I'll try and keep this relatively spoiler free, but I can't entirely:
So right off the bat I have to say that the Special Effects in this are amazing! The puppets and the blend of CGI works really well and there were many moments that I thought were stunning to look at. This is a very bold and risky thing to be developed and I'm quite honestly shocked that it ever got made (just like the original). You can tell a lot of love and care went into making this and it really shows.
That being said... what about the story? The writing? The characters? The stuff that is most important for a series.
Well, fortunately, most of the characters are pretty good and fairly well written. There is that issue that all Jim Henson productions have where characters have to "speak their thoughts" due to the lack of subtle nuance that can be achieved with their faces which leads to many moments where a character suddenly starts going on an emotional tangent that wasn't really built up to. Stuff like this isn't terrible, but it starts to feel more like the writers speaking to me than me witnessing actual characters.
I think my favorite characters were Deet and Rian, and SkekGra and UrGoh. Overall, pretty good characters. The writing could be a little better but it's nothing terrible.
The story (I won't talk too much about it) works for what it is and can fairly exciting and rather terrifying at times. However, there is something big holding the story back...
The Tone and in-universe mechanics...
This series is dark. Like really dark. Like, how is this rated TV-PG? There is blood, killing, murdering, torturing, people exploding, gore, death, lots of screaming, and much more. I honestly think whoever rated this series TV-PG probably didn't watch it themselves because this has some of the most tonally messed up stuff I've seen in a series in quite some time. I get flashbacks to Schindler's List when watching this movie... heck, I think it even tops some of the moments from that movie in terms of how disturbing it gets.
However, this poses a problem with the story. The ending of the series requires a battle to happen; however, the battle is hilariously underwhelming and makes no sense as to why it is so small or inefficient. The ending to the series is tonally inconsistent because the show IS SO DARK yet the ending is cartoonishly safe with the good guys saying stuff like "Look we made them run away!" as if their who goal for the fight was just to make the Skeksis retreat... Their goal was to kill them... but then suddenly it isn't? Which is this? A dark fantasy story
Stuff like this happens frequently throughout the series where the tone of the show gets in the way of the story because one second you are witnessing a slave who finally manages to escape slavery only to get beaten to death with his blood splattered across the walls and then the next moment you have the heroes not using their weapons or any tactics for fighting Skeksis as if this was some sort of "School yard brawl" instead of a fate of the world battle.
This really kills the tension because characters who can win certain conflicts won't use the tools necessary to win due to their apparent understanding of the "plot armor" that protects them, while in other scenes everything is brutal, vicious, and absolutely terrifying. I could honestly spend a good chunk of this review just listing all of the strange inconsistencies that harm the story but I don't want to spoil the entire story.
Final note: The camera moves around a little too much. I know that is nit-picky, but sometimes it feels like there is non-stop movement even on simple scenes to the point where it is hard to tell what is happening.
All in all, I really like the effort that was put into this but I think the tone hurt the series as a whole. It could still be dark but it just needed the main characters to react to that in a more suitable way. There were an infinite number of occasions where Skeksis could've been taken out but due to plot-armor they weren't. It's a little confusing.
So right off the bat I have to say that the Special Effects in this are amazing! The puppets and the blend of CGI works really well and there were many moments that I thought were stunning to look at. This is a very bold and risky thing to be developed and I'm quite honestly shocked that it ever got made (just like the original). You can tell a lot of love and care went into making this and it really shows.
That being said... what about the story? The writing? The characters? The stuff that is most important for a series.
Well, fortunately, most of the characters are pretty good and fairly well written. There is that issue that all Jim Henson productions have where characters have to "speak their thoughts" due to the lack of subtle nuance that can be achieved with their faces which leads to many moments where a character suddenly starts going on an emotional tangent that wasn't really built up to. Stuff like this isn't terrible, but it starts to feel more like the writers speaking to me than me witnessing actual characters.
I think my favorite characters were Deet and Rian, and SkekGra and UrGoh. Overall, pretty good characters. The writing could be a little better but it's nothing terrible.
The story (I won't talk too much about it) works for what it is and can fairly exciting and rather terrifying at times. However, there is something big holding the story back...
The Tone and in-universe mechanics...
This series is dark. Like really dark. Like, how is this rated TV-PG? There is blood, killing, murdering, torturing, people exploding, gore, death, lots of screaming, and much more. I honestly think whoever rated this series TV-PG probably didn't watch it themselves because this has some of the most tonally messed up stuff I've seen in a series in quite some time. I get flashbacks to Schindler's List when watching this movie... heck, I think it even tops some of the moments from that movie in terms of how disturbing it gets.
However, this poses a problem with the story. The ending of the series requires a battle to happen; however, the battle is hilariously underwhelming and makes no sense as to why it is so small or inefficient. The ending to the series is tonally inconsistent because the show IS SO DARK yet the ending is cartoonishly safe with the good guys saying stuff like "Look we made them run away!" as if their who goal for the fight was just to make the Skeksis retreat... Their goal was to kill them... but then suddenly it isn't? Which is this? A dark fantasy story
Stuff like this happens frequently throughout the series where the tone of the show gets in the way of the story because one second you are witnessing a slave who finally manages to escape slavery only to get beaten to death with his blood splattered across the walls and then the next moment you have the heroes not using their weapons or any tactics for fighting Skeksis as if this was some sort of "School yard brawl" instead of a fate of the world battle.
This really kills the tension because characters who can win certain conflicts won't use the tools necessary to win due to their apparent understanding of the "plot armor" that protects them, while in other scenes everything is brutal, vicious, and absolutely terrifying. I could honestly spend a good chunk of this review just listing all of the strange inconsistencies that harm the story but I don't want to spoil the entire story.
Final note: The camera moves around a little too much. I know that is nit-picky, but sometimes it feels like there is non-stop movement even on simple scenes to the point where it is hard to tell what is happening.
All in all, I really like the effort that was put into this but I think the tone hurt the series as a whole. It could still be dark but it just needed the main characters to react to that in a more suitable way. There were an infinite number of occasions where Skeksis could've been taken out but due to plot-armor they weren't. It's a little confusing.