My husband and I recently watched The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. It's a 10 episode show that acts as a prequel to the '80s Jim Henson classic, "The Dark Crystal," which has a darker tone than most of Jim Henson's other offerings, and is also a marvel of absolutely wild and groundbreaking puppetry. You should check it out if you have the means and you're into that kind of thing. And, let's be real, you know if you're into the Dark Crystal or not.
It goes without saying that the puppets are amazing, as are the sets. Every single visual detail is exquisite. But I'm a writer, and I want to talk about story, and some places where it stumbled. Obviously, I'm going to spoil larger chunks of Age of Resistance. If you want to watch it and haven't, go do that, because it's a triumph. If you don't care about it, then let's talk about how weird prequels are!
The Dark Crystal movie starts the statement that there are only ten Skeksis left and with the fact that the Skeksis killed most of the Gelfling, leaving only a few survivors who are in hiding. So when Age of Resistance starts with a full civilization of Gelfling happily living under Skeksis rule, you know from the jump that things are going to go poorly. Between the start of this show and the start of the movie, there's going to be a genocide and probably the individual murder of all the Gelfling characters the show makes you love, along with a couple Skeksis I grew real fond of in the show who I know aren't in the movie. The last few episodes are kind of like watching the last act of Star Wars: Rebel One. Aw, crap, these people are all going to die, aren't they? Maybe they'll take down a few Skekses along the way? Maybe the show is aiming for a second season, so the finale here won't be everyone dying?
Add to this that we also know from the jump that the Skeksis are bad, either from the movie or from Sigourney Weaver's introductory voice over that tells you that once there were aliens who got split into good and bad halves and the Skeksis are the bad half who are misusing the big magical crystal with which they were entrusted to make themselves immortal that the expense of the environment. But that exposition seems unnecessary really. We know they're bad because they openly and unapologetically treat the Gelfling like crap. To their faces. And yet the Gelfling remain subservient and reverent of the Skeksis. I kept asking, "How do the Gelfling not know the Skeksis are evil? Why are they putting up with this? Why did they hand their planet over to the Skeksis in the first place?" And the sad fact was that I could see how it happened, because similar nonsense is happening in my country as we speak. "Why are we letting them do this?" I ask, "Why are these people still in charge when they so flagrantly don't care about us? Why do people still believe that our leaders are doing what's best for us?" This depressing realism, paired with the certainty that things weren't going to go well, made it cringe worthy to get the next episode started each night. I didn't want to watch people try to make a better life for themselves and ultimately fail.
Of course, this hesitation diminished every night as I watched, because the show is so immersive that I forgot about the real world until the episode was done and I had a moment to think back on it.
Ultimately, the show (this season, at least) is much more uplifting than I expected. So in a way, it made a happy ending seem like an inversion of expectations, when if it wasn't a prequel where I knew what would ultimately happen, I would have assumed that from the beginning. That sounds great! Well done, writers. But, then again, I could ask if it was worth it being anxious the whole time. I'm going to go through this process again next season, when my heroes have another chance to be murdered, and when I get to face the fact that resistance in my own life may utterly, epicly fail if we don't...ban together? Do better? The show doesn't offer this kind of solution. Just a warning. Is this what I want from my escapism media?
No. But The Dark Crystal is still my kind of thing, and I'll still be pumped next season.
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