Watching The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance's bad muppets torture and kill is very disturbing

Los Angeles Times

"On Sesame Street, Muppets have often been monsters of a friendly disposition: Elmo is a monster, Cookie Monster is a monster for cookies," says Robert Lloyd. 'But the Dark Crystal monsters are also muppets. (They are not, legally, Muppets, with a capital M, for that brand has been locked since 2004 in Disney’s unassailable Tower of Intellectual Property.) There is a repertoire of techniques and technologies designed by (Jim) Henson and his collaborators, a choreographic style as recognizable as Martha Graham’s or Twyla Tharp’s, a physical vocabulary of head shakes, mouth gapes, hand flops, bouncy walks. And so you may see in the Skeksis a hint of Big Bird, in the lumbering Mystics the shadow of Snuffleupagus. When a Gelfling princess tosses the hair from her face, Miss Piggy springs to mind; any creature whose arms wave wildly in excitement has a bit of Kermit in him. It brings historical richness to Age of Resistance but also some cognitive dissonance. That overlay is part of what makes watching the bad puppets torture, kill and casually mistreat the good ones so very disturbing. There were times watching Age of Resistance that I, as an adult who has not slept with the light on since high school, had to pause an episode to catch my breath."

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