by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

Given the stories that he set out to tell in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s deeply unsurprising that Jim Henson apparently thought it was unhealthy for children to never be afraid. Which is how, in 1982, we saw the theatrical release of The Dark Crystal. Directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, with a script by David Odell, The Dark Crystal is burned into the brains of many millenials - myself included. Within a tight 93 minutes, the general audience was transported to the dying land of Thra and introduced to the last living Gelflings, who go on an epic journey to save their world. A journey that they succeed at, though the future of Thra remains unknown to us.

Thra, itself, is a world with no humans, unlike many of the stories that Jim Henson and company set out to tell throughout his career, and even long after. Unique in this way, every creature in The Dark Crystal is a puppet, created and operated by the great people at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. And it was a mix of an illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll’s poetry by Leonard B. Lubin and Henson’s own short-lived, but recurring, SNL sketch, The Land of Gorch, that served as major inspiration points for The Crystal. As a 25-page story that Henson wrote and shared with his cohorts, The Crystal held all the eventual plot tidings of the final film. And I, for one, would love to read it - even if it’s messy. 

As the jumping off point for the film, The Crystal included some major elements that would remain. Including the epic quest, three main races of very distinctly different creatures, the unification of two of those races, and the Crystal itself. Among a few other, smaller things that would be adapted, but not thrown out. Like, the land was originally called Mithra, which was later shortened to what we know it as today: Thra. As the story evolved, philosophical elements from Jane Roberts’s Seth Material began to form the base of the story - especially where Aughra and the urRu (aka, The Mystics) were concerned. 

Once a lot of the small changes (mostly names) happened from Henson’s original story, the actual refining process of the plot started. Because building an entire fantasy world like this one would take a lot more than 25 pages! It was at this point that Jim Henson pulled in illustrator Brian Froud to work on designs for the puppets. Known for his elaborate and stunning art of faeries, dwarfs, and other woodland creatures, Froud brought an otherworldly vibe to the vision shared by Henson and Oz. (His illustrations are truly amazing, by the way. I had one of his art books growing up and never tired of flipping around it. Really great stuff!)

And then there’s the puppets themselves. Marketed as the first live-action film without human beings on screen, The Dark Crystal was touted as “a showcase for cutting-edge animatronics.” Which it most certainly was! It contained some of the most groundbreaking technology in both hands and facial expressions that Henson and company ever put together. Often taking two, sometimes three, puppeteers to operate, the urRu and the Skeksis were horribly heavy with all their electronics. The Chamberlain Skeksis, alone, had 21 different electronic components!

Which is not to mention the sheer size of them. Henson, himself, said he could only hold a Mystic puppet in a single position for 5-10 seconds at a time. And there was a distinct lack of vision possible when operating the puppets, so many performers had monitors on their chests so they could see what they were doing. Which is not to say that the Gelflings, tiny by comparison, were the easy ones to perform. No, because they were meant to be the closest to humans, their expressions and gait of their walk needed to be very specific and relatable. A task that the puppeteers manage with flying colors, though it was quite taxing on them.

However, beyond the insurmountable talent involved in the creation of it, The Dark Crystal is sort of the pinnacle in 1980s fantasy for kids. It’s scary in a really direct and purposeful way, it’s funny and filled with humor children tend to like, and it gives a really good reading of a high fantasy world with the most minimal of additional information. Besides, a story about the last living beings of a race, set to save the world and bring forth something called the Great Conjunction? Yeah, that’s the fantasy stuff that we all crave!

But that part about how the film is very high concept, but gives the least amount of information possible? That’s the most interesting thing to me, at least as an adult, about The Dark Crystal. It’s why I think I’m still enthralled by this film, instead of the Skeksis just being a point of film-induced trauma from my childhood.  

The Dark Crystal isn’t alone, though. It’s part of a long tradition in children’s fantasy where you’re only ever given world building in narration and the rest of the film say, “figure it out!” It was a theme for nearly 30 years of this kind of cinema, even. And Henson’s next film, The Labyrinth, falls into that category, too. At least in a pretty broad way. For a long, long time the only piece of additional world building, or look into the history and mythology of Thra and its people was the novelization, written A.C.H. Smith. (It was recently reprinted and I’m dying to get my hands on it!)

So, there’s this deep, mythical world that exists, with lots of history, but basically none of it is on screen. Instead, we’re truly just getting a snapshot of a Very Important™ moment. All of which, I think, serves to make the story mysterious and intriguing. It’s also what makes The Dark Crystal the perfect case study for how fantasy writing, especially in television and film, has changed in the last half century. 

Created and released 37 years after the original film, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a Netflix series that was, unfortunately, canceled after its first season. It’s a prequel series to the film that explores what life in Thra was like before the Skeksis started their active reign of terror. It goes from undisputed peace and into how Thra would eventually become a land with almost no Gelflings. However, because it only received a single season, that story gap is never quite closed, although I believe it's being told in comics. 

But the story, as it’s told in the ten, hour-long episodes, is the story of three Gelflings from different clans whose stories come together when one of them witnesses the Skeksis killing another Gelfling. From there, it’s a mad race to convince all the Gelflings that they can of this ultimate betrayal. Because, well, um… the Skeksis are bad, actually! All of which triggers the resistance from the title.

However, because the series is a prequel, it runs into a few issues (especially with its cancellation). The major one is, of course, that the first season doesn’t bring us anywhere near where Jen and Kira come in, from the original film. But also, because we know that every Gelfling is dead at the start of The Dark Crystal (except for the two leads), there’s not a lot of tension to be had in the “who lives, who dies” conversation - since we know that they’re, more than likely, all going to die. And that’s not always a bad thing, there’s certainly something to be said for the inherent sadness of that, and still being able to connect to characters even knowing their fate - but without more than one season of set up, the series never really reaches that point.

My assumption for the reasoning behind the cancellation is that the production cost of the series was simply too high to sustain the type of watching that the streamer wants out of their shows. Which… is kind of unsurprising, ultimately. One of the joys of the series is that they did a lot of practical puppets and sets, as a way to pay homage to the original. There’s CGI and general VFX mixed throughout, but with a few exceptions I don’t think it’s too distracting. In fact, the only time I ever really bump on anything, personally, is when they CGI the tongues of the Skeksis. The rest of those characters are really elaborate puppets, and I think they just would have done better to have them have puppet tongues. Much less distracting, honestly. 

Ultimately, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance received much more positive reviews in its time, than the original film did in its own. Something I find interesting about all of the criticism for both pieces, is that everyone agrees that they are visual masterpieces. Stunning and dreamlike in their imagining and execution - but the story is lacking in some way. That they could have the same criticisms, but have pretty different scores in the aggregation is of great interest to me. Mostly because I think it’s part of the key to how we’ve changed in what we expect from certain types of stories. 

So, the major issue I have with The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance compared to The Dark Crystal is something that I think makes it a failure of adaptation, through no fault of its own. Which is to say that  there have been almost 40 years of cultural and storytelling changes since the original film was released. And, like many things, the way that we approach telling fantasy stories has changed dramatically. How we tell them, what we expect as an audience, and the long lasting impact of them would be, in all probability, almost incomprehensible to Henson today.

It is no longer the norm to dropkick your audience into a world they know nothing about, with only a piece of text or narration to ground them at the beginning. So, that’s where The Dark Crystal firmly sits. And because of how storytelling has changed, Age of Resistance deems it necessary to fill in lots of details, spending large chunks of its not inconsequential runtime doing so. Some of those things work, but most of them do not. In fact, there are many times where actually gaining knowledge about certain functions of the world of Thra make the story less magical. 

And that’s something I find so interesting about this type of adaptation. It succeeds and it fails in equal measures. It’s why I wanted to start this series in the first place, to talk about the shows based on films I love and think work, of course, but to also talk about the shows that either totally fail - or that teeter on the edge of being something profound and interesting. Ultimately, I don’t really think that The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance had much of a chance, given the new fantasy landscape it was stepping into. But I think it succeeds in honoring the legacy of Jim Henson with its production - which I think Henson would have really appreciated. And, really, Jim’s legacy is the legacy to consider with something like this.