Series Well that was far better than I expected
I'm not a fan of the original movie. It obviously took a lot of work and was intended to be taking series, but I think the end result is rather boring and surprisingly hollow. It went for thematic depth, but ended up being an extremely simple story. It had a lot of nice little touches, but that was about it.
This series on the other hand? This was fucking epic. It's a manifestation of what the original wanted to be. The world feels much larger and lived in, the violence and horror is much more striking and the characters are far more developed, nuanced and real. Even the puppetry looks way better (there were some scenes in the original where they very clearly used real people for distant shots). The dialogue and plotting is simply on a metric above. Just look at the scene between the Chamberlin and Rian in the carriage.
However, it's not without some problems. It features, roughly, three main protagonists and the Skeksies get almost half the screen time too. Augra and a gelfling antagonist we follow a lot. This doesn't slow down the story much, surprisingly, a lot still happens each episode, however it does make the show feel a bit discoordinated. Starting with a smaller number of principal characters and expanding the cast slowly as the show goes on might have worked better. It's also a bit, I don't want to say cliche, as it is very original in many regards, primarily its designs. Maybe kitsch is a better descriptor. It's good, but it's also very much high fantasy and doesn't really strive to go beyond it's genre. If one is an enthusiast of high fantasy this isn't necessarily a negative at all.
In short, a series I was expect little from, but continued to delight with its high quality in basically every aspect of production. Hope it can be maintained in future seasons (though I expect it'll take them a while to bring out anymore). If you've come here with even a passing interest in giving the show a watch, then I definitely recommend you do.
Series A review from about halfway through the first episode.
The original Dark Crystal was a gorgeous movie, which presented a fascinating world and mythology via impressive technical achievement, and enjoyed colorful and interesting antagonists and heroic backers... but suffered from the protagonists, while not annoying or unlikable, just not being very interesting in terms of either design or characterization.
Well, I'm halfway into the first episode and let no one say this series isn't faithful to its source material.
First, what originally scared me away was the abundance of CGI in the preview trailers I'd seen. And let there be no bones about it; there is some of that, but it's not nearly as intrusive as I feared, and, with the exceptions of an unfortunately large number of flying scenes, the focus is generally on the impressive work of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, or whatever its modern incarnation is called. I don't look at these characters and see the hand of the muppeteer, I see the character acting, emoting, and in one case, messily sneezing.
Second, yes, it's a prequel, and yes, that means that on some level it's hard to invest knowing that a lot of these people are doomed, but I can't deny that it's still interesting to watch the intrigues of the Skeksis as they try to figure out how to get to where they are in the original film. Plus, as someone who once did a deep dive into this world's mythology, I must commend the filmmakers for doing their goddamn homework in terms of deep-cuts references to obscure lore never revealed in the original film, and choosing to implement it rather than ignore it.
Also, while such scenes are a bit slow and plodding for me, a person who has seen the original film, lots of stuff in this first episode is designed to let people who've never seen the film in on stuff it covers, such as female gelflings having wings, gelflings having a psychic, memory-sharing connection when they touch hands, the Skeksis draining power from the crystal, that sort of thing. It may be old-hat to me, but I commend the creators for trying to make the show just as good an entry point into this world as the film, rather than relying on their viewers to have seen it.
Unfortunately, while it succeeds very well when the focus is on the Skeksis, and while some of the things I've read here about later stories that sound like fascinating but reasonable new directions to take some of the concepts the original film explored, well... sins of the father, the new batch of gelfling protagonists are just not very interesting in terms of either design or characterization. So far, we have the "guard captain's immature son who want to show his dad he's grown up by dealing with a dangerous problem without telling him first," his girlfriend, the "bookworm who doesn't realize the powerful people she idolizes are evil," and the "hayseed nature-lover whose animal friends are turning evil because of The Corruption." All very stock, none with a lot of visual identity or personality.
The worst part is, the creators were clearly aware of this problem! The opening actively tries to go, "Look, look! There were lots of different kinds of gelflings, all with different specializations and cultures!" But, with one exception, it just doesn't work. For one, the only culture that's interesting and sketched out are the reclusive underground-dwelling nature-lovers, who unintentionally hit on one of my pain points. The others are just generic "warriors," "scholars and leaders," and so on. For another, the one gelfling city we see isn't really designed in an interesting way. Female gelflings can fly, why is one of them struggling in foot traffic? Are they barred from flying within city limits? If so, why?
I want to keep pressing on. I have heard good things about many later concepts I would like to see. But while the creators seem to be keenly aware of the original film's biggest misstep, I am not at all confident that they have properly identified how to fix it.