Cool News
Dark Crystal 2 storyboards and art hits the web!!! Want To See Now!!!
Hey folks, Harry here... Sometimes - the Harry head animations just happen to work with something I'm reporting on a given day. Today - the new Harry Animation from Cartuna is, of course, a tribute to Jim Henson and The Muppet Show. Well - as it happens - MTV puts out some designs and interviews some folks about the new Dark Crystal movie that Genndy Tartakovsky (CLONE WARS & SAMURAI JACK) is directing. Click Here To Check Out that story! However, I have received some reports that MTV's pics are hard for some systems to see... so check them out below. In the article - it looks like they'll begin shooting around the end of the year - for release next time around this time of the year. I'm sure you'll be excited by some of what is suggested in these storyboards and art...
Readers Talkback
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and i can't wait for this one. thanks for the storyboards.
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All the art and talk about this new one makes me want to see the original. (There is a noticeable lack of Henson puppeteering in my background, save for Sesame Street.)
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Man, Froud's designs rule. Get his hardcover DARK CRYSTAL DESIGNS book, it's amazing.
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This better be good, and not just another retread of the same story. Oh please, let this be good.
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You see, they could tie-in a new type of cristal with the release of the new movie. I know, it sounds crazy but that just means you are pissed because you didn't think of it. Insane Jealousy is the path to a sane life. Do the Dark Cristal...you won't regret it.
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Interesting the first pic reminds me of the work of Roger and Martin Dean. I have the movies and The Froud art book, now I must secure some shrooms for the film as that is what these films are made for. You know it to be true.
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I've waited over 20 years to see s sequel......Whoooo hoo.......break out the shrooms indeed!!!!
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Rewatched original a few months ago while drinkin a forty, not quite the same as shroomin. GenTar kicks ass, should be a blast!
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Cloris Leachman is in everything lately!
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Some might say nothing can recapture the magic of childhood, but I believe that they just might do it for me with this. I hope I hope.
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The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth were like epic LSD substitutes for kids. I had my doubts about Tartovsky, that he likes to do drawn out, wordless action sequences which don't have much of a place in a Henson studios film, but now I can see that style working perfectly. I want to see Landstriders or horrifying Garthrim beasts now, or some reasonable equivalent. The two lead characters we see in the art are the aforementioned girl made of fire and some Gelfling kid, right?
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should be be way more sweaty and obese.
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this rules so much
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GenTar (that's great S Mart) is definately in my good books after salvaging the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoons (Samurai Jack is kinda cool, too). For him to do the (long-overdue) sequel to a movie that tripped me out when I was younger (yeah, I used to do fortuitous amounts of contraband back then) would be pretty spiffy, for sure.
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Hooray for anything, quite frankly that showcases the Henson factory's glorious contributions to our culture over the last thirty years. Recently in Ireland (me home don'cha know) the term 'muppet' has gained traction as a generalised sunonym for 'foolish, inept person' as in 'Ya silly muppet!' This annoys me greatly, since I believe that the Muppets were and are the best thing ever to appear on children's televison. And it's wonderful to see the rebel Henson creations still holding their own against the CGI Empire and their death stars.
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Because of the complete and total reliazation of the world of the Dark Cyrystal by Brian Froud. He thought all the way down to the mystic meanings of the specific knows in each urRu's coat. The ONLY way this sequal will work is if it does justice to Brian Froud. If the Jim Henson company can get the passion and spirit of the project that Jim had back in the day, next year around this time we all know where we'll be.
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best Cartoon yet! Congrats!
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It wasn't the epic scope of the film, the story, or the action. It was the coats.
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You totally forgot the tail things that told the future. Shit Robert you also forgot about the dental superiority of the fizzgigg. Give me a 2 hour expose on thier teeth alone and I'm sold. But the coats made me pee a little.
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Um, anyway...
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Ok Maybe Im to drunk but the second pic looks like it has the ship that killed Ming from Flash Gordan in it.
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Let this be good. I just hope the rumors about Brian Froud leaving the production are false.
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Was the best thing to happen to star wars! Having recently watched the clone wars due to disillusionment with the franchise I was amazed at how good it was, then I watched Ep.3 and felt really depressed. I suppose the only thing I can look forward to is someone re-imagining star wars in 20 years time and actually doing a good job at it. As for Dark Crystal, I remember watching a couple of times on video when I was younger but to be honest at the time I was more interested in going out to play with my mates from school. There's one thing that always puzzles me about geeks onthis site, at the time the film was originally released did these people experience the geek-gasm then or did they only realise the film's true potential at a later age. I'm 36 years old and when star wars and the subsequent films were released I couldn't give a crap about them, in fact they weren't even on my radar! It's only when I hit my mid-teens did I really start to appreciate cinema as entertainment. Does that make me unworthy to come to this site?
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How do you class yourself as a geek, can you be on if you skip chapters on films like star wars just to watch the good bits? As far as I can tell that's the only reason everyone wanted star wars on dvd so they can skip through the dross and watch lightsabre fights? Also since the release of the original trilogy it's good to hear so many of the petition's contributors righting heartfelt reviews of how good and grounbreaking the originals are before Lucas starting making them worse.
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I like what I see so far.
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me likey
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...do not fuck this up. I just bought my son the original and, while he probably won't be old enough to appreciate it for a few years, he did sit very quietly while dad watched it this past weekend...twice. Henson owned my childhood and this movie could give him an inside track to my adulthood if it's even half as immersive as the first.
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BOO-shay BOO-shay BOO-shay
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for this type of movie considering how unique he is.
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it was a fantastic setting. the problem was always that it was paper thin. plus. the. story. was. so. very. slow.
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I just got a used copy of the superbit DVD Dark Crystal and I love watching it brings back fond memories hopefully this new movie will compliment and not let down us who grew up with it
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There's that great freaky scene in the original movie where they test to see who will be the next leader and then they cast out the Chamberlain because he lost, it's great. You won't get anything that dark or as dark as the Garthim(sp) in this new movie. No fucking WAY. Not unless they want a PG-13 rating. Things are so tame now.
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Drink when you hear the following words: Skeksis Gelfling Shard Crystal Fizzgig You will be very fucked up in less than an hour, I shit you not.
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..or the beginging. I couldn't resist that one. Growing up, did anyone else assume that Olgra was Yoda's wife? Maybe I was just a retarded kid.
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I'm 36 too. When I was a kid I craved anything fantasy or scifi and I also grew up loving the Muppet Show. So I was in the theatre seeing it. Though I think by that point I was a bit older and able to go to movies without my parents. Can't remember who I saw it with or if I went alone. I lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere with a one screen theatre that I could bike to, so I often went to the movies on my own. Because, you know, small town, and what else are you going to do, especially when most of your friends live too far away to get to unless your parents drive you. But I can definitely say I loved the movie and even bought the novelization. It certainly wasn't until I was older that I realized some of the cosmology and interesting mysticism in the film - I think I had a feeling for it, but not yet the intellect to point it out. So I guess that makes me a geek and worthy to be on this site. But we all come at these things from different places. As long as you now have respect for the 'geekgasm,' (which I translate as the joy one receives from experiencing a film/tv show/book/comic book/performance), then you're fine.
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i wish i were around when it was in theaters. i consider everyone who saw it that way very lucky. i first saw the movie when i was a kid in the late '80s. my dad rented the vhs. i made him rent it five more times.
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Gendy Tartakovsky rules. It all rules. This is good news.
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It's like this...You watch "A New Hope" all the way through, watch "The Empire Strikes Back" for the battle in the snow and the lightsaber duel between Vader and Luke, and "Return of The Jedi" you use as a coaster.
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Did I err?
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But enough of of past disillusionments, Dark Crystal 2!! I don't know how they'll have Skekses though since the uRSkeks came back....shit...I don't know how they'll do anything now...the whole point of the first story was the division of the urRu and Skekses for 1000 years. The end of the first movie brought an end to that. Where can they go from here????
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I hope they don't bring the skeksis back for this movie. The bringing yin and yang together thing was finished in the original, and the urSkeks returned to their home planet, or became beings of pure energy, presumably. That would be like making a sequel to Star Wars where you find out that the Empire is still alive and well and nothing worthwhile was really accomplished in the original trilogy. Oh, wait,they did that in book form several times.
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I'm a storyboard artist and I do full color boards so suck on it Dark Crystal!!!!
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On the subject of the disappointment of the Star Wars prequels, I've always imagined a completely different set of films with someone like Arnold Vosloo ('Imhotep' from 'The Mummy') playing Anakin Skywalker in a completely different bunch of stories, with no kids or annoying teenagers involved. Can you just imagine how different they could have been as films? What kind of brilliant dark movies they could have been? And whatever happened to that rumour way back in the early nineties about Matthew Modine playing a lead role in the Star Wars prequels? Whatever happened to that? That would have been great. Ah well.
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I truly hope these reports are false, because it would be a HUGE let-down, story-wise. Staldo hit the nail on the head. The idea that cracking the crystal would somehow cause the urRu and Skeksis and Garthim to all magically reappear is not only lazy storytelling, but tramples all over the meticulously constructed back-story envisioned by Henson and Froud ... not to mention it directly contradicts the original film, where we see in Jen's crystal vision that it was a Skeksis who cracked the Crystal -- in other words, FIRST the urSkeks used the Crystal in a foolish attempt to "purify" themselves, resulting in their division into two races, and LATER the Crystal was cracked by the Skeksis. (Some of the film's narration and dialogue can be read to imply that the schism came after the cracking of the Crystal -- but Jen's vision, the film's novelization, and the very thorough "World of the Dark Crystal" all explicitly reject any such interpretation.) Furthermore, nothing in the original film implies that the urSkeks were in any way tied to the Crystal beyond having used it first as a portal into the Gelfling's world, and second as a tool in their SELF-INFLICTED experimentations. (That's important: they split THEMSELVES. It's far less compelling to make them passive victims of any yahoo with a hammer and chisel.) At the conclusion of the film, they do not recede into the Crystal, but ride the beam FROM the Crystal up into the light of the Great Conjunction -- presumably returning to their place of origin. Were the Crystal cracked, a shard stolen (as seems to be the plot of the new film) there would surely be grave consequences for the Gelfling world ... but everything going back to the way it was before Jen healed the Crystal is the least interesting and most nonsensical direction to go, and represents a gross failure of imagination -- especially when Henson and Froud left so many realms of possibility. If this film turns into another round of "we must heal the Dark Crystal and reunite the Skeksis and Mystics", I don't see how I'll be able to enjoy it. And what's more, it looks like we're going to get a Fraggle-like message about how different races can't live at the expense of one another, but need to learn to work together to make the world a better place. Don't get me wrong -- I love Fraggle Rock, and all of Henson's projects carry some sort of charmingly innocent-yet-timeless message of goodness and fellowship ... but it's very easy to cross the line into tiresome morality pageant. I only pray Dark Crystal 2 manages to avoid this fate.
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as much as i love this stuff, and think its cool, and i do think tartakovsky's an excellent choice, this is another film that only people on this web site (and other similar ones) will pay to see. other than self-proclaimed geeks like me, i'd say either young kids, or people over the age of 30. all cool, all good, but it is what it is...
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Both the actors you named would have been old for the part, but tack in some jive about the midichlorians accelerating Anakin's aging or something and you're set. at no point in episodes I-III did I see the "good man Anakin" that I was assured once existed in the original trilogy. Straight from indecisive maladjusted loverboy to amoral cyborg. I was once berated by one of the AICN writers in Talkback for bitching about casting so long after the fact, so I'll leave it at that. We don't have the ability to travel to alternate realities, so we'll never know what might've been.
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because of it's use of green screen. The combination of green screen special effects (a la Sin City and Sky Captain) and puppets might lure families to the theatre looking for something different. I truly hope there are non-geeks looking for something new and exciting.
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"The Power of the Dark Crystal" is a little overbearing for today's audiences. It would be better off going with one of those painfully obvious titles that the CGI animal movies use. How about "Little Elfy Things Adventure" or "Puppetz"
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Not so sunny Barnsley in the heart of South Yorkshire. We only had one Odean cinema (admittedly with an upstairs and downstairs screen), bus fair used to be 2p there and 2p back so you'd have enough change for 3 black jacks and three fruit salads from t' corner shop before heading off home for a dripping butty in front o' coal fire....cue Hovis music and images of cobbled streets and kids pushing bikes. (Seriously though the first bit was true!!)
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You started sounding like a Jethro Tull song there for a minute, Teh Ran. Tone down on the Dickensian imagery
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i agree, tone it down.
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The only buses we had were the orange ones with the fat scary driver to take us to the nun school. It was bike, car or nothing. This is America! Northeastern Ohio, just a click from Amish country to be exact. Right in the heart of the snow belt, which used to mean something in the late 70s. Though I won't talk about the walking in 6ft snow drifts uphill both ways to school. (ok, that part's the tall tale. Except for the snow drifts. Well, and the hills. Ok, so the only untrue part is the walking. We did have the buses, but if we missed the bus, we were screwed). And two screens? Luxury!
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I loved it when I was ten, bought the soundtrack, the Froud book, and every magazine with an article about it. Twenty years later, I bought the DVD for my kids, ages 5,3, and 2, and they LOVE it. I can't wait for this to come out.
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that's the whole point. I imagine a different story altogether that still ties in with the referenced made by characters like Obi Wan in A New Hope, but instead of concentrating on goofy child stories and whiny teens, it could have all started sometime in, say, Anakin's 30's, with Episode I focussing on a good Anakin in some lowly existence finding himself thrust into a battle against some sort of pre-Empire army of evil, an army that he ultimately joins over the course of 3 prequels through a series of unpredictable & unfortunate events. It would have been great to see a mature actor thrown into a sort of Catch-22 situation (or 'Sophies Choice' if you like) where Anakin becomes the antihero. Rather than Hayden Christensen just turning round and saying 'Oh, alright then'. But the whole of the Star Wars prequel backstory would have to be ENTIRELY different (except obviously you'd have to include something called 'The Clone Wars' somewhere in it because that gets mentioned in 'Episode IV'. Anyway, don't get me started. I actually like the prequels if I imagine them to be a completely different series of films. It's just that as an expansion of the original Star Wars we knew as kids, te prequels went the wrong way in so many ways, in fact every single way, that you could write a whole book about how wrong they got it.
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Well fucking put.
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That's how we speak where I was born! Actually readin it back makes me think of the Four Yorkshiremen Monty Python sketch where they are trying to out-do each other by increasnig the level of how poor they were growing up (do a google search). Oh! and oisin5199 we are kindred spirits!!!
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