create wildly inhuman, or un-human, creatures, we'll blithely accept them, whether their eyes are ping-pong balls (C. The problem wasn't simply that they were thin, underwritten characters, though they were certainly that. Or to gaze admiringly at the procession of Mystics (the good wizards of this universe - part giant possum, part ALF) as you attempted to figure out precisely how the puppeteers were puppeting those puppets. Or to grimace during the feast scene in the Castle of the Crystal, which existed at the place where food porn met body horror. And that's to say nothing of the plain craft of the thing - you could watch it just to admire the way the corner of that one Skeksis' mouth-beak curled into a sneer. The sheer idiosyncratic imagination stuffed into every frame - and brought to vivid (often terrifying) life by the Henson Creature Shop's skilled teams of puppeteers and craftspeople - conjured a rich narrative universe into being, steeped in myth, magic and mummery. It was far, far too weird a thing for that. The Jim Henson/Frank Oz film, which like the series teemed with all manner of creatures, plant life, settings and costumes conceived of by Henson and production designer Brian Froud, was anything but basic. But as soon as you place them - as do both the original 1982 The Dark Crystal film and Netflix's new, 10-episode prequel series - at the center of a world as gorgeously wrought, breathtakingly detailed and astonishingly elaborate as that of The Dark Crystal, they become something even worse: They're basic. On their own, they'd be generic enough - a first-pass attempt at your garden-variety Tolkien-adjacent high-fantasy race. Dark Crystal's wan, elf-like protagonists - is "Gelfling." Similarly, the plural of Skeksis - this fantasy world's eeeeEEEeevil villains, which look like what would happen if Gonzo schtupped a turkey vulture - is "Skeksis." Clip and save for your records.) I am reliably informed that the plural of Gelfling - the o.g. Look, if I wanted to watch dead-eyed, expressionless creatures sniping at one another over backstories I can't follow without consulting the Internet, I'd watch Real Housewives. Let's get the cheap joke out of the way up top: The three sister-princesses of the Vapra clan await the apology they feel they are owed in the Netflix prequel series Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.
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