Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance premiered on August 30, and has already proven to be one of the best productions in last few years. Over 2500 people worked to bring back Thra and that group effort created an absolute masterpiece.

I must admit that this series took me by surprise. Somehow I never got acquainted with original Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal from 1982. And never imagined that it would be such a large legacy to build on. That is why I was overwhelmed by the scale and complexity of the material. A universe that could go hand to hand with one created in “Neverending story” or Narnia.

The idea of creating the new Dark Crystal first emerged around 2000 AD, thanks to screenwriter David Odell, but the production crashed fast. In one of the interviews Odell explained that production crew was just scared of how big the project really was.

The idea however did not die and was brought back in 2017 thanks to Louis Leterrier, Jim Henson’s Company and Netflix – the almighty giant that decided to pump a lot of money into this project. To everyone’s delight it was ultimately concluded that all the movie props – along with the puppets will be built by hand, and CGI will only be used for enhancing purposes. 

At this point I can only imagine how costly the production must have been – since the original 80’s movie cost 15 million USD. Unfortunately I wasn’t (yet) been able to find information about the production cost, which must have been significant. Considering a huge production crew, all the props, settings, robotics, all 110 puppets and cost of CGI that was melded in shots to remove wires and puppeteers. Despite it all I think that Netflix decision to make live-action prequel was a jackpot.

Frankly speaking I don’t remember a time when I watched anything good that was stripped of violence, gore and bloody scenes. Of course Dark Crystal has its own mystical dark side, but the number of scenes showing actual violence are less then a few. And here I was thinking that you cannot create anything creatively great without exploring filthy face of humanity. The kindness, gentleness, and purity of the story opposing the darkness it’s what makes it exceptional.

The script for the series was developed by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (I don’t get why screenwrites always come in pairs..). They did an amazingly good job by keeping the story firm and consequential. They balanced character development, action, and storytelling really well and were able to put spirit of Thra in the story. The also used all tools left by original movie to build on – as well as the prequel saga created by MJ Lee. 

I also don’t remember a time when while watching anything I was able to say “This is so beautiful!”. These actually were the first words I said about this series. The movies, or tv series are very often filled with amazing visuals – breathtaking even. But you can rarely say they are beautiful.
For the record the last thing I considered beautiful was Lothlorien on big screen, and that was in 2001 AD. Eighteen years ago! That why the level of my appreciation for this series went off the charts..

The music is simple and emotional – it fits perfectly with every event and every visual effect. It’s also amazingly fitting to the fairylike land of Thra and to the Gelflings. The composer behind it is Daniel Pemberton,
who said : “I wanted the music to be as magical as Thra itself – organic, imperfect, strange, mystical, otherworldly and wonderful. I wanted to create new sounds that felt like they came from the world itself, as well as using thematic large scale orchestral elements to bring an emotion to the journey of the characters. I wanted music and sounds that would fill you with wonder, but also terrify you. It was very important to me that all the sounds felt like they could only be from Thra itself – no grand pianos or overtly electronic elements.”

The voice artist cast is vast and very impressive. Special congratulations to Simon Pegg who borrowed his voice to The Chamberlain. It gave a soul to the most cunning of Skesis. It instantly made me think I would want to create a Littlefinger-like character for my RPG sessions. Below just a sample of how cool the voicing cast was.

Of course right after i finished watching Age of Resistance I watched the original Dark Crystal. The enormous amount of sadness and unanswered questions appeared. I just hope, these questions will be answered in season 2, and perhaps the creators will find a way to prevent or soften the disaster that fell upon the Gelflings.