The Crystal Calls - Making The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

Another world.

Another time.

In the Age of Wonder.

The opening sequence,

which is just the most atmospheric,

mythic, cool thing, where, you know,

the voice-over comes in all deep and low and talks about another age,

"In the age of wonder."

And then, you cut to these creatures,

these monstrous, bird-like, reptilian figures.

I fell in love with it. I've been in love with it ever since.

The Dark Crystal is Jim's most human creation

of everything that he did,

which is a funny thing to say about a world where there are no humans.

I remember it vividly. I loved it.

It's such an incredibly all-encompassing, vivid world,

and the Skeksis are bloody scary.

It's the only part where I've known

I was gonna accept the part before opening the email.

The original Jim Henson film, like all of Jim Henson's work,

but especially that and Labyrinth, were huge parts of my childhood.

I found them enchanting,

the right side of dark for my sensibilities,

and just completely other-worldly.

There was a book at the library of the making of The Dark Crystal.

You couldn't find the book anywhere, this was pre-internet,

and I would just check that thing out, like continuously.

I just remember it being quite an overwhelming experience, you know,

and, uh, everything about it, the visuals, the score...

I love the score. Another one of those movies

where you come out of the cinema slightly changed.

Early memories I have of watching television with my father

was The Muppet Show.

It was one of the few television shows he would watch.

And then, he took me to see The Dark Crystal movie

when it was in its theatrical run,

and it was just something we'd never seen before.

And it was so magical.

I left the movie theater going, "Well, how... how did any of that happen?"

I got Podlings. I thought Podlings were a bit like Muppets. I get that.

And then, everything else, I just wanted to know how.

It's a game-changing film.

So, if we go back and go, "Well, what can we do

to match the level of script quality,

art departments, set design, everything?"

With Dark Crystal, everything is built.

Everything is made specifically just for us.

It's based in reality, something tangible,

something that doesn't trick the eye.

And the craftsmanship, the talent

that has been brought to the table, is just... it's mind-blowing.

Vast on every level. I mean, it was one of the biggest things

I think we've ever attempted

in terms of the amount of characters, the sophistication of the characters,

and also, the challenge of recreating things that already exist.

What fans of The Dark Crystal want is they want an odyssey, they want a saga,

they want something to enrich the universe of the original film,

and that's what this series does.

You could put them side by side,

and it is the same world,

but there's just so much of it to explore now.

Imagine if you are in the puppetry business,

whether as a puppeteer or a puppet builder,

what bigger opportunity is ever gonna come you way

than ten episodes of Dark Crystal?

A thousand years ago, this land was green and good,

until the crystal cracked.

There's so much here that you don't know about.

There's an entire world to discover.

It's the first of our trip.

I was working in London for five years as a jobbing illustrator,

and I needed to do my own work,

but I didn't know exactly what that was.

But once I got the opportunity to move to the country here,

then, immediately, the first thing I painted

was, indeed, this picture of a troll with trees behind it

and a waterfall coming off its nose.

And that's what Jim saw.

And I was a bit overcome, I think, meeting Jim,

and I didn't know quite what to say or how to express myself,

and it was his leap of faith.

My father really wanted to do an epic fantasy adventure.

He really enjoyed doing comedy.

He enjoyed doing Muppets. He loved Sesame Street.

He loved the sort of fast, funny, vignette kind of variety show,

but he wanted to do something that really told a complex narrative.

But quite quickly, we were hiring people that had other skills,

and Wendy was brought on board

specifically for the Gelflings,

because Jim wanted that strong feminine thing.

It was all about bringing a character to life,

all about creating something you've never seen before

that he was hoping the audience would not only believe in,

but also scratch their heads and go, "How do you do that?"

Hang on!

You have Brian Froud,

who is a guy who, for this world, these things are real.

You have Frank Oz,

who is one of the most brilliant puppeteers who's ever lived,

and you have Jim bringing the world-building, and the humanity,

and the sense of human nature being put into these puppets.

It's a brilliant kind of creative melting pot

that brought the original thing to life.

We live in an age of sequels and prequels,

but the great thing about The Dark Crystal is

it's such a microcosmic look at the world that, when you finish watching it,

you're left with these massive questions

about the universe at large which have never been answered.

There are people who obsess about Dark Crystal,

who really care about Dark Crystal,

and over the years, it's really become a cult film.

Is there going to be a feature film sequel?

Is there gonna be an animated TV show?

I don't think that you could have done

a new version of The Dark Crystal better than on Netflix

with the right budget,

with the creative team that Henson assembled.

It's so exciting to see the world come back to life in that way.

All too often, projects are rebooted or remade based on an IP

where all the DNA of that thing that makes people love it is discarded.

But, for me, if you're going to remake or reboot a franchise,

go back to why people like it in the first place.

Teddy Biaselli had told me that Henson were interested

in doing an animated series of The Dark Crystal,

and I thought about it, and I went home and I watched the movie again.

I kept thinking about it. I was, like, "Well the mythology is great,

but what makes it really special and transcendent is the puppets."

I picked up the phone. I was, like, "Okay, good news, bad news.

Uh, bad news is, we're not gonna make The Dark Crystal animated series.

The good news is Cindy wants to know what it would cost to do it live-action."

And you could hear the phone hit the floor.

And we were shocked.

Like, "Really? A series that looks like the film?"

And, of course... of course we immediately responded

that it's yes, like, it's technically possible,

but it will be very expensive.

The best version of The Dark Crystal

that could be made today,

would be made by the Henson Company,

by giving them the freedom

to really reach for the best version they can possibly imagine.

Gelfling!

And they picked up a teaser, a test,

to see what it looked like.

Netflix could look at the test and see the same thing that we saw in it.

So what we had tried to do in the test

was we did CG Gelfling with puppet Skeksis.

Trespasser!

Does it make sense to do a TV show

in the same way that they did the original film?

You know, how much has technology progressed?

What's that smell?

There's something disparate

between a real tactile object that catches the light,

that is layered and textured,

versus something that is generated in a computer.

And no matter how good it looks, no matter how good it looks,

they looked like two different mediums.

We could make a clean marriage between the two.

And, technically, it could be done,

but the CG Gelfling didn't look like Gelfings.

No matter what you did with the eyes of the puppet,

those puppet glass eyes were so hard to replicate

in a CG environment,

that you immediately could see

that it was CG talking to the puppet,

then you really just wanted to see the puppet.

Seeing the tests that they did before the shoot

with full CGI character and a puppet,

it was... I mean, it's like night and day.

It's amazing how much more evocative the... the puppet is.

As masterful as it is,

you can't talk to a Pixar character in the real world.

I mean, the percentage of the audience that gets to come

and talk to a puppet in the real world is very small,

but I think you know that you could.

We're going back to telling the story and what serves that,

not just, "These effects are such fun,

let's... how much more effects can we do?"

How do the effects serve the story? What can they tell?

CG, they can expand your world, they can enhance it and augment it,

and they can totally take it to places that just sets can't

and just puppets can't,

but they can't be the star of the show, and they shouldn't be the star,

because then you do lose that humanity, and it does jar you out of it.

And we all looked around at each other and said,

"We're doing it all with puppets."

And Double Negative, the studio that did the CG,

said, "Well, hold on. We want to show you something."

Take just a shot from the movie, and then just manipulate it,

so you can add a little bit of blink or a little bit of smile,

and just take the performance from the puppet

just that little bit further to add a bit more life to it.

And they augmented Kira's face a little bit.

That gave it a little bit more pop of life.

And we all went... "That's it."

We, as a company, have been doing puppets for over 50 years,

and to be here at this point, so many years later,

and be doing what has got to be the biggest puppet production ever.

This has no humans,