Someone sets off on a quest against a world-threatening evil power every encounter is a life-and-death struggle. In modern fantasy stories, of which Tolkien is the ur-text, everything that happens is hugely meaningful and important. But I didn’t know if I would be taken by the writing. So when the new, prequel series was announced, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, I knew I would watch it for the art of the puppetry and the overall visual magic. I barely remembered the story after a few years, but I remembered that painstakingly crafted world. The lasting impression it made on me was of a gorgeous, intricately constructed, analog (as opposed to CGI) world – whole landscapes full of critters and various species of flora, made entirely from puppet-stuff. I finally saw The Dark Crystal for the first time as an adult. It was also seen, rightly, as something too scary for small children. I think adults around me didn’t respect it, as a film with no fully human, non-puppet actors. But somehow, even as a fan of Labyrinth and The Muppet Show and everything Jim Henson, I never saw The Dark Crystal as a kid. It features a girl protagonist, puppets that seem like living, breathing characters, and great music (David Bowie!). Its storyline is familiar in a mythological sort of way but novel and fresh. Myself, I was a devotee of Labyrinth, a movie that has arguably stood the test of time better than Dark Crystal despite being a box office flop. When I was growing up, a lot of us nerds were either Dark Crystal kids or Labyrinth kids. The world is finally ready for more Dark Crystal. Why was Jim Henson’s puppet studio creating The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance now, after so long? Wasn’t it a little late? After watching the series, though, I think it came out at exactly the right time. It was initially puzzling to me why a TV series associated with the 1982 film The Dark Crystal was coming out 37 years later.
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