The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

The original Dark Crystal film came out in 1982. I was 10 and obsessed with fantasy at the time – mostly the Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barbarian books – so was always keen on fantasy movies. There just weren’t all that many around at the time. I can’t be bothered to google it but off the top of my head, there was Krull, Beastmaster, Hawk the Slayer, the Sword and the Sorcerer, Excalibur and a few others I could probably remember if not gripped by lethargy. But those were the ones I watched the most. Schwarzenegger’s Conan film came out around then too and was great.

In the glorious days of the 1980s no one really gave much of a shit about special effects in low budget films but to give them credit, they still made something of an effort. You just have to be very forgiving. Option B, such as with The Dark Crystal, was to use puppets. Jim Henson was, and his company still is, the undisputed master of puppets (why am I suddenly thinking about Metallica?) I am still not 100% sure on the difference between muppets and puppets but it is probably to do with the seriousness of the acting involved.

I won’t go into the story much because frankly, it is quite ‘fantastical’ and complicated. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a prequel to the original film, which is fine I guess. What put most fans off, when they heard that Netflix was doing a ten-part show, was that they are obviously not going to use puppets any more because we have cheap and readily available CGI. So when the new trailer dropped I was shocked to see they went old school and are using puppets. And CGI. Good for you Netflix.

I am tempted to go back and watch the original Dark Crystal now but like all the fantasy films I have listed above, (except Conan,) I am a bit scared. I have really fond memories of all those films and they might not have aged well. So I will watch this afresh with an open mind. The series will be on Netflix on the 30th August this year. Here is the trailer. Fantasy muppets!