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The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

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Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#61

Post by sleepybrett »

I do not agree w/ this in relation to the Dark Crystal series. But I see parallels in the Star Wars series Andor. Many will skip it because 'it's star wars', but it's a great series in star wars costume. The three people I've pressed into watching it came away with very favorable reviews.

There are some kinda deep cut star wars references that non-fans will miss. Mon Mothma the political head of the rebellion is seen only sparingly in the original trilogy and in rogue one (scenes were shot for her in the prequels setting her up as politically aligned with Padme and Bail, but they were cut) is a main character here. Other characters like Saw Gererra only appear in the clone wars series and Rogue One (a film for which this series is a prequel). However this didn't seem to effect my friends much only one of whom had even seen rogue one and the prequels, the other two only having seen the original series.

I'm so glad that it got a second season and am very excited to see it play out.

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#62

Post by bee_rider »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #60
bee_rider wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The art of Scavenger’s Reign was really good. The ecosystem was really interesting (a bit overly-clever for stuff that is supposed to have evolved IMO, but it was still really interesting). Really great setting and art. The plot and characters felt a bit shallow/stereotypical/predictable in a bad way. It’s like they had too much of the ecosystem that they wanted to show, so they split it up among too many characters,…

FWIW Scavenger's Reign's creators have been making the show Common Side Effects. It's a brilliant show in its own right IMO but the animation is nowhere near as high-effort.

Oh, wow, I’ve been loving Common Side Effects. Didn’t realize it was the same people.

Common Side Effects has great characters IMO, it really captures this tension where the alternative to selling out is to accomplish nothing, maybe.

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#63

Post by ziddoap »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #25
beloch wrote: post #17

This was a brilliant show, but it had the misfortune to come along at a time when Netflix was cancelling even moderate successes after one season and slashing the budget of hit shows for their second season before cancelling them too (e.g. Altered Carbon). Only very rarely does a show turn into the kind of pop culture sensation that seems to make the bean-counters want to go past two seasons (e.g. Stranger Things), u…

>A lot of people in a lot of countries are cancelling Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Plus, Apple TV, etc. just because they're American Think you might be over-estimating the size of your algorithm bubble there. Normal people don't even make that connection.

I mean, I wouldn't say "a lot of people" but... "normal people" absolutely make that connection, and some moderately-sized portion of them are indeed cancelling some services.

The antics of the US have been a perfect excuse to clean up under-used subscriptions.

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#64

Post by jhbadger »

engineer_22 wrote: post #37
jhbadger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the whole point of the original is that the Mystics and Skeksis were both flawed societies (even if the Skeksis were closer to the normal meaning of "evil") and the ending unites them rather than having the Skeksis destroyed.

The Netflix show is a prequel, setting up the story of how the gelfling were wiped out

Right, but it still takes place after the Mystics and Skeksis split off from each other. The Gelflings were really just irrelevant bystanders to the real story even if we the audience see the story from their perspective in both the movie and show.

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#65

Post by guyzero »

ericmcer wrote: post #52
dash2 wrote: post #50

The author seems to conflate "dark" with "adult", so let me take the chance to point out this common mistake. Horror films, Warhammer 40K and 2000 AD comics are all famously dark, but they're for kids or teens. A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Importance of Being Earnest are light but grown-up. It's a weird deformation of the past generation to think that being depressing makes you deep.

Oh man yeah I hate this trend. It has especially worked its way into popular literature. A books writing is at a 5th grade level, has almost zero depth, but then is full of sex and violence which makes it an "adult" novel. Authors like Sarah J Maas are almost comically bad writers but have achieved immense popular success using this setup.

54% of [US] adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level - https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s...

Not surprising that books like this succeed.

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#66

Post by nottorp »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #58
nottorp wrote: post #13

Is it a masterpiece, or a 2 hour movie made with the best material in the 10 episodes would have been an actual masterpiece?

Cramming that much plot into a 2 hour movie would suck. You could maybe halve the runtime, but anything less than 5 hours would just not work IMO

Are you sure, or most of the plot is padding to get to season length?

Every time I try to watch a tv series the padding starts to burst at the seams by at best the 3rd episode. Then I give up for a few years, let myself be tricked again and nothing has changed ...

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#67

Post by metalliqaz »

guyzero wrote: post #65
ericmcer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man yeah I hate this trend. It has especially worked its way into popular literature. A books writing is at a 5th grade level, has almost zero depth, but then is full of sex and violence which makes it an "adult" novel. Authors like Sarah J Maas are almost comically bad writers but have achieved immense popular success using this setup.

54% of [US] adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level - https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s... Not surprising that books like this succeed.

Agreed. People just can't read. I think this is one of many upstream causes of the current political landscape. When faced with reading a corporate financial statement, any laws, scientific papers, municipal budgets, or even an article in WSJ or The Atlantic, people are unable to proceed. So a defense mechanism comes up: "it's all just lies, anyway." Then they go and find a tweet or watch TV.

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#68

Post by jandrese »

pcmaffey wrote: post #49

The writing in the series is unfortunately terrible. It sinks the otherwise beautiful show with sterile and laborious narration/dialogue, telltale signs of over workshopped writing room slop, from which no real living plot ever emerges. Such a disappointment.

This was my problem too. I really wanted to like the series and the visuals were nice, but the Netflix writers room strikes again. The whole thing felt like the middle season episodes from a Netflix Marvel series.

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#69

Post by tunesmith »

I'm actually surprised to read the opinions of people who watched it and didn't like it. I thought the problem was always just that not enough people knew it existed, but if they watched it, they would have loved it. I guess I must just be in the camp of "who WOULDN'T want to watch high-budget puppetry for ten hours??"

Re: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is a Stone-Cold Masterpiece

#70

Post by metabagel »

guyzero wrote: post #65
ericmcer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man yeah I hate this trend. It has especially worked its way into popular literature. A books writing is at a 5th grade level, has almost zero depth, but then is full of sex and violence which makes it an "adult" novel. Authors like Sarah J Maas are almost comically bad writers but have achieved immense popular success using this setup.

54% of [US] adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level - https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s... Not surprising that books like this succeed.

This may also help to explain why politicians who express themselves with a limited vocabulary can be surprisingly successful. And the implication is that other politicians should probably do so as well.
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