I remember watching the original at the drive-in when I was 7 and my folks covering the windscreen with a blanket at the bits they thought were too scary. Still stuck my head out the window to watch, cos 7-year old capnjimbo was a fucken badass that would not be denied (a badass that had to deal with nightmares for the next night or two, but a badass nonetheless).
Excited for this.
Here in Atlanta we have the wonderful Center For Puppetry Arts, which has a room dedicated to The Dark Crystal, including an original Skeksis, (with the Sword of the Crystal), a Mystic, Aughra (not as gigantic as I thought), Jen, and some Pod People, among others.
The rest of the museum and its programming are pretty great, too.
One of my favorite stories about how truly ‘non-muppety’ Henson wanted Dark Crystal to be is about the Skeksis. He wanted them to be completely alien and weird, so originally they just spoke in screeches and their own language with no subtitles. Test audiences were about as confused as you’d expect. So they dubbed in English over the screeches.
As great as this looks, I cannot help but remember that it will be a depressing tale. After all, we know that the poor Gelflings are doomed. It makes it hard for me, to be honest. I don’t handle genocide all that well, it just depresses the heck out of me.
But I will watch it. After all, I have Brian Froud’s book The Art of The Dark Crystal in a place of honour, and love the world he and Jim Henson created.
Gelf One: A Skeksi Wars Story
OK - me and the kiddo watched it and she liked it. We then got to watch the Odd1sout reveiw - which is pretty funny. So we will probably watch the Netflix series together.
Even “Hollywood” by and large (would you believe it?) recognized audience ‘fatigue’ from digital effects and are more and more returning to practical ones. For me, the best example so far (and there are some great ones out there) is First Man. (One the of the few good trends happening these days.)
Absolutely – especially when making a movie/show in the spirit of something from an earlier time. The new Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, is using tons of old-school practical effects like motion-control cameras and handmade ship models, because they want to look as much like the original movies as possible.
When the abandoned Dark Crystal sequel was announced years ago (originally to be directed by Genndy Tartakovsky!), they made a big deal about using a combination of puppets and CG creatures in fully CG environments, and it didn’t go over well.
Just a guess on my part, but I suspect that studios see the practical (that word again) advantage of such effects, perhaps (as far as reusable) standing sets, accepting them as ‘capital investments’, always there to allow directors and actors more flexibility, improvisation, and fast on-site corrections that need not require having to reengage digital effects companies (and having to hope that scenes/images mesh correctly, look good, and are done on time). Two great examples include the ‘hero’ spacecraft from Interstellar and the X-15 from First Man, both being full scale props that allowed real lighting and (very importantly) something for actors to act in and against. Then there’s the practical effects extensively employed in Dunkirk which simply blew me away.
The return to practical effects got me going back to (and reassessing) older big effect films, such as A Night to Remember (1958). Already benefitting from substantial historical accuracy (when compared to the fantasy of Cameron’s Titanic), the use of large scale models (even the moving ‘fleet’ of lifeboats fleeing the ANTR Titanic) in crucial scenes are good enough to not annoyingly derail the audiences’ emotions built up from the drama. For even better ‘old school’ effects, there’s Run Silent, Run Deep; as far as underwater battle effects, it still holds its own.
More and more of the content I want to view is on Netflix, Amazon, etc. I wonder if I really need a DVR any more?
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