The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

Context & Trivia

The series was created and produced by The Jim Henson Company using traditional puppetry with no CGI creatures, continuing the practical-effects approach of the 1982 original. The puppets were built in early 2017 at Jim Henson's Creature Shop in Los Angeles before being shipped to Langley Studios near London for filming. According to design supervisor Toby Froud, the production used about 20 principal puppets and roughly 90 additional puppets for secondary characters. Unlike the four puppeteers required to operate the Gelfling puppet in the original film, the new Gelfling puppets needed only two performers each, with their animatronic facial mechanisms remotely controlled through modified Nintendo Wii controllers. Concept artist Brian Froud and his wife Wendy Froud, who worked on the original film's creature designs, returned along with their son Toby Froud (who as a baby played the title role in Labyrinth) to help design and build the new puppets. Muppets performer Dave Goelz also took part as a puppeteer. As with the 1982 film, voice actors recorded their dialogue after filming, matching their performances to the puppeteers' lip movements and scratch-track voices.