Netflix’s Dark Crystal – Worth Watching! (Review)
Let me tell you a secret about myself. I hate puppets. So I thought I was going to absolutely hate this show, since I was never a big fan of all Jim Henson’s puppet stuff back in the day. I didn’t even like the original Dark Crystal movie. I got bored and fell asleep. (Don’t throw things at me).
But on August 30th, 2019, Netflix released a show based on the original movie, and I begrudgingly gave it a shot.
I was very pleasantly surprised. First of all, the show is way better than the original movie IMHO (Seriously. Don’t throw things at me, it’s rude).
There’s more plot and dialogue. I feel like 85% of the script of the original movie was the Skeksis (the bad guys) making their weird HMMmmMMmMMmMMmM sounds.
Now, I will say that the show can get a bit cheesy (I mean, it’s puppetry mixed with CGI, what do you expect?) And sometimes the dialogue is a bit “As-You-Know-Bob” (characters explaining things to each other that they would already know purely for the audience’s benefit).
But aside from that, the show did a great job of creating a fantasy that is a true fantasy. It immerses you into a world that is just as magical as it is alien. And like any good fantasy, its theme is a battle between good and evil, a battle cast against the beautiful and varied landscape of Thra (the world our characters inhabit).
Like the original movie, Thra is inhabited by the Gelfling (the creatures closest to Thra). And the evil Skeksis are abusing the powers of the Dark Crystal to suck out the essences of the Gelfling. The Skeksis abuse of the Dark Crystal has also started “The Darkening,” an event in which the animals and plants of Thra are corrupted. I think there are many parallels to the environmental destruction of our world today. Just like the same parallels found in Tolkien.
There are seven different Gelfling tribe, and they all inhabit radically different terrain of the world Thra. The Dousan Clan who revere death more than life sail the Crystal Desert in their sandships, amazing constructs of crystal and bone. The Drenchen inhabit the overgrown swamp (Sog). The Sifa sail the seas. The Spiriton are a warrior race who inhabit the rolling fields south of the Dark Wood. The Stonewood Clan has made their home in Stone-in-the-Wood. The Vapra are the oldest of the gelfling, a race of white-haired gelfling who inhabit a snowy region in their city Ha’rar. And then there’s my favorite, the Grottan, gelfling with large black, marsupial-like eyes who live undergound, away from the light of the sun, in caves filled with fantastical glowing, bioluminescent creatures.
I’ve gotten sick of the fantasy genre lately because a lot of fantasy television shows just feel like modern people wearing elf ears and carrying swords. And of course, there is the epic disappointment of the way Game of Thrones ended.
Netflix’s Dark Crystal has reignited my love for the fantasy genre. Looking forward to more!
A Better Ending for Game of Thrones
As someone who was a huge fan of Game of Thrones for the nine years it was on television, I joined the rest of the television watching world by being incredibly disappointed and feeling betrayed by the rushed and thoughtless ending provided by the shows writers. It’s very clearly they were eager to just be done with the matter and go off to work on the new Star Wars trilogy, which I will not be watching because of this disaster.
People keep saying, “Oh, well they didn’t have time to make a good ending because they only had six episodes.” First of all, HBO would have given them as many episodes as they wanted.
But anyways, in the video above, the YouTube personality Overlord DVD, very eloquently describes how he would have written the last few episodes of Game of Thrones.
It’s so good. And if fulfills the prophesies of the story.
Even though there is a petition with over a million signatures to remake the ending of Game of Thrones, I doubt it will happen, because hundreds of millions of dollars would be needed for the purpose, and already the actors are going on to do other things.
HOWEVER…
I think it would be very possible for someone to animate the ending described in the video above. And if disappointed fans can’t have a remake, they could at least have an animation that fulfills that purpose.
Metal Gaia 