When the old emperor dies, a new even nastier "Skeksis" one takes his place, and so begins this latest reign of terror for all the "Gelfling" on the distant world of "Thra". The only way to rectify things is for the dark crystal, damaged aeons ago, to be restored to it's former glory and that can only happen at the conjunction of their planet's three suns. That onerous task now falls to the timid "Jen" and his friend "Kira" and so they set off on a series of perilous adventures as they must locate the crystal and get it to the temple so that it can regenerate and defeat the vulture-like (look at my avatar) creatures. It's a cracking story of good versus evil, with the monstrous creations of Jim Henson delivering quite an effective, in a pantomime sort of fashion, degree of peril as the tension builds up. The humans I didn't care for so much - they're a bit weedy; but the monsters are crafted with detail and originality and the use of colourful visuals to augment the story whilst evoking a sense of mystery and danger works well too. It's got plenty of action, mysticism and even if I did hate the predictably goody-goody denouement, I did enjoy the film and though it has dated, that didn't spoil it too much.