The original
Dark Crystal was a beautiful, visually stunning film with amazing puppetry and a haunting score by Trevor Jones. The movie also unfortunately had too little plot and paper-thin characters.* I have to imagine that the Henson company has learned from both the praise and the criticism of the original work, and this is a case where the follow-up may be better than the original. (In fact, there was a long-planned movie sequel that ultimately never happened, which suggests to me that they're not just slapping something out there, but waited until they had the right scripts.)
Debuting it on Netflix is a win-win. People who might be too skeptical to try a new
Dark Crystal in the theaters will probably give this a shot since it's already a part of their streaming service anyway. And right now, Netflix has a way better standing in the industry and in the eyes of the viewing public than network TV, cable or direct-to-video. So this is the right way to premiere this.
Yeah, consider me excited.
*I've often thought of -- but have yet to get around to -- an edit that takes the "Story of Star Wars" approach to the material, using the read-along book and record to give you the whole plot in less than 15 minutes set to the beautiful visuals, puppetry and music of the movie.