“It was otherworldly and completely different
to anything I had seen at that age. And it’s still
completely different to anything I’ve seen. I
think that’s the wonderful thing about ‘The Dark
Crystal.’ It is totally its own thing,” he said.
Netflix has taken some risk resurrecting such
a beloved title. The main writers — Jeffrey
Addiss and Will Matthews — had never done
TV or undertaken anything so sprawling, while
Leterrier, whose big-screen credits include action
movies like “The Transporter” and “The Incredible
Hulk” had no experience in TV or with puppets.
But he had passion, discussing various
techniques and plot ideas with Henson’s heirs.
“Here’s a Frenchman pouring his heart out and
telling them how important Jim Henson is and
‘The Dark Crystal’ was to me,” he said.
After he accepted the job, he admitted he
freaked out. “I realized, ‘What did you do, Louis?
You’re such an idiot! You’re going to ruin it! You
don’t know. You’ve just done action movies and
karate movies. You cannot do this thing. Why,
why, why?’” he recalled thinking. Then he joked:
“I guess they were impressed by the accent.”
Leterrier and Henson’s children didn’t initially
decide on a prequel. They first thrashed around
for a way to create a sequel. But they couldn’t
seem to get beyond the 1982 film’s ending —
the grand unification of the Skeksis and Mystics
and the healing of the crystal.
Leterrier calls it “an enormous exclamation
point — one of the biggest in movie history.”
So instead of building a sequel, they teased out
the mythology of the first film along with input
from the original filmmakers. They came up with
a sweeping story that deals with environmental
degradation and tyranny.
nora
(Nora)
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