Ah, here we are in the tail-end of June 2020, and I’m only just getting back to my awards for 2019 movies… Look, it’s been a rough year for all of us, okay!
Anyway, with the advent of streaming services, the line between movies and television series has become thinner and thinner, with the streaming format allowing shows the gateway to tell stories much closer to their big screen kin than they could on the weekly schedule of television (admittedly, shows such as Twin Peaks and Arrested Development used a more cinematic structure, but they were ahead of their time). Because of this – and also because I haven’t started talking about TV/streaming series in the same capacity as I do movies and video games just yet – I decided to lump an award for “Best Streaming Series” in with my movie awards this time around. I may even make this a Wizard Dojo tradition. Who knows?
At any rate, I’m not sure if there’ll be any other individual movie awards from me this year after this, and I may just do my top 10 favorite films of 2019 countdown, seeing as it’s taking me an eternity already. So I hope you enjoy this.
Winner: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
It seems the streaming series that caught everyone’s attention in 2019 was Disney+’s The Mandalorian. While that show is great (and probably the only piece of Star Wars media that’s genuinely liked these days), it wasn’t the best streaming series of the year. That honor goes to The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance which, for my money, is the best cinematic fantasy epic since Peter Jackson adapted The Lord of the Rings for the big screen (I know some people would bring up Game of Thrones, but…no.).
Serving as a prequel to Jim Henson’s imaginative (if maybe unfocused) 1982 film The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance far surpasses the original work, and gives Jim Henson’s world of Thra a story that’s worthy of its imaginative world.
Age of Resistance sets the gears in motion for the events of the movie, but not in such a way that would make it a chain of fan service events making callbacks to the original feature. This series tells a compelling story of its own, with its own cast of characters, as well as a few returning faces from the 1982 film. That these characters all happen to be puppets and costumes quickly becomes an afterthought as you get swept away in Age of Resistance’s unique fantasy world and rich storytelling.
Rumblings of a second season continue, though nothing official has been confirmed yet. Then again, it took the creators of the series years to complete the first season, so hopefully a potential second season is just a matter of time. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if the series eventually remade the events of the 1982 film as one of its seasons. This series is what Jim Henson’s passion project was always meant to be.
If a possible second season is as good as the first, it will be more than worth whatever the wait may be.
Runner-up: Stranger Things 3
Runner-up: The Mandalorian
Wizard Dojo 