The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

The author seems to conflate "dark" with "adult", so let me take the chance to point out this common mistake. Horror films, Warhammer 40K and 2000 AD comics are all famously dark, but they're for kids or teens. A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Importance of Being Earnest are light but grown-up. It's a weird deformation of the past generation to think that being depressing makes you deep.

Hard disagree with a lot said here. Watched both the film and this series (though haven't got around to finishing it yet) for the first time last year, and the series lacks a lot of what makes the film great.

The film has some interesting zen-like qualities like duality, and a more complex set of morals. The series just feels like most modern creations with a pretty bland right vs wrong.

The film is also almost entirely practical effects, which are incredible (the behind the scenes footage is amazing), while the series leans a bit too heavily on CGI in parts, which detracts from the action a bit (à la LoTR vs The Hobbit).

Given this piece I might go back to finish it now (and from another comment possibly upgrade my TV), but I still think I'll prefer the film.

Given it was so obvious that the team had bottled lightening with this creation, it stands as a monument to the failure of bean counter driven programming. Surely any creative person looking at the quality of this work would have kept this team in the groove. It's not like they didnt have the money.

They could easily have made the cash back on some reality thing that cost nothing but made bank.

I love the film. The film is a real masterpiece.

I'm struggling to get through the series. That ultra clunky opening narration is not a great sign and the world building and underlying plot feels shallow in the series.

I'd LOVE for more Dark Crystal content but I would like them to start over...

How strange, the most positive review I heard from anyone I know was that "It ruined my childhood" and that it let's say "craped" on the source material. Mind you these are the nicest things people said.

I have not seen it nor the original film to be fair, but this is quite literally the first positive thing I have heard about it.

If you liked the original, you should absolutely watch Age of Resistance. It’s not a masterpiece but it was clearly made by people that care about the original, its legacy, and its lore.

I remember this was the first HDR program I watched on my new OLED TV back in 2019, and the experience felt like all my life I'd been watching TV with foggy sunglasses that had been suddenly removed.

It's a really beautifully shot show.

I loved DC:AoR but I never expected it was anything more than a one-off. Keep following the struggle as much as you like, but you still know that in the end, the Gelflings lose. I mean yes they pull it off in the end and maybe the Ur-Skeks magic them all back, they discover a lost tribe, whatever, but in the meantime they pretty much get wiped out. Making a good story in the face of that dark inevitability is what the writing craft is about, and they pulled it off and left on a high note. Best thing they can do is leave it that way.

I do not agree w/ this in relation to the Dark Crystal series. But I see parallels in the Star Wars series Andor. Many will skip it because 'it's star wars', but it's a great series in star wars costume. The three people I've pressed into watching it came away with very favorable reviews.

There are some kinda deep cut star wars references that non-fans will miss. Mon Mothma the political head of the rebellion is seen only sparingly in the original trilogy and in rogue one (scenes were shot for her in the prequels setting her up as politically aligned with Padme and Bail, but they were cut) is a main character here. Other characters like Saw Gererra only appear in the clone wars series and Rogue One (a film for which this series is a prequel). However this didn't seem to effect my friends much only one of whom had even seen rogue one and the prequels, the other two only having seen the original series.

I'm so glad that it got a second season and am very excited to see it play out.

I don’t know if I’d go quite so far, but it is very good. The Chamberlain remains a piece of work, and Lena Headey sometimes feels like she’s still on the set of Game of Thrones.

This was a brilliant show, but it had the misfortune to come along at a time when Netflix was cancelling even moderate successes after one season and slashing the budget of hit shows for their second season before cancelling them too (e.g. Altered Carbon). Only very rarely does a show turn into the kind of pop culture sensation that seems to make the bean-counters want to go past two seasons (e.g. Stranger Things), unless it's some executive's idea of a tent-pole for their platform (e.g. Rings of Power).

Given how fragmentation and enshittification of streaming services is driving users back to piracy, one can't help but feel like the current model may not persist much longer. Heck, I wonder what the impact of the trade war is going to be! A lot of people in a lot of countries are cancelling Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Plus, Apple TV, etc. just because they're American.

The writing in the series is unfortunately terrible. It sinks the otherwise beautiful show with sterile and laborious narration/dialogue, telltale signs of over workshopped writing room slop, from which no real living plot ever emerges. Such a disappointment.