One episode in. I found the first half plodding. I get they are trying to establish the main characters and a state of the world, but the dialogue was yawn-inducing. So much so, my wife up and went to bed.
My son and I stuck it out for the rest and it does pick up quite a bit. The threat is revealed and the stakes are raised considerably.
I’ve got a question concerning how this eventually ties into the movie:
The Skeksis are one half of a race of creatures that were split when the Crystal cracked. It’s isn’t referenced at all. Will this be revealed/discovered later in the season?
Anyway? The first episode was good enough for us to continue.
I think one thing that gnaws at me while i watch this, is that we already know that the ending is going to get pretty bad.
When the original movie takes place, basically all of the gelflings are dead, and stuff is bad.
So that makes this series kind of weird, because it seems like the only way this is going to work is that it’s going to be a whole series that ends by setting up the movie… Essentially just setting up a collapsed civilization of the brink of ultimate destruction, which is then saved by what happens in the movie, 30 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still cool, and it’s neat to see a new Henson production with practical puppet effects again. And it’s cool to see more stuff about this world’s back story.
So far it’s alright. Beautiful to look at. Like someone just vomited out their imagination all over the place. In a good way. The plot is the same old same old, literally could just go through a list of tropes and i think you’d find every nearly every one. It doesn’t help that we know this is a prequel, so the stakes are super low. We know the Skeksis (no idea how to spell that) win and literally genocide the entire Gelfling race down to 2 survivors.
What I actually thought this show might show us is what exactly it is about the Skeksis that is threatening. Sure, they are a lot bigger and stronger than Gelflings, but there are like… 12 of them, and they apparently aren’t arrow proof. And they are such cackling, mustache twirling villains that it seems completely implausible the gelflings would have ever viewed them with anything other than deep suspicion. I get that at some point they must obtain the giant crab demons that gave me nightmares as a kid, but they seem utterly helpless.
Maybe a satisfying answer is forthcoming, but I kind of doubt it.
I think that’s mainly explained in the first 5 minutes of the show.
They used trickery and deception to entice the planet’s protector, Augra, with the promise of knowledge about the Stars. She then made them into protectors of the crystal, and essentially just transferred that role from herself to them. Since she had been the protector for all of history, and there wasn’t really any deception by anyone, ever, there wasn’t really any reason for the gelflings to distrust these new creatures that Augra put in charge.
This series is really exceptionally well done. I’m about half way through, and I’m really enjoying it. Even the weird gelfling faces eventually stop being weird, especially as you get further in and get used to all of the individual characters.
Really quite good. It straddles a line between being a fantasy puppet show for kids and a dark fantasy for adults. It’s funny to watch right after the old movie, because this new show looks so much better.
I’ve seen a Skeksis urinating, so my life is now complete.
Yep, i just finished it, and it was excellent. Overall, very true to the original movie… One significant retcon, at the very end, but other than that, pretty much in line with the movie so far… and i guess this is only the first season. Feels like games of thrones with Muppets.
Here in the real world many people in power seems to be sociopath. They get to do things that people with a moral bone would not do. They play with no rules against people with rules. The get the benefit of the trust because they clearly say the right things, where somebody honest would sometimes say the wrong thing. And so on.
Ok so I fully admit I watched a lot of this on the second monitor while playing games and I while I got the gist of what was happening, I’m sure I missed plenty. What I’m trying to say is there is probably an obvious answer to this that I just didn’t catch and maybe someone can clear it up for me -
In the movie, my understanding was that the combined race of Skeksis + Ancients had the crystal in their possession, and then it shattered, splitting them. In the TV show, it is referenced more than once that Aughra gave the crystal to the Skeksis. But then the splitting with the crystal is referenced again. So… didn’t she give the crystal to the combined race but then it ended up in the hands of the Skeksis after the split? Was Skeksis the name of the combined race and they just kept it while the Ancients rebranded their names? Or is it just a similar word that I misheard? Am I just totally crazy?
In the show, the emperor states at one point that he had obtained a shard from the Crystal after it was placed into their care. Presumably this caused the splitting. Well, they don’t spell that out in the show but outside literature says it was so. Hope I understood what you were asking.
The behind-the-scenes doc on Netflix is pretty interesting. Brian Froud, his wife Wendy, daughter Lisa, and his son Toby,came to work for Henson Company on Age of Resistance based on Brian and Lisa Froud’s involvement on the old movie. That’s cool.
In less cool news, Kevin Clash, the ex-puppeteer/creator of Elmo, that had a whole bunch of accusations leveled against him for sexual violations with minors, worked on this. I hadn’t realized Henson Company quietly hired him back for odd stuff after most of the accusations petered out.
I believe when Augra transfered the crystal they where a fusion of bad and god and where called UrKeksis or something like that, with a more humanoid form.
They did abuse the crystal in this form, and that caused the crystal break, that caused the division into skessis and mysthics. The emperor staff has the part broken from the crystal, and he seems to be nurturing the darkness growing below. All of this is explained in a episode where they meet the heretic skeksis.
The wiki offer a different explanation
They where “purging” the evil from their bodies and that caused the division
And yeah, it’s kind of nebulous when Augra put the Skeksis in charge of the crystal. It seems that happened after the split, but perhaps at that point it was not known that the skeksis were super evil.
