5/7/2023 0 Comments Dark crystal puppets![]() People, animatronics, remote controlling or any combination of the three moved the film’s effects. ![]() Unsurprisingly, the puppetry on The Dark Crystal was unprecedented in its complexity. Jim Henson and his Skeksis puppets (Image credit: Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images) The concept of the Skeksis having gentler counterparts called the Mystics, and the two halves reuniting into a hyper-intelligent race at the film’s end, echoes ideas in Roberts’ writing. He went so far as to use The Dark Crystal to communicate or respond to Seth Speaks’ ideas – even if, as Odell has claimed, he didn’t always understand them. How insane all of this sounds is subjective, yet Henson was a big fan. She apparently channelled that being, called Seth, while in a trance and recorded the words that came out of her. Seth Speaks was by Jane Roberts: a writer who claimed to be intermittently possessed by a multidimensional being. Before we started work on The Dark Crystal, he insisted I read a book called Seth Speaks.” “He had developed his own ideas that seemed to combine a little bit of theosophy, Hinduism, Taoism and various New Age philosophies. That personality trait manifested itself in the film. In a 2012 interview with Gizmodo, Dark Crystal screenwriter David Odell, who’d also worked with Henson on The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie, spoke about how spiritual the puppeteer was. ![]() There were also other mature concepts integrated, like spirituality and the duality of man. Such themes as death and corruption of the soul became cornerstones of the script. Lubin drawing depicting alligators in a palace. In that vein, the Skeksis became (in Froud’s words) “part reptile, part predatory bird and part dragon” and wore ghoulish Victorian regalia, inspired by a Leonard B. “He didn’t think it was healthy for children to always feel safe.” “ thought it was fine to scare children,” his longtime collaborator and fellow Dark Crystal director Frank Oz later explained to The San Francisco Chronicle. Such an art style was deemed perfect for The Dark Crystal, since the director envisioned the film as reviving the bleakness of the Brothers Grimm fairytales. Still, Netflix knew they wanted the very best version of The Dark Crystal that could be made today, and that meant giving The Jim Henson Company the creative freedom (as well as the financial backing) to do what they do best.Concept design for The Dark Crystal was handled by Brian Froud, whose 1976 collection of folkloric illustrations Once Upon A Time hugely impressed Henson. This shocked Henson Company CEO Lisa Henson, since it's much more expensive to create a 10-episode series with live-action puppets. When The Jim Henson Company first came to Netflix, their idea was to make an animated series based on The Dark Crystal. In fact, during the early stages of production on what would become Age of Resistance, they commissioned test footage of a computer-generated Gelfling interacting with a puppet Skeksis in order to explore what could be done with today's digital technology.īut upon re-watching the original movie, Netflix's VP of Original Content Cindy Holland realized that, " what makes it really special and transcendent is the puppets." So instead of an animated series, Netflix came back with an offer to make a Dark Crystal live-action series. Here are the biggest reveals from The Crystal Calls - Making The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: The documentary details everything about the production, examining just how The Jim Henson Company made sure that their version of The Dark Crystal would not only seamlessly connect but also honor the work done on that original film. The Crystal Calls - Making The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look what went in to making the Netflix series a success. ![]() Related: Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance World, Creature & Terminology Guide Now almost 40 years later, The Jim Henson Company has returned to Thra with The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance - a ten-part series that again employs many of the same techniques as the original Dark Crystal, but on much larger scale. Set in a strange world populated by creatures that his team would bring to life entirely through puppetry, The Dark Crystal was a massive undertaking at the time. Henson, of course, had already made his mark on the industry thanks to The Muppets, but The Dark Crystal is by far his most ambitious project. The Dark Crystal is a revolutionary movie for dark fantasy aimed at children as well as puppetry in film. ![]()
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