well. i grew up watching the Muppets and Labyrinth and Little Shop of Horrors, so maybe i was predisposed to love it?
but seriously, beyond the fact that I was already a fan of puppetry, I think that the reason I like this film so much is that it stuck with me big time! My introverted self LOVED the idea of dreamfasting and thought it was super cool that the characters could talk without, y'know, talking. But I particulary loved (spoiler) the relationship between the Skeksis and the Mystics. As a kid you get a lot of "This is the bad guy, he is irredeemable and vile" spoonfed to you, so you're kind of inundated with dualism. But the end of the Dark Crystal threw child-Me for a loop... you're telling me these evil gross bird guys are THE SAME as the cool nice turtle guys??? Like they're parts of the same beings? And the fact that this reveal comes at the end, without much explanation or lore-dump, makes it feel all the more ~mystical~.
probably the second reason I love this film is. Come On Look At It. The detail put into the set dressings, the painted backdrops, the puppets, the puppets' costumes, the music... mwa. breathtaking. Click on crystals 3 & 4 if you want to see some pictures.
Originally, the Skeksis were supposed to speak in a different language, with subtitles being provided.
The Dark Crystal was shot in England, at thesame time as Henson Co. was shooting The Great Muppet Caper.
Jim Henson and his daughter Cheryl made up the plot to this movie while stuck in a snowed in airport in '78, and wrote it out on napkins.
Concept artist Brian Froud and puppet desgner Wendy Midener met on the Dark Crystal set and were later married. You might know their son Toby as the baby from Labyrinth! He also worked on the prequel Netflix series in 2019.
Even though the film didn't make much in America, it was the highest-grossing box-office release of 1983 in both France and Japan.