#The dark crystal netflix movie#
#The dark crystal netflix series#

#The dark crystal netflix series#

Like the original movie, this series is set on the planet Thra, which is ruled by hideous birdlike giants called Skeksis who have dominion over other races and species, including the elf-like Gelflings the main story is about a small group of heroes who discover a horrible secret about the Skeksis - they’re killing Geflings and drinking their “essence” to prolong their own lives - and then try to expose it. After a dense opening prologue with a lot of Tolkien-esque names, the narrative is not difficult to track, and even if you do get momentarily confused about political or dynastic particulars, the action is usually staged in a way that makes the characters’ actions easy to understand.

#The dark crystal netflix movie#

And I am here to tell you that there is no way this show won’t satisfy you.Īdapted by writers Jeff Addiss, Will Matthews, and Javier Grillo-Marxuach, and directed by Louis Leterrier ( Clash of the Titans, The Incredible Hulk) in a dynamic, at times chaotic style reminiscent of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and Game of Thrones, this Netflix series is officially a prequel, but you needn’t have seen Henson and Oz’s movie to follow the story. (I could write a whole other paragraph extolling the quiet majesty of the moment when the character, dissatisfied with how he’s combed his hair, whips it around wildly, then practically leers at himself as if to say, “You handsome devil.”) But if you’re an obsessive fan of puppetry, and the Muppets in particular - and reader, I totally am - this is how your mind naturally works. I realize this is an awful lot of analysis to expend on a single scene that isn’t even important to the main story of Age of Resistance. The character’s hands have already been affixed to the edges of the shoes, probably with Velcro, and because the shot begins when the character is already in the process of tugging the shoes on tighter, the viewer doesn’t ask how a puppet’s tiny hands, too small for human hands, could “grip” the tops of the shoes. And when the character is pulling the shoes on tighter, there’s a puppeteer operating the character from a hole in the bed.

The shots of the character putting on his shoes are another little magic trick involving segmented “feet” being pushed into shoes by a puppeteer’s hands, with the framing so tight that you only see the feet and the shoes. The little spot of drool in the corner of his mouth was dabbed onto the puppet by a craftsperson, but you accept it as a biological reality because of the way the puppet “breathes,” and the way his eyes are pinched shut while he “sleeps.” The gag where he spills porridge on himself is a testament to blocking action for the benefit of a camera: Cookie Monster notwithstanding, a puppet can’t really eat porridge and dribble some out - even human actors might have trouble making food land in the right spot - so they put some on the shirt front ahead of time, then had the camera dip down to reveal “spilled” porridge that was already there. But the character is a puppet built in a shop, and all this marvelous naturalism is an illusion resulting from careful coordination among dozens of puppeteers, craftspeople, and filmmakers. It all feels as tossed-off as if you were watching a skilled human actor perform the actions. It’s a simple scene: A minor character awakens in his bed one morning, steps into his shoes, pulls them on tight, eats a bowl of porridge at the kitchen table, spills some on his shirt, combs his hair in a hand mirror, then goes off to work as a cleaner, his duster and rag at the ready. There’s a bit at the start of the second episode of fantasy epic The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel to Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s 1982 feature film, that sums up everything that makes its merging of puppetry and filmmaking so special.