The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is the Strangest of Things: A Riveting Long-Form Puppet Show
EntertainmentTV

Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance asks a lot of its viewers: It wants them to take puppets seriously enough to empathize with them over the course of 10 hour(-ish)-long episodes. This ask is not without precedent. Previously, some of these characters (and other characters very much like these characters) were handcrafted to engage audiences in the movie to which this series serves as a prequel: 1982’s The Dark Crystal, co-directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz. But even if you weren’t much invested in what made protagonists Jen and Kira tick, even if you considered their quest to replace a broken shard from a giant crystal that served as the life force of their planet Thra to be a mere formality, that movie engaged in a slow-release world-building in which at least once every 10 minutes, a new, completely bizarre, and often charismatic creature was introduced. It was a blur of felt, foam, plastic, synthetic hair, and multi-species uncanny valleys, a truly immersive experience whose from-point-A-to-point-B storyline was almost besides the point. You could plop down and let the film hallucinate for you.
I almost cried once? What the fuck!
Age of Resistance requires more engagement, and it’s also more rewarding. Viewers are likely to be reminded of Game of Thrones as well as our planet’s imminent ecological collapse. The social commentary via parable is a bit more blatant this time around, but sitting through a woke Dark Crystal is no chore. We’re back on Thra, whose very existence is in danger because of a growing environmental cataclysm referred to as “The Darkening.” The ruling class are the purple raptor-like Skesis, some of whom wear ruffs and speak in a theatrically formal tongue (“Lackadaisical Skeksis, they feast while we toil!”) but also smack their food in their beaks and fart. They’re the one percent, rich at least in the resource of time (they’re immortal). Below them on the social scale are the Gefling, elf-like creatures spread over Thra in a variety of clans that largely work for and revere the Skesis at the start of the story. (How they don’t realize giant, snarling purple birds might be sinister is never addressed by the show. I guess Gelfling are pure of heart and not hung up on looks.)