Netflix's The Witcher - Season 2

[Lokiat0r]

I found Season 2 to be entertaining, though also disappointing given my expectations as a fan of the books. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 6. Maybe a 6.5 at best.

I understand why screenplays often deviate from the source material - it's more engaging and adds some mystery when you aren't certain how events are going to unfold. However, in this case, I don't think they did a particularly good job. Also, most shows of this nature rarely have the staying power to make it past 4 or 5 seasons, so I suspect they're planning to shorten the storyline significantly and that means major plot deviations.

 

[Riven-Twain]

Moderator: A few posts deleted. Although we recognise that some may strongly dislike the Netflix series, for a variety of reasons, please, keep comments reasonably respectful, and leave national and cultural criticisms aside.

 

[Sunsibar]

I haven't watched second season yet. I'm not saying that I won't do it, but so far I'm in no rush to watch it.

I did see the whole first season, but it just never felt Witcher to me. Characters just won't feel right. I hope that this second season would make things better, but I doubt it. So far I have loved all things Witcher, but this tv series is just something I can't be excited about. No matter how hard I try.

But I gotta admit, there is one really good thing in it. It has made several new people play the games =) That is always a good thing

 

[Feline_Witcher]

I understand why screenplays often deviate from the source material - it's more engaging and adds some mystery when you aren't certain how events are going to unfold. However, in this case, I don't think they did a particularly good job. Also, most shows of this nature rarely have the staying power to make it past 4 or 5 seasons, so I suspect they're planning to shorten the storyline significantly and that means major plot deviations.

Shows like The Boys, Hannibal and early GOT have done that successfully. Obviously not this one. This show feels like a parody of The Witcher, and I've watched it with that in mind. The show got the worst showrunner/scriptwriters/costume design/acting it could possibly have, and what makes them bad is mostly the fact they do not seem to be aware of the mistakes they've made and still make. The only question left now is how come it doesn't get cancelled just like so many other Netflix Flicks

 

[incomingdamage]

Crap, I 've watched the 2nd season after all
Not much good to say about it unfortunately. Same weaknesses from previous season still present here.

I think that cinema (or tv series) magic happens when you have a strong vision and you are the right, not accidental, person to create a visual version of a written story. This story doesn't have to be complex, multi-layered, with branching sub-plots and army of ocean-deep characters. It can be very, very simple. HOW you show it is what matters. Some greatest directors, screenplay authors, camera operators - in short, best movie creation teams in history knew this, and still know it. That's not the case with this tv series. It's totally mediocre and forgettable in all its aspects: screenplay, casting, visuals, environment. Just another tv show with a lot of "talking heads" and generic content. I don't mind changes made to source material, but it has to be done in a CLASSY way, with a very strong vision and confidence, a passion about the story you want to adapt. I'm sorry, but I couldn't find anything of that sort here. There's no real cinema magic in it that would make it a visual artwork remembered for many years, a classic - which would be in my opinion what mr Sapkowski's books deserved.

 

[StanislavOZZO]

Season 2 is better in every way, except music.

Here we have a coherent story with proper atmosphere.

The cast for new characters like Vesemir, Dijkstra and Nenneke is very good, I think. And even the sweet man Cavill is better here at portraying the witcher.

Costumes look much better and closer to the books.

Now, on a bitter note, they have replaced the composer of the series Sonya Belousova who did an amazing job with Giona with some new guy that wasn't nearly as good. There was nothing memorable for me from the new tunes, and Netflix reused the old tunes by Sonya occasionally. Hm...

I did not like Season 1 very much and with Season 2 I am having an overall positive impression so far.

 

[Rantsir]

Lets put book aside, and let's just take a look at the official Netflix map for the show:

Spoiler

Find Ellander - that's the place Yen and Ciri teleport from in episode 7.

Find Oxenfurt - that's the place, where Geralt is apparntly teleported to by Nenneke after he asking her to open the portal.

Find Sodden - that's the place where Ciri and Yen are teleported to. See how close they are to Cintra now?

So, is there anyone that could explain how the hell Geralt was able to catch up to them near Cintra when ha had whole country(ies) to travel, actual border with Nilfgaard and Yaruga river (which should be hard to cross) on the way, with Jaskier on foot and some dwarves on that old wagon?

Actually it is even better - the dwarves originally (in the books) were met in Kaedwen (he met them much earlier when traveling with Ciri to Ellander) and here they still say they work for Kaedwen's king, but their subplot was moved to entirely different place so it looks like Geralt visited Kaedwen (again - weeks long journey) to meet dwarves and THEN went to Cintra just in time to cacth Yen & Ciri.

And how they were able to go back to Kaer Morhen just like that, when this is a journey that would take months (including crossing mountains, Yaruga river, and border with Nilfgaard again) - just see where is Kaer Morhen on the map. It would take MONTHS, and even if we assume that it took months then it seems like all the rest of plotlines have been on <pause> that whole time.

Fast travel, right?

Really, I understand why there were changes made to Blood of Elves plot, but when you published official map, at least take a look on it when you're writing your scripts, cause what was shown in episodes 7-8 makes no sense.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

The only question left now is how come it doesn't get cancelled just like so many other Netflix Flicks

Maybe because the first season still on "top watched - series" (6th-12th December 2021) and I guess that the second will be in the "top watched" in the next update.
Netflix Top 10 - Global
As simple as that

 

[Feline_Witcher]

Maybe because the first season still on "top watched - series" (6th-12th December 2021) and I guess that the second will be in the "top watched" in the next update.
Netflix Top 10 - Global
As simple as that

Ridley Scott is so right...

 

[REG2012]

I just finished watching Kaer Morhen and wow!! The detail is amazing. They got it spot on.
The steps that lead up to the top where you fight the invasion in the first game (I think it was the first tutorial), the training columns where Geralt trains Ciri and the room where Geralt is studying that branch arm. Its also where you have the first real fight in the first game. I don't remember who it was against but wow season two has taken it up a notch. Not just because of episode two but the production value has gone up significantly. I think they have a bigger budget this time.
I could see the first game so much in this episode. Even the forest and the areas outside Kaer Morhen.

And he uses signs this time too. Axxi and Igni. Yes!! This is the most faithful adaption of source material I've ever seen across mediums. Books to games to tv show. Maybe there'll be a movie later down the line?

I wonder if they're going to have any more characters from the first game like Shani and Alvin?

I won't read anything more here until I've watched the rest of the season so I avoid spoilers.

At the time when the first game was out I didn't even know about the books. I found out about them years later.
I still have yet to read them. I have a few of them but not the entire collection yet.
I'm not a book reader but I'll make an exception for this series.

The timeline jumps around a lot in the books. I've only read the first 45 pages or so of the first book. I'll have to start it from the beginning again. I've forgotten what I've read.

I am fully ensconced in The Witcher world again!!

 

[northwold]

I'll have a look at it eventually but two things struck me / blinded me with season 1:

1) the budget wasn't big enough for the stories they were trying to tell, so you had small armies on cheap looking sets, locations that did not look as dramatic as the story implied but like they'd just popped out round the back of the studio, weak cinematography (specifically, the lighting), etc;

2) poor storytelling decisions that were made even poorer by poor casting and ill-considered production design. For example, if you're going to mess with the timelines deliberately to throw off your audience, there has to be a reason for it rather than just a gimmick. This isn't Westworld, where confusion was the point, so there was no narrative reason not to tell the viewer you were in a different time period. It unnecessarily irritated the audience for no reward while actively harming the viewer's ability to follow the story. The unmemorable environment design, the generic costume design, the casting of characters with faces and characterisation so undistinctive that you couldn't even remember who they were all made it even worse, because there was no way to track what was going on in the first place, let alone that it was in different time periods (I remembered the Nilfgaardians, granted, but that was because they looked like a drag revue).

I got the impression that whoever was in charge had a poor command of cinematic storytelling, story structure and narrative tension, and was taking material that could have been made to feel epic and instead just spraying it randomly everywhere. The only character whose story properly cohered into any recognisable form of character development was Yennefer's, which was utterly peculiar for a series about Geralt of Rivia. It made me desperate to see more of her journey because at least there the creators had a handle on how to engage viewers with the narrative.

I appreciate that that sounds fairly vicious but I don't mean it as a b**ch. Just that the result was... not good.

 

[minicrom]

Watching season 2 of The Witcher is like watching The Desolation of Smaug three times in a row. This is both fun and bad but way more bad than fun. I enjoyed first season more and I must say this is a surprise to me.

 

[Feline_Witcher]

Watching season 2 of The Witcher is like watching The Desolation of Smaug three times in a row. This is both fun and bad but way more bad than fun. I enjoyed first season more and I must say this is a surprise to me.

At least that has Richard Armitage and Lee Pace. And I always though it was the most tolerable Hobbit film

Shit, Lee Pace would have been a superb Eredin

 

[REG2012]

Watching season 2 of The Witcher is like watching The Desolation of Smaug three times in a row. This is both fun and bad but way more bad than fun. I enjoyed first season more and I must say this is a surprise to me.

sif comparing The Desolation of Smaug to The Witcher The Witcher is way better.

 

[Spockprime]

It wasn't easy, but I've managed to finish it. I hope it's the last season and it follows Cowboy Bebop. Netflix, please, cancel it. Stop murdering the world of Witcher.

Post automatically merged: Dec 18, 2021

Writing on the show is seriously pathetic. There are many dull or cringe lines.

Season 3 has already been approved by Netflix.

After finishing it, I'm somewhat in agreement. I thought that Season 1 was rough, but I thought that it had promise. I was hoping that they might find their feet in Season 2, with a bigger budget and a year of experience. The presentation and cinematics are much better, but the story is terrible. Or stories. Ugh. The writing was so bad that for one scene, which I won't describe to avoid spoilers, Henry Cavill refused to use it, and re-wrote the scene himself.

I've become tolerant of his portrayal of Geralt. I like the portrayal of Ciri. Triss is barely tolerable, sometimes (I think that the actress does pretty well with what she's been given to work with). The rest -- please just discard them and start over. The writing is terrible, and the rest of the actors don't seem to be able to compensate for it.

 

[lelxrv]

Season 3 has already been approved by Netflix.

After finishing it, I'm somewhat in agreement. I thought that Season 1 was rough, but I thought that it had promise. I was hoping that they might find their feet in Season 2, with a bigger budget and a year of experience. The presentation and cinematics are much better, but the story is terrible. Or stories. Ugh. The writing was so bad that for one scene, which I won't describe to avoid spoilers, Henry Cavill refused to use it, and re-wrote the scene himself.

I've become tolerant of his portrayal of Geralt. I like the portrayal of Ciri. Triss is barely tolerable, sometimes (I think that the actress does pretty well with what she's been given to work with). The rest -- please just discard them and start over. The writing is terrible, and the rest of the actors don't seem to be able to compensate for it.

Cavill's Geralt is easily the worst performance on the show. Even worse than Triss. I can barely stand it. But at this point it's irrelevant. I'm done with the show. I seriously doubt I'll subject myself to another season. Hopefully by that time we will get some news from CDPR about the next Witcher game...

 

[sidv88]

Lets put book aside, and let's just take a look at the official Netflix map for the show:

View attachment 11270128

Spoiler

Find Ellander - that's the place Yen and Ciri teleport from in episode 7.

Find Oxenfurt - that's the place, where Geralt is apparntly teleported to by Nenneke after he asking her to open the portal.

Find Sodden - that's the place where Ciri and Yen are teleported to. See how close they are to Cintra now?

So, is there anyone that could explain how the hell Geralt was able to catch up to them near Cintra when ha had whole country(ies) to travel, actual border with Nilfgaard and Yaruga river (which should be hard to cross) on the way, with Jaskier on foot and some dwarves on that old wagon?

Actually it is even better - the dwarves originally (in the books) were met in Kaedwen (he met them much earlier when traveling with Ciri to Ellander) and here they still say they work for Kaedwen's king, but their subplot was moved to entirely different place so it looks like Geralt visited Kaedwen (again - weeks long journey) to meet dwarves and THEN went to Cintra just in time to cacth Yen & Ciri.

And how they were able to go back to Kaer Morhen just like that, when this is a journey that would take months (including crossing mountains, Yaruga river, and border with Nilfgaard again) - just see where is Kaer Morhen on the map. It would take MONTHS, and even if we assume that it took months then it seems like all the rest of plotlines have been on <pause> that whole time.

Fast travel, right?

Really, I understand why there were changes made to Blood of Elves plot, but when you published official map, at least take a look on it when you're writing your scripts, cause what was shown in episodes 7-8 makes no sense.

Helpful mages along the way who allow portals for a small fee.

Seriously though, all sci-fi fantasy filmed works have travel time problems. Somehow the Millennium Falcon made it from Hoth to Bespin in Star Wars without a hyperdrive (I just pretend the Falcon went at near light speed, relativity and time dilation made the trip feel short to Han/Leia/Chewie, while Bespin was conveniently 2 light months away from Hoth allowing Luke months to train with Yoda).

The Enterprise flew to the center of the galaxy in the 5th Trek movie while the whole premise of the tv show Voyager is that it can't go that distance in a short time.

Elrond walked all the way from Rivendell to near Gondor in Return of the King, just to give Aragorn a sword. And this movie won Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

And these examples are just the ones from literally the most famous sci-fi/fantasy filmed works there are. There's countless more travel time errors in less well known works. Witcher is hardly new in this aspect.

I'm on episode 6 of season 2 now and like the show so far. And yes, I read every one of the Witcher books, even Season of Storms. I always felt Yen got a pass in the books for being kind of a jerk (to put it mildly), so I'm actually enjoying the dark turn they're taking with her against Ciri here. It seems more honest. Book Yen reminded me of my mother "I scream because I care" and then recklessly yells at people and causes havoc and claims they do it because they care, while, you know, just making things worse. Yet somehow book Yen got a pass. At least Triss had a justification for being scared in the books. But me disliking Yen always put me in the minority with other book readers in the past--maybe that's why I'm taking to this show more easily than others.

 

[Feline_Witcher]

Cavill's Geralt is easily the worst performance on the show. Even worse than Triss. I can barely stand it. But at this point it's irrelevant. I'm done with the show. I seriously doubt I'll subject myself to another season. Hopefully by that time we will get some news from CDPR about the next Witcher game...

And he is a pretty dope actor outside of The Witcher

Whose idea was to use those horrible contact lenses anyway? In GOT they refrained from using violet contacts for the Targaryen characters because it looked really bad, why the people who run this show don't see this???

Post automatically merged: Dec 22, 2021

Helpful mages along the way who allow portals for a small fee.

Seriously though, all sci-fi fantasy filmed works have travel time problems. Somehow the Millennium Falcon made it from Hoth to Bespin in Star Wars without a hyperdrive (I just pretend the Falcon went at near light speed, relativity and time dilation made the trip feel short to Han/Leia/Chewie, while Bespin was conveniently 2 light months away from Hoth allowing Luke months to train with Yoda).

The Enterprise flew to the center of the galaxy in the 5th Trek movie while the whole premise of the tv show Voyager is that it can't go that distance in a short time.

Elrond walked all the way from Rivendell to near Gondor in Return of the King, just to give Aragorn a sword. And this movie won Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

And these examples are just the ones from literally the most famous sci-fi/fantasy filmed works there are. There's countless more travel time errors in less well known works. Witcher is hardly new in this aspect.

I'm on episode 6 of season 2 now and like the show so far. And yes, I read every one of the Witcher books, even Season of Storms. I always felt Yen got a pass in the books for being kind of a jerk (to put it mildly), so I'm actually enjoying the dark turn they're taking with her against Ciri here. It seems more honest. Book Yen reminded me of my mother "I scream because I care" and then recklessly yells at people and causes havoc and claims they do it because they care, while, you know, just making things worse. Yet somehow book Yen got a pass. At least Triss had a justification for being scared in the books. But me disliking Yen always put me in the minority with other book readers in the past--maybe that's why I'm taking to this show more easily than others.

Return of The King should never have won Best Picture IMO. There were far better movies that year

 

[lelxrv]

And he is a pretty dope actor outside of The Witcher

Whose idea was to use those horrible contact lenses anyway? In GOT they refrained from using violet contacts for the Targaryen characters because it looked really bad, why the people who run this show don't see this???

I saw other movies with Cavill and at his absolute best he's serviceable.

Lenses is an awful decision, I agree. I think in the first season they used FX to give Yennefer's eyes violet shade. It was probably too expensive, so they just put lenses on freaking everyone.

 

[Feline_Witcher]

I saw other movies with Cavill and at his absolute best he's serviceable.

Lenses is an awful decision, I agree. I think in the first season they used FX to give Yennefer's eyes violet shade. It was probably too expensive, so they just put lenses on freaking everyone.

I was thinking more of Cavill in The Tudors, certainly not in those lame Zack Snyder flicks.

They should have not used lenses AT ALL, just the black ones for Geralt when he's intoxicated and no more. If it looks awful, it looks awful. Some things simply can't be translated visually