The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece
27 comments
·March 14, 2025OisinMoran
donatj
If you have not seen "Princess Mononoke", I highly recommend it. I rewatched it recently and the people and creatures on both sides of the conflict are neither really good nor evil. Just two opposing forces with different goals.
It offers a level of subtlety I have not seen often in film, particularly since Star Wars.
jhbadger
Yeah, the whole point of the original is that the Mystics and Skeksis were both flawed societies (even if the Skeksis were closer to the normal meaning of "evil") and the ending unites them rather than having the Skeksis destroyed.
donatj
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.
techterrier
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.
ReptileMan
I mean they had to finance rebel moon, the idol and the electric state.
This is what I also hate about the gaming industry. If you have a team that works good - find something to do for them.
The guys behind Prince of Peria lost crown were brilliant in every aspect. And Ubisoft disbanded them instead of giving them time to get their footing. But we have a bloated AC:Shadows crap coming our way.
ekianjo
> The guys behind Prince of Peria lost crown were brilliant in every aspect.
You seem to assume that people want to keep working together forever. Gamesdev can be really intense and for a lot of devs the end of a game is the opportunity to part ways cleanly and try something else.
kermit___
https://archive.ph/2025.03.18-084516/https://gizmodo.com/rem...
(Had a page crash and strange refreshes from ads.)
pavlov
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.
donatj
The first season of Westworld was this far me. Started it the same day we got our first HDR TV. Blown away.
nottorp
Is it a masterpiece, or a 2 hour movie made with the best material in the 10 episodes would have been an actual masterpiece?
moomin
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.
raffraffraff
> The problem with all this is the same thing great animation runs into. Because of the medium, many people choose to ignore the show or dismiss it as made for kids
This reminds me of Yonderland, an absolutely amazing TV show that has plot, characters and occasionally adult humour that will fly over the heads of children in the same way that a lot of great Simpsons gags did, in the good old days. Yonderland is made by the same people who did Ghosts (no, not the American rehash, the far superior original). Find it, watch it, it's brilliant.
socks
Gravity Falls is another 'kids' show that is absolutely brilliant.
beloch
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.
whywhywhywhy
>A lot of people in a lot of countries are cancelling Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Plus, Apple TV, etc. just because they're American
Think you might be over-estimating the size of your algorithm bubble there. Normal people don't even make that connection.
mjamesaustin
A hidden gem, well worth the watch for fans and newcomers alike. This show wows on so many levels.
eldgfipo
Incredible show, so disappointed Netflix cancelled it.
fowl338
FWIW, it's unlikely that any other studio would have greenlighted AoR at anywhere close to the budget it got. It might have had more seasons elsewhere, but not at this level of quality. I'm glad we at least got one incredible season out of it.
Scavenger's Reign on Max got similarly cancelled after one season. There isn't much audience for weird shows like that, apparently. :(
socks
Scavenger's Reign was really excellent - but as I was watching it, I had an inkling that I would likely be in a small cohort of people who love it.
teamonkey
I think it’s a shame that shows like this need to be runaway hits out of the door, rather than slow-burners. Cult TV has historically had a long tail; you’d think that this was something that would benefit streaming services.
the_hoffa
It sucks too because with streaming they can track so many finite details; with "old school" TV it was mostly self-reporting (i.e. Neilsen Ratings). And so much of the TV-streaming budgeting took "Hollywood budgeting" to the extremes: if total_individual_views < (total_episodes * 2) && total_episodes_binged < total_episodes && average_time_spent_on_episode < (average_episode_time * 0.98) && release_date <= 1week then CANCEL_SHOW=true ... just shortsighted and sad :(
Loughla
Scavenger's Reign is probably the best show I've seen, in terms of world building and creativity. Just absolutely stunning.
I'm massively disappointed it got cancelled. It really scratched the sci-fi itch that usually only gets scratched via books. Most sci-fi movies and shows are really just lazily dressed up romance.
freetime2
This is the first I am even hearing about it. Interesting that Netflix has never recommended it to me as someone who watches a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, animation, etc. Although TBH if it weren't highly recommended I would be pretty hesitant to watch a show with muppets, despite my other interests. Even with this glowing recommendation I'm still a bit skeptical.
tigerlily
> It’s certainly darker than something like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films...
Huh. Why not also compare Jackson's puppet/splatter films, Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, heck even Braindead?
whywhywhywhy
"dark" in the context of a fantasy movie isn't the same meaning as "dark" in the concept of a gross out or comedy movie.
EdwardDiego
Because very very few people know of those films.
"Ooh, aren't I lucky, I got a chunky bit!"
You could also have mentioned Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners (filmed in my home town, was a blast seeing Michael J. Fox roaming around).
I suspect they mentioned LotR because you know, well known and, fantasy.
Not really comparable to Barry and the team vs. the evil aliens, or Harvey Weinstein personified in a walrus puppet.
But I'm rather glad you're aware of Jackson's earlier works.
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.