THE DARK CRYSTAL
As Netflix returns to Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal with prequel series Age Of Resistance, Total Film goes behind the scenes to get up close and personal with the skeksis and gelflings to see how the world of Thra is coming to life once again…
On set for the Henson Company comeback, as gelflings and skeksis return for a Netflix revival.
It was the Jim Henson movie that starred neither Kermit the Frog nor David Bowie, a bold slice of epic fantasy that created its own mythology with a cast composed entirely of puppets. Even 37 years on, The Dark Crystal remains a film unlike any other, a tale as uncompromising and bleak as it was groundbreaking – as cute as the gelflings and podlings were, the movie was never designed for kids.
While The Dark Crystal lacks the tunes and Bowie fright wigs of Labyrinth, it’s gained a massive cult following in the decades since its release. A proposed sequel movie was eventually abandoned – Power
Of The Dark Crystal was subsequently adapted into a comic in 2017 – but the world of Thra is now back on the agenda thanks to new 10-part Netflix prequel series Age Of Resistance.
“I have been wanting to do something new with The Dark Crystal for about 15 years,” says Lisa Henson, exec producer, CEO of the Henson Company and daughter of Jim. “It’s a very complete fantasy world and that lends itself to extension. The imagination can go wild!”
With the show about to reveal more of Thra than we’ve ever seen before, Total Film finds itself on set in an anonymous north London warehouse, face to face with heroic gelflings, evil skeksis and plenty of forest. And yes, they’re still doing it all with puppets…
Unfamiliar faces
Astronomer Aughra is one of the few characters returning from the original movie, but the design aesthetic should still feel the same – Brian Froud, the artist who designed The Dark Crystal, is back on board as a consultant. “Brian’s really our creative glue between the original film and the TV series,” says Henson.
Vocal stylings
Age Of Resistance has one of the most impressive voice casts ever assembled, mixing up-and-comers Taron Egerton, Anya Taylor-Joy and Nathalie Emmanuel with the more established likes of Sigourney Weaver, Mark Hamill, Simon Pegg and Mark Strong. According to director Louis Leterrier, however, working on Age Of Resistance was anything but a simple day at the office.
“We had to find a cast that would not crack under pressure!” he laughs. “Every time I met an actor I said, ‘Welcome to The Dark Crystal, it’s going to be the worst and the best experience of your life!’”
Why so challenging? The fact that the characters were voiced on set by the puppeteers meant actors had to match their performances with what had already been created. “It’s a very long, slow process and frustrating at times because the actors are not following their instinct,” says Leterrier. “They’re like, ‘Why did she say that so slowly?’ or ‘Why is he jumping around when I want him to be calm?’ They had to find their way in.”
going into detail
The gelfling puppets may be small, but they contain an impressive amount of detail – so much, in fact, that most will be missed by the average viewer. “I remember one day I went into the studio and [the puppet makers] were showing the wigs for some of the gelflings,” recalls writer Will Matthews. “They were saying how each braid on the back of the head tells the story of the character, and how she relates to the other.
I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’ve read the scripts! They love them!’ That’s how much everyone is trying so hard. It comes from a place of love.”
World building
One of the biggest challenges of working in an entirely made-up world is that you can’t simply pop to the shops for costumes and props – especially when all the characters are puppets. Everything in Age Of Resistance – from creatures to weapons, costumes to sets – has to be built bespoke. Luckily, the former factory/warehouse that’s become Thra’s outpost on Earth isn’t just a studio – it’s home to all the departments who are meticulously building Age Of Resistance.
“The beauty of this and the only way this production can function is us all being in the same location,” says Toby Froud, design supervisor and son of original Dark Crystal designer Brian. “We build everything on site here as much as we can. Having every department here means we can get it out on set easily.”
As someone who’s grown up surrounded by the worlds his father created, Froud’s arguably better placed than most to manage an army of skeksis, gelflings and other fantastic beasts. “I grew up surrounded by fairies and goblins and creatures my whole life, so this is very normal to me,” he admits. “It wasn’t until I went to university that I realised the world isn’t quite like that!”
beloW the sUrface
When puppeteer Neil Sterenberg says the gelflings you see on screen are “like an iceberg”, he’s not exaggerating – there’s a lot going on beneath the surface of each of the main characters. As well as the lead puppeteer, who controls the head, mouth and one of the arms, there’s often another puppeteer looking after the second arm, and a third controlling their eyes, ears and brows remotely. “For one little gelfling that’s only perhaps two-and-a-half feet tall, you have three people [creating
the performance],” he explains. “So by the time you get a few puppets on set, it means an awful lot of manpower to make all these creatures come alive.”
Even though the sets are built four feet off the ground, with moveable sections to help the puppeteers squeeze in, it can be a cosy experience when you’re spending much of your working day staring at a monitor with a hand in the air. “It’s quite a logistical challenge at times,” Sterenberg admits. “Sometimes in some of the sets you’re crammed into very small spaces, so you have to be quite accommodating and patient with your fellow performers. But, y’know, we’re all friends!”
origin of the species
As well as material from the Henson archive, coffee table book The World Of The Dark Crystal (published in 1982) became an important source of background information. “It was a robust bible from which to work,” says Henson. “It wasn’t your typical ‘making of’, because it was more a book of mythology and lore. It sort of explained the Dark Crystal world – you learned things that you can barely extract from the film, like the names of all the skeksis and mystics.”
Ideas from more recent novelisations and comics were also added. “Part of the challenge was weaving that together,” explains writer Will Matthews. “You don’t want to undo or countermand [what’s come before]. You want to flesh it out and that’s the fun.”
gelf and safety
The production team are cagey about exactly how long before the original movie
Age Of Resistance is set, but we do know it takes place during what Henson describes as “the early days of the conflict between the skeksis and the gelflings. The gelflings discover what’s making the skeksis inherently evil, and a resistance to them develops, hence the title.”
That means we get to see the gelfling civilisation that was hinted at (but more-orless extinct) in The Dark Crystal. “We wanted to see who the gelfling were before the Garthim started attacking them and the skeksis drained [their essence], so we went back and created this wonderful civilisation.”
puppet master
Director Louis Leterrier may have blockbuster experience on The Transporter, The Incredible
Hulk and Clash Of The Titans, but the scale of his undertaking on Age Of Resistance is on a different level. He’s directed all 10 episodes – much of the time doubling up by shooting on his own Steadicam
– and admits, “It felt very much like 10 movies!”
Given the size of the production, didn’t everyone wonder if it might have been more straightforward to ditch the puppets and go entirely CG? “In some ways, it would have been easier, but it would definitely not look like the original Dark Crystal,” explains Henson. “We wanted to achieve something that in episodic form looks as rich as the original film. What makes it different? Everything that moves is brought to life by a human action, whether it’s a hand puppet or somebody
[inside a creature]. The characters are animated from within – there’s a real unity to their performances that I think is different from animation.”
Even though Age Of Resistance didn’t go down the CG route – aside from cosmetic tweaks such as enhancing facial expressions and backgrounds, and allowing the giant landstriders to move convincingly – Leterrier did embrace advances in puppet technology.
“As far as I was concerned, my approach was, ‘What would Jim Henson have done [if he were directing
the show now]? Would he have gone full CG for this sequence? Would he have enhanced the puppets? Or would he have kept the puppets real?’ We made sure we pushed the envelope. Sometimes people would say, ‘You can’t do this with puppets!’ and I was asking, ‘Why?’ Technology’s different, and I’m bringing different camera systems that can fly around the puppets. I can swing around the puppet with my Steadicam or with a crane and make it feel like they’re running or being chased. It’s techniques I’ve used many, many times with actors. Sometimes you don’t have to move the piano, you just move the stool.”
size matters
Age Of Resistance is dealing with a problem few other physical productions have to worry about
– the fact that its key players exist on very different scales. “We’ve got gelflings who are half our size, skeksis who are really our size, and then podlings who are two foot two,” says production designer Gavin Bocquet, a veteran of the Star Wars prequels. “Whatever we’re building and relating to, there’s a number of different scales to work at. I think after 10 months we just about understand it, though when we walk onto [a gelfling] set as a human we think they look a bit small!”
THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE STREAMS ON NETFLIX FROM 30 AUGUST.