Let's go. That sounds like a prophecy to me. Paul, what are you hearing there? You're hearing some prophetic meanderings, musings perhaps?

I am hearing a perfect follow up to the Sword and Sorcery Fantasy Adventure trilogy we experienced in the summer. And now we are getting this sort of perfect coda that takes us even farther into an age of wonder.

This movie is just daring in that it wasn't just, I mean, it's like they made it with puppets, which is, you know, they're only slightly better actors than Schwarzenegger. So it's good, right?

So many puppets. And you're right. It provides a striking juxtaposition of a performance.

But let's say, yes, Bradley. Are you saying that they should have done Conan with a puppet instead of Schwarzenegger?

Everything else the same?

Oh, my God. Could you imagine if Conan had been made like, but it's easy. The thing is, I wouldn't have used any. So just, just for our audience, for the sake of-

We're already off the rails.

We're already off the rails. This is a clip from The Dark Crystal, which is one of the greatest films ever made for my money. It is a movie that is so dazzlingly brilliantly weird. It is a fantasy, a high fantasy film made entirely with puppets. They're latex, very realistic puppets. And it was directed by the great Jim Henson in collusion with Frank Oz, obviously, and Brian Froud, the great character designer. And it's a movie that I'm going to say is very near and dear to me, not just because it skipped the summer of 1982. So we're doing a special winter special.

Our first ever holiday special episode.

Our first ever holiday special.

A momentous occasion.

It is humongous. It is as large as a skeksis puppet, my friends. This film is also very special to me because I worked on the prequel, The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance, which is still available on Netflix.

Javi, may I suddenly correct you? I think you meant to say the Emmy award-winning prequel.

Yes. We won an Emmy for it. It is probably the thing I'm most proud of and the thing I'm most humbled by because as a writer on it, I mean, the level of collaboration with so many people on this was so great. It really does illuminate how difficult it must have been to make The Dark Crystal. However, I just want to say when you walk into the conference room at the Jim Henson Creature Shop in beautiful downtown Burbank, the first thing you see is the Wall of Prophecy or the Wall of Destiny, which is where this prophecy was dream-etched. This entire thing is just incredibly meaningful to me. Sorry, Paul, I've monologued over you for a moment.

No, no, no. I've been so excited to get to this, and this momentous film provided the perfect opportunity to have our first ever holiday special episode. As a bridge between summers in the 80s. Yes. And, you know, and it does beg the question of whether or to what degree this is appropriately a holiday film. And to what degree that, let's say, bold choice of scheduling its release over the holidays.

Are you trying to, are you trying to tell me that a...

It may have impacted its success or lack thereof.

Are you trying to tell me that a puppet phantasmagoria, that is pure nightmare fuel for generations, which just happens to be set in the aftermath of a genocide, and not just a genocide, a genocide of some very cute creatures, would somehow not cut the mustard for Christmas time? Is that what you're saying?

Javi, we have over the course of this endeavor, that is Multiplex Overthruster, become psychically linked, because my first two notes include one of my favorite words that you just deployed. If any film deserves the moniker of phantasmagoria, it is The Dark Crystal. My other overarching note slash personal recollection to my childhood experience first viewing this film with my family thinking, oh, it's Henson, it's puppets. It's the puppets. So much nightmare fuel. Just wall to wall, wall to wall nightmare fuel for kids.

And on that note, let us say it once and never again, I am Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is Multiplex Overthruster Summer of 82. Paul, we have buried the lead. We have buried the lead. We need to say this one thing.

Yes.

Because we're doing a holiday special for the winter of 1982, does that mean that Multiplex Overthruster will be back for the summer of 83?

I dare say.

I dare say, yes, indeed.

Destiny calls us across the divide of the Gregorian calendar.

The crystal calls to the multiplex chamber.

Oh, what wonders await us in the summer of 1983. But before we get there, we have to take a much needed rest stop to refuel, recharge our inner crystals, which may be cracked in varying degrees by some of the films we endured in the summer of 82.

Indeed, indeed.

Yeah, and take another bold, if not possibly, the boldest genre swing cinematically of the entire year of 1982, which is The Dark Crystal, which boggles my brain that it exists.

Paul, I am right there with you. The very existence of this film is a miracle. Because the other big Henson-Brian Froud collaboration, everybody talks about is Labyrinth, right? Yes. So that movie stars Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie in A Cute Baby, and it has that human aspect. This film is entirely just these weird puppets, and they are wonderful and nightmarish. I mean, it's insane that, I mean, what I do know is there was a version of this movie. The way that Jim Henson originally made this film, and I'm sure you know this, because we're both died in the Wogeeks, was originally entirely in the language of the planet in which the film takes place. And that planet is called Thra. And the entirety, the entire first cut of this film was literally just the character speaking in these alien tongues, you know, with no explanation whatsoever. And that did not go over well in the first studio screening. And Jim Henson had to buy the rights for the film back. And then he and writer David O'Dell literally made an English dialogue script based on what just the mouth movements of the characters, which actually accounts for some of the weirdness in the language in the film. Sometimes they were literally writing to match mouth movements. Yes. And that's the film that we see. And I believe that Jim Henson's children remember this as the time daddy had to sell the house to get his movie back. So, it's a...

You gotta do what you gotta do.

But just the idea, I mean, just this idea that somebody would be so crazy as to make a high fantasy film set in another world, in another... Well, as I believe the opening narration, you know what, producer Brad, how far off the rails are we? Should we just go ahead and ring the bell and get this started? Because I feel like we're rusty, we're all over the place, we're not following the producer Brad guidelines for how we're going to do this. You must be going crazy over there, producer Brad. Let's ring the bell.

Ding, ding.

Let's go to the first clip, which is the voiceover narration that was put to kind of try to explain what's happening in this film.

Yes.

As we know, Paul, this film literally begins with the Skeksis going into the crystal chamber, right? And the sun hits the crystal and they are struck by the light refracted from the crystal. It's a completely alien beginning to a movie that if you don't know what's happening here, you're in real trouble, right?

Yeah, this movie, while following very classical beats of a fantasy adventure hero's journey quest, does so in a very aggressively alien, different context than audiences had ever seen or been transported to, and makes liberal use of voiceover to help us stay connected and oriented to the proceedings.

I think if they just handed out, you know, mushrooms when you walked in, they would not have needed this voiceover, but sadly they did not.

I think that would be a valid alternate approach to experiencing this film.

So, producer Brad, let's hear the opening narration to this film, if you please.

Another world, another time, in the age of wonder. A thousand years ago, this land was green and good, until the crystal cracked, for a single piece was lost, a shard of the crystal. Then strife began, and two new races appeared, the cruel Skeksis, the gentle Mystics.

So that is the voiceover that opened the movie, right? Another world, another time, in an age of wonder, right? And we get a little bit of exposition here, the cruel Skeksis with their twisted bodies and their twisted wills, lord over the dying land, right? And it is just bizarre world here. We're literally just watching these dinosaur, turtle, raptors in very ornate dresses getting hit by purple beams from a crystal. When I was 12, this was insane.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, it is unabashedly freaky. It's just like, what is... It's so aggressively weird and bold. There is no choice in this film that feels restrained. It is fully committed to complete fantasy and a cohesive world building of rich detail and complexity.

And just in case you weren't freaked out enough by the dinosaur, turtle, raptors and the dresses getting hit by the purple beams of the crystal, the movie then cuts to another completely bizarre race of creatures that look nothing like people, the mystics. So we go to Mystic Valley, and in Mystic Valley, we have these creatures who look kind of like camels, but they're like camels mixed in with like sort of hippies from Woodstock, and they are, the voiceover tells us they're going over the old rituals, but in a way that's very rote, like clearly they're loosing their will to live as well in this dying land. Something like that. Did you get that from this? How did that land with you, Paul?

Yeah, so one of the challenges of the film is that it has a lot to introduce us to up front that takes time, and there's not a lot that happens in the setting of the table. And I think it would be even more challenging without the voiceover guiding us. And one thing I'm curious about is that whole development process and how they, was that the plan from the get-go or was that something that they thought, oh, we need to kind of pull people along?

Look, I can completely imagine if I'm Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and Gary Kirk and Brian Froud, and we're just out in the English wilderness figuring this movie out, smoking what I imagine is a colossal amount of marijuana. Yes. I would imagine that when I look at the choices without the voiceover, that literally, you start with the evil dinosaur turtle raptors, then you go to the mystics, and then you see the one humanoid creature in this thing.

Yes.

I would imagine that to someone's mind, this would make complete and perfect sense, and part of me wonders, like if I had seen this film without the voiceover, without all this stuff, we have just accepted it. I don't know, we're kind of, the whole movie is sort of presented to us through the filter of studio notes, make this clearer, make this clearer, put in a voiceover, tell us what's happening.

Yeah, and I'm curious what the push and pull was in that. It's kind of tantalizing, looking at this, at just the end result. And anyway, it's just a marvel to kind of look at. But one of the things that's laid out that's really crucial is this dichotomy of these two races, the Cruel Skeksis, the Gentle Mystics, and there are only 10 left of each of them. And their respective leaders are both dying.

Are both dying. So that is kind of the- So you know, Paul, I think that-

Yeah, yeah, what we are presented with right at the outset is that, oh, okay, this is a momentous kind of collision of impending events.

There are two races, the planet is controlled. You know, Paul, because we're going in a kind of non-linear Jim Hensonian manner, we haven't even recapped what the movie is about. And I can see producer Brad squirming because we're now doing this in video. So let me go ahead and just tell you what the movie is about. In another world, another time in a dying land, two species control the planet Thra. One of them are the cruel Skeksis, and the other ones are the gentle mystics. The Skeksis are the de facto rulers of Thra, and they do so with an iron fist. Although by the time the movie begins, the only people they seem to be ruling are these little potato creatures named the Podlings, who serve as their slaves. What we find out as the movie goes on is that there was another race of creatures living on this planet, the Gelflings, and the Gelflings were massacred by the Skeksis decades prior, and there's only two of them left. The first one we meet is Jinn, who lives with the mystics, and he was raised by the head mystic, whom I believe is Irva. You can't tell them apart. I worked on this for three years, and it's still hard to know who's who. The main mystic basically tells Jinn that, it's a really weird exposition scene because the main mystic is dying, but the mystics are also very slow. So it's like having the exposition delivered by a dying sloth where he's like, I should have told you this many years ago. You're like, don't die, I need to know what the movie is about. So he tasks Jyn to find a shard without giving him much other explanation for what the shard is about, other than that it is deeply important. Because this is the one hero's journey movie.

Without giving him or us.

Or us.

Crucial context.

This is a hero's journey movie in which the hero continually asks himself, I wonder what my quest is for, because he doesn't actually know. In the course of this, he winds up getting the shard from this crone witch named Agra in what is one of the best set pieces in the movie. And then he meets Kira, who is the other lone survival gelfling, and together they travel to the Castle of the Crystal, where they quickly realize that their job is before the Great Conjunction. The planet Thra has three sons that we know as the three brothers, the three moons are the three sisters. When the three sons come together, the gelfling, much as the prophecy says, has to get on top of the crystal and put the shard of the crystal in the crack in the crystal, thereby healing the crystal and purportedly healing the planet, I would suppose, but none of this is really laid out for us. So we're just kind of waiting to see what happens with the same kind of confusion that our hero does. At the end of the film, of course, what is sundered and undone, the crystal is healed and we'll talk about what happens because if you think the beginning of this movie is druggie, wait till you see the end, right?

Boy, howdy. Yeah. Well, I was to talk about when to get there. But yeah, this is one of the interesting deviations from a classic quest movie, which is that usually there is a clarity of purpose. It is, you've got to get this to do that. You've got a very simple goal and you know what your endpoint and destination and mission is.

Luke Skywalker is missing. The plans for the Death Star have been stolen. The Empire is striking back. It's real easy and this one, none of that.

The dude wants to get his rug back because it ties the rug together. ET wants to go home. That's the classic pattern. It's very simple. That immediately, we are invested along with our protagonist and buy in. What The Dark Crystal challenges us and the protagonist is, hey, go get this thing, but we're not going to tell you why. We're going to have to hopefully maybe figure it out, discover that on the way. But just trust us that it's important.

It's also the fact that when we first meet Jin, now all the mystics raise their heads and they all do this collective chant, and then Jin arrives. My first note on this entire sequence is, oh my God, this world is alive. There are just little critters everywhere, little Jim Henson, Brian Froud critter. They didn't just stick their puppets in a setting. There are just puppets everywhere. Yeah. Jin goes to see his dying master, who as I said, speaks like a dying sloth.

Yes.

The dying master tries to, and the thing is, the dying master even says, I should have told you this a long time ago. You're like, no shit, you're dying and you talk real slow.

Yeah, yeah. And so, there are basically two things we know. He has to go find the shard from someone called Agra, and he doesn't tell him how to do that, who Agra is, how, what Agra looks like, really useful information that would be good to convey, but that he also has to find the shard before the Three Suns meet, before this conjunction event is going to happen. But that's basically all he knows. And all we know-

And he's just going to follow this one star to Agra's like-

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He kind of points him in the direction, and then it's like, good luck.

A very general direction, I might add.

Yes, very, very nonspecific. Yes. And then that's it. And then both leaders die respectively. And this is- Yeah. And what's interesting is that it is implicit, but doesn't become explicit to later, that the 10 Skeksis and Mystics are directly linked symbiotically to each other.

So, there is a whole Corsican Brothers thing going on with them that is very unclear. It's sort of clear now, but it becomes explicitly clear later.

Yes, yes.

You said yes.

There's an existential balance that has to be kept. So, when one dies, the other, the court, it's respective, yeah, yeah, dies.

So, now Paul, shall I do the expo dump now or shall I wait? Because this movie tries really hard to sort of explain why this is, but it is a convoluted mythology that I actually...

I think we can save that to when it becomes more dramatic, but I defer to you because you have lived in this world in a way very few people have.

We might as well just tell the audience now kind of what... I saw the sense of urgency in Javi's face. We gotta dump it. Okay. So, here's the thing. So, once upon a time, the planet Thra existed and everything was at peace, and Agra, this kind of crone, is in fact the heart of Thra. She is symbiotically linked to the planet Thra, right? Then, this race of beings called the Urskeks landed on Thra from another planet, and they saw that Agra was guarding the Crystal of Truth, which becomes the titular Dark Crystal later on, right? They say to Agra, Hey, give us the Crystal of Truth so that we can run experiments on it, and we'll build you a large scientific facility that you can use to astrally project to other galaxies so that you don't bother us while we're messing around with the Crystal that is symbiotically linked with your own being and the entire well-being of the Crystal. Agra takes the deal. She's off astrally projecting into other planets and other universes, and the Urskeks start doing experiments on the Crystal. None of this is in the movie, by the way. This is just shit that I know, because I had to. And then, in one of their experiments while trying to purify themselves using the Crystal, they crack the Crystal, and the Urskeks are rent-asunder into the Skeksis and the Mystics, right? And in the confusion of that, right? In the confusion of that, they start fighting each other. I don't know how, because the Mystics are very slow. And they crack the Crystal, and the shard falls off of the Crystal, and the Crystal is corrupted and becomes the Dark Crystal. And then, for a amount of time, the Skeksis are able to rule over Thra and over the Gelfling, except essentially they discover they can use the Crystal to drain the Gelfling of their life essence. So they wind up draining all the Gelflings in Thra, and thereby murdering them. So there's only two of them left, Jen, and the other one we'll meet later in the movie. And that's the setup for the movie that you never hear with any clarity during the film. All you know is there's a shard, there's only one Gelfling left, and yeah, and the Skeksis and the Mystics have been rent asunder, but when one dies, the other dies. Javi? Yes?

Was that backstory created for the 82 film, or is that done for the Age of Resistance?

No, that is the back story for the film, and that is something that they knew completely when they did it. If you look at the Brian Froud book, The World of the Dark Crystal, all this stuff is sort of laid out in it. So it is this incredibly rich world that existed in the minds of its creators that you're just sort of seeing the surface of here, much to our confusion as an audience, I might add.

Yes, and it is a great example, or possibly cautionary tale, given the fact that Dark Crystal did not break out as a huge blockbuster success, but kind of was relegated to cult status, is that creators of rich, complex worlds have... It's a challenge to kind of determine how much of that must be shared with an audience, and the audience only knows what you tell them, what you give them, and things that may be very meaningful in full context are not as meaningful in the absence of that context. But of the things that you laid out, we do get the most critical reveals as we go through the story about that the crystal was cracked, there's a shard, it needs to be restored. The fact that the Skeksis and the Mystics, and this is a big reveal near the end of the film, were originally one race that were split into two, which is very heady stuff. And the fact that there are only the two Gelflings left, so there are kind of big reveals that do fill in some of these gaps and add meaning over the course of the journey, but that larger, rich, world building back story is sort of kept from us, for better or worse.

And here's the thing, and we can say that for better or worse, and we can make fun of this movie till the cows come home, because there is so much about it that is just so weird, okay? But I'll tell you what, I believe in this film the way that I do Holy Scripture. I think that this movie is a work of art on par with Eraserhead, with anything David Lynch made. And for the same reasons, it is obscure, it is oblique. It insists on itself, it just stands there and tells you, here's what I am. And I think that just the balls of Jim Henson to do that. And honestly, I wish that we could see the movie how he originally intended it, you know, because that would be even weirder, you know? But I mean, for me, this is on par with Hodorowsky, like this is a humongous swing and such an act of cinematic bravery to me.

Yes.

That even though we will sound like we're making fun of the movie left and right, and we are, it comes out of a place of absolute awe.

Yeah, and as you pointed out, like just the degree of craft and artistry on display and that the film takes its time to showcase and linger on details that, again, like just have an incalculable amount of time and craft and care put into them, is, it's not for everybody, but it is unassailably, yeah, an extraordinary work of art that deserves recognition as a singular achievement.

And the other thing I would say is, you know, we talk about how this movie wasn't successful or whatever. I think that the problem here is that this movie was expected to deliver success.

Yes.

You know, I think that it's, and I understand why a studio would want that, obviously, from a Jim Henson movie. You've got the Muppets, you've got all of the stuff. It's generating a huge income for everybody who invests in it. This is a movie that is, I'm sorry, it's a David Lynch movie to me, you know? And I think that it's like universal putting out eraser head as a romantic comedy. I mean, it's like, the expectations and the deliverables are just not jiving here, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. And, and yeah, again, that collision of there are certain aspects of the film and, you know, a character who will emerge soon that have appealed to a younger audience, to kids, there are points of entry. But on a storytelling narrative and also just artistic level, it is reaching for, with such ambition and complexity that it is, it is, yeah. So striking that balance is such a challenge. But the fact that it is unafraid to just say, either you are all in and come along for this weird ride, or not, but we're doing it on our terms and we're committing from every level to-

And I would say, Paul, that the film did attract the kids. It was just the weird kids. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then confounded their parents. But anyway, we're still very early in the plot.

We're like five minutes, as usual, we're five minutes into the movie, we're like 45 minutes into the podcast right now.

But to me, when things get really good, and start to get a little juicy, and I'm not just saying this as a conclave geek or a succession geek, is there is a succession challenge once the Emperor of the Skeksis passes.

Yes, so Skekso, the Emperor, dies, and he's in his deathbed just like Gerva. And I love how they try to take one of them, tries to reach his first scepter, and he swats him away and he goes, I am still Emperor. And then he dies and he crumbles away, and then all the Skeksis gather to go to this... It is in the crystal chamber, isn't it, that the trial by stone happens, right?

Yeah, there is this big pillar, the stone, yes.

And we meet two, the two key Skeksis here are the Chamberlain, and the Gartham Master, and Skekang the Gartham Master, yes, and everybody knows that the Chamberlain does this, and the Gartham Master is not a fan. Can we hear clip number three, producer Bradley?

I hate your ripper.

I mean, at this point in the film, I'm all in. I'm like, okay, you got me. Like, and I remembered this as a kid, because the opening stretch is just confounding. And it's like, what, who are, what are, what, where am I? What are all these weird things? Whatever, blah, blah, blah. But as soon as you start getting real character and personality, and that one little bit that the Chamberlain does is, I think, enough to just like pull you in and be like, okay.

Yeah.

And it's kind of the signature sound of the movie. When Netflix did the preview for Age of Resistance, the tag of the preview after, ta-dum, right? Was like, just everybody. And so, and I actually chose this. I have this clip, which is how the Chamberlain kind of initiates his challenge for the throne. And I put this clip in because it's actually the title of my, the Age of Resistance titles are all quotes from the original movie. And episode seven, I believe, was my episode. And the title of the episode is, Producer Brad, can we hear clip number five?

It's time to make my move.

It's time to make my move. So the Chamberlain and Skechon, the Gartham master, now the Gartham are the crab-like soldiers of the Skeksis, who hold the world, basically enforce the Skeksis will, decide that they're going to decide who the next emperor is. The conclave is the Trial by Stone. Hey, Paul, any idea what the Trial by Stone, other than that they get these swords and they hit the stone with it, what is the, how is the Trial by Stone decided? Did you get any idea about that in the movie?

So here's the thing, I have in my notes, first and foremost, the other thing that really captivated me as a youth, because again, I was lost at the beginning of this film as a kid, but you get the Chamberlain with his, and then you get cool swords. They have the coolest freaking swords for the Trial by Stone.

Yeah, they're on a plinth that descends from under the floor.

I would put them up against any great fantasy sword design of all time. They're glorious. And it also just seems striking from the outset that there's this challenge between the general and the Chamberlain who seems woefully outmatched in anything involving violence. Why would he think that's a good idea? But it's very oblique in terms of what this challenge is and how it works. There's this big stone pillar.

The stone comes up from the ground.

Yeah, that they have to whack at with the swords.

And it's clearly been hit a lot of times. It's got a lot of holes in it, right?

Yeah.

A lot of slashes in it, right? But so what's the trial? Like are they just supposed to hit the stone until somebody can't hit it anymore? Because it's clearly been hit a lot of times, right?

Well, yes, and also you think, oh, well, maybe it's who can shatter the stone. But then you're looking at the stone and say, well, no one ever has.

So that's shattered it before. So it was a much taller stone to begin with.

It can't be that simple. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. It's just, no, it's just, oh, we're going to play with these puppets and the sword. You're going to like puppet action.

And by the way, the thing that's really striking to quote a phrase here is that puppets actually, like the thing I learned making the, working on The Age of Resistance, puppets can't do much. You know, puppets can emote, they can move their hands, but they can't, grasping things, holding things, doing a lot of that stuff is really difficult. So the fact that you've got these body performers inside these puppets, they're actually doing the head. You probably have another person doing the hand. They're wielding these swords and actually hitting something is kind of stunning. Yes. Just on the level of puppetry craft alone. Yes. But, so they take turns hitting the stone, and then every time they hit the stone, somebody goes, hmm, good hit, hmm, hmm, hmm. We don't know why. But finally, the Gartham Master is, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

If only it had been like a piñata. I just was thinking, why couldn't it have been a piñata challenge? But that's just me.

The Stone Piñata sounds like the great magical realist novel of the 1970s that Garcia Marquez never wrote.

Imagine what kind of Brian Frowdy-ish wonders could have erupted out of a piñata in the Dark Crystal world. Again, this is the tangents my brain goes on in watching.

I will say, just to get us back on track, I would say that the conclusion of the trial by stone is, already the Skeksis looking at the beams of light coming off of the crystal, refracted from the sun, so that's pretty creepy. But the first, and the emperor dying and then crumbling into dust is pretty creepy. But let me tell ya, so the Chamberlain, so Skekong hits the stone really hard. The stone finally does shatter, which is a conclusion to the trial. Whatever the initial stakes may have been, shattering the stone does the trick. Now the Gartham Master, yes, is the emperor. What do they do to the Chamberlain?

He is stripped and vanished. But it is like, whoa, this is-

It is so awful. All the Skeksis pile up on him and they start ripping his clothes, and the Chamberlain is screaming like, like, like, like, like bloody murders.

Yeah.

And then when they're done, he's naked and he's just like this dead, emaciated bird.

It is, it is so disturbing. Oh my God. Nightmare fuel, like just, it's like, ah, this is- And again, this is the one character that we have gotten some endearment towards.

Yes.

And immediately, even though he's evil, but he seems like he's the nice one of the evil.

Yeah.

He's like, he's the nicest.

But we appreciate his motivation, his scheming.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We know who he is, right? Yeah.

He's, you know, he's got to be him. But this just seems so cruel and is viscerally abusive.

It also tells you that this movie is, yeah.

It's not playing around.

It takes no prisoners. It's not playing around.

Yeah.

It is.

It is.

It was not rated G. It was a PG movie. And honestly, it could have been an R for some of the things that happened in it. So now, so now the Chamberlain is banished. He's forced to leave the Castle of the Crystal.

Yes.

And we go back to Jin. And Jin, Jin now has all these voiceovers that kind of explain where his head is at. So what we hear, so he's got to go on this quest. His master is dead.

There's a critical moment, though, that connects these two narratives that up until this point are happening in parallel, because once the Chamberlain is banished, I'm cueing the Crystal, the Crystal calls.

Oh, that's right. That's right. Well, you know what? That's because the banishment were a little bit chronologically messed up here because Jin starts his journey before the Crystal, before the Trial by Stone.

Yeah.

And then we cut to the Trial by Stone.

I assume we've already sent him on the journey from our previous explanation.

Well, then, he's on the journey.

He was pointed in the direction. Yeah.

Okay, so let's play clip number four, just so we can get a taste of his voiceover and kind of where his head is at, okay?

All right? Alone then.

That's what I call a one-line character arc. I'm not ready to go alone. Oh, fuck it.

Oh, well.

OK. Now, Paul, go ahead. So the Gelfing's out on the quest. And Paul, please give us give a cue us into the best quote of the entire thing, please.

Yes. I mean, the Chamberlain has been dispatched, has been sent into exile naked and afraid. The general has now assumed the throne of the emperor. But before he can even start, you know, whatever.

Just signing executive orders.

Yes, exactly. Whatever radical reorganization of his government that he's been scheming for who knows how long. Yeah. Something intercedes.

Okay, you can't watch this movie without spending the next three weeks going, the Crystal calls to the Crystal Chamber.

And as becomes immediately evident, when the Crystal calls, it demands you respond quickly. Whatever else you're doing does not matter. You got to drop everything, and the Crystal's calling, that's a big deal. And the Crystal reveals that there is a Gelfling, that they all believed had been wiped out and had been sucked dry by the parasite life force sucking stone from hell to feed them.

We'll talk about that in a second.

And they're like, ooh, juicy, like we missed one. Let's, we got to get this Gelfling.

But some of them, it's interesting, because some of the, here's the thing.

What they see also is a threat because of the prophecy.

Yes, yes, they know the prophecy and they know that a lone Gelfling. So it's interesting because they see that in the prequel, in the Age of Resistance, the Skeksis and the Gelfling kind of have a symbiosis. The Gelfling serve the Skeksis as their Lords and Masters and the Lords of the Crystal and all of that.

Yeah.

And in this, when they see the Gelfling, they're kind of repulsed by the Gelfling. They're like, oh, disgusting creature, you know, all of that stuff.

Yeah.

And what I think, you know, the way that we kind of reconciled all of this for ourselves is that in the prequel, you're watching this society at its height. It's the height of Gelfling society. There are many clans, there are Gelfling cities, all this stuff. They all work with the Skeksis. The Skeksis rule them all. Then the Skeksis basically drained all the Gelfling of their life essence, which they can do with the Dark Crystal. We'll get into that in a second because that's another sequence in this film that is nightmarish.

It's so messed up.

And what was it? Yeah. So for us, writing the prequel, we said, okay, the movie takes place however many years later, and you're literally watching, the Skeksis are basically heroin addicts in withdrawal. The reason they're so insane and so just kind of not rational in the way that they are, is that they literally are just at the end of the line of having all of this stuff and all of that. They're literally just dissolute and they're circling the drain in terms of their mental capacity and their physical capacity.

Yeah.

And that's sort of, yeah. So they're in a state of deterioration along with the entirety of Thra. So, yeah, so they discover that there's a gelfling, that the gelfling is going to fulfill the prophecy and they call forth the Garthim.

Yes, these giant crab bug beetle monster creatures of doom.

Yes. Who, by the way, just in a nice tidbit, I can tell you about the Garthim, is that the Garthim, so one of the species the Skeksis massacred is called the Arathim. And they were these spider creatures that had all the carapaces and claws and all that stuff. And then there was another species called the Grunax. And the Grunax are, we actually kind of got them from an early Brian Froud illustration that there'd be these miners. So the Grunax were actually the slaves to the scientists, who's the Skeksis who gets the crystal to do all these awful things. And he melded them together and used the crystal to bring them to life as the Garthim. So the Garthim are also the product of a dual genocide in Thra. So they're really good with the genocide of the Skeksis. They love it. It's just their thing.

I mean, just big fans. Yeah. So then, so Jin finally gets to Augra. Yeah, they dispatch the creatures. We're back to Jin, who again had been given the vaguest of directions. So vague. But has ended up in a place. I don't think we have this clip, but it's one of my favorites. And I found myself going, yeah, in agreement where he finds this land at the base of this mountain or whatever. And he says, this place is weird. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it really is. It's all weird. This place could not be weirder. And there are vines that are alive and moving tentacle vines and stuff. And then-

No, this is moving orange anemones that live on this mountainside. And they're all moving. And he looks at them and that's when he says, this is weird. And it's like, mm-hmm, you're-

Yeah, yeah. And then they kind of grab him. And then, of course, we finally meet Agra, but of course, we don't know it's Agra. He doesn't know it's Agra. But we have a pretty good guess it's Agra because we've been foreshadowed.

I mean, who else could it be?

Who else would it be? Unless it's some random other character in this critical moment.

Well, the sketches have killed everybody else.

Yes. Yes. And Agra, just a fantastic character design.

Yes.

One-eyed Agra that is removable.

She is voiced by the great Billy Whitelaw, who was one of the great British character actresses who just had this amazing husky voice.

Yeah.

Just so much character and personality. And then we get into her home and world. And one of the great, if not the greatest set. And as a child space geek, I lost my mind seeing her planetarium, which is just glorious. Absolutely.

So the aura, yeah. So it is stunning when you see it. And it's this giant mechanical sort of, well, we called it the orary.

Yeah.

And it's actually the device that the Skeksis built for her so that she could, so when you see it in Age of Resistance, she's actually on like this bed in front of it, and she's actually in a trance.

Yeah.

And it's just this giant mechanical like planets, and it's beautiful. And of course, Agra, as is the case with everything in this movie, is incredibly vague about stuff as well. Because Jin says, I think something bad's happening. I think that there's a big ending coming, and Agra says to him, Click number seven, Producer Brad.

And begin all the same big change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Which is-

Thank you. Yeah, thanks.

Which is about all the explanation we get about the Great Conjunction. That is this impending event, the clicking, the ticking clock that we have for our plot.

The very vague ticking clock.

Yes, it's like, what does it mean? What's gonna happen? What's it gonna do?

Agra makes Obi-Wan Kenobi with a certain point of view bullshit. Like, she makes him look like the most, like, just a hard objectivist. Like, you know, like, like the most specific person in the world. Agra is Vegas Fog. And Agra basically grabs a box full of shards of crystal and throws it in front of Jinn and says, find it, I don't know.

Yeah, this is an interesting scene. And there's also obviously a little Yoda in action with this dynamic and with Agra. But then we also get a scene that I will speculate that-

Yes, do go on.

That George Lucas and Spielberg steal in Indian Jones and The Last Crusade, where Jinn is being offered an array of possible shards. Yes. And it's a challenge of can you choose the-

Wisely, yes.

Yes, wisely, the actual legitimate shard. And this is a test, a classical test. And how does Jinn do this?

How does he? He just sort of looks at them and I don't know, you tell me. See, I saw it more as Temple of Doom with the ice and the diamond.

Okay, that too. And it's a classical kind of test on a quest.

Just like she's kind of like Yoda, where she doesn't reveal her true identity until well into her senior.

I don't mean to pick on Last Crusade, but...

So they stole it twice.

Yeah.

But yes. Well, one steal from the other. You rob Paul, you pay Peter, you pay Paul, you pay... That's the whole thing. But you rob producer Brad to pay Paul, and then he uses that money to pay Javi. That's what we're saying here.

But what I find interesting is that we're presented with what feels to me like a payoff that has not had a set up, which is that Jem whips out this flute. And for some reason, he has the intuition that if he plays the flute, that will somehow trigger or help him intuit or identify which shard is the actual shard of The Dark Crystal. And lo and behold, him playing the flute causes one shard to glow. But it's like, how does he know they knew that?

Well, I mean, because this whole movie, I mean, look, I think that this movie works on... The first time we meet Jem, he is playing the flute by the river. Yes. And I think that, you know, again, it's like...

It might just be like a coping mechanism where he's in stressful situations, he just decides, I gotta play the flute to focus. Maybe that's all that it is. And it just happens to them align with...

Spielberg was gonna steal that for Private Ryan, but they wound up not doing it. So, yeah, Vin Diesel's character under great stress would always take out his... They cut it from the movie, never mind. Anyway.

He played an oboe.

I think this movie operates on dream logic a lot.

Yes.

And I think that for me... But it's beautiful.

It's very elegant. It's very elegant, it's very visual, and yeah, it works.

And at this point, you're in another... I mean, it's another world, another time, and it's not even like a galaxy far, far away. It's like there are no humans in this movie, and it's just not... You know, when we were doing the prequel, one of the... You know, I made up a note card and it said, Gelfling are not human. And by the way, the plural of Gelfling is Gelfling. Yes. FYI. We're going to say Gelflings the whole time because we're that way, but it's just... So they're not human, and they don't operate like human beings. And I think watching this movie as a human being, you look at this, and you want to enter... You want to make it... Because he's the lead character, you want to identify with him, but they don't always do human shit.

No.

It's the kind of thing you have to accept, you know?

No, no. And again, that's another challenge in terms of finding ways in and orienting oneself in this world that we are still doing at this point in the process. But as sort of languid as the opening of the film is, what's great here is that the momentum of the proceedings picks up, because just as he finds the right shard, those creepy crab bug beetle creatures, whose name I forget, attack.

The Gartham.

The Gartham attack ruthlessly and start just destroying shit.

And that's the thing.

It is unhinged.

Yeah.

It's one of the greatest sets in movie history. And the Gartham just show up and start tearing. Like there's no tactics here. There's no battle strategy. There's no commando infiltration. They just start tearing up the place. And Jinn actually gets on one of the planets in the Aurary and he gets flung up to the second level. I mean, they really do. This action sequence is pretty great.

It's a very impressive sequence.

I'm considering it was made with puppets and it's right mechanical Aurary. Yeah.

Exactly. So I marvel at, again, the ambition of the production to kind of push puppetry into directions and to do things that we have never seen but done before. And that no one in the right mind would even attempt to... Yeah. It's wild. And they pull it off marvelously.

Yeah.

And they're using... And look, on Age of Resistance, we had CGI that we could use for set enhancements and we could use to like take strings out of things if the puppets were running or whatever here. When Gin runs, it's an 8-year-old kid in a Gin costume.

Yeah.

When you see his legs moving. But everything else is done by puppeteers. And it's not just puppeteers like with their hands, you know, sort of over their heads. Like, first of all, the puppeteers are some of the most amazing athletes you'll ever meet. We had to have unset masseurs and massage therapy for them, you know, because the job is so physically demanding. They're incredible artists. They're great actors. They're also working with like, you know, like the system back then was not, you know, they didn't have flat screens. So if you're looking at the Gelfling, you know, the set is four feet off the ground. Jim Henson, who operates Gin, is literally underneath the set, hand up, wearing a giant headset with a microphone so that he can give direction and take direction. And he also has a cathode ray tube monitor strapped to his neck so that he can see what the camera is seeing. So he's got, but it's not like a flat screen in an iPad or something. It's literally like a giant box with a glass tube in it. For those of you born before the 20th century or after the 20th century. So it's, the physical demands of this are huge. And when you see Gin being flung around and it's incredible that they were even able to pull any of this off. And now here's the thing about the scene that, you know, we did poke a little bit of fun at. On, Ogre is the heart of Thra. She's capable of astrally projecting to other worlds. She is linked to the Crystal of Truth and the Dark Crystal. She is the most powerful force of magic in this world, right? And the Garthian come in, they tear up their place. And how do they defeat her? She's literally the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Thra, right?

But we don't know that.

They put her in a bag.

But here's the thing.

Well, no, we don't.

The viewers of this film have no idea.

Have no idea.

Of any of that when it comes to her.

No. But she's still defeated by a bag. Like, the Garthians stick in the burlap sack, and that's that.

It's, yeah, it's, it's, yeah. It's, it does not seem worthy of her. But on the other hand, one could retcon her thinking, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna-

There's no reason to fight here, yeah.

And like, I'm gonna go let these guys have it, and like, just let them take me to the, you know, to the Skeksis and, you know, knowing that she's, she's gonna be okay, and she can hold her own when she gets there. But again, we don't know any of this, and so we're worried for her. But Jen manages to escape, thankfully.

I keep calling him Jen, because I worked on Lost and It's a Whole Thing, I'm sorry.

Yeah. And with the Shard, so, which again, he still does not understand the significance of, and-

And just in case, and just in case we think he might understand the significance, the voiceover lets us know, right?

Yes.

Producer Brad, clip number eight.

Now I've got the Shard, but what do I do with it? What is it? Am I supposed to take it somewhere?

What's so special about this Shard?

It doesn't look like any-

Lot of questions. We're totally confused.

And so is the audience.

Yeah. And the one being who could answer them has been taken hostage by the Gartham. But this is also the scene where- No, he has not met- No, this is where he meets Kira, actually.

He's about to. There are two things that happen leading up to this. One is, there is a glorious, what I call a freaky flora and fauna montage. That is just a showcase of Henson's work and his compatriots. And it is a great transition in terms of passage of time. It doesn't take too long. But again, in terms of just taking the time to pay attention to detail of the craft and immerse us in the richness of this world, I just found it as a lovely little little stretch. And we also get what we will start getting intermittently, our cutaways to the mystics who are now very slowly caravanning in single file across this land to the castle of the Skeksis.

Somehow, the destruction of the Avagras orrery, Jend finding the shard, all of these things, the mystics have, again, another moment of chanting. And then they sort of go on their journey very slowly because they're the mystics.

Yeah. And the conjunction is loomed. So I think it's all like there's for some reason. And again, we are kind of largely kept in the dark that they are compelled that they know they've got to get to the castle.

When you talk about this flora and fauna montage, like you cannot say enough good things about Brian Froud, and by the way, also his wife Wendy, who was deeply involved in the fabric. And I got to see them both at work. The design of this thing is just beyond imagination. Like just the sheer volume of creatures and of life that they put in this world to make it feel like another planet is just insanely amazing. Yeah, I just, I can't wonder enough.

I, again, looking at this film again, and thankfully exists in a beautiful transfer and can be enjoyed and feels still new. Even though it is very much of its time, it does feel like it was vastly underappreciated at the time as an artistic achievement. Even given some of its narrative challenges, that it, I still feel like it was robbed of some sort of special achievement Oscar for artistic achievement because it's extraordinary. It is absolutely extraordinary. But between the things we've just mentioned in terms of the, you know, Gen's Veo, you know, all these questions that are the same questions the audience has, it taps into something we've talked about before. I think you've and Jose have talked about on your previous podcast that in storytelling there is this tension between curiosity and confusion. And that in terms of how much we reveal versus hold back from our audience. We want them leaning in and being curious, but we have to be careful to calibrate that so that we don't push them away with confusion.

And it's what we call in the writers room, we call that good. You want good confusion. You want people to be confused in a way that makes them want to know more.

Yeah, yes. And not for too long, because that's also like it's it's it's it's on a it's on a fuse with the audience in terms of how long they're willing to tolerate confusion. And I think this film is very brave in how willing it is to do that and more effective than not in terms of delivering the answers, maybe not answer to the questions you are asking, but it does feed you new bits of information along the way to give you confidence that you're in the hands of competent storytellers that are not making arbitrary decisions, but that there is like go along with us. And so toward that end, it's that even though it's like, yeah, what the hell is the Shard IV? What am I going to do with it? Why do I care? We then are immediately treated to then the next major, and really the last remaining significant character introduction, which is-

Yes, indeed.

Which is actually is twofold, which is one of the greatest creatures of all time.

Yes, indeed.

Fizzgig, and then Kira, the other last remaining gelfling. That, yeah. And it's marvelous.

So Jen goes to this one. So one of the things I wanted to say before we get to Kira's introduction, because it is, but in Apropos, if you're saying about confusion, one of the words that kept coming up, and we heard it a lot from Lisa Hansen, was crazy wisdom. And I think that's just this whole idea of it doesn't have to be linear, it doesn't have to be necessarily sensical in the way that you think things have to be sensical. But it does have to present a kind of crazy wisdom, a kind of, and also just the seduction of the natural world, and the idea that the natural world doesn't move in a linear logical fashion all the time. And what's really interesting about Agra as the mentor character, as the Obi-Wan characters, she doesn't operate like Obi-Wan. She's not giving info dumps and training people and shit like that. She's sort of a wanderer. She is somebody who's also a little bit addled, to be honest with you.

Yeah. And also kind of feels like she kind of can't be bothered.

Yeah.

She's got her own stuff to do. So she's in and out.

She's very cranky. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is kind of great.

So and Kira. So we meet Kira and Kira, apparently one of the biggest challenges in the movie and one of the shots that took the longest to do is the one we meet this hooded figure who has this little fuzzy tribble dog with two sets of jaws. And she lifts the hood to reveal that she's a female gelfling, right? Apparently, getting her to take the hood off took hours. Like just it was just really hard to get the fabric and the fingers to work too. You just you know, it's just you learn just how hard it is to get these puppets to perform the way you need to. And it's it's and then Kira and Jin touch hands.

Yeah, she rescues him from the swamp. She kind of gives Fizzgig to calm down because he looks like he wants to eat him or attack him or something. And I just I cannot say and I'm going to try not to go on a whole Fizzgig tangent. I Fizzgig is why would you try not to?

This is this is this is have you seen our show?

Have you heard our show? Fizzgig is a miracle. I think it's just a perfect, perfect creature creation. We have been deprived as a civilization of more Fizzgig. I think that we are woefully deficient in Fizzgig-ness in our culture.

Fizzgiggity.

And society, yes. And I, yeah, I just, that, it was the most delightful reconnection to my childhood glee of meeting Fizzgig for the first time and seeing like, oh yeah, there's Fizzgig. I love Fizzgig.

So Paul, as you know, in The Age of Resistance, there were many Fizzgigs.

Yes.

And including one, including one that had an eye patch, which was my favorite one out of all of them.

Yes.

And I believe that Dave Geltz actually came in and did a short cameo as one of the Fizzgigs in The Age of Resistance. We had a few of the puppeteers from the original come in and he was one of the greats. Yeah. And also another one is Louise Gold, who played the gourmand in the original movie, and she came back and played the same character as well in an amazing feat of just physical fitness.

Yeah.

The one thing we never got to do on Age of Resistance, and I had it written on a card and I put it up a lot on the board and it kept getting taken down, was Fizzgig Tsunami. You're welcome.

Oh, the mind boggles and the heart sings. Yes. Yeah, so bless you. I just have to say bless you. And I do when we get to the end, I do want to talk about Age of Resistance a bit with you. There are things I'm holding back. But one of the things I do have to thank you and your compatriots was for recognizing the value and of Fizzgig-ness, Fizzgig-socity. And blessing us with a reward for our cumulative...

30 years of patience waiting for more.

We were deprived for decades. But I still just feel that there is a great social injustice that Fizzgig has not penetrated and permeated our broader culture to the degree that so many other cute creatures of wonder have.

It should be.

And I still need a plush Fizzgig. I somehow do not have one. And that is a wrong that still needs to be corrected in my life, even though I have way too much stuff.

But let's move to Kira and Jin and Jen touching each other, because we get a huge piece of... Yes. So it turns out Gelfling, not being human, when they touch each other, they dream fast, which means that they exposition dump each other mutually. And we get this really great montage of Kira as a child being raised by podlings and Jen being raised by the mystics. We see this cute little Jen being bathed by the weather master. It's awesome. So Gelfling have three dream-based abilities. There's dream fasting, which is when you touch, they touch each other and they share their memories, which is how we get a lot of the backstory of this, including Kira's mom being killed by Gartham and Kira being placed in a hollowed out tree by her mother, who I can tell you without breaking my NDA, was one of the main characters of Age of Resistance.

Dun, dun, dun.

Dun, dun, dun. And we see how they grew up as the lone representatives of this face while their entire race was being genocided. And we just get to know a little bit more about their backstory, which is great. We also learn that Kira speaks podling language, which much to the chagrin of the Jim Henson Company, was a kind of mishmash of Serb and a few other Serbian and a few other Eastern European languages. And when the movie played in Eastern Europe, this was not so well received apparently.

Oops.

Well, you know.

Kind of like, yeah, kind of like Nyen Nam in Return of the Jedi speaking in, I think it's Swahili. Like in the movie, it's an African dialect. And when the movie played in Africa, people were like, hey, what's that about? Yeah. So actually for the TV show, JM. Lee, who wrote a bunch of Dark Crystal prequel novels and all of that, created a con line for the podlings. So that we actually, instead of using the original podling language like, and it's a beautiful creation and we have a main podling character, so we speak it a lot. It's great. So now Kira, right, is going to take Jen to the podling village where she was raised.

Yes.

And with the shard, but not before they were spotted by the crystal bats.

Yes.

In another little piece of nightmare fuel, right?

Yes, yes, yes. And those are real quick, real quick. I just got to say, I love this montage. There are so many examples of the second act montage and whatever, blah, blah, blah. But going into the whole thing about information being withheld versus given and an exposition, up until this point in the film, I had this sense of frustration of who are these characters, who's Jen, who is our protagonist. And we are given nothing as far as who he is as a character, almost nothing. But we are rewarded with this montage, which is so beautifully done. It's hard to describe without actually just watching it, because the narrative efficiency and pure cinematic nature of these little glimpses and clip reel, but so artfully done of their filling in key moments and gaps in each of their upbringings and history that immediately brain dump to us this sense of them as fuller, richer characters, while also showing how they then immediately connect and bond as these two last of their kind who are now finally connecting. Is that from this montage on, we are now immediately more invested in them, in Jen as the protagonist, but also now this central relationship that we're then rooting for. And I just, I think it's really well done.

No, it's beautiful, and it saves us a very, it saves us some very tedious meet cute dialogue, which is always good. And also, again, just to speaking to the weirdness and the dream logic of this movie, like it happens almost halfway into the movie.

Yes.

That you get all of this information. And it's sort of like, at this point, I'm in Jen's journey anyway.

Yes.

But it's, or Jen, I keep, oh God, I can't believe I literally worked on this material and I can't fucking, and no, but I think it's really elegant and I think it's beautiful. And I agree with everything you've said about it.

I think that a traditional development note would be, oh, we need to know this sooner. Yes. But the restraint of saying, no, no, no, no, no, we're gonna wait and hold it and we're gonna deploy it in this fashion that then will double as the way for these two characters to meet and connect, I think is really smart. And I think it's gutsy too, but I find it very effective and also very moving, because it really, at that point, you feel like, oh, yeah, these characters are coming alive. I want to get to the Pondling Village, but a couple of quick things happen.

No, no, no, but here's the thing. We have the sketches, before they even get to the Crystal Bats, we actually jump the gun, because there's a transition here. We're in the swamp and this creature comes up, and it's this giant fish called the Nebri.

Yes, this big swamp blob creature.

Well, Nebri's happened to be the Skeksis' favorite meal.

Yes, we don't know this yet.

So this is then the, no, we don't, but this is the cut.

Oh my God.

You go from the living Nebri to a Nebri on a tray.

Well, it's not just that, it's worse, because there's this big swamp creature blobby thing, that first we're like, oh, is this a threat? Is this scary? Is this going to eat them? Like Jannan and Kira or whatever. But it's like, oh no, it's, it's, it's, it's docile. It's a khan creature and it has babies. It has this cute little blobby, whatever swamp babies. And then we cut ruthlessly from the thought of the thing with its babies, this whole family, to a cooked baby on a platter being delivered to the Skeksis Emperor and presumably his first celebratory feast or something. And it is, it is, it is so sick and wrong. It is funny in the darkest, most depraved way. But, oh my God, I, wow.

And it leads us into the scene from this film that everybody remembers who's seen this film, which is the Skeksis Banquet.

Yes.

Which is so gross and awful and wonderful. And it's literally, Elaborate. The surviving Skeksis just around this giant banquet table, Yeah. eating all sorts of disgusting little critters. And I, the elegance with which they solve the fork problem, Yes. is one of my favorite things of this. Because puppets would have a very hard time handling cutlery. So they put the cutlery as like these, Finger utensils. Yes. They're like attached by these caps to their fingers. So they just literally stab at things with their fingers, with forks attached to their fingers. It's beautiful. And it's so alien and weird.

Brilliant. It's brilliant. Because again, it's a way of further enriching the fantasy weirdness of this.

And the alienness of it.

The alienness of this world, but solving a very practical problem. How are we, these puppets, going to interact with food because they're freaking puppets. It's like, yeah, we create freer utensils.

And the food is puppets too. Half the food is alive and it's like squirming and stuff.

It's a glorious showcase, again, of puppetry and a complexity of craft that is like, why would you do that to yourself as a puppeteer, as a filmmaker and make it that hard? But the payoff is so rich and gross, but it's wonderful.

And it's one of these things, and we had to replicate some of a couple of, we did a couple of banquet scenes in Age of Resistance. And I got to tell you, for me, one of the greatest days of my life was stepping into the set. They recreated the set exactly how you see it in the film. And to be able to walk in with those creatures there, having a banquet, it was insane. Like, I mean, literally my head fucking exploded. And, but however, the banquet is interrupted by the untimely arrival of?

Agra! The big...

Agra in a bag!

Yeah, the big crab, bug, beetle, soldier, monsters deliver Agra, who emerges from a bag, and we get the first sense that she is an imposing figure, that she carries power given the reaction from the Skeksis.

They're pretty horrified by her, which is... it's also weird that they're so horrified by her. And again, it speaks to kind of the addledness of this, because they've known Agra for a long time. They've had business dealings with Agra. Like, they traded... she traded the crystal of power that became the Dark Crystal for the orrery. Like, they have a backstory.

Again, we don't know that, but we get a sense... Oh, yeah, there's a relationship and she's just like... You guys really screwed up.

Really fucked up. And producer Brad, let's hear her letting them have it, because it is just the best.

Fools! Skechsis fools! What do you want with me? This is no Delfling! Of course I'm no Delfling, you putrid lizards! I'll get my eyes for you! Delfling gone! Stupid got him! You want Delfling? Why not ask me? No! Easier to send your crab brain soldiers! Burn my home! Now, home gone! Delfling gone! Nothing but...

Wow! She's really great! Yeah! I mean, no, look, I know this actress' name because she was in a TV movie version of A Tale of Two Cities that I watched when I was... She was Madame Delfarge. And I just remember her being so evil. And then seeing this movie, I recognized her voice immediately. And I mean, just... Of course I'm no Delfling! I mean, she's just... It's unhinged and it's wonderful. I love that the Skeksis are petrified of her. That's something we carried through into Age of Resistance, even though they do imprison her and do all sorts of... You know, they have all sorts of weird things happen with them. But she's just such a powerful character. And... But she's also kind of like a... Not entirely a moral North Star, which is what you expect from this sort of mentor character. She's kind of a wandering mentor and her morality is weird.

Yeah. Yeah. She's sort of very singular on her own, on her own side, but has a global overall sense of things and of how they should be and aren't and has her own goals, but she keeps them kind of to herself and also is a little baddie.

Also, by the way, there's a couple things. She is connected to the planet. I mean, literally the planet has gone insane and there's this thing called the darkening that has basically killed so many of the flora and fauna. That's why the planet is so dark and so horrible. And she's kind of addled as well. I mean, they're all sort of in this weird state of like irrationality based on the decay of the planet, you know?

Yes, and the state of the crystal, which again will become vividly evident at the end. Like, we have a sense of that now, but we haven't seen... Anyway, we'll get to that at the end.

Look, I also want to spill the tea on Augura, just in case we're talking about her grave morality. Like, she also had sex with a comet and had a son who is evil. Her son is named Raunip, and it is literally the product of her somehow having intercourse of some sort with a comet. So, I mean, she's got skeletons in her closet too. She's not squeaky clean, you know?

I was going to say, the... botanical, chemical... combinations that must have conspired in the psyche of Jim Henson and Frank Oz to concoct this...

And Brian Froud and...

Yeah, it's... It's impressive.

Now, because the Gartham did not bring Jin to them and instead brought Augra, the Gartham then call out the Crystal Bats, which are these winged shards of the crystal, that broadcast whatever they see back to the crystal. So the Skeksis have their own surveillance drones, is what we're trying to say here.

Exactly. I was going to say it's early bio-engineered drone technology in the world of the Skeksis. So the... Yeah, the Crystal Bats are cool and the Creepy.

Yeah, they're very cool. Yeah.

And yeah, again, another key creature introduction.

Yes.

And at this point, and yeah, go ahead. You go ahead, you go ahead.

Yeah.

So then we're back out to Jen and Kira, who have shared this bond and are now canoeing.

Canoeing.

Not quite canoodling yet, but they're having, and they have kind of a canoe duet.

Yes.

And it's a lovely kind of pastoral respite that they're having on their journey together.

To the podling village?

To the podling village, which again, the arrival at the podling village, and I want you to talk about the podlings, but in retrospect now, it's difficult to look at this and not think of its influence on the Ewok village and Return of the Jedi.

Oh, interesting. Kira, first of all, Kira takes out a crystal bat using a slingshot.

Oh, yes.

Which is badass, you know?

I forgot that. That is really cool.

And again, I'm sure that took them like 22 days to film because I can't imagine how they got Kira to wield that weapon like that.

Yeah.

But they do get to the podling village.

But the crystal bat, important to say, did spot them and transmit the image back. So now the Skeksis are going to know there are not one but now two gelflings.

Yes, and I believe this is the point when the vernacular is shit gets real.

Yes.

No, because this is actually the podling village sequence sort of kickstarts the third act of the film. Yeah. So we get to the podling village and the podlings are, so the podlings are these beings that grow underground like potatoes. They don't have sexual reproduction. They actually, they're little potato beings. The best thing about the podlings is scared podlings are the best podlings. You see them in the cast because they've been enslaved by the Skeksis. They're always scared. They always have chains on them. There's a bunch of sequences in the Age of Resistance where like the scared podling band, those Skeksis are like, music, and there's just these terrified podlings. But in the village, they're actually quite amiable, quite affable. They are big-hearted, loving creatures that we extended their civilization a lot in the Age of Resistance. You see this here. They're very cute. Of course, at the apex of their cuteness, what happens? The Garthim come in and in a harrowing sequence, they destroy the podling village like they did August, Castle and Orrery. There's one scene where one of the podling screams, like almost into the camera lens, and it's terrifying because you feel for these little cute little, oh my God, it's so awful.

There is podling mass trauma being inflicted, again, without much warning and without any mercy or grace.

By the way, they're not killed, they're enslaved.

Yes, they're being enslaved. And soon we will know why and what the Skeksis are using the podling for, and it is fucked up. But who then emerges as Jen and Kira are trying to make their way through this attack? And just as the Gartian are about to grab them, the Chamberlain steps in and blocks them the path.

Using his Skeksis authority, he's like, hey, I'm a Skeksis, a Thoth, yeah.

And the Gartian apparently are not up to speed or confused by his status because maybe they didn't get the memo that he was banished. And we're like, oh, this is the plot thickens.

Look, I think the plot of the film kicked in before the Skekong administration could send out the email blast that the Chamberlain had been banished, whatever. And the Gartham do obey him, so the Gartham back off. And the Chamberlain makes a peace overture to the Gelfling. He tries to get the Gelfling to be friends with him because he feels that if he brings the Gelfling, the captured Gelfling back to the castle, he might get his status back.

Yes.

So he's being very mercenary.

Oh, it is deliciously conniving. And it is. It is. And he plays this. And I've got the performance, I think, is so good. But also the writing, because he's sort of playing up the idea about, oh, we could restore our society. We could all work together and come with me in peace and we'll blah, blah, blah. But you know, and you can tell this is all subterfuge. Like, maybe he believes that on some level, but his overriding agenda is he wants to get the throne. And he sees them.

The general is an asshole. He's the worst. So bad.

He's oh, he's a great character. He's so conniving and so conniving and charming. And it's such a great performance. But then we get this moment where, you know, Jen has escaped. He's, I think, separated from Cura temporarily. And at this point, his questions about the Shard have not been answered.

Have not been answered.

They have brought him nothing but trouble and trauma to others.

And he blames himself for the Pobling Village. He blames himself for all of this. Exactly.

He is clearly a morally centered character and is feeling guilt about all this. And in a fit of guilt and frustration and everything else, he throws away the Shard, which is a shocking moment. It's like, what? You need that. But to be fair, someone probably should have told him why he needs it. So it does feel motivated and justified. But it's also just this great twist on, you know, it's the refusal of the call, I guess. But it is a twist on this.

It happens two-thirds of the way into the...

Heading into the third act, which is so late. And you're like, wait, no, you're going to screw the whole world. Because at this point, we have this sense, and we've probably connected the dots of what the Shard needs to do and is for. But he isn't quite there yet.

Exactly. And it's a pretty touching moment. I mean, we have a quote, number 10, Producer Brad. Let's hear the anguish of Jem.

Look at me. I'm not a hero.

Not the way you want it.

Master, nothing is simple anymore. Yeah.

So he's having a dark night of the soul because he's caused a lot of death and whatever. But him and Kira wind up finally getting the answers they seek.

Yes. They find some ruins.

Yes. Yes.

Who doesn't love some little ruins?

Now, Paul, you know, I'm blanking out. How does he get the crystal back? Does Kira give it back to him or what?

No.

So how do they get back together?

So they sleep for the night. They take shelter and then they wake up and they find these ruins. And then as they begin to explore the ruins, I think Kira finds the shard that he had crossed away because it is conveniently there in their path and waiting to be found again. And then there is one of my favorite lines in the film that resonates and I think... Do tell.

What is it?

To and should resonate for anyone who's a writer. They're looking at the wall, the prophecy, and he's like, oh, there's writing. Kira asks, what's writing? To which Jen responds, words that stay.

That stay, yeah.

I mean.

Yeah. By the way, this is a dream-matching, by the way. The entire wall of destiny was dream-matched. Yeah. So there's a lot of layers here in terms of that. Also, it is strongly implied that these ruins, the houses of the old ones, as Kira calls them, are actually the ruins of a town called Stone in the Wood, which is where Jen's family might have come from. Mmm. And Stone in the Wood is a big part of Age of Resistance. And this is where they finally hear the prophecy, they read it, and Jen realizes, wait, if I heal the crystal, because there's literally a photo, not a photo, there's a higher glyph of a gelfling putting... A pictogram of the gelfling putting... The shark back on the crystal. Yeah, exactly. The other thing I love about The Wall of Destiny is one of the female gelfling in The Wall of Destiny has a beard, which I think is awesome.

Yeah.

I just love it. I love that this is a, I just love that this is a...

A gender-fluid society.

It hails back to Tolkien's dwarves also, you know? And by the way, it's also like something that's a running gag in The Witcher, a show that I've also worked on, that the dwarves, that the female, to the dwarves, the females are only at their most attractive when their beard comes in really full. Yeah. So I just love that as a trope and as a thing.

Yes.

And also just kind of freeing us from the tyrannical standards of hairlessness in our society.

Yes.

Anyway, so now they know where they have to go and what they have. They have to go to the Crystal Castle.

Yes.

They have to go to the Castle of the Crystal and heal the Crystal. They get the shard back and Kira calls forth the greatest creature. I love, I do go on.

Someone arrives.

Yes.

The Chamberlain re-emerges. He has tracked them down and found them. And he's like, friend, friend. He's- Gethsemane and Skeksis can be friends. Yes. So he's pleading for their help and to try to make peace and making his case as best he can. And it's not bad, but he's clearly evil.

But by the way, but the funny thing is the gelfing see right through. I mean, Jen basically slashes him with the shard.

Yes. Yes.

And they run away.

They escape. And then, yes, then we get another of the great creature introductions of all time.

Yes. But also, isn't this also where in the cut between this and when we meet the greatest creatures of all time, when we get one of the greatest nightmare fuels of all time? Because this is when the scientist takes...

Not yet.

Not yet.

Okay.

So.

All right.

Then, then. So let's get on it. So then the Landstriders show up. Kira whistles and the Landstriders show up. And they're like fuzzy manta ray pachyderms. I mean, what are these things? I've seen them. I mean, I've been...

On stilts.

Yeah. On stilts.

Like, yeah.

So technically it is a puppeteer on stilts that are as, you know, makes basically makes their arms as long as their legs, which are also on stilts. And then, so there's these spindly kind of stilty legs, and they kind of build up to this kind of fuzzy four-legged manta ray creature that's called the Landstrider. And they're just amazing.

I love their beautiful this creature design so much. And again, the ingenuity of the engineering to make it work, but also be so cool. They're awesome. They're just so awesome. And I again, I wish we got more of them, but it's just like, it's this revelation of like, holy crap, those are awesome. And but it's just to get them to the castle. And so we get great shots of them.

But we will get a great, a great action.

Yes, we do. We do.

We land striders later.

That is that is very true.

But before, but before we can get those goodies.

Yes, we get the serving part. But there's another really great line from Kira. Oh, yes, yes. Because they're discussing the prophecy. And Kira has this great line where he says, I have to go alone.

Right. And and she says, I'm going with you. And he says, the prophets said that only I would do it.

And she says, Prophets don't know everything.

Also an episode title from Age of Resistance. This is a quotable line.

Yeah. Great line. Great line. Great moment.

So Jen and Kira decide to go together, which leads us to number 12, which is another one line, one line, one couplet sort of character arc. Let's let's hear it. Kira, you don't have to go.

I know.

All right.

Together then.

By the way, that barking you heard was Fizzgig.

Yes. I don't know if I have this in my notes, but this is a critical thing. I think either it's either at this moment in this scene or maybe it's even way back in the swamp, but I think it's here. There's a moment where Kira tells Fizzgig to stay and that Fizzgig can't come. And I remember as a kid, and I felt this again watching it, it's like, no, you can't leave Fizzgig behind. Mainly selfishly.

It'd be like leaving Chewbacca behind.

Well, yes, but also because we need more Fizzgig, and I love Fizzgig, and I don't want him to be gone from the movie, but we actually really do need Fizzgig. They just don't know it, but there's this moment where then she changes her mind, and then Fizzgig gets to tag along, and it's a little small beat, but the fact that the film takes the time and the moment to address that choice and make that a choice that then is pivotal as a payoff is just, I just really appreciate that because it's, again, these little things I think just add up and make such a difference in the storytelling.

Well, I think, look, I think a lot of what makes this movie great is that it's not sort of, this is a very deliberately plotted movie. It is, in fact, detractors might call it slow. I call it deliberate. And I think that a lot of the pacing in this movie and all of that is also dictated by you getting to know this world.

Yeah.

And experiencing the world and being in it and seeing little creatures and little critters here and there and plants and all this stuff.

Yeah.

You don't get into this movie because it's got like, you know, the plot of The Empire Strikes Back where it just never stops, you know. This is a movie that wants you to stop, wants you to look at the scenery, and it has created the scenery specifically for that purpose.

Right.

And it is very heavy on plot and world building. It is fairly sparse on character and story, but it is very efficient in terms of what it does.

Yes.

So, in terms of providing opportunities for the characters to make choices, like this, and to display contrasts, like, you know, the previous quote in line, the little interaction between Jan and Kira. It is so smart on that, and that is something in rewatching it, and again, now having the context of Age of Resistance, is just appreciating the little fine strokes of storytelling amidst the grander vision that is so overwhelming.

Now, Paul, I feel like with all of this discussion, we are avoiding this horrible, horrible nightmarish sequence. I think you don't want to talk about it. I think you're traumatized.

This is one of, let's just say, the most flammable barrels of nightmarish fuel from my childhood that burned and seared into my psyche in ways that gave me, I think, actual physical shakes.

But like a gentle psychotherapist played by Robin Williams, we're going to walk you gently through the sequence, okay? The emperor's not feeling so good after the banquet. The scientist takes him down to his lab, where he has a chair set up and a bunch of mirrors that refract the energy from the dark crystal, which he has learned how to use to drain the life essence out of living beings. And that's how they killed all the gelfling, we find out. But now they don't have any gelfling to drain, so he puts a podling in there, hoping to just get enough juice to try to get the emperor just a little bit, just give him a little bit of a shot in the arm, right? And then he puts the podling in the chair, and the purple light of the dark crystal hits the podling in the eye, and the podling slowly desiccates and disintegrates before our very eyes, its eyeballs kind of retract into its head.

Yeah, and then the eyeballs go milky white, the face kind of sucks in on itself, kind of collapses like a deflating balloon, and it is horrific.

It is so, it is horrific.

Yeah, it is so fucked up.

It is so awful. And you just, and you just, oh my god, yeah, as a child, this was, and I'm 12, by the way, like we're saying we're child, but we're 12.

I mean, we're not, yeah, it was terrifying. Yeah, younger, but it was messed up. Oh man.

And like Chekhov's gun, let's just call this Chekhov's Draining Chair, you know, they didn't show it in the first act, but they've shown it, they've shown it early enough in the movie that, you know, it's a payoff later, and it's horrible. So now, Jen and Kira are riding their landstriders, and by the way, so are the mystics, you see this great shot of them sort of cresting over a hill.

Yeah, getting closer and closer to the castle, slowly.

It feels like every once in a while, do you remember in the movie Airplane, how like when Ted Striker is a cab driver, right? And he's driving his cab into the airport, and he's got a client in the cab, and he stops the cab, and he runs out to get on the airplane. And periodically through the film, they cut back to the guy in the back of the cab, just looking at his watch going like, you know? And then at the very end of the credits, they cut back to the guy still in the cab going, I'm going to give him one more minute, but after that, I'm out.

Yeah.

I feel like the mystics are kind of like that guy.

Yes.

Like they just keep cutting back to them, and they're just slowly.

Yeah.

And you're like, it's almost tense because they're so slow. You don't know if they're ever going to make it to the castle because they're just like, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, but, you know, presumably they've, the Google Maps has told them how long it's going to take at walking speed, and they know what they're doing, but it is, and they're lovely shots, but it's almost comical at a certain point when we keep cutting away, and they're just still slowly moving. It's pretty funny. But in contrast to them, the Landstriders really know how to move, and they're going, and they allow Jen and Kira to catch up to the Gartian that-

Gartham, Gartham, Gartham.

Gartham, sorry.

Gartham, yes, thank you.

That-

Not the actor who played the Riddler. No, that's Gorshin. Gorshin. They're not the Gorshin.

Oh, man.

They're the Gartham.

That's, if only-

What a crossover.

If only they were voiced by Frank Gorshin.

Okay, but Paul, we've got to get to this place.

So Jen and Kira spot them, and they've got to rescue the podlings from them.

They do, yeah.

But at a cost and a revelation. Yes.

So first of all, probably what is the biggest action scene in the film, which is that the Gartham are carrying all of these enslaved podlings, right? Back to the castle, we catch up to them.

And now we know, we know they're bringing them back for food to be sucked dry. And it's like, oh, no, we gotta save these podlings from that horrible fate.

Paul, what would you rather be a podling or a nebri? I'm gonna let you let you sue on that. So we have the sequence where the Gartham and the Landstriders, and we're on the Landstriders, and we're fighting, and the Gartham kill one of the Landstriders, which is terrible. We get, yeah, which is awful, but we do free the podlings.

Yeah, but we lose the Landstriders.

However, and now the Gartham are pushing these two gelfling against the cliff at the side of the Castle of the Crystal, and our characters fall off the cliff. Paul, what happens then?

In a revelation, it turns out that Kira has wings that emerge.

Wings!

She can fly!

She can fly, like the Iron Giant spoiler, and saves Jen and herself, I guess, but again, something she's just neglected to mention at this up till now, because that just hasn't come up.

Leading to this beautiful line delivery.

Jen is like, wait, do I have wings? She's like, no, you're-

Producer Pratt, clip 13.

Wings.

I don't have wings.

Of course not. You're a boy.

Because why not?

Because we all know girls are cooler than boys, and they deserve to be especially in a fantasy adventure.

Setting up, by the way, that the entirety, not setting up, but giving you a kind of little, little pinprick of a vision into the fact that Gelfling culture was matriarchal, and it was all led by these women. Their queen title was Madra, and there was an all Madra, and there was Madras for every village and every piece of Gelfling civilization. Yeah, it's a matriarchy, and in this world, women have more powers than men, and it's kind of great.

Imagine a world like that. How much better would we be sleeping right now? Anyway, I digress. They then enter a creepy face cave. I just have it written down as it's a big creepy face.

The creepy face, which leads to the Castle of the Crystal.

And Kira, I think, says, maybe it's Jen, says, I smell death here, and the visuals sell that really well.

And we once again run into, who else but the Chamberlain.

The Chamberlain has been stalking them with impunity, and somehow has caught up without a Lansdrider. Or maybe he found his own, but it doesn't matter.

But he's such an asshole. Like, he literally buries Jen under rubble, quite nastily. He grabs Kira, he takes Kira up to the other Skeksis, and presents himself as this great hero.

He has dropped all pretense. He has given up on trying to negotiate or seduce them with his plea for friendship or peace. And he is now full conniving, subterfuge mode. Yes. One thing that's interesting, Jen cuts the Chamberlain, and we cut to...

Yes, with the Shard.

With the Shard, we cut to the Mystics, and one of the Mystics also then bleeds. So again, we're finally getting that. Oh, there really is a deep link here. And yeah, the Chamberlain then kidnaps Cura, brings her to the Emperor, but Jen has...

Jen seems to be dead.

Yeah, that's right. He's under rubble. He's under rubble. And Fizzgig. But Fizzgig is still there with them. So yeah, the Chamberlain takes a Cura to the Emperor to then drain her of her essence. And we know how bad that's going to be.

He trades her for his family.

Yes, to be welcomed back into the court.

And now we have a Gelfling to drain, which is humongous. They take her to the Draining Chamber. They start draining her, except that as we know, Kira has a gift. We've seen this in the Swamp. We've seen this with the Landstriders. You can kind of talk to the animals. And the scientist has a lot of animals in his lab that are trapped and being experimented on. And Kira starts, Augura, who is also trapped there in a cage, basically encourages Kira to use her ability, her Dr. Doolittle-like ability, to talk to the animals. And she causes basically an animal riot.

And Jen, who is not dead, but is emerging from the rubble and with fizz gigs, is also kind of telepathically telling her to fight because they apparently have now a psychic bond with each other. So she summons the strength and uses her abilities to unleash the animals.

Like an animal jailbreak, it's like an animal prison riot happens. It's kind of amazing.

It's really cool. It's really cool. And they defeat the creepy lab scientist, like Nazi guy who is conducting all these horrible experiments.

By the way, voiced in Age of Resistance, that character, much bigger role by Mark Hamill. Aha, yes, of course. Beautiful. As Mark Hamill always gives a beautiful voice performance, but it's wonderful.

And then we get this other vivid example of the symbiosis between the mystics and the skeksis, because as they defeat the lab scientist, Skeksis, a corresponding mystic vanishes.

They don't just kill the scientist. The scientist gets thrown into the shaft of air and fire over which the crystal hovers in the crystal chamber above.

It's an important point.

So he literally falls and burns up. Yeah. And the mystic also burns up.

May I say also looks suspiciously like the planet Krypton.

A little bit, yes.

Yes.

Not quite as glassy, but yes, I got it.

But the whole geometric like that whole thing. I was like, it looks a little like Krypton.

And in the immortal words of Dr. Strange, we're in the end game now.

Yes.

The mystics are coming. The conjunction is happening. The gelfling are free now. Ogre is wandering around just going like, and the Skechies are all congregating at the Crystal Chamber.

Yes.

And then-

And Janice fallen into the pit with the bug soldiers, then climbs, emerges, breaks into the Dark Crystal Chamber.

While the conjunction is going on, while the Skechies are all getting together there.

The mystics are finally, finally arrive at the entrance of the castle. Jan climbs his way into the lab. He's chasing after Kira. The mystics then arrive at the entrance. This is hilarious to me. They arrive at the entrance of the castle of the Skechies. There are these big crab bug guards that are not Frank Gorsuch.

The Gartham.

The Gartham. They moan chant at them. The mystics do this kind of cross between moaning and chanting that it's just... I guess it's like they're using the force, but it's kind of soothing.

I would equate the badassery of the mystics here to, there's that great scene in Revenge of the Sith where Yoda walks into Palpatine's chambers and there's these two guards, very menacing guards at either side of the door. Yoda walks in and just kind of flicks his finger, and the two guys just violently hit the wall and pass out. And it's kind of like that. They just go like, Ah, bitches, get out of the way.

We're here. They put the whammy on them, so the mystics can enter the castle. So all this stuff is converging. Jen finally finds the Dark Crystal, but just as the Skeksis are then converging for the Great Conjunction, and then who does he spot across the way, on an opposite kind of balcony, whatever, on the orbiting, you know, upper level, is Kira. And so like all of our characters are now converging. Jen realizes, or knows what he has to do. He leaps onto the crystal, but he drops the shard.

Leading us to, again, another bit of this film that is just nightmarish, which is that, you know, we have the usual shard, you know, shard football that happens in movies like this, where I need the, I need to put my duffin, you gave it to me. No, I dropped it. Oh God, you got it. Kira gets the shard back to Jen, but the Chamberlain fucking stabs, go ahead.

But first, Fizzgig is tossed into the pit.

Yes, that's the, yes.

That part of me died. I'm like, no, Fizzgig, no. But of course, it's like, he's not, he's gotta be fine.

He's fine, he's gonna be fine. But, you know, who's not fine is Kira, because the Chamberlain, yeah, Chamberlain stabs her and fucking stabs her in the back.

And the Emperor stabs Kira.

Is it the Emperor? I thought it was the Chamberlain.

Is it the Emperor?

No, it's the Chamberlain. Pretty sure it's the Chamberlain. I think it's the Chamberlain.

We'll see, we'll put up a poll.

Okay, we'll have to go back. We'll have to go back.

Regardless, it's really bad. But she's dead. But she's tossed the shard to Jen, restores the shard to the Dark Crystal.

And then, and then shit gets weird. Because the mystics, the mystics, as the crystal is healing, and the castle is now shaking, and just the mystics walk up behind the skeksis and kind of give them a reach around, right?

So all this stuff is happening at once. So the big crab bugs, Garth and whatever start disintegrating. They disintegrate. The castle, it looks like it's crumbling, but it's actually like this.

But it's not.

It's actually like this this bark around or the the the castle.

The residue of evil of the skeksis that made the castle black starts basically crumbling off.

Yes, crumbling off, it's revealing that it is a crystal castle underneath that starts to emerge.

Beautiful, beautiful, white crystal castle.

The mystics are arriving. We do cut to down below. Agra rescues Fizzgate.

He's just wandering.

Thank God.

He's kind of wandering around.

But then the freakiest shit of freaky shit in this movie happens.

The mystics who are going to cross with their crouched back legs kind of stand up with their front limbs. They they give the skeksis the reach around, as I said, yes, right. The crystal is glowing white. Yeah. And then there is a massive outburst of they start producing radishes shaking his head. They start glowing and then the skeksis and the and the mystics merge back into the Earth skeks.

They they they merge like Decker and Ailea at the end of the motion picture.

Yes. Thank you.

But there are eight of them, I think now because two are gone. Yeah.

Yeah.

And they merge into these really freaky spirit dudes that are glowing.

Translucent. Trans...

And they also have transcendental beings.

You know who they remind me of? Weirdly because it is they are puppets and they're Jim Henson puppets, but their faces look kind of like like elongated Bert from from from Sesame Street. Like they have these sort of long bulbous noses and long lower lips. That is except they also have like like glowing spikes coming out of their heads. I mean, they're weird.

It's not an association I drew at the moment, but I mean, it's a it's a it's a moment that that can can rearrange the molecules in one's brain. Now, I have my most important question to pose to you. Yes, in this moment, in terms of something I'd forgotten, but hit me in this moment as hard as it did when I was a kid, watching it for the first time. So they've merged into these freaky spirit dudes, and we've seen this occur.

Translucent, yes.

And Jen has survived. He has saved the world. He's he's restored, you know, this whatever freakiness.

And he's carrying the corpse of Kira in his arms.

He has the corpse of Kira in his arm. And he's now pleading to the freaky spirit dudes, kind of at least in- Yes. It's a lot. And for a moment, I am asking, are they going to merge Jen and Kira?

Wow.

Wow.

I never extrapolated to that. That is something, Paul. That's-

That's where my mind went.

One of them is, this film is about the aftermath of a genocide. Our characters have basically revived godlike beings that give them life and their planet life back again. And then you realize this entire movie, and Age of Resistance and everything having to do with the Dark Crystal, are about an alien invasion, because the Urskeks are not of Thra. They then ascend back into space, and what you realize in the backstory is, the Urskeks are from another planet. They just sort of wound up on this planet that had Gelflings and an Augra and Landstriders and Podlings and went like, let's fuck around with this place. Yeah. So literally, this is a story of the end of colonization, which I find fascinating when you actually start thinking about it in those terms.

And of reconciliation of a fractured society. And of parts of a culture being split into antagonists of each other instead of a single community.

And I think in a weird way, I love this and I love that it is so sort of hippy-dippy that it's like, you know, no, it's not that we have to defeat evil. It's that we have to redeem evil and reintegrate it into the totality of balance of the universe. And it really does remind me of Return of the Jedi a lot, which, you know, I hear is coming out in the summer of 83. Because ultimately, ultimately, you know, the entire master plot of Star Wars is about reintegrating the split personality of Anakin and Darth Vader. Yeah. You know, Anakin, who is the good person, is basically destroyed by this evil being called Darth Vader, but he's still alive somewhere, like the Mystics. And it's about reintegrating a split personality. And I think that that's a really interesting. Yeah, exactly. Yes. And I think that that that Jim Henson and George Lucas do have that kind of 1960s. And I believe they are contemporaries in age. I mean, Jim Henson was younger than you and I are when he died. And I don't even want to get into that. But but I think that there's a real kind of 1960s, 70s sort of philosophy at work here that you see in a lot of these blockbuster movies. You know, even in something like, you know, Close Encounters is not about the morality of Roy Neary leaving the family. It's about, you know, the integration between alien and human. And I feel like it's a real kind of hallmark of some of these films and where these filmmakers are coming from. I think it's a pretty beautiful philosophy.

I agree. And it's definitely very striking looking at it right now because it is very much rooted in that age. And it is this combination or integration of these kind of classical fantasy quest genre tropes, but through a very period at the time, contemporary new age, like you said, hippie dippy lens with a, you know, again, that's kind of 70s rooted aesthetic into that. A lot of the stuff feels like trippy album cover stuff. And it's great. But, you know, and you touched on Henson, who the world was robbed of far before his time. And it does beg, this film may be more than any of his other work. It begs the question of what was the world robbed of when we were robbed of Henson's light from it. And what else, you know, could have come from it. But, you know, to the credit of Lisa Henson, Brian Henson, you know, the Henson company, I think that they have carried, kept that torch lit beautifully and valiantly. As best evidenced by the work you got to do with them on Age of Resistance.

Look, and thanks for saying that. I think, look, Age of Resistance, when Lisa Henson presented it at Comic-Con, she said it was the proudest moment of her career. And Lisa is no slouch. I mean, she is a Harvard graduate. She's had a physical production at what is now Sony. I mean, she's somebody who didn't have to necessarily take up her father's mantle. She would have done very well here. Same with Bryan Henson, who is an amazing director. And I think that, look, one of the proudest things in my life is that we did win that Emmy Award, and I literally have that award, and it's got my name on it next to Jim Henson's name. And I can't, I mean, that's not a flex or a boast. It humbles me that I got to be a part of it. And I think the biggest thing I learned working on that show was just how collaborative it has to be. You know, because on that show, there were these poles of influence. There were the Frouds, who, you know, legacy designers of the show, and their son Toby was the head designer on the show. There was Lisa and the Henson Company, who guard Jim Henson's legacy very jealously and with a great deal of philosophy and thought. You know, then you've got the writers, and we're trying to move this in all sorts of directions. And you've got Louis Leterrier, who is a wonderful director. Yeah. And his work on Dark Crystal is just art. I can't say, you know, so I think it's something that, you know, Jim Henson died, I was a junior, I was senior in college, I believe, when Jim Henson passed away. And he was 54 years old when he passed away. And Paul, I don't want to get depressing here, but how old are you?

I'm not quite there, but getting perilously close.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I'm 55. And it's sort of, you know, like it really does kind of like...

Yeah.

As you said, we were robbed, but it also just kind of sets your perspective in terms of what have I accomplished? Well, you know, I don't know.

It's weird. But I put them on this pantheon. You think of artists that died too young, from Mozart to Gershwin to... Christoph Kieslowski is another filmmaker whose work I hold dear, who died too young, whose birthday I share. But yeah, it's hard not to grieve what might have been, but yet also be so deeply grateful for what was and what he's left us, which still speaks to us in so many ways.

And I will tell you two deeply personal stories about Age of Resistance. And I don't usually reveal this much about myself in the podcast, but I was going through a horrible depression when I was working on that show, probably the worst depression I've ever had. And the word suicidal is not something that I throw around lightly, but it was one of the real pits of that, and I've struggled with it my whole life. When the Writer's Room of The Dark Crystal was opened, and I actually have a picture of the door of the Writer's Room right here behind me, and in my office, in my workplace, I look at it every day. The Henson Archives gave us a bunch of pictures and things to put on the Writer's Room to decorate the place. And one of those pictures was a picture that had appeared on Starlog magazine, and I remember seeing that picture when I was 12 years old. And it was Jim Henson and Frank Oz and Gary Kurtz, who produced a little independent film called The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars. And it's them sort of looking at a puppet, but it's sort of the three great men at work. And I remember seeing that picture in Starlog magazine at a very young age and just saying, these are the fucking gods, man. These are the wizards. And that picture was one of the pictures the Henson Archives gave us. And I remember the first time I saw it thinking, holy shit, I got to Hogwarts. I got to run away and join the circus and this is my life's dream. But the other thing of that is that I was one day just standing at the bottom of the steps that led up to the writer's room, which is in the second floor, thinking, do I even want to go up these steps? I mean, literally having some very, very dark thoughts. And it was in many ways knowing that I was working on this. If that project had been one of the lesser things I worked on in my career, who knows if I would have gone home and canceled the reservation. But it was literally looking up. I mean, obviously, I had a family and my daughter, and so I wasn't going to do anything like that. But it was one of those things where I looked up at those steps and I knew that if I walked up those steps, I was walking into a room that had that photo in it, and that I was working in that room and that that was the place where I. And the other one is, my daughter is on the spectrum.

And that you had been invited in. Yes.

Yes.

It was by, yes, you were specifically invited and deemed worthy to climb those stairs and enter that space and share that space. Yeah.

And in many ways that show, that show along with my family sort of saved my life. And I don't say that lightly. When Lisa Henson first, when I went in to audition for it to be a writer on the show, they wouldn't tell me what it was. It was a very severe NDA on everything. And I went into the meeting not knowing what I was meeting for. And I went in, I signed the NDA, and Lisa Henson handed me an iPhone that had a five-minute clip that they'd done as a test for the puppets. And I apparently burst into tears in Lisa Henson's office. And I was like, I didn't know whether they would hire me or put a restraining order on me. And it was, but I'll tell you the other thing. And I started saying this, my daughter is on the spectrum. She's autistic. And I can't show her The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance. It's too scary. And frankly, I've only watched the show all the way through once because it is so emotional for me. But she became obsessed with all of the Skeksis and the Mystics and their relationships to each other and all of that. So every night for a good eight months after the show was done, because she got to go to England with me to see the puppets and everything, we would sit at the dinner table with Brian Froud's book, and we would go over who all of the Skeksis were and who all their corresponding Mystics were. And she knew all of them and she would list them because, you know, she had that kind of autistic list making kind of thing. And that was probably the closest I've been with her. And, you know, so I have, in addition to the professional memories and the glory of having this award, which, by the way, I gave to my parents. I don't have that in my house. Just knowing that this show had such an effect on me psychologically twice in things that are very important in my life, it makes it humongous for me. It is one of the... I cannot love this movie enough for having told me when I was 12 that there were weirdos out there making this kind of stuff. And if I just hung on to those awkward years, I'd get to play with them. And then I got to play with them. And it was the actual weirdos. And I got to see their photo like that. And then the bond of it with my daughter, I owe the Dark Crystal a lot, you know?

Yeah. No, this is one of the reasons I was so looking forward to this episode and knowing we had to do a holiday special around Dark Crystal. One of the things I wanted to talk about is that, I mean, well, also, first of all, I had that same Starlog magazine when I was a kid, because I-

Yeah, of course you did.

Starlog religiously, and it's probably, hopefully still in a box of work. But one of my favorite days ever, and certainly one of my favorite days of our friendship, was Friday, August 26th, 2022, which was a perfect day with a perfect bookends on it, which is when you and I went to the Academy Museum and hung out for the day. And we had lunch first at the cafe, and we're gonna go in and we're gonna get to see some of the Dark Crystal puppets and stuff that were there on exhibition, which was nice to see them in a worthy place of honor. But you were still grieving the loss of what might have been in terms of not getting to continue with Age of Resistance. And which is, you know, heavy. And for everyone who loved the show and who loved this world, but you know, as a creator, as a writer to work so hard on something and set a path and then not get to complete it or share it, is, it's a difficult wound to explain. In terms of a very specific kind of kind of loss and grief and of missing those characters, missing that world, but also just missing the opportunity to finish the journey and complete it and share it with the promise with the world. And do you remember what I told you? I do not. Please tell me. Please. As an effort and gesture of consolation was that, Javi, here's how I look at it. In no rational universe, should you guys have gotten to make this show at all? It was wildly an irresponsible expenditure on a ridiculous scale of 100 plus million dollars on a sequel to the fucking Dark Crystal, which is not exactly mainstream. But it was this intersection of right place, right time, when irresponsible streaming money was flowing at Netflix, and they were throwing money at things and at franchises. And by some miracle, enough powers that had collective derangement to say, yeah, let's spend this obscene, insane amount of money to make 10 episodes of a live action, of a fully produced feature quality sequel series. And so I told you, I was like, Javi, you and Louie and everybody, you may have pulled off the greatest heist in Hollywood history.

That's right. That is your tropia. And I tell people now, I feel like whenever I talk about this show, I feel like I'm one of Ocean's Eleven. Yeah, yeah. Because we got Netflix to give us over $100 million to make a hard R-rated puppet show for grownups in the fantasy genre.

And you got to live and play and expand and build out that world exponentially. And my God, and it exists. And like, yes, in a just universe, given its critical acclaim, the Emmy, the artistry, the creative conviction of it, you should have been afforded the opportunity to finish what you started. But the fact that you got to do as much as you did is nothing short of miraculous and, again, like an incredible, historic level Hollywood heist to get Netflix to say, here's a hundred million dollars or whatever it was.

Don't make a puppet show.

Don't quote me on that. Go dust off this fairly obscure cult weird freaky thing and make a whole big series with Louis Luton. I mean, it's just it's insane. And the cast you had and everything, it's mind boggling. It's mind boggling.

I really appreciate that you gave me that trope because I use it constantly. I say I use Ocean's Eleven as the metaphor. And you know what? And I got to say are Danny Ocean, you know, obviously Louis and Lisa and the Frouds. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention full throatedly the names Will Matthews and Jeff Addis. Will and Jeff developed the show. They wrote the pilot. They were the showrunners on the writing side. I was there to help them. I wasn't it was not my show and I did not create it or develop it. I was there to help them do what writers do, which is get in the writers room and create the 10 episodes. These guys are two of the kindest, warmest, nicest people that I've worked with and we became brothers. We actually started a company together which sadly COVID was, sadly we chose to do that before COVID. But these guys wrote a great script and they developed a great show and they figured out a way for us to explain and end a series that's about a genocide in a positive, hopeful note. And the end of the series would have butted up with the end of the movie in a really interesting way. I can't say any more about it because they may still use some of this plot material. But it would have been a beautiful, beautiful end. And you're right, Paul. I mean, it's like we, this is a be glad it happened, not be sad it's over situation. But what could have been would have been pretty great. Well, and let me just say one thing. Let me just say, part of the first three episodes, Ice Station Zebra with Gelflings. That's all I'm going to say. Well, Louis came into the writers room and then said, I would like to see the Gelflings tobogganing down the hill.

I'm like, I'm a big Ice Station Zebra with Gelflings. Big Ice Station Zebra geek and a big fan of Alex North's score for that, which is a favorite. But to finish the other half of that day, after we did the Academy Museum and then we went and saw Christian James Hand do the session at the Bourbon Room, and I implored you to indulge me in going across the street to Scum and Villainy, Cantina, the bar, that is a, let's say, unsanctioned recreation of the Cantina in Star Wars. Reflecting on the day and everything and you had other things going on and whatever. And we're there sitting in a booth like in this fucking Star Wars Cantina. We're just sitting there, you know, two geeks hanging out. And this couple in cosplay ends up sitting next to us in the booth.

That's right, yeah.

And we're just casually chatting and one of them was in the industry, I think a costumer and the other guy I think had nothing to do with the industry at all. And we were introducing ourselves and of course, you know, and you're very humble, whatever. And I, of course, can't resist saying, well, he also has an Emmy from working on, not just Lost, but on Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance. And before I even finished saying the title, their faces lit up with the light of a thousand suns, their jaws dropped through the bottom of the floor. And it just so happened we had sitting next to us in this booth, two die-hard, hardcore, deeply devoted, passionate, not just Dark Crystal fans, but fans of Age of Resistance. And we had started that day talking about how you were not going to get to complete, finish telling that story. But I got to sit in the firelight of the candle, in this booth at the Star Wars Cantina, and you took the opportunity to fill their souls with the great, one of the greatest geek joys probably of their entire life. And you-

I told them what the-

And you said, here's what we were going to do. And that, again, one of the greatest days of my life, one of the greatest days of our friendship, to get to share that with you. But most importantly, to get to see you have that full circle moment to finish telling that story to the audience of those two people.

Yeah. And sometimes, you know, sometimes that's, yeah.

The universe is a mysterious place, but sometimes it's truly magical. And that was incredibly magical and moving to get to witness. And it's something I carry in my heart dearly and deeply.

I'm deeply grateful for that and for that day too, Paul. So I really appreciate it. I don't know. Well, is there a better note to end this with? I mean, it's just that this is a great movie. It's influenced both of our lives enormously. I don't know. But, Producer Brad, what would you like to say?

We tied it into the holiday spirit.

That's right. Producer Brad, how did The Dark Crystal do? Now, you know, we've talked about it not being successful. Was it successful? You can tell us how it did.

Well, in terms of the year of 1982, it opened on December 17th. So there wasn't a lot of box office to add to the tally for 82. But it opened the same weekend as Tootsie, The Toy, and Best Friends, Trail of the Pink Panther, and lastly, Six Weeks with Dudley Moore and Mary Tyler Moore. Wow. Oh, I'm sorry. One more. Honky Tonk Man with Clint Eastwood and Kyle Eastwood.

They opened all those movies the same week?

They all opened on that same weekend.

And I just got to say, dear listener, are you not so glad and happy that we are not doing episodes about any of those other films?

I'm so happy.

I'm glad. I'm enormously relieved. But what a dour holiday movie season that was at least that weekend. But yeah, I wish that The Dark Crystal had been given a better release date and maybe a better marketing management of expectations that it might have gotten greater appreciation and success. And who knows what else could have happened. But I wouldn't trade any of that for the fact that you all got to do what you got to do on Age of Resistance.

I think, look, I think with the film, as with AOR, like this is a movie that we need to be happy that it even happened at all.

Exactly, you know, exactly.

Because it's such an unlikely thing. I mean, like I said, I don't compare this to Game of Thrones or to... I compare it to Eraserhead, you know, because it is that idiosyncratic, that singular and that sort of self-contained vision.

Imagine if David Lynch had had freedom on Dune.

You know what? I do imagine that. So, guys, are we going to do the Summer of 83? Is this the big...

Well, first of all, I think we have to toast and say farewell to the year of 1982, which was special and formative and continues to cast a long shadow on, as far as influence goes, especially in genre. But I could not be more excited to venture into the future of 1983.

It's also going to be cool because, you know, like everybody... Look, Summer of 82 is so sort of vaunted, but there's a lot of interesting movies in 83.

Oh, yeah.

You know? And I think some of our... And look, I love what we've done with Wrath of Khan and The Thing and all that. I mean, obviously, we're two nerds talking about that. It's going to be entertaining. But I think our best podcast out of the entire run of it was The Soldier, which probably most of our audience skipped. Gris 2 is pretty great. Gris 2 is pretty great, actually. No, but I think when you get to see some of the movies that are more curios from that time, and they're not the ones that... Look, Return of the Jedi, there are libraries worth of nerds writing about Return of the Jedi, right? And we'll have some fun things to say, and it's right behind you. We'll have some fun things to say, but we're going to get to some movies in that summer that we're going to have some really interesting shit to say about it. And I think we're on for some interesting rides here. Are we, Producer Brad?

But I believe...

Well, before...

Yeah, I believe we might have a way station, a rest stop, let's say a cinematic Bucky's or Stucky's on our journey to the summer. Or let's say, or Howard Johnson's on the way to the summer of 83. Now from the vantage point of holiday in 1982, Producer Brad, what stands before us, between us and the summer of 1983?

We're going to see one more movie for the summer.

There are. We're going to do a spring special. Your options will include movies from January through May of 83.

Because you're also in the theaters, because movies stayed in the theaters forever back then, right?

Right. I mean, there's a lot of ground to cover. So I've picked 13 for you to choose from.

13?

You can pick one from these 13. I'm giving you a wide selection here, so I'm giving you some leeway. But I also think, unlike our past episodes, where I just described the film to you, I think we should do it the way we did it back in the 80s, where we saw a movie poster, we picked a movie in the theater by what we saw.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

This is exciting. Oh, multimedia.

First up.

Oh my.

The Entity.

In February, February 4th, 1983, two movies came out. First, We Are the Entity, with Barbara Hershey and Ron Silver.

This is the one where she gets raped by a ghost, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Directed from the director of Superman IV, The Quest for Peace, I believe.

Ouch. Ouch, yes, you are right about that, yes. Let's, what's next, Brad?

What else do we have? Also opening the same day is?

Video drone.

David Cronenberg.

We have a front runner.

This is the one to beat. This is the one to beat.

Okay.

Three movies opened February 18th. First up is The King of Comedy.

I'm not, you know what, I'm not a Scorsese fan that way, so it doesn't matter to me.

And I want to try to optimize for genre. Wait, wait.

Local hero?

We also have Local Hero.

One of my top five favorite movies of all time. I worship this film, directed by Bill Forsythe. It is the gentlest classic, oh my god, it's so good, okay, but Viderodrome's still the front runner.

And also on February 18th, a call back to Megaforce. We have The Pirates of Penzance.

Oh my god, Becky.

I know.

No, no, no, no. I watched this movie a billion times on cable. I love it to death. No, we're not gonna, no.

I'm running away screaming from that, sorry. Yeah.

Moving on to March 18th, we have I Road to China.

Nope. Nope.

Really?

Nope.

John Berry, Golden Harvest, Tom Selleck.

We all know that this is the movie Tom Selleck made out of regret for turning down Indiana Jones because he had to go to an MMPI. And you can see that in the movie. No, no, no, we're good.

I remember liking it. I haven't seen it since.

I remember having the massive crush on Bess Armstrong, but that's not enough. I'm sorry.

Okay, moving to March 25th, we have The Outsiders.

Saw the musical in Broadway in November, had enough.

Yeah, it's okay.

Stay golden, Ponyboy. Yeah. Stay golden, Ponyboy. Yeah.

Also March 25th, Tough Enough with Dennis Quaid.

Whoa! You know, this movie had a really interesting... There's a moment in this movie where, you know, I can't even get into it. We're not going to watch this movie. Never mind. It had a gay character who was presented with a minimum amount of, I don't even know.

Well, Wilfred Brimley is in it, if that helps.

Oh yeah, never mind. Love Wilfred? Nope, we're good.

April 1st, 1983. Monty Python's A Meaning of Life.

Oh! But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Doing a podcast about a Monty Python movie, do you just wind up rehashing the jokes?

Yeah, no, no.

We're just going to hear you do silly accents.

No, no, no, no. I think that would be painful.

Love this movie, but we spare the audience.

April 15th, we're going to Pittsburgh.

We're going to Pittsburgh.

Flashdance.

You know, weirdly, this might be... I think it's a contender because it is such an iconic movie of its time. And it might as well be science fiction, considering that she does get into the dance academy, but I don't know. I think Videodrome's to the pole a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, it's tempting. And, you know, George Amoroto, but no, I gotta stick with Videodrome is still, you know, all these being equal, I'm going to go with Cronenberg and genre.

Hit it to us. Hit us with the next one, Producer Brad.

Keeping with iconic films of the era, April 29th, Valley Girl. Nope, nope.

It's an easy pass. No, no.

One of the finer, Nicholas Cage. No, this wasn't the one, Nicholas Cage, was it?

Yeah, that's Nicholas Cage.

That is Nicholas Cage. Yeah, okay. There's another one that I'm in. Oh, yeah. Of course.

April 29th, we have...

Oh, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Which may be an easier film to remember fondly than to rewatch.

Yeah. It's got a great title.

Yeah, no, no. But you know what? I, no, no, no.

I think that's the extent of that podcast. Great title.

Yeah, no, this is going to be a great time.

Thank you. The last option is The Hunger.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Do we want to pick one now or do we want to leave this a cliffhanger? Because this is, this and Videodrome, these are contenders now, you know?

It's, I mean, clearly it's down to these two. It's going to be Videodrome or The Hunger. That is, that is a, that's a deviously difficult decision.

So, Producer Brad, do you want us to decide now or do you want us to, or do you want to surprise our audience and solve this cliffhanger when we send our broadcast away?

If you can make a decision now, let's do it. If not, I can't. Let's hold on.

I can't.

And I think, I can't make a decision right now.

I can't. Maybe we, depending on timing, who knows in the fullness of time when this episode is going to drop, I doubt we're going to hold it for the holidays, but who knows? But maybe we also gauge our audience's interest in inclination. I'd be curious if we put a poll up what the, what the, our listeners would choose between these two. But this is a very, this is a challenging conundrum.

A cliffhanger it is, my friends.

I am surprised by Highway to, High Road to China. Really? I was looking for, yeah.

Really?

No.

I haven't seen it since 83 and I remember liking it a lot.

Producer Brad, did we have this argument at the Multiplex did you and I literally have this argument when we were 12?

Not on the way in, maybe in the way out.

Yeah, no, that's a distant, yeah.

I did not experience that movie until I was, until Cable. I never saw it in the theater, so I must have won the argument, producer Brad.

Yeah, I am curious to maybe revisit the John Barry score since you mentioned it, but nothing. Yeah. I'm okay.

Hopefully it's the John Barry score from Out of Africa and not the one for Star Crash, right? That's all I'm saying. They weren't all winners. That's all I have to say.

Yes.

So we will reconvene for our Spring Break special, kicking off 1983 as a prologue to Season 2 of Multiplex Overthruster, Summer of 1983. How crazy is that?

But you know, Paul, I think the only thing left to say is we will see you in line at the Multiplex. At the Multiplex.