I loved the movie when I was a young adult, so I really wanted to like this prequel series. Sadly I didn't like it at all, though I finished watching it out of a sense of loyalty. The good things: visually it's beautiful, the puppets, costumes, props, the puppeteering, as are the music and the sound effects (slightly overdone maybe) and the voice acting. I liked the new characters, the new creatures, the new landscapes. Plot-wise they made some changes so that this story cannot fully coexist als a prequel with the original story only if you forgot what that was all about and only remembered the vaguest gist from it. These changes were probably needed to fill out 10 episodes but I do feel it was kinda lazy and maybe should have had more thought into it. Now it ended up in a classic good versus bad sword battle that seemed like it didn't belong in this world. However, the tone of the series is off from the beginning to the very end and that is my biggest complaint. This was extremely explain-y, there was no mystery and certainly nothing for the viewer to figure out for themselves. From the mysterious Ogra to the nefarious plans of the Skeksis - everything is explained immediately and in detail. It felt dumbed-down, like an overzealous fanfic. Also the Skeksis were much more talkative and loud - yes we get it, they're evil and disgusting, this was repeated and emphasized beyond any subtlety taking away any seriousness of their characters. The humour is also very different: more language based humour and things between characters, like them getting dirty things in their face, less original visual jokes like the original.
The magic of nostalgia is broken when the tone is so completely off.
Just like many franchises expanding on their original work they all seem to focus on visuals and invest huge amounts on that while the story and plot are last priority while those should be FIRST priority and it would cost nothing more to give it a little more thought. Please stop ruining beloved classics with vapid fanficcy new work.
