from Hacker News

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

by adrian_mrd on 3/14/25, 9:18 PM with 117 comments

  • by dash2 on 3/18/25, 3:24 PM

    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.

  • by OisinMoran on 3/18/25, 11:13 AM

    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.

  • by techterrier on 3/18/25, 10:37 AM

    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.

  • by hoofedear on 3/18/25, 6:48 PM

    I'm gonna disagree with the comments here and vouch that Age of Resistance is a fantastic show. It's what got me into the world of Dark Crystal in general. I saw the show first and then the movie, and I feel like the show perfectly setup the events that lead up to the movie. Even if the show unfortunately was cancelled before it could explore Deet's storyline, the creation of the Garthim, and the discovery of the Wall of Destiny. Sure, the rejoining of the UrRu and Skeksis is interesting, but it's certainly not the "whole point" of the movie/show.

  • by duxup on 3/18/25, 1:19 PM

    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...

  • by sleepybrett on 3/18/25, 4:54 PM

    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.

  • by trentnix on 3/18/25, 1:13 PM

    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.

  • by pavlov on 3/18/25, 9:40 AM

    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.

  • by donatj on 3/18/25, 11:32 AM

    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.

  • by tempodox on 3/29/25, 7:16 PM

  • by moomin on 3/18/25, 7:17 AM

    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.

  • by tunesmith on 3/18/25, 5:37 PM

    I'm actually surprised to read the opinions of people who watched it and didn't like it. I thought the problem was always just that not enough people knew it existed, but if they watched it, they would have loved it. I guess I must just be in the camp of "who WOULDN'T want to watch high-budget puppetry for ten hours??"

  • by beloch on 3/18/25, 11:02 AM

    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.

  • by kermit___ on 3/18/25, 8:51 AM

    https://archive.ph/2025.03.18-084516/https://gizmodo.com/rem...

    (Had a page crash and strange refreshes from ads.)

  • by chuckadams on 3/18/25, 2:38 PM

    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.

  • by raffraffraff on 3/19/25, 7:23 AM

    Can't get into it. But whatever about me, the wife straight up hated it. She's not a fan of LOTR and it felt way too LOTR, story wise. You're supposed to love the (beautiful or cutesy) entities, hate the (ugly, so obviously evil) entities, and care about wherever mysterious evil has gripped the land. You're supposed to want the protagonists to go on a quest that brings you on a rollercoaster of emotions etc. But I don't really care enough about anyone in this to finish the first episode.

    My biggest gripe is that puppets have no facial expression, so this so-called "amazing voice acting" doesn't work for me. It feels like they're overacting to make up for lack of facial expression. Thing is, I've seen this work in shows like Yonderland where puppets make up less than 50% of the cast. If their human counterparts are good actors, the puppets interaction with humans work, especially if they have good lines and interesting characters (which, in the case of Yonderland, they do but with Dark Crystal they very much don't).

    It's odd, but I also think that the CGI and lack of any physical actors is what kills this for me. I don't know anyone in the acting profession but one example I can relate is the amazing "Yes, Minister" political comedy series from the BBC on the early 80s. That was originally available as a radio show. Having watched and loved it, I decided to put the radio version on one day while cleaning. I had to turn it off. Even though it was the same cast of great actors, I think the fact that they were sitting around a bunch of microphones and not inter-acting completely stunted the dialog. I decided to put on the TV version and simply listen to it. Even though there were visual gags I couldn't see, it was far far better. Something about being the characters in costume, on a set, interacting with other actors, injected vitality and comic timing into the performance. You could listen between the lines and feel the gags you couldn't see.

    I understand that a lot of time, effort, CGI went into this, but I just feel slapped in the face with beauty while not caring one jot about a single character. Or as the wife very uncharitably put it after 45 minutes "I hope all of these characters die in this".

    Sometimes there are adult shows that also appeal to kids. Sometimes there are shows that appear to be aimed at kids but are really aimed at adults. But this wants to be the latter and fails as either.

  • by raffraffraff on 3/18/25, 7:59 AM

    > 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.

    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2938522/

  • by throaway1989 on 3/18/25, 2:05 PM

    If Gizmodo said its great, you know its not.

  • by Sporktacular on 3/18/25, 2:35 PM

    It's true. An amazing feat of manual, analogue artistry in our age. It's almost criminal, but definitely heartbreaking they didn't pick up season 2.

  • by staplung on 3/18/25, 6:00 PM

    I think plans for a Dark Crystal sequel were stuck in development hell for decades and then Jim Henson died. It was actually announced in 2005 but never got made into a film. Think there was a comic series though.

    Also, can't help pointing to this Robot Chicken gem: The Dark Cristal:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RudzOqb-fRc

  • by nottorp on 3/18/25, 10:30 AM

    Is it a masterpiece, or a 2 hour movie made with the best material in the 10 episodes would have been an actual masterpiece?

  • by mjamesaustin on 3/18/25, 7:25 AM

    A hidden gem, well worth the watch for fans and newcomers alike. This show wows on so many levels.

  • by pcmaffey on 3/18/25, 3:11 PM

    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.

  • by gglitch on 3/18/25, 2:09 PM

    Is there any way to buy and own a copy of it?

  • by eldgfipo on 3/18/25, 7:44 AM

    Incredible show, so disappointed Netflix cancelled it.

  • by tigerlily on 3/18/25, 8:24 AM

    > 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?