The Crystal Calls - Making The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019) on Netflix
NR20191h 23mDocumentary
Stars, puppeteers and creators go behind the scenes of the prequel series set in the world of Thra. They describe making the puppets that play the Gelflings and the Skeksis.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.5/10624 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Plot summary
A feature-length documentary about the making of the puppet series set in the world of Thra, with interviews from its cast. The puppets were fabricated in early 2017 at a creature shop in Los Angeles and then sent to a workshop outside London. A test film made in 2016, pairing a puppet Skeksis with a computer-generated Gelfling, convinced the makers that the series needed puppet characters. The show uses twenty principal puppets, with ninety more for secondary roles. A Gelfling puppet takes two puppeteers instead of four, and its mechanical parts are worked remotely with a modified game controller. Voice performances were recorded after the puppetry was shot, with the actors matching the puppeteers' lip movements and scratch tracks.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Crystal Calls - Making The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Gelfling puppets in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance needed only two puppeteers, where the 1982 film used four, and their animatronic parts were operated by a modified Wii controller instead of the original film's cables, according to design supervisor Toby Froud.
- The series was pitched to Netflix as an animated prequel, but after Vice President of Original Content Cindy Holland asked whether it could be done in live-action, a 2016 test film featuring a puppet Skeksis and a CGI Gelfling convinced the Henson Company and Netflix that it needed puppet characters.
- Director Louis Leterrier wanted to join Jim Henson Productions after Clash of the Titans and interest large studios in The Dark Crystal, but was repeatedly turned down: he said they were only interested in Transformers and many executives had never heard of the 1982 film.
- Voiceovers for the series were recorded after the bulk of filming was done, and the voice actors had to match their performances to both the puppets' lip movements and the puppeteers' scratch track voices.
