If you’re a genre fan – shoot, if you’re a fan of quality television – and skipped watching the Netflix mini-series “Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” you’ve made a very silly mistake. The long-awaited return to the world of the original 1982 fantasy film “The Dark Crystal” is not only gorgeous and captivating but a rare prequel where you become invested in the characters. And when those characters are puppets? Well, that’s Emmy-worthy.*
WATCH: “Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” sneak peek
For executive producer Lisa Henson, living up to her legendary father Jim Henson‘s legacy has been a daily calling. And with director Louis Leterrier at the helm, “Age of Resistance” was a genuine surprise for old and new fans alike. And are there enough fans to justify the cost of a second season? There is no definitive word from Netflix, but as Henson notes in our conversation below, it’s hard to imagine all of those puppeteers in close, confined spaces in the coronavirus pandemic era.
*”Age of Resistance” is a contender in the Outstanding Children’s Program category
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The Playlist: Congratulations on the show. I thought it was fantastic. Before we revisit how it all came together, is there any news on a second season at all?
Lisa Henson: Well, gosh. Things are so complicated right now, aren’t they?
Yeah.
I can’t even think when would be the next time we would be able to cram dozens of puppeteers together in teeny tiny spaces. It’s actually incredibly fun, the way we bring these characters to life. If you see the behind-the-scenes, you can see how two people would be inside of one Skeksis together. It was all so wonderful. But when I look at our own footage, and it’s like, “Oh my God. What we’re doing is so unsafe.” But of course, it wasn’t that unsafe at the moment. But quite honestly right now, I can’t think when will be the next time we will be able to work like that. As much as it has felt like an incredibly special experience to make the series, it was 35 years in the making. I don’t know when will be the next time we will be able to do something so amazing.
You referenced the fact that it has been 35 years since the original film. Over the years, there have been rumors of new movies or other series or other options. How did this particular version come about?
Well, I can definitely speak to that, because I was involved with all those different versions. We did announce once that we were going to make a feature film sequel to “The Dark Crystal.” And in both cases, it was to be a sequel. We had a storyline that extended after Jen and Kira restored the world. That sequel idea picked up later in their reign, as they were thinking in Queen of Thra. They were old, and it was a story that happened in the future. But while we were developing that, we were also developing [the world] in graphic novels and in young adult novels. This prequel world which is actually much, much richer. We realized the much more exciting time period for “The Dark Crystal” world was this prequel period when the seven clans of Gelflings all had their own cultures. And this sort of rich tapestry of different kinds of life forms in that world, many of which are gone by the time we meet them in the movie. The original film takes place in a very dark time in the history of this planet Thra. Netflix was really interested in doing a “Dark Crystal” production like that. We took the film that we had in development, and we just put it to the side and said, “Let’s start from scratch and be aggressive, and develop a prequel television series.”
When did you know you had the right story for the Netflix version?
We started developing that prequel world in the YA section, as I said. And also, as an interesting little tangent, we also had developed an animated prequel series. The combination of the YA books and some of the development from the animation, that is what became the core storyline of the TV series. And of course our writers, Jeff Addiss and Will Matthews, they beat out this 10 episode arc. They took these materials which we gave them, which was the YA novel and the bible for the animated series, and all these things that we had been brewing up as a company. The anthology was interesting canon, but it wasn’t the bones of a television show. And then, interestingly, Leterrier, he was going to direct the feature sequel. He loved [that particular project] and was developing what we budgeted for a couple of years. But when we told him that Netflix was interested in doing a series and there was a chance to do a project with a bigger canvas, he jumped right on board. And we said, “Well, this may mean you won’t get to make that sequel film, ever.” And he said, “Well actually, I prefer to do this bigger story, and have 10 episodes to spread it out over.” He’s an extraordinarily talented person. He had a whole series in his head from the beginning. It was incredible to work alongside somebody who was so clear in his vision and technically phenomenal.
A traditional 10-hour live-action series probably takes what? Four, five, maybe even six months to shoot, depending on what it is? How many months of physical production went into making “Age of Resistance”?
Well, we had a vision we’d have a real physical production [over] 10 months. And we shot as slowly as a feature film. It was shot as slowly as a low-budget feature film. Not as slowly as a high-budget feature film, because that would have been six movies being made in ten months. We would sometimes say, “How many feature films are we making?” It was so big. But of course, even with its 10-month schedule, we had to be much, much more efficient than then we would. Louis also is the cameraman. He’s a Steadicam operator, himself. Because he operates the camera, sometimes he could shoot the scenes very efficiently because he could just shoot exactly what he had in his mind. There were times when we got some real efficiencies out of him being both a director and a cameraman.
Obviously, you guys used CG and visual effects in the series. But were there any shots that didn’t use any of those, were you astounded by what the team was able to accomplish without any sort of trick strings or anything?
Well, old-school technology was the only way to shoot. We used CG. We were in the studio the whole time. So anytime you saw landscape you were looking at CG. And then sometimes in the action, you might see the full body. I’d like to say to people that we used CG for these puppets the same way you would use CG if you were shooting humans. Because if I cast a woman to play someone flying like a fairy through a cavern, I would have to use CG for that shot. We started using CG the same way as you would like in a Marvel movie. But all of the emotional scenes with dialogue scenes, emotional breakthroughs that the characters had, were all done with the puppets. Which was wonderful and amazing for all of us to see, because it’s been so long since anybody had seen anything like that. Puppets communicating with each other so emotionally, so sincerely, and having it really work.
It’s not just the amazing work that the puppeteers do, but the voice actors for this series were phenomena. And you got such an incredible cast. Can you talk about just how they came about?
At the beginning, I didn’t expect to cast so many star cast members. We were budgeting and were planning to have three leads, the three lead Gelflings, Rian, Deet, and Brea. We thought we would cast those. And otherwise, just have voice actors, character actors. But what happened is, it became like a bit of a snowball [with these] amazing A-level actors. Once a couple of them were on it, then we were having people saying “yes” without looking at the material, without reading any scripts. Like, “I’ll give you a few days, and do my character.” At a certain point, we didn’t have any turn downs. It was just amazing. We were just overjoyed with this cornucopia of incredible people that we had a chance to work with. A lot of them had never done this type of voice work before because this was all ADR. It was all done after the shooting. So the actors who had done a lot of animation realized that it was the opposite. Instead of laying down a track where they had a lot of freedom, they actually had to dub this. And it was more painstaking. I can’t remember how many recording sessions we did, but it was in the high hundreds.
In terms of capturing the puppets on set would the puppeteers say the lines for each character? How does it work?
Yes. We had a core group of 12 puppeteers who performed all the lead characters, and they’re incredible. I mean, our puppeteers are our stars. All of them played a combination of Skeksis and Gelfling. Most of them had a hero character and a villain character that they played. They are so incredibly talented. We didn’t keep very many of their voices. I mean, for one thing, you would want more variation amongst the characters. You wouldn’t want to hear the same voice on so many characters. But a couple of American puppeteers were those that voice wouldn’t probably match in with the British cast. In some cases, we had character puppeteers who were older playing characters that are younger, and that might not be a fit. Some of the characters are really brilliantly voiced by the puppeteers. The little Podling, Hup, has his puppeteer’s voice and he’s so funny. And then some of the Skeksis like the scroll keeper, he’s very droll and hilarious. And his voice is the puppeteer’s, as well.
Considering it had been almost four decades since the movie how did you feel about the love the show got? Was it satisfying?
I was personally extraordinarily proud of having made the series. And then when the reviews came in and all the reviews were so positive, and it’s like anything in life where you feel seen or you feel understood. It’s so rewarding. I feel like when the critics watched the show and stated it on so many levels, we really felt seen and understood as individual artists and as a company. And so, that was very exciting. I also feel quite honestly, that we did well by my father’s legacy and by the people who made the original film, and that we did something worthy of it. That makes a difference to me and makes me feel proud of the experience. And then there was the other thing we do. We got some of the biggest puppetry projects in history with the most puppets, most sets, most screen time. And of course, there are no humans in it. As great as the movie star voices are, they’re really representing the puppets, to become emotionally invested in. We ask people to get excited by the ups and downs, and adventures of these puppets. That’s a very, very unusual proposition, and we feel very fortunate to have been able to do it.
“Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” is available on Netflix