The Witcher on Netflix: more like Dork Three Jackdaws

From Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

S2 has gotten the green light. I’d discourage spoilers right out of the gate but they’re almost impossible to avoid for this material.

YOU’VE GOT ARTHRITIS YOU HATE THE COLD

Also use this as a dumping ground for linx

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/12/23/21035189/witcher-review-questions-henry-cavill

I was so damn confused about the timeline until near the end. Like, there are bits of dialogue to make it clear this is happening over a long time and I figured Geralt and Yenn may not age but then the bard also stays the same age. And I don't think they were trying to make it confusing? It also took me a couple episodes to figure out this show is going more for the tone of Xena than Game of Thrones. It was a fun, quick watch despite some problems, they have me for S2

I imagine these things wouldn't be problems for those who have read the books/played the games

four episodes in and this is fun - makes much better use of henry cavill’s blocky taciturnity than superman did, that’s for sure

Struggled to get through the second episode, it's just so ugly. Everything looks like a video game cutscene.

only saw e1 so far but thought the production choices were ummm interesting. that King and Queen who die in battle looked like they were dressed for a fancy dress business conference

episode three is where it starts to improve

It's sad how often that happens. Often it's the entire first season that can more or less be disposed of (Parks and Rec, Buffy).

ok that bard better not sing through the rest of the series or my skeleton will leave my body

it took me four episodes to realize they were jumping around in the chronology. I was also very drunk when watching episodes 1-2.

You'll keep your skeleton, VG. He thankfully never gets a showcase like ep 2 again

THANK CHRIST

ugh he reminds me of youtubers

he has big jack whitehall energy

Caveats: I've played the first game and am currently in the middle of the second; I'm not a fantasy fan (or much of a gamer) but did read the book series to get into the games. Also gave up after about four episodes and skimmed some of the remaining.

I didn't care for the tone of the show at all. The books were closer to Xena: Warrior Princess, but the show thinks it’s Game of Thrones. The novels had a wry, down-to-earth quality to them, which befitted what was essentially popcorn reading; the show seems very po-faced and self-consciously EPIC, which made the goofier Dandelion scenes stick out. Wish they would have kept more of the fairy tale subversion, such as the antagonist in the first episode being a vengeful twist on Snow White.

The show also had so little style. The costumes and sets all look generic grimdark fantasy to me. I wish it had been inspired by the material's Slavic origins.

I have a feeling that Neftflix's impetus behind the whole thing was more "We need our own Game of Thrones, someone find a franchise we can chuck onto the site" rather than "I love these games/books, let's bring it to the screen."

Thinking as well of the fact that Amazon's well on the way with its own one-two of Wheel of Time and Tolkien so Netflix doubtless wanted to stake out some post GoT space even more than usual.

okay I just saw e2. I'm still completely unclear as to whether they are going for GoT-style hard-fantasy or high-camp cheesiness but I found it embarrassing and riveting in equal parts

They want both. And tbf some shows have straddled the camp/serious line effectively (Buffy comes to mind). But this show is trying to cover 2-3 different short stories with very different tone in one episode and the tone shifts are pretty jarring

The dragon episode was remarkably bad

I thought the last couple were decent though

Having Geralt's adoption of a child be basically an administrative error is slightly less appealing than the short story's approach of it being a ruthless miniature heel turn for him, but it is very funny when Cavill says "fuck" so it's impossible to say if it's bad or not

cavill has found a lot of different ways to say ‘fuck’ in this show

it’s a good catchphrase tbh

Henry Cavill in the role he was born to play

(from IMDB)

Henry Cavill himself actively pursued the role of Geralt until he got it. When Cavill first heard that the show was being made, he repeatedly bothered his agents to get a meeting with Netflix. Finally, Netflix agreed to take the meeting with him but show-runner Lauren Schmidt initially turned him down because she hadn't written a single word of the script yet and did not know what the show was going to be. After 4 months, as the show was being written, Schmidt tested 207 actors for Geralt but couldn't find him. She said that while writing the script, she kept hearing Cavill's voice in her head speaking Geralt's lines. Finally, 4 months after their initial meeting, she met Cavill again, and this time during his audition, when he read the lines she had written live in front of her in his real voice, she instantly knew that Cavill was Geralt. Cavill said it was important to go through the process to make sure the right actor was picked and he was thrilled to finally win the role which he called his "dream come true". He went to add "it was an absolute honor to play Geralt because he lives very close to my heart."

Having read the books and played the games, I finally surrendered to my completist impulses whilst fending off a fever and watched the whole thing. The narrative learning curve struck me as steep for viewers unfamiliar with the original saga (my wife said she would have enjoyed it far less had we not periodically paused to discuss what was going on), but all in all the three threads are satisfactorily woven into each other even though Ciri's tale comes across as the most dispensable. I found the magnifying glass bits – i.e. everything that Sapkowski merely alludes to in passing – most convincing, such as Yennefer's formative years and the Battle of Sodden Hill, which made for a logical and impressive visual climax (I'm a sucker for sorcerous fireworks) despite the occasional baffling liberty (e.g. the implication that Cahir can so much as take on Vilgefortz). As other have noted, issues of tonal consistency permeate the first season, especially towards the very beginning, although it's fair to say that this is a holdover from Sapkowski's pentalogy of novels. By contrast, The Last Wish, a short story collection spanned by an amusing frame narrative, does a much better job of highlighting his talent for discrete, episodic retellings of Eastern European folk tales (mainly), without any pretence of strict adherence to an overarching yarn. In the video games, as well, side quests often turn out to be more memorable than the main plot (see: the much-touted 'Bloody Baron' in W3), so ideally I'd like the Netflix series to further tap into The Witcher's fragmentary potential instead of its epic aspirations, but we all know that's not going to happen.

OTM, the short story bits were closest to the show I might enjoy watching. I'm skeptical Netflix will commit to however many seasons it might take to finish the books, especially if it doesn't become the GoT phenomenon they're hoping, even if one hopes they streamline the books. They've only had a handful of shows go past the five season mark, right? Obviously, though, Orange is the New Black or Grace and Frankie don't cost what this show would, though.

I skipped most of the Ciri plot; her actor doesn't make any impression on me at all.

I had never read books or played game or anything and even though i didnt fully grasp how far apart some of the timelines were, but i really enjoyed the show overall.

Okay, I finished this last night.
I'm still quite baffled at... not really the show, but how it actually came to existence in such a way. So many plotting and production choices feel outright bizarre.

For lack of an overarching plot, it would have perhaps made more sense to have introduced a framing device, like in the Last Wish books.

Instead I spend a decent amount of time in each episode trying to work out where on the timeline we are. In some ways that becomes part of the fun, but it's still a head-scratcher and sometimes trying to work out whether, for example Mousesack is a good sorceror or a bad doppler takes a minute.

Similarly, Yennefer's character arc spans such a huge length of time that it's hard to buy-in to her rags-to-riches story. Her motivations and attitudes swing wildly from episode to episode, scene to scene.

This way of presenting the timeline feels almost avantgarde right now, but I've a feeling it's going to be used a lot more in the coming decade so as to become de rigueur in film and TV. But for a show with so many different characters and stories to tell, the non-linear presentation is super confusing, even to someone who's playing the video game and listening to the audiobooks.

The production choices are also a little bizarre. So much of it felt like a TV set and the costumes often looked like they'd been hired from an expensive fancy dress shop.

More often than not, it gave the enormous world of the Witcher an uncanny closed-in quality. Huge battle scenes felt like re-enactments at a stately home.

Even the haircuts looked strangely modern. This is a medieval fantasy world where hair clippers and curling tongs are easily accessible. Calanthe and Eist especially looked like they were about to pitch their fantasy wedding business to the team on the Dragon's Den.

Also - is this a world where literally no one ages? I get that Witchers and sorcerors have a form of genetic arrested development, but what about everyone else? Pavetta is supposed to be 14, so I can accept that Queen Calanthe could be a grandmother in her forties. But she looks the same wherever on the timeline she appears.

Maybe someone with better background knowledge can explain to me how the royal family works here. Forgive me if this is SPOILER-y - perhaps this will all come out in the wash in Season 2, but I'm just confused:

- So, Calanthe is the Queen of Cintra and grandmother to Pavetta who in turn was the mother of Cirilla.
- Eist is Calanthe's husband? And some sort of Skelligan leader (despite not looking particularly vikingy as do most Skelligans)?
- Duny, the hedgehog knight is Cirilla's father?
- But am I right in thinking that in the games, Cirilla's father is the Nilfgaardian Emperor Emhyr Var Emreis.
- So are Duny and Emhyr the same person? Duny comes across as quite a nice, humble chap. But in the games Emhyr is a villainous tyrant.
- Furthermore, if Duny and Pavetta are married, wouldn't this link Nilfgaard with Cintra? Why would the Nilfgaardians need to invade Cintra?
- Or am I getting my timelines all messed up? They did mention that Duny and Pavetta drowned? So if that's the case, who is in charge of Nilfgaard?

Ciri's parentage is a plot point in the books

They probably can't stick the landing on the books' handling of it because so many people have played W3 (and the show will get cancelled after 2 seasons lol)

So deepending on how much you want to know, you can either wait to see if they frontload that story some time in s2, or just google Duny

The bard not aging is weird

I wouldn't dwell on these apparent inconsistencies if I were you. It will make sense in time.

xp

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

1200 years before Geralt of Rivia, the worlds of monsters, men and elves merged into one, and the first Witcher came to be.

Announcing The Witcher: Blood Origin, a 6 part live-action The Witcher spin-off series from Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) July 27, 2020

why am I psyched? why?

They're doing a spinoff after only one season of the main series? That's gotta be a record or something.

I mean Spartacus did that, sort of, but they had a lead actor dying of cancer at the time.

Season 2 was... better, and I liked it, and will likely watch the next season, but I still get kind of a hollow feeling from the show. dialogue too functional, story elements too familiar from other fantasy. it avoids the confusion of S1, so that's a plus I guess

Watched S2E1 last night and it was a tremendous improvement on the first series which was, let's face it, a fun but confusing and undercooked mess. The scenes with Yen and Fringilla were still a bit ho-hum,
But the way they adapted Nivellen's story from the books so it included Ciri was excellent

Through episode 3, not totally following the whole elf thing necessarily but it’s ok so far. Fight choreography hasn’t totally been as engaging as season 1 but also he’s basically only fought a tree and a bat so far. One hilarious moment that pulled me out of it briefly was Ciri “running” away from the monster in ep 3. Arms swinging, panting, and she’s barely moving at all. Never seen a slower run on camera. Idk made me chuckle.

Oh and a quick google and I stumble on the subreddit where the consensus very quickly appears to be that everyone is livid that they didn’t stick to the source material and perhaps regardless of that main gripe they all hate this season either way. So maybe it gets worse I guess I’ll find out.

I'm only three eps in, it seems better but also gets a bit cringey as soon as e.g elves turn up to chew scenery

They're continuing down their path of having a lot of the non-protagonist characters be turned into one-dimensional fanatics or outright morons

Yeah elves so far are overacting

Ciri “running” away from the monster in ep 3

Lord, she did a bad job at that. I also laughed

Fantasizing about a gif meme where a group of elderly mall walkers overtake her near that waterfall.

It also took me a couple episodes to figure out this show is going more for the tone of Xena than Game of Thrones.

i just started watching a few nights ago, and this was my take by the 2nd episode aswell.

In the middle of watching S2E2 with a slightly spinny Covidy head.

Yennefer gets kidnapped by elves - do we have to? I can't say I'm the biggest fan of Yen as a character in the game or the books - but they've done an especially bad job of depicting her in the show so far. I wonder if this is down to the script or down to the acting, but there's something especially wooden about a lot of the scenes, and Yen is the woodiest of them all.

Of course there's plenty of horrific acting and undercooked scripting in the rest of this show. The bit with the Cockney Witcher telling the anecdote about the farmhand was just... is this supposed to be a good bit? What were they going for there?

And yet I'm loving every campy minute of it
Luckily Leshen (or Leshy as they seem to be referred to in this show) are some of my favourite beasties in the game, so this should zhuzh things up a bit.

It might also be my watching comprehension but it's rare that I watch this show and have any more than 50% understanding of what the fuck is going on

OIC, Cockney Witcher is menst to be Lambert of "Lambert, Lambert, What a prick" fame

I mean I'm trying to follo this show but this is basically me at this point

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S09E03/541573.jpg?b64lines=IEJSSUxMSUFOVC4gSSBIQVZFCiBBQlNPTFVURUxZIE5PIElERUEgV0hBVCdTCiBHT0lORyBPTi4g

The monsters don't get an enormous amount of screentime in this do they? There's a lot of build up and then they're thwarted fairly easily after about five minutes. Unfortunately, because the show expects you to already kind of know who people like Eskel and Vesemir are, you don't get much of a chance to get to know them very well before they either turn into a monster or nearly get killed by one.
I had absolutely no fucking clue what was going in that Baba Yaga hut. No idea at all, and I've played the whole Witcher 3 game and the DLCs and read like one and a half of the books

Thats the bit I was confused by too!

Holy shit I 100% read that as “Baby Yoda hut”.

From what I gather, having read all of the books or played all of the games does not particularly inoculate anybody from having no idea what exactly they're going for with this

Just saw the running away scene lol

I don't know what it is with this show, that clearly had a fair budget put into it, that the makers don't seem fussed about whether it looks like you're watching something filmed in a TV studio. Yennefer and her sorcerer pals look like they're all dressed up for a night on the raz at Pryzm. And there's one king character who looks like a middle manager who's turned up at a medieval banquet reenactment. It feels like it's being done on purpose, like some avantgarde post-Brechtian method. But it's played absolutely straight. I can't tell if it's smirking to itself sometimes:

"What do you call a Witcher with no brains?"
(Ciri walks past) "Lambert"
"Now she's funny"

I'm not expecting Tyrion Lannister in S2 Game of Thrones here, but is this meant to be a bit shit-on-purpose, or is it really the best the writers could throw together for this scene?

Absolutely loving every minute of it though. I can't lie.

my sense is it’s 100% in on the joke

I'd say so. But lately I've come to feel this way about a lot of Netflix productions and it's proving to be a personal bugbear: I'm rarely immersed enough to suspend my own belief about what I'm seeing. Midnight Mass was another offender, and I know that wasn't aiming for some sort of postmodern irony, it's just that the whole thing gave off a hollow, scripted vibe. You wouldn't have got this in the last golden age of television, certainly not with peak-era Game of Thrones, which was dazzlingly well produced and scripted; or even Stranger Things, which did postmodernism very well.
There's also this production patina that covers over a lot of Netflix shows (maybe not so much The Witcher, but certainly things like Brand New Cherry Flavour, Midnight Mass etc) reminiscent of the Michael Bay Orange & Teal aesthetic of the 2000s. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it'll become very obvious when observed in retrospect in years to come: i.e. "That definitely showed on Netflix c2020"

So checked the subreddit again for community consensus (I don't know how to look up stuff like that anywhere else) and found a criticism I agree with:

Every scene is written like it’s the most dramatic moment in that person’s life up until that point. No one speaks like a normal person or has a single normal conversation. Everything is either a huge life lesson, exposition or world building.

In general the level of production you mentioned dl, the acting quality etc. all does feel as Vinnie said closer to Xena with 2021 technology and a Netflix budget than anything scanning "golden age" like early-mid GoT.

I've never seen Xena but that's like some low budget early-evening 90s stuff isn't it? Not aiming high for a high rating Netflix show I must say.
It's also got a bit of a Lynch's Dune vibe, in every way that it is a disjointed, corny, overblown hot mess that is nevertheless charming and incredibly watchable despite it all

or maybe… they’re hitting exactly the target they want to hit? you want classy, go bore yourself to death with Wheel of Time lol

Sure, sure. I have nothing against a bit of corny fun. That said, it's played so straight and the narrative is often so wilfully, deeply confusing that it doesn't code as such. But yes I'm enjoying it loads all the same, just bamboozled by it a lot of the time

TUSKED PIGMAN

I haven't watched the whole of the series yet but I know how it ends: Geralt dies falling off a four foot wall

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Anyone watched/watching Blood Origin?

delighted by the appearance of Dylan Moran in Ep3 … also by general presence of Lenny Henry who now has a late stage career as earthy “magic dude” i guess (he was also in Rings of Power)

Watched the first two episodes and it seems ropey as fuck?

The narration is particularly bad and it's not quite sticking the fun/humour of the original so far

yeahh it was a bit lackluster overall… found it hard to care abt anyone much until Meldof showed up

So rumours now there might not be a season 4 after all. Poor Liam.

Meanwhile, latest season getting review bombed in the usual places (by, I assume, the usual people) but it seemed to include quite a lot of plot from the books (which appears to be their main beef). It just wasn't particularly good.

it took a while for me to get back into the first half but i’m looking forward to the new episodes now that all the place-setting is (hopefully) done

and i would much rather have NO witcher than a replacement for Cavill ESPECIALLY a fucking lameass lesser-helmsworth honestly good riddance to that stupid idea

like fucking spin it off with any of the other main cast members & it would still be good imo

Am I the only one who found it hard to give much of a shit with S3? It felt like Cavill desperately wanted out and was phoning in his lines. I continued to have no idea who the bad guys were, so found every battle scene completely confusing. I didnt actually mind the Ciri has her Job moment in the desert ep and was suprised it got such a low IMDB rating.

No you weren’t the only one. The whole 3rd season just slid right off my mind like rain on a windshield

yeahhhh it was definitely a bit bemusing

also between Yennefer’s airy lisping and Cavill’s growling mumbles i felt like i could absolutely not understand anythinb the two of them said to each other lol

Oh yeah all these shows get subbies without a 2nd thought for me (this, Foundation, Trek). Anything with mumbling or ornate language or a lot of info.

We have eight budgies and the ac is running so every show gets subtitles without exception

We have 2 teenagers who love to talk loudly 10 feet from the TV lol.

Lol
At least with the budgies I can turn the light out

Shame this show didn't work better. It does feel like a missed opportunity. I'm such an enormous fan of the game, and to a much lesser extent the books.

But I dropped off about a third of the way through S2, baffled by the constant spacetime switching, disillusioned by much of the acting, jank production values, odd pacing, and an overall feeling of hollowness through the whole thing - like it could almost definitely have been good had they made and avoided certain stylistic choices.

That said, the Nivellen episode was actually so great (it's also one of the better Witcher short stories) and it really raised my hopes for that season. But after a couple more epidosdes it started falling apart and dragging very hard.

If someone can convince me to carry on with it, I will.

But while we're talking video games with a complicated sense of time and space, I would watch the hell out of an Elden Ring TV series done in this way - mad timeline switching, slightly janky production, overwrought acting - it would all very much suit the FromSoft aesthetic and it would be fun to see a dramatised version of events leading up to the game itself

Was nivellen the lonely animal guy in his castle? That’s what I wanted from this show.

yeah that's right, Beauty & the Beast basically