So I am on my second sitting of The Witcher Netflix. I am enjoying it even more this time around because, my expectations are no longer a factor and I am now watching the show for what it is - a re-imagining of the books. I think it is an excellent show and the acting is really good.
I would still have preferred it to be closed to the books but it is not an issue for me, and the second sitting is a real joy.
I would still have preferred it to be closed to the books but it is not an issue for me, and the second sitting is a real joy.
Yep, once you are past the deviations from the books factor, it's actually quite good.
Well, to be fair he wasn't whinging about CDPR, he was mostly mad at himself for making the wrong bet and not foreseeing the sucess of the games
After the latest agreement with CDPR, Netflix contract and latest book sales boost he should be financially secure and I think it's a good thing. Old man coming to terms with the new world he doesn't want to accept for what it is
Thought so as well. Bunch of groups of scrotum warriors running into bad stuff followed by some explosions, tragedies, a mage in a sword fight doing nothing but conjuring brand new swords every time he lost it from being clearly outmatched (yet taking the exact same approach 4-5 times in a row before the "Not enough mana.", track started rolling.), more explosions due to team Nilfgaard mages deciding to sacrifice themselves for the cause, a bit more tragedy, a few other mages getting curb stomped, and on and on it went. Until finally the teacher gave the student a pep talk and bam, Yen went beast mode and everyone was fucked
. None of this is listed in any particular order, of course. Except for the Yen part. I guess she figured the chess match was going south so the solution was to light the board aflame.
Yeah, the way they did that it was practically a deus ex machina moment. Which is utterly rudiculous. I mean, you have powerful mages everywhere in this battle, but they seem to achieve almost nothing, and then you end it all with some inspiring talk followed by a move that looks overpowered and unbelievable in the face of all the other magic we saw so far. That was simply subpar writing.
Dumbest story changes to me are how they depict Nilfgaard, Cahir and Vilgefortz. Almost the opposite of how they are in the books.
No, it's not. Both fight for Cintra and battle of Sodden are only described by Dandelion to Geralt briefly in the last short story. Also mages in the books don't die from throwing some fireballs and they are not suicidal morons.
Pretty sure that was all dreamed up by the show writers to make Nilfgaard be extra special evil. From the looks on the mages faces, they didn't seem to be enjoying themselves. It was more like they were avoiding something significantly worse being done to them. Maybe turned into eel food -- I dunno.
What the books did or did not do wasn't a huge concern for me. It's an adaptation. Changing things here or there is fine. Provided those changes are sensible and well executed. In this case I don't feel it holds true.
The bigger concern was the "battle" getting typical TV/movie treatment, where it's basically just a series of action sequences thrown together. If large scale battles are going to exist I'd prefer a coherent sequence of events for all sides involved. I don't expect to see random action cheaply and inexplicably thrown together, with a half dozen, "Oh noes, all my buddies are dying.", scenes with dramatic, melancholy music tossed in to emotionally sabotage the viewer.
A good counter-example would be the movie The King, also on Netflix. The setup for Agincourt there made it believable. The English were undermanned so opted to bait the French into the muck, full armor in all, to get them stuck and slowed, shower them with arrows via Longbows and attack from the forests with various weapons designed specifically to wreck full plate mail, all the while having superior mobility due to lighter equipment. You know, strategy, tactics, stuff you'd see in a battle. Obviously, a fantasy series isn't comparable to a historical drama but... come on....
That entire battle I was sitting there thinking to myself, "This is the best these mages/sorcerers can come up with?". Aren't these people supposed to be powerful? Wise from their extended stay in the world? What the hell is this monstrosity of a "plan"? Nilfgaard, an empire frequently waging war and presumably adept at executing it.... The best they could come up with is sending groups of aforementioned scrotum warriors, adorned in intimidation factor inspired gear (or comedic mind-fuckery, depending on how you view that attire), into the explody potions, a touch of sabotage and a handful of suicide bombing mages fearful of the alternative.... Yep, I'd expect anyone to shake in their boots at the sight of such an army.
Yeah.... I didn't view Nilfgaard as necessarily evil before. It was more they were trying to make the world better but felt it necessary to conquer to do it. I also never got the vibe they would resort to various barbaric acts after completing their conquest. If anything I always figured it was implied they handled conquering similar to the Romans. Exert your authority but let the natives retain some degree of cultural identity. Mass murder everyone after conquering? For what purpose? Force your own mages to kill themselves, or else, to accomplish what a piece of siege equipment could do? What the hell for? It was implied NG had a massive numbers advantage.
It's like the show tried to make NG out to be some big bad, in a setting where one of the central themes is most things are a shade of grey, solely for the sake of providing a big bad. Poor choice on their part....
Please enlighten me how exactly were Cahir and Vilgefortz depicted before battle at Sodden hill?
Vilgefortz is the firstly showed at Thanedd ball and his past was only marginally mentioned. Cahir's character development begun after he joined Geralt's group...
Just finished watching with my girlfriend and we both concluded that this show was mostly a mess. I've read all the books, she had read the first two some time ago and do not recall them that well. Even with this, there were a lot of questionable decisions in the story they told, or actually the way they presented it - it was unnecessary gutted into little bits and pieces, thrown all over the episodes and made it unnecessary confusing for the most part.
The Ciri ark was the dirt worse, with some of the most cringe scenes (that fight with(WTF was this character?) Dara and Mousesack/Ermion as a prime example). This Doppler as a whole. Just BAD.
The costumes were just... I don't want to say cheap, but they looked so out of place, also so clean and just ironed. The ballsack armor, which in the final episode I discovered reminds more of the Wild Hunt armor, and the soldiers were wielding Wild Hunt axes with them too. Why? Low budget I guess, but why...
Music was a second rate W3 soundtrack rehash. Maybe not as bad as I am making it to be, but far from the game(s) for sure.
There was good stuff in the show, I liked Cavill for the most part, Calanthe was good for the most part, Eist was OK too, I even didn't mind Borch dragon form (I was expecting way worse so was fine with how it came out), Dooney I liked the way he looked and acted, but that scene with him and Geralt fighting in the throne room was baffling - why they had to kill so many of Calanthe's people and she would be fine with that at the end? Yen was up and down, Triss was baffling, Tessiah was good, when she was not stupid, Cahir was good but they did focused too much on him here, where in the books he's just a menacing silhouette with a WINGED HELM for the first couple of books, that was haunting Ciri's dreams, a WINGED HELM that was totally missing. Ciri... here's where I can't decide if the girl was bad, or the way the writers wrote her scenes did a BAD job. And overall my and my girlfriend's opinion is is that the writers did their dirt worse with their writing of the show.
That battle of Sodden at the end... we both were rolling our eyes all episode long. Mages came as totally incompetent, NG bois came totally incompetent, and the battle was won because Yen channeled her inner Ciri OP OP powers. Written badly, directed badly, acted meh-ly (with wath the actors were given... this Cahir/Vilgeforz confrontation). Whatever happened to that guy (Guy Ritchie ) that directed those awesome sequences at the end of the first episode? Was he gone after this episode or they've found him at the very end of the shootings and it was the only thing he managed to shoot (cause he was not there for the Strigga fight, I can 100% vouch for this)?
I'd say this first season was more disappointing than satisfying. I can only hope that the positive (over)reaction won't encourage them to make the second one similar to the first, that they'll get a bit more money and maybe time for the second one, and that writers and directors had gain some experience while shooting it, to do the second season more coherent and less confusing.
Like my girlfriend said: "If you have to explain to me what is going on, because you have read the books - someone didn't do his job well".
The Ciri ark was the dirt worse, with some of the most cringe scenes (that fight with(WTF was this character?) Dara and Mousesack/Ermion as a prime example). This Doppler as a whole. Just BAD.
The costumes were just... I don't want to say cheap, but they looked so out of place, also so clean and just ironed. The ballsack armor, which in the final episode I discovered reminds more of the Wild Hunt armor, and the soldiers were wielding Wild Hunt axes with them too. Why? Low budget I guess, but why...
Music was a second rate W3 soundtrack rehash. Maybe not as bad as I am making it to be, but far from the game(s) for sure.
There was good stuff in the show, I liked Cavill for the most part, Calanthe was good for the most part, Eist was OK too, I even didn't mind Borch dragon form (I was expecting way worse so was fine with how it came out), Dooney I liked the way he looked and acted, but that scene with him and Geralt fighting in the throne room was baffling - why they had to kill so many of Calanthe's people and she would be fine with that at the end? Yen was up and down, Triss was baffling, Tessiah was good, when she was not stupid, Cahir was good but they did focused too much on him here, where in the books he's just a menacing silhouette with a WINGED HELM for the first couple of books, that was haunting Ciri's dreams, a WINGED HELM that was totally missing. Ciri... here's where I can't decide if the girl was bad, or the way the writers wrote her scenes did a BAD job. And overall my and my girlfriend's opinion is is that the writers did their dirt worse with their writing of the show.
That battle of Sodden at the end... we both were rolling our eyes all episode long. Mages came as totally incompetent, NG bois came totally incompetent, and the battle was won because Yen channeled her inner Ciri OP OP powers. Written badly, directed badly, acted meh-ly (with wath the actors were given... this Cahir/Vilgeforz confrontation). Whatever happened to that guy (Guy Ritchie
) that directed those awesome sequences at the end of the first episode? Was he gone after this episode or they've found him at the very end of the shootings and it was the only thing he managed to shoot (cause he was not there for the Strigga fight, I can 100% vouch for this)?I'd say this first season was more disappointing than satisfying. I can only hope that the positive (over)reaction won't encourage them to make the second one similar to the first, that they'll get a bit more money and maybe time for the second one, and that writers and directors had gain some experience while shooting it, to do the second season more coherent and less confusing.
Like my girlfriend said: "If you have to explain to me what is going on, because you have read the books - someone didn't do his job well".
Great TV Series can't wait for season 2.
BTW
Did you know that geralt of rivia ever learn to dab?
BTW
Did you know that geralt of rivia ever learn to dab?
I really liked season 1, although I was also expecting a meeting between Geralt and Ciri in Brokylon, especially after the 'girl in the woods' prophecy. Apart from that, the timeline didn't bother me so much and I was glad to see some of the short stories on screen.
This season was overall more of an introduction than a real beginning but I still had a good time going through it.
I am a bit disappointed in Vilgefortz, although I suspect he didn't really show us what he was capable of, the sneaky one. And after Ciri's vision, I was kinda hoping for an ending of the season with a short scene with the wild hunt but I guess they wanted to avoid a white walker parallel...
This season was overall more of an introduction than a real beginning but I still had a good time going through it.
I am a bit disappointed in Vilgefortz, although I suspect he didn't really show us what he was capable of, the sneaky one. And after Ciri's vision, I was kinda hoping for an ending of the season with a short scene with the wild hunt but I guess they wanted to avoid a white walker parallel...
Without expectations, like forgetting the books and the games and awesome time you spent with them, it's just bland fantasy trash. With excellent dialogue writing like "fuck", "you and destiny can both fuck right off" and "fuck".