I'm not the hugest Muppet fan. I enjoy re-watching segments of The Muppet Show where they busted out something notably bizarre (even by Muppet standards), and I love The Dark Crystal and what Henson's Creature Shop has done for the world of puppetry...but it's not a big thing with me.
However, I both enjoy and find disturbing the blue creature known as Uncle Deadly, who is kind of a cult classic among cult classics, for his few appearances in The Muppet Show. Something about his eyes, I think, awakens a weird childlike terror in me, even if I normally love lizards and dragons and things like that--but at the same time, Uncle Deadly has an awesome and distinct character design, so I like him, too. In that way, he falls somewhere between Skeksis and G'Mork from The Neverending Story, in that the Skeksis are also disturbing-but-lovable, but somehow not quite as unsettling, and that while I love werewolves, G'Mork scared the stuffing out of me with no disclaimers)
I just found out a few minutes ago that Uncle Deadly actually has a role in the new Muppets film, instead of, as I expected, being a background cameo as in the earlier Muppet movies. His voice is also different, which bugs me a little, both in principle and in actual quality, but I can't complain because the original performer, Jerry Nelson, is over 70 years old, and has mostly retired for health reasons.
I'm on the fence about seeing the new Muppet movie. I have to try to be open-minded, but I still have that knee-jerk fear of trying to revive old properties for a new time period. I'll see if the other nerds like it, and maybe I'll go to celebrate my liberation from schools.
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