Netflix has released the first teaser for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the television prequel to Jim Henson’s iconic 1982 fantasy film. Directed by Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Now You See Me) and with a cast including Caitriona Balfe, Helena Bonham Carter, and Taron Egerton, the series follows three Gelflings trying to stop “the Darkening.”
Most notably, Age of Resistance utilizes puppets, as did its forebear, rather than going full CGI. Voicing these puppets is an impressive cast that further includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Eddie Izzard, Mark Strong, Toby Jones, Natalie Dormer, and many more. Watch the epic teaser:
The official summary:
The journey begins as darkness rises. Join three Gelfling heroes on an epic quest to save their world.
The 10-episode first season of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance premieres on Netflix on Friday, August 30.
Wow – they maintained the look, recreated a lot of the elements … I’m in.
Wow. I remember Genndy Tartakovsky was supposed to be working on a prequel a few years ago and the project got scrapped. I never knew Netflix went ahead with it. As a guy who grew up loving the original (and to a lesser extent, Labyrinth), this looks really interesting, albeit also a bit sad, since you know the heroes will ultimately kind of fail.
Oh yeah. Looks pretty great. It’s crazy to imagine Mark Hamill and Eddie Izzard both featuring into this resurrection of a childhood wonder, but here we are. Cannot wait.
The Dark Crystal is the movie that inspired me to become a storyteller, so I’m here for all of this.
Note that the reign of the Skeksis lasted “nine-hundred and ninety-nine and one” trines (years), from one Great Conjunction to the next. Judging by how clean the palace looks (the Skeksis’ grime and smoke hasn’t yet turned it fully black), I’m guessing this is still relatively early. There is plenty of time for these gelflings to win a victory, or even just to set things in motion for those who will come after (we know nothing about Jen & Kira’s parents, aside from the briefest glimpse of Kira’s mother being taken by garthim).
I’d say it is mid-way through the Skeksis’ reign. Long enough that they are an established order. The palace isn’t a grimy but is covered on the outside by the accretions that eventually fall away when the two are reunited. I suppose what we have here is a particular attempt of the Skeksis to do something new and extra-evil, which the gelflings can prevent or reverse without having to overthrow the entire Skeksis regime. (Kind of like how the original Star Wars was a significant victory but did not end the Empire.) And Ohgra is alive and old, which would be problematic for this to have occurred a thousand years before Dark Crystal, unless immortality is commonplace rather than restricted to the Ur-skeks and their “progeny”.
Aughra is at least four thousand years old at the time of the original movie, per other material; she was “born” (from Thra itself) under one Great Conjunction, saw the arrival of the urSkeks at another, witnessed the shattering of the Crystal at a third, and its restoration at a fourth.
Aughra is the first and last and only one of her kind; the living avatar of Thra.
This looks great . I can’t wait for August. Now I have an excuse to break out my Dark Crystal DVD and watch it again. I should also give the graphic novels a look. I read a few Labyrinth but not the Dark Crystal my hold list is going to be out of control again.
It does look beautiful, but I have grown to be wary of prequels. I can’t remember a single prequel worth its salt…
Is Frank Oz reprising his roles as Aughra and the Chamberlain? They sound similar enough, but you never know.
Oh well, this looks promising!
I am likely going to watch this because it looks like visually stunning high fantasy. I was very interested in seeing The Dark Crystal when I was a kid but didn’t end up seeing it until I was an adult. As such, it probably missed its chance to make a huge impact on me the way I know it has on so many others. I admire it’s technical sophistication, but I found it slow and pretty lacking in plot – and I watched it three times, because I was confident the problem was with me and not the movie.
All of which is to say, good on these folks for making a prequel to a film I have no real attachment to seem pretty compelling!
I have nothing really to add, except:
@2: I think that Genndy Tartakovsky’s project was what became the The Power of the Dark Crystal comic series, likely adapted from the scripts/storyboards. Sequel series, not prequels. (I’ve read the first collected volume, still need to pick up the others.)
@9: The voice of Aughra was definitely not Oz. (And IMDB, take-with-salt as ever, has Donna Kimball credited as the voice.) (Edit: And it looks like the original voice was Billie Whitelaw according to IMDB, Oz was just the puppeteer.)
Can’t say for the Chamberlain tho. (IMDB says the original voice was Barry Dennen.)
“The Dark Crystal” came out when I was in high school and I went to see it on opening weekend. It was boring. A few years later I watched it on cable. It was still boring. I dunno. Maybe I was too old to appreciate it when I first saw it? It’s one of those that I can tell, objectively, is a good movie. Well written, excellent practical effects, just technically very good. Yet I bounced right off of it.
@11 and @14 — oh no, you are quite right that it is slow in parts and boring in others. It needed some better editing to really make it shine — I suspect that there was a bit of reluctance to cut anything because so much work went into making the world alive. And it’s also wonderful and flawed and beautiful and has some scenes that are just perfect. That’s why I come back to it over and over, anyway. My sister and I can have whole conversations in Skeksis: “Hrrrr-rrm?” “Hrrrrmmmm….” “Hrrrm!”
@@@@@ 13: You are right. I have watched that movie (and credits) probably a thousand times, and still I forget the amount of people who was necessary to bring to life each character.
The biggest problem I had with The Dark Crystal was that the hero, Jen, was just kind of fundamentally uninteresting, especially compared to the baroque richness and grotesquerie of the world around him. (Contrast with Sarah from Labyrinth, who was able to give as good as she got, at least as the film progressed.) I hope that they can avoid this in the prequel series.
@@@@@ 17: That’s true. Jen is a pretty blank hero. Kira is a much better character. She’s a polyglot, can also speak to animals, and is pretty fierce.
And there is that unforgettable exchange:
“But… I don’t have wings!”
“Of course not. You’re a boy.”