News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: The Dark Crystal Returns to Theaters and Is Weirder Than You Remember Plus: The Zen of Poptimism and Caprica, the origin story no one asked for By Molly Templeton | Published on October 10, 2025 Photo: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Universal Pictures New Yorkers, I hope you polished your armor and got your good boots on for the marathon of New York Comic Con. May the swag be good and the con crud be mild. The rest of us may or may not be following along with news from NYCC—but surely that can’t take up your whole weekend? Maybe you want to decompress with a movie or remember a time seemingly full of mid-budget SF series? Call your reps, get a nice warm beverage, and settle in. The leaves are starting to fall. The Dark Crystal in a Big Dark Room At this point, it feels like there’s a beloved old movie back in theaters every five minutes. If it isn’t Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Battle Royale (also returning to theaters this weekend), it’s the 400th return of any given Studio Ghibli movie (not that I would ever complain about this phenomenon). This particular weekend, children of the ’80s and beyond can re-traumatize themselves with The Dark Crystal, which is possibly even weirder than you remember. Written by David Odell from a story by creature master Jim Henson, who co-directed the film along with Frank Oz, the movie follows a pair of Gelflings as they save the world from the greedy Skeksis. The story is gorgeous and strange and sometimes downright scary (giant! spider! crab! creatures!) and includes both one of the best fuzzy sidekicks of all time (Fizzgig!) and a line I say all the time for no reason (“Smells like Gelfling!”). If you have never seen it on a large screen, you should—and you can do so on the 12th and 13th, at least in some places. The Last Word (I Hope) on a Music Criticism Bugbear At Slate, the always excellent Carl Wilson has an incredible piece about “poptimism,” a term which I absolutely cannot explain in brief without getting some part of it wrong. (That’s kind of the point of this piece.) Poptimism was a big part of music criticism discourse in the 2000s, and it keeps coming back, an undead creature that’s really just misunderstood. Wilson’s piece sits squarely in the larger continuum of conversations about criticism as a whole—about the way coverage of the arts has been changed by the internet; about the connections between art and technology; about whose voices are heard and whose are dismissed, both artistically and critically. It’s just really, really good, and thorough, and though it is specifically about music criticism, it’s also about art: what “counts” as art; what gets taken seriously and by whom; how people feel and write about art; how all of these things change. Those who follow conversations about “genre” vs. “litfic” will see some similarities and familiar notes, I think.  Caprica: The Origin Story No One Asked For I’m not entirely sure I should admit this, but I have begun rewatching Caprica. I never finished it the first time—the return after the break in its single long season was too rough—and I’m just … curious. Also, I really did like the beginning, which suggests the whole rise of the Cylons began because a couple of bored teenagers got into a monotheistic cult and one of them was also really good at computers. Bringing in young William Adama and giving him a dead sister doesn’t really make sense. Having the Cylons be born of teen arrogance sort of… does. (This isn’t exactly what happens, but it is how it feels at first.) Also, the two key teens, Zoe Graystone (Alessandra Torresani) and Lacey Rand (Magda Apanowicz), are played by actors who look believably young. It’s refreshing! And if you, like me, enjoy recognizing members of the Canadian SFF Hall of Fame, you will have a field day with this series. It’s just complex enough to keep the attention but not so complex you have to closely follow every line of dialogue. It’s kinda just right, even though it’s not great. Sometimes that’s all a person wants, you know? And it’s a lot less of a commitment than rewatching all of Battlestar Galactica. So say we all. Some Very Good (and Very Beloved) Books Turn 10 Years Old This Year On a whim, I was looking at the books that came out 10 years ago, in 2015, and whew: That was a year. The dominating force that is Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series began that May. Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows was September. V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic came out that February, and the brilliant series that would go on to win three Hugos in a row, N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth, began with The Fifth Season that August.  And that’s just for starters! Also published in 2015: An Ember in the Ashes. Between the World and Me. Uprooted. Children of Time. Nimona. Radiance. House of Shattered Wings. Seveneves. Sorcerer to the Crown. And so many more. Do I have a point here, beyond straight-up curiosity about how things come in waves? Mostly it’s that. But it’s also interesting which books do gangbusters from the get-go and which take time to build. (Two of these books—Six of Crows, sort of, and Nimona—became movies, but years later.) I don’t remember 2015 feeling like a particularly wild year for books as it happened; that perspective came later. But also, well, so many of these big books feel like fall books to me: Changing seasons, changing planets, falling empires, the Ice Court plot of Six of Crows, the entire feel of Radiance. You could do worse, if you’re looking for something to read.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: The <i>Dark Crystal</i> Returns to Theaters and Is Weirder Than You Remember appeared first on Reactor.