The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is Riveting Television

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance may be the ideal form of bringing back a beloved property in a modern-day reboot/continuation. A Netflix TV show prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson/Frank Oz directorial effort The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance takes place thousands of years before the events of the original movie. This extensive amount of time in between the two stories allows the saga of Age of Resistance to really stand on its own. Though they take place on the same planet (Thra) and share some characters, Age of Resistance will work just fine for newcomers and is interested in telling a good story and pushing the boundaries of puppetry-based filmmaking rather than just relying exclusively on callbacks to the original Dark Crystal movie.

Hey, A Movie! Hopefully One That's Better Than The Happytime Murders!

Taking children's entertainment icons The Muppets and filtering them through an R-rated perspective is the central conceit of The Happytime Murders, a new raunchy comedy from director Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson. If that sounds like a slightly familiar premise, it's because Happytime Murders is one in a surprisingly long line of projects that have tackled this idea. Most notably, Peter Jackson provided a gruesome peek behind the curtain of a Muppet Show pastiche in 1989's Meet The Feebles while Broadway musical Avenue Q sent up Sesame Street with its depressingly realistic take on how unfulfilling adulthood can be. Both of these projects, especially Avenue Q, were of a level of quality that Happytime Murders only wishes it could rise to.