But we quickly learn he isn’t, because Kira is a character.Īnd Kira has the following traits: she knows a lot about the world, she is very personable, good at maturely dealing with problems, she can control wild animals by singing, she can fly. It’s about a Gelfling, and the Mystics just assume Jen is the last Gelfling. He’s just Jen, and that’s supposed to be enough.Įxcept the Dark Crystal is even more regrettable, because the prophecy isn’t even explicitly about Jen. He doesn’t have to be the smartest or strongest or most compassionate or win the most games of Muppets Party Cruise or anything. Why is Jen the hero of this movie? Well, because of the prophecy, of course. Prophecies remove all agency from characters, all logic from narratives, and ultimately let characters who are bumbling failures accomplish great things. Y’see, wiser men than I have outlined the problems with movies about prophecies. Jen does not understand the stakes of this mission, and again, we have to assume the Mystics conveyed the stakes to him, so I guess Jen is just too lazy to care or whatever. This is a Henson world where literally every living thing is a cute puppet: the odds that the shard would be gobbled by some sort of fish or snake or Big Mean Carl are too high to measure. Understandably upset after Kira’s Podling family gets Garthimed, he hurls the shard into the woods. In fact, Jen is also responsible for the most heinous action in the entire film. (Someone needs to read some of Scott McCloud’s words that stay, I guess.) Likewise, Jen reads “the words that stay” to identify that his goal is to restore the Dark Crystal, but one could also get to that same conclusion by interpreting the related pictures. For instance, it’s Jen’s flute that reveals which of Aughra’s shards is the true shard, but like, he probably could’ve asked Aughra… or at least tried to. It’s my only explanation.Īlong these lines, while Jen does use his pipe skills and literacy to help him in the film, it’s obvious that there was an alternative that a more perceptive or personable character could’ve used. He was probably too busy narrating his own life to listen to them tell him what a Garthim was or whatever. I mean, the kid doesn’t even know how to bandage himself. I have to wonder why t he Mystics didn’t teach him more, which leads me to believe that Jen obviously ignored every other thing they said. Here is a fairly-comprehensive list of things Jen knows about during the movie: playing the pipes, reading “words that stay.” While it’s unquestionable those things are helpful, it’s not exactly what you need from an adventurer. One would assume that the Mystics would teach him something, and yet here is a small list of things Jen needs to be taught about during the movie: animals, Podlings, outer space, remembering things, eye-bats, Gelflings. And yet Jen has no skills and no knowledge about the world around him. Jen is garbage, and here is why.įirstly, Jen was raised from childhood by the Mystics, who knew that the prophecy said a Gelfling would have to restore the Dark Crystal. Coincidence?).īut now, in honor of the Netflix Age of Resistance series, I have been unshackled, freed like the animals at the end of The Dark Crystal. Editorial shelved this idea for some reason or another (donations from an anti-wing lobby group?) and instead I just wrote a bit about how much I love Prairie Dawn (Note: she’s the pink Sesame Street Muppet who doesn’t have wings. But I remember leaving with a newly kindled obsession: Jen is 100% worthless.Īt the time, we at ToughPigs were working on a series of articles for Women’s History Month, and I suggested I run an article wherein I just dunked on Jen for a couple hundred words and praised Kira for the remainder. Look, I am such a sucker for visuals and amazing puppetry that I still adore this movie, even if I believe the plot is dull. My opinion after rewatching it was mostly unchanged, of course. I hadn’t seen the movie in over a decade all I remembered was that the film was gorgeous but had a very, very boring story. Over a year ago, my partner and I went to see the Fathom Events screening of The Dark Crystal.
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