JHC planning Dark Crystal sequel

[Ernie101]

As far as I know, I think this is just a rumour.. I hope so, because I love Dark Crystal..
One thing that made the movie great is how all the "special affects" are ahead of their time. Agreed? I wouldn't go and write over something like that..

 

[muppetsforever]

I'm afraid I'm of a mind that dictates: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Dark Crystal was as perfect as it could get, and no sequel can top it, compare to it or even remotely improve upon it, especially not one that's going to allow CGI effects. If a sequel had to be made, they should go back to the original's roots and strictly use animatronic puppetry. But even then I still think they should leave Dark Crystal untampered with. Brian Henson needs to start seriously thinking things out before he puts events into unchangeable and ultimately detrimental motion.

i don't think it was perfect... there were parts of the movie that seemed to drag out. i would give examples but its been many years since ive watched it.

 

[lowercasegods]

I see what you're saying. But I'm referring mostly to the special effects, not the storyline (I tend to agree that it goes on longer in some scenes than necessary). The animatronic puppetry, in my view at least, was the perfect tool to tell this story. CGI does not equal perfection, and it will not "improve" upon what Jim created over twenty years ago in the original. And I still feel that a sequel will not make up for any shortcomings the original had. If it relies heavily on CGI it will only create new shortcomings, much worse than the original's and making the original look far better by comparison. I repeat myself: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[Cantus Rock]

 

[beemer]

im all 4 it as long as they stick stricktly 2 puppets and not the half hearted computer animation like in mirror mask

 

[AndyWan Kenobi]

I think that if the right people are on this project, they could incorporate all sorts of techniques and still have it feel authentic. In the words of Scotty, "The right tool for the right job."

 

[Krazedmuppet]

Im excited. I wanna see it! BUT I just hope they dont have a lot of pointless CGI, you know just to show off how good they are? kinda like some of the stuff in the new star wars *star wars fans throw tomatos at krazed* It didnt add to the movie, it was just there to impress. Like it didnt fit the original, the movie looked like it should have been AFTER the old ones, the planes looked cooler, faster, mor tech. I just dont want that happining to The Dark Crystal, where it looks like the movies dont even go together. I usualy have a 5 year rule of how many years can pass for a 2 movie to be made (like Disney making a 2nd Cinderella was just lame) but I think the Dark Crystal might be the exception.

 

[DTWolf]

I agree that some of the Star Wars I-III effects and machines looked more modern and advanced than stuff in the original movie (and that lots of what they did was just showing off--the ridiculous, useless Podrace scene being the worst offense). The same was true of Enterprise, the prequel to the original Star Trek show: the equipment and technology looked more advanced even though it was supposed to be a hundred years or so earlier.

On the other hand, I still think a prequel would be absolutely a better idea than a real sequel. In the Dark Crystal world, it would make perfect sense for everything to look better and more advanced. What we see in the original movie is a time after one wonderful civilization has collapsed (the Urseks') and another civilization has been wiped out intentionally (the Gelflings'). I don't think it's a stretch to say that the environment (around the castle, anyway) has gone through years of devastation and overexploitation. So if we went back in time naturally everything would look better. Instead of the ruined Gelfling temple covered with vines, we would see a bright, clean temple in the middle of a bustling city.

I'm still holding out hope that it will be a prequel. There hasn't been much news about this movie, so I think there's still time for that shift to be made.

 

[AndyWan Kenobi]

Slightly off topic, but I think things were supposed to look nicer in the Star Wars prequels. It was "before the dark times, before the Empire." After that, everything went downhill and turned to junk.

 

[brianwindsor]

You can use a mix of puppetry with computer graphics to get the performance characteristics of puppetry with the versatility of CG. It's the type of stuff I've been doing for a while through motion capture. I thought animation didn't fit certain characters and that motion capture of humans is definitely not right for anything that isn't distinctly human. I've been doing mocap for over a decade and realized I thought it was a better match to puppets than people...I have to thank OSU for giving me the flexibility to play around with this approach...oh yeah, it's also unbelievably quick if set up properly.

http://accad.osu.edu/~bwindsor/digipuppets/index.html
The talking puppet section is probably the most relevant.

One of the things you can see is that a lot of my stuff isn't what I'd call "production quality" because of the time it takes to make the CG version look really good unless you're going for a CG look. Also, that's not my strong point, so I stick with the mocap and rigging and ideas part of things.

I do think that only having a one and a half year production cycle is extremely small for something to match to the level of the original Dark Crystal. There would have to be a lot of cut corners.

-Brian