When I saw the trailer of this, I had mixed feelings. After seeing the show I still have mixed feelings haha
I just want to note that I loved the original movie. I rewatched it a few times and last time I saw it again was about a year ago. I loved the concepts, the characters, the world building and its magical feeling.
When I saw the trailer, I felt mixed because I felt like the show will take away that magical feeling and it sort of has. Knowing more takes away the mystical nature I guess and the theories the fans have put in.
Doing a prequel in itself is hard and I can see that this story came after the movie. Some ideas might have been there before the production of the movie, but probably not all the fine details as the comics this is based on was written well after the movie. It is made by the same guy, jim henson though and he has some fantastic direction for the storytelling and imagery. But going back to the point, prequel is hard, even starwars, a movie that planned for its prequel, had a lot of hate. A prequel has a lot of expectations that are different from a sequel. The first problem, particularly for this show, is that the audience already knows what's going to happen. When you know the rebellion fails and genocide is imminent, it becomes a little hard to be fully invested in their cause. Same with characters, for the first about 4 episodes (they're long episodes of about 40min? 45? Btw) Instead of emotionally trying to connect with characters who I know will just die possibly knowing they pretty much failed, I only looked out for who might be Jen and Kiras parents. On top of that there were quite a few main characters or groups introduced anyway, which also made it hard to emotionally invest in.
The original movie had an atmosphere of a children's book to it. It was the right choice for it to be done with puppets. It fit right in. The story itself was rather simple. A boy journeys this magical land to fulfill his destiny which is to heal the crystal. He meets enemies and friends on his journey and even love, which isn't fully displayed but definitely implied. If you look at a lot of children's stories out there, it usually only follows one character or group. The kids put themself in the main characters shoe and go on a journey or grow with them. Following multiple groups and seeing the interaction and dynamics requires a bit more brain power and mental investment. With lots of new names and faces to memories, you have to pick out who's important and who's not and then memories what journey each group is doing and why. This type of storyline without one main character fits more for adult's stories. To compare, there's Lord of the rings and game of thrones and to a certain extent the dark crystal has a lot of similar aspects of those to it. That's not necessarily a bad thing since the story is well written, but it does take away the children's story-like magic and wonder that the original movie had. The other problem is that with a complex story like this, the puppet was just out of place at times. The ridged movement of puppets were at times even annoying. Because the puppets can't freely move their face muscles, they couldn't express their emotions fully. Without the tear drops they deliberately put in whenever there was a sad moment, the puppets would've definitely looked very awkward just gaping their mouth screaming no like the soul-less puppets they are. As a basic monké humans connect emotionally much more when we actually see facial expressions. Once again, the old movie had just one main character which made it was easy to emotionally invest in. With so many characters as somewhat significant, you become a bit blase about their hardship (especially when you're already coming in with the preconceived notion that they'll all die with a failed rebellion anyway) a full expression and acting would've filled in the gaps of those disconnect a bit, but they couldn't with puppets. By the way, I'm not saying they shouldn't have used puppets. They need to use puppets to stay true with the original and the puppets were fantastic in all other aspects. I'm just listing all points I couldn't fully enjoy.
By the way, just to point out the adult themes once more, the story also had a fair bit of politics to it. Like the governing of the land and how each race interacts with each other. These are all great, but again, think of talking about a serious story with serious themes with puppets and toys. It just felt out of place at times.
Anyway, I'll stop the review here for now. It's all I could think of.
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