Dark Crystal Age of Resistance Review
/Dark Crystal Age of Resistance takes us to an expanded world of Thra. The series is a prequel to the December 1982 movie release self titled “The Dark Crystal” from the mind of Jim Henson.
For those unfamiliar with this movie, it was a dark and rather scary movie intended for children. The use of practical effects in the movie were impressive. The thing that this movie really has going for it was the use of puppets for the characters and creatures in the film. Dark Crystal Age or resistance chooses to do the same thing.
The Story
This new prequel series sets out to tell the story of the eradication of the Gelfling. Gelfling are a race of beings that inhabit the world of Thra alongside the Podling. They give up their goods to the protectors of the crystal. These protectors are the Skeksis. They are alien bird like creatures that are secretly using the crystal to extend their life. Something that all the races are unaware of.
The events in this series kick into high gear when the crystal does not rejuvenate the Skeksis any longer and they must find a way to continue their immortality. When two Gelfling defenders of the castle that the Skeksis live in stumble upon the happenings of the Skeksis, one pays the price of the research to prove that the crystal can drain essence from the gelfling and the Skeksis can drink it to get a form of rejuvenation.
Rian, escapes with the essence bottle of his fallen friend Mira. Its from this point on that the Skeksis work to hide the truth of what they are doing in their castle from the rest of the Gelfling while Rian works to show what has really been going on and recruit other Gelfling to his cause to fight the Skeksis.
The Characters
Aside from some of the Skeksis and the being known as Aughra, most of the characters in this show are brand new. We can be led to believe that most of these characters will have some role to play in the future that takes place in the movie years later.
The recurring cast, that the voice acting was done really well and are very close to the original voices of the movie. Once voice that really stands out to me is of the Chamberlain Skeksis named SkekSil. His entire way of speaking and tone of voice was really well executed.
Rian and Mira’s characters are pretty one dimensional. They don’t really grow as characters which is honestly a big issue. Rian for example has many examples and reasons that we should have seen his character grow. But by the end of the season, it felt that non of that happened when it should have.
Deet is another notable character that is in this season. She is probably the most interesting character in the show as we follow her path and begin to understand what that might mean in the future. She does not seem to grow much as a character but is much more interesting the Rian is.
There are many characters in this show that shows the structure of the Gelfling world. They all have a leader called an Al-Madra, and each clan has a Madra. This is different from the movie as this structure simply does not exist anymore, this show begins to tell how that happens.
The Skeksis story is pretty straight forward, they don’t really grow as characters either. We see the Chamberlin up to his tricks just like he was in the movie. We also see the Scientist Skeksis voiced by Mark Hamill and how he creates the main plot device that causes all the problems the season has to deal with.
At the end of the day, if you are looking for character growth, I suggest you look elsewhere cause that does not really happen with nearly all the characters here.
The Visuals
If puppets are jarring to you, then just don’t watch this show. It’s a puppet show. There are limitations to puppets and what the puppeteers are able to make them do. But if that does not bother you, and you also want to see what happens before the movie and be treated to incredible practical effects and visuals, then watch this.
It’s worth noting that yes, there are more digital effects used in this movie to polish things up, but that does not really bother me. The effects are done in a very minimal way in most cases where it’s hard to pick up on them being done at all.
There are some effects that are very noticeable however in which took away from the telling of the story. The biggest instance that I can recall when watching the show was the effects on the Hunter Skeksis. I assume that they had to do something different with his character due to the amount of movement that was going to be required of him. It was clear that there was at least digital altering to his character to the point where it was almost mostly digital.
When you are working with so much practical effects, the digital ones really start to stick out especially when they are against similar character models that are still practical puppets. That being said, there was a very healthy meld of the two and the colorization of different areas of the show was really well done.
The show is different from the movie in the fact that we are treated with many different areas of the world that we have not seen before. There are also areas that we have seen before that feel like they were just slightly touched up. They people creating this show did a really good job making use of the scenery as well as meld them together so they all still felt like one cohesive world.
The show is truly eye candy to look at and there was very clearly love and care that went into all the effects with the characters and the environment that also are utilized to tell the story.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a prequel to the Dark Crystal, this is it, and it does not disappoint. We are treated to a significantly larger world that dwarfs what the movie was able to showcase back in 1982. There are people out there that say that this should not be as big or bigger than the movie, but I have to disagree. It feels like these are the events leading up to an ultimate movie conclusion and it will continue to be that way as a second season is in the works for this show that will take the events even closer to the time of the movie. We will see the continued rotting of the world of Thra and the fall of the Gelfling that lead to there only being a couple left.
If you are interested in viewing this for yourself, you can watch it on Netflix.
