Tag Archives: Peter Jackson

“The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance” v “The Dark Crystal” Movie (1982)

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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The Dark Crystal (1982) movie was one of the formative puppetry experiences of my youth. As I was born in 1982 I did not get to experience it at the cinema but rather watched it on the television in later years.

Sadly I do not remember exactly how old I was when I first saw it but, at a guess, I would say around 7 years old.

I remember it was frightening, or rather, had frightening bits but I was not distressed by it in the same way I had been by Moley in the Wild Wood (in Wind in the Willows by Cosgrove Hall). I used to make my Mum fast forward that bit on the video when I was 3 or 4 years old.

I think the worst bits were the collapsing face of the old emperor and the draining of the essence of the podling and then Kira, (though she did escape). The little detail of the tiny Podling child with her little doll when the Garthim raid the Podling village is also moving, (but I think adult parent of 2 small children me picked up on that more than child me did). However my main feelings about the film were that it was an exciting magical world. I did not even think of it as puppetry. The characters and the story were real creatures from another world that we just happened to have a window inside. I think I felt the same way about the characters from the Cosgrove Hall Wind in the Willows. As stop motion models/puppets everything was really real and was actually occupying real space rather than being a bunch of pixels in a computer.

I also found the Skeksis amusing rather than scary through much of the film. The disgusting way that they eat is so wonderfully tactile and filled me with the same childish glee that one gets from a Roald Dahl book such as “The Twits” or “George’s Marvellous Medicine”. The Chamberlain and his constant repetitious “whining” “mmmMMMMMmmm” was one of my particular, favourite bits of the film.

Re-watching the film with adult (and puppeteer’s) eyes sadly involves my analytical brain popping into gear. I can see the traditional puppetry style of the Jim Henson company in the way the Podlings and some of the other puppets move (the same style that we see animating Muppets and characters from Sesame Street). I was also a big fan of Sesame street growing up. I was too young for the Muppet Show and again, at the time did not think of the characters as puppets, (they were real).

I can also clearly see the multiple legs of the Garthim masking the real legs of the puppeteers (because I am looking for them) and that the Land-striders are the same shape as a person with stilts on arms and legs (because that’s what they are). What I am not sure about is whether I notice this because I am a puppeteer and puppet maker or because I am now an adult.

The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance has modern technology to help make the world as real as possible for an adult audience (they assume that fans of the original will be watching the prequel and are therefore now adults). In theory (as with the original) it is supposed to be for a family audience, but if so I would say it is definitely more suitable for older children. They have used green screen technology to remove puppeteers from shots and CGI to remove visible puppet rods. They have also used CGI for various special effects, backgrounds and the creatures that are in the place of wheels in the Skeksis’ carriages. From my research I have discovered that Jim Henson was not entirely happy with the puppet Gelfling as major protagonists as they did not have a lot of expression due to the small size of the heads and this is the reason they used human actors in the subsequent Froud/Henson collaboration film “Labyrinth“.

The Gelfling head animatronics in AOR is an improvement on the original heads with movable eyebrows allowing for a range of expressions though the jaw/mouth is rigid and simply opens and closes. The heads have also been augmented with CGI for certain shots (adding in eye blinks etc.).

The Director says that his aim was to make people forget that they are watching puppets and I’d say that the Gelflings and Podlings are the most problematic when it comes to that, (the Podlings are definitely a bit “Muppety” but very fun to watch). On my first watch through of the series (I binge watched it) I definitely found the rigid mouths of the Gelfling puppets a little off putting and found the expressions they were capable of a bit limited at first, but as the story progressed I found I became more absorbed by the story and less conscious of the Gelfling puppets’ limitations. They are undoubtedly beautiful puppets and I found Deet the most engaging of the main, Gelfling, characters. Her colouring (particularly her lustrous amber eyes) is very beautiful and she has a wistful, poignant expression that fits with the character’s eventual tragic ending (I say “ending” as with the series being cancelled we are sadly never going to find out what eventually happens to Deet).

On subsequent re-watchings of the series, I found, (as I often do) that as I already knew what was going to happen in the story, that my brain, (once again) started to focus on how everything was done technically.

I loved the very knowing and amusing reference to the artform of puppetry in the “puppet show within a puppet show” episode. The miniature puppets were wonderful and there was no pretence that these were anything other than puppets telling a story. The Dark Crystal film was criticised by some for not having enough humour in it (hence the change of tack in “Labyrinth”) but this episode of AOR was packed with humour from the very eccentric “Heretic” and “The Wanderer” and the interplay between the two.

I have read that the decline in popularity of the Bunraku theatre in Japan was possibly due to the fact that the puppets were too realistic and that once a puppet reaches a certain level of realism then it prompts the question: Why use puppets at all when an actor can portray so much more expression? The obvious answer to this in relation to the puppet Gelfling is that they are not human, merely human-like. I don’t know how much better a human with make-up/prosthetics would look compared to a realistic puppet, but I suppose the obvious comparison here would be Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films. The Hobbits and Elves are wonderfully expressive because they are human actors and of course they pioneered the motion capture suit technology for the character of Gollum, (which one could argue is another form of puppetry).

However, I have seen the screen test footage that “The Jim Henson Company” created using a puppet Skeksis and a CGI Gelfling and even though (in my opinion) the Gelfling was a bit basic CGI wise compared to Gollum, the Skeksis and Gelfling do not match up together in terms of the way real objects catch the light etc. The puppet Skeksis in my opinion would not be better as human actors because they are not human-like and, therefore, they play to the strengths of the puppet; which is to do things that a human actor cannot do and to be things that human actors cannot be. There is no room for improvement with the Skeksis in terms of their appearance or performance in my opinion. They recreated the brilliance of the Skeksis in the original film and gave us more of what we liked in the first place and developed it and took it further, with a little CGI augmentation here and there (tongue movements for example).

The combination of Warwick Brownlow-Pike as puppeteer and Simon Pegg as the voice actor did a fantastic job of bringing the character I loved so much from the original film back to life and recreating and building on that original performance by Frank Oz and Barry Dennen. I would say that Warwick should take the greater credit for the acting performance of The Chamberlain when you consider that the voice-actors were matching their performance to the visual performance that the puppeteers had already created.

So if we agree that the Skeksis need no improvement and that they don’t match visually with CGI Gelfling then we are back to the decision to make the Gelfling puppets with little “pops” of CGI like the AOR did in fact use.

I think the problem is that the quality and realism of everything in the series is so high (with nearly everything physically there and lovingly handcrafted by experts at the top of their game) that very small flaws stick out rather more than they would otherwise do.

This series is, and will remain, an example of a crowning achievement of what is possible with puppetry; breaking new ground and inventing new ways of doing puppetry for TV that have simply never been done before. The puppets have been pushed to the absolute limits of what is possible and the Director, Louis Leterrier, pioneered the use of multiple hand held steady-cams to shoot the puppets which particularly pays off in the epic sequence where Rian is rescued from The Chamberlain’s carriage.

Performers of TV/film puppetry are used to being in complete control of what the camera sees by using monitors to view their performance as they do it. But, obviously with this approach (even with a split screen monitor) the puppeteer is not in quite so much control of the shots and I imagine they would have to approach the performance more like a human actor would. Leterrier directed all of the 10 one hour long episodes (a huge commitment which gives the series a unified overall vision) and he brought his experience of directing action fantasy films such as the 2008 The Incredible Hulk film to the project.

This is such a rich source of material to discuss one could write whole books about it (and indeed many people have). I am aware that I have only covered a fraction of what there is to talk about with both the original film and the Netflix series, (including the contentious issue of the cancellation of the series) but I have to draw a line somewhere.

To those at Netflix who think that the series is too expensive to make versus the amount of new subscribers they gained who wanted to watch this series; I would say that I would recommend anybody to subscribe to Netflix* just to get to watch this show (if you haven’t already seen it). If you haven’t already seen the original 1982 film or want to re-watch it; you can’t get this on Netflix. I downloaded the film via *YouTube Movies but perhaps it is available from other places too? Please mention in the comments section if you know of other places you can get hold of the film.

On a non-puppetry note if you are a similar age to me and remember “She-Ra” and “He-man” from your youth with affection there is an original Netflix series “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power” (which is a Manga style animation). It is aimed at people of our age who remember the series from our youth and the characters/plots/writing are sophisticated with lots of emotional depth. It is, in short, immensely superior to the original which was created solely to sell toys. So if you do decide to subscribe to Netflix I would recommend this as well (I have also enjoyed/am enjoying their series of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective agency”).

I welcome comments and would be particularly interested to hear from anyone who was involved in the making of “The Dark Crystal” or “The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance”. 🙂

*Please note I have not been paid anything by Netflix or Youtube to mention them and am wholly impartial.

“The Hobbit” versus “The Tinderbox” at Norwich Puppet Theatre

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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My husband and I have been going down to Norfolk regularly for a good many years to visit his family, (who live in the Kings Lynn area).  In all these years we have never got around to seeing a production at the Norwich Puppet Theatre.

So this Christmas we decided to treat ourselves to a trip to Norwich and went to see “The Hobbit” at the cinema, (with the special frame rate) and “The Tinderbox” at Norwich Puppet Theatre on the same day.  I had visited the theatre before to audition for their “Little Red Riding Hood” show but it was quite different being an audience member.

We struggled through horrendous traffic to see “The Hobbit” first, (the puppet show was in the evening).  We arrived just in time to get something to eat and then went in to see the film.

I am very hard to please when it comes to adaptations of books I like.  I always spot any deviations from the plot right away as I have an extremely good memory, (it comes in useful for learning scripts).  I thought Peter Jackson did a fantastic job with the Lord of the Rings so I was hoping I’d be equally pleased with The Hobbit.

I was very pleased that the songs had been kept in, and the humourous scene with the dwarves throwing Bilbo’s crockery about was better than I’d imagined.

I had heard that Barry Humpreys was to be the Goblin King and he was also brilliant and just as I had imagined in the book.  Good also were the classic riddling scene with Gollum and the adventure with the trolls.

However at various points, (including the episode with the trolls) Bilbo was made into a cleverer and more heroic figure than he is in the book.  This seemed to have been done so that the dwarves would gain some confidence in Bilbo by the end of the film and the audience would want to see the second film because the main character has been revealed to be a hero and not just a wimp who wants to go home all the time.  In the book the growth of Bilbo’s confidence and heroism is much slower and half the charm is Bilbo’s ordinariness as he stands in for the person reading the book.  In real life most people would prefer tea and cake to being in danger of death and so it is with Bilbo.

I had also been looking forward to seeing my childhood’s Dr. Who, Sylvester McCoy, in the role of Radagast the Brown.  I tried my hardest to like it, but his performance was out of step with the rest of the film.  He seemed to be in a children’s movie and the rest was like Lord of the Rings – very adult in tone and with lots of violence and excessive amounts of gore.  Don’t get me wrong, gore is okay in Lord of the Rings, but The Hobbit is a children’s book and I wanted a child friendly film to match.  I think Sylvester’s performance suffered from having to interact with too many CGI effects.  The hedgehogs, rabbits and even his house were not at all convincing and I struggled to get a sense of the danger of the Necromancer from a CGI hedgehog behaving very unnaturally, to say nothing of the giant bunny rabbits.  A bit more gravitas in McCoy’s manner and using real hedgehogs would have been better in my view.  I think the Wargs should have been more like real wolves instead of turning them into weird deformed looking creatures too, they are described merely as giant wolves in the book.

I did not remember a great deal about the story of The Tinderbox so came to the show fairly fresh.  The one thing I did remember was the three dogs with the enormous eyes.  I was very taken with the illustrations of them I had seen in a book of the story when I was younger.  I thought they had an uncanny and rather alarming appearance which gave me a pleasurable thrill of excitement when I was reading it.

The puppets were very visually appealing and a world away from the Hobbit’s CGI.  The puppet used carved wood, old kitchen implements and other found objects such as the flint that created the witch’s head.  The techniques used in the show were all very slick and professional, though there were one or two little things that didn’t work as well as they could have done such as a shadow that was being cast onto a black animated backdrop showing a ferris wheel.  There was a point near the beginning where the turntable stage’s movement was not very obvious because it did not have any “landmarks” on it as well.  It would have worked better if it had stripes of different colours painted onto it perhaps.

They used two performers who passed the puppets back and forth between them and even had both performers voice the same characters at different points in the show.  I think this would have worked better if they merely swapped operators but kept the same voice actor for each character for better continuity.  On the other hand the parts where both performers voiced the witch at the same time gave an uncanny doubling, echoing effect which was quite a nice idea.

I think both myself and my husband Tim’s favourite characters were the King and Queen humanettes.  They charmingly referred to each other as “Mr. Queen” and “Mrs. King” some of the lines they came out with were priceless, such as when they threatened to turn the soldier into a teddy bear and hug him to death as a punishment.  Seonaid Goody’s high pitched voice and spoilt rotten, child like nastiness were fantastic and her constant refrains of “eugh yucky!” filled me with glee.  It was quite interesting that the King & Queen and the pursuit of wealth and materialism were the real villains of the story rather than the witch.  It seemed that the witch’s goal seemed only to teach the soldier a lesson and improve his life as a result and did not seem to bear any malice over having her head cut off at all!

I loved the sequence where the soldier spending all his money was illustrated by him removing coins from his money-box stomach and rolling them down a set of ramps, (like you get on some charity boxs) to land in a bucket with a satisfying chinking noise.  It was great visual story-telling and the performers acted out the various scrounging characters who were after his money brilliantly.

I’m afraid that the dogs could never be as impressive as they were in my imagination as a child, but they had a good go at it.  The dog with eyes made of real tea cups and with a wooden spoon for the body was particularly charming.

So which did I like best?  The film with all the 3-D fast frame photography and all the sets costumes and famous actors that money can buy and the latest CGI animation, (The Hobbit) or the down to earth live performance made using bits of crockery and copper kettles, (The Tinderbox)?  The truth is I liked them both, though I think the puppet show had the edge for me.  Good quality live entertainment is just that bit more special than a film at the cinema, however brilliant.

I was particularly glad to see a show at Norwich Puppet Theatre which was very well made and performed and of great quality. Norwich Puppet Theatre are a great success story having bounced back from funding cuts and have successfully secured a fresh Arts Council England Grant to produce this and other new work, (CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE).  I was very glad to support their work and hope they continue to make more excellent new shows like this one well into the future.