

" Clash of the Titans".
(I said "almost"--See listing under "Krull".
And sheesh, JB, listing every 80's fantasy title sight-unseen and no mention of the first "Never Ending Story"?...Which would easily rank third place, beating out the art direction for "Dragonslayer".)

" The Last Unicorn".
" The Flight of Dragons".
" The Hobbit".
(I'm sorry, JB...You mentioned Rankin-Bass on a "Dark Crystal" thread, and now you must die.)

" Wizards".
(We, uh...really haven't rented this one, have we? 0_0 )

Okay, like it or not, this one does have to have some ranking on the list--
Not just for Ridley Scott's originally-intended concept of using Brian Froud puppets for the fantasy creatures (and where-so-ever did he get that idea??), but for peeking into the complex, tortured mind of late-80's Jim Henson:

Jim's personal obsession--another word I don't use lightly--with "Legend" was near-neurotic: Not content with merely hiring the cinematographer to work on "Labyrinth", but a quick viewing of "The Storyteller" will show how his entire view of fantasy was irreparably changed from there to the end....
Namely, that every fantasy ever told had to have gold-filters, swirling leaves/petals, dark-haired Mia Sara heroines, Creature Shop monstrosities, and pompously somber-loopy scripts.

...Ridley Scott's movie may have singlehandedly destroyed the mind of a talented artist, but alongside DC, it does back-to-back emphasize how much better Jim's fantasy films were before he started hitting the "Legend" bottle.
 
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