The original is a genuine hit, I knew it wouldn’t be long before there would be a redux or two. Or a thousand. That one is pretty cool.
I was incredibly impressed with the bard. I loved his voice, he's pretty, and his and Geralt's interactions were hilarious. Like squabbling boys. There are very few live singers that I want to watch. I'm usually cringing or suffering from second hand embarrassment. El hubs has sent me some memes with the throw a coin to your witcher line and I get the song stuck in my head. It's just good. That remix is good but the originals are better in my opinion. Edit: I thought this was kinda interesting to watch. He is really providing the music, playing the lute and singing, and had to master it for the role.
So having played through the game which is widely thought of as one of the best in the RPG genre, the acting has gotten the characters pretty spot on. The Bard is always upto his neck in shit with Geralt rescuing him and all of his songs bend the truth vastly out of proportion. It's great watching it come to life in a different way. I'm excited to see what they do with a lot of the other characters that haven't been seen yet as well as the Wild Hunt.
Only 4 episodes in and main i can see what people are talking about, about the timeline being very hard to follow. This helps a bit https://witchernetflix.com/en-gb but still a bit confusing. I really wished they would of put time stamps at the bottoms when they switched timelines.
Finished season 1 this morning. The time switching was fucking maddening. I'm not sure the show's director processed the fact that this is a fantasy world with shapeshifters and magic, which makes it very hard to process when an event occurred just from the people in the room. Spoiler For example, the scene where Geralt goes back to the city to claim the girl, and ends up in the dungeon with Mousesack. We have literally already seen a shapeshifter take this guy's form once, which means his presence says nothing about when the scene occurs. They also don't do a great job of contextualizing events. So much of what happened in the world is explained through rapid-fire conversation, so if you're not great about catching and remembering all the names and relationships involved, it all just becomes narrative mush. Which, okay, isn't always critical to the plot but it does feel like a waste. I also feel as if they don't do a good job handling powers. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything. Mousesack shows he can use portals, seemingly with little effort, but this ability just goes ignored the entire rest of the series? Like, oh, when the girl you're charged with keeping safe needs to escape a burning city full of soldiers? Geralt seems to flatly ignore his powers most of the time, even when facing mortal danger. Spoiler Big buildup of how there are mysterious and forbidden magical powers that one group can use, but in a war they show precisely nothing except a little box full of mind control worms which a) hardly seems like a worthy payoff, b) only a couple worms actually did anything and c) they infected a mage and the best betrayal they could muster was her stabbing someone with an arrow. Overall, the series was entertaining enough. I just don't think it's very thoughtful - just a bunch of "stuff" thrown into a pot and mixed together.
Yep, I would agree with all of that. I'm also hoping that they learn from those issues and make things much better moving forward.
I found it puzzling until I watched the season a couple more times. You have to get used to so much if you’re not familiar with the books or game, such as myself. The timeline almost seems like some twisty practical joke you don’t even realize is happening until the fourth episode. Then not only do you realize it’s jumbled, but also taking place over the course of decades.
The reality is, though, that the series isn't even close to good enough for me to want to watch the season again. It was entertaining enough the first time, and I'll definitely tune in for the second season, but if the show producers can't put together season 1 of a new show in a way that can introduce new people into it, then they're bad producers.
I tend to think that they put it all together, and realized how screwed up it was, and didn't have time to fix it. Any attempt to fix it part way would have made it worse, so it's like it's almost better to just leave it as it is and fall back on the "well, if you played the games or read the books you'd get it" mentality.
I think the best way to fix it would of been just to put a date at the bottom each time they changed the timeline.
Or, who knows... they may have done it somewhat intentionally, in order to make the game-players and readers feel a bit superior, or to foster discussion, or to try and increase interest in the games/books? Maybe they didn't write it as a standalone movie that caters to the uninitiated?
Even just a visual cue when we were changing timelines would have been helpful. It was jarring to switch scenes with literally no indication whether it was the same timeline or a different one.
They seemed to have paid homage to both the book and game, and seemed to have thrilled fans of both. It wasn’t a critical smash but viewers ate it up and Netflix has a very big hit on their hands. One thing is for sure: all fans far and wide have accepted Cavill as Geralt. I have not heard a word of disappointment in his performance yet.
I just finished the season yesterday and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. It is both really good and really bad at the same time. The good- Cavill is perfect casting. Absolutely nails it. Only slight issue here is I kind of like the more sarcastic Geralt from the games and I hope they give Cavill more of that in the upcoming seasons. The special effects are really well done based on a first season budget. The shots look great, acting all around is really good, it hits all the beats of a competently made show. The problems basically boil down to two things for me. None of the characters are very interesting right now. I couldn't tell you what really motivates any of them at this point. Jaskier has more presence that any of them, but when your most interesting character is the bard who's there mainly for comedic relief I'm not sure that's a good thing. The bigger issue though is the lack of world building. It's virtually non-existent. What is the difference between Temeria, Redania, Nilfgaard, Cintra, or anywhere else? I really couldn't tell you based on what the show has given us at this point. An oddball custom (law of surprise) isn't enough to make an entire fantasy universe. I think part of the problem is that they took what was really an incredibly simple plot for this season and somehow tried to make way more complex than it actually is. Nilfgaard is invading the north. They want to find Ciri. Geralt also wants to find Ciri. Yennefer regrets sacrificing her fertility. There. That's it. That's pretty much everything that is happening right now. I feel like what this season needed was maybe another 4 episodes that weren't so hitched to the main plot and were just something like monster of week investigate and slay kind of adventures. This is after all what a witcher is supposed to be doing anyway. This would have let them slow the fuck down, get away from endless expository dialogue, and do a little more world building. They only had one episode in this vein, the one with the striga, and I thought it was far and away the best of the season. Yeah, who the fuck knows at this point? There is no coherency or limits as to how magic is supposed to work in this show. I mean, I'm not expecting some bullet point list of rules, but that final battle was just ridiculous. It's like magic goes from completely omnipotent to totally useless depending on the needs of the moment. There needs to be some kind of consistency developed. Ciri is the worst example of this. I guess she can just extricate herself from anything because she just activates her powers - whatever the fuck they are- and like, some crazy shit happens, and like, everyone bad like dies. Having played the game and thus having known all the major plot points of the season made the time jumping pretty easy to follow, but I can easily imagine how goddamned confusing that would be to someone jumping into the show with no prior experience to the lore. I don't like how they've made nilfgaard the 'bad guys' as that's very different from the witcher lore I was familiar with and it seems to unnecessarily simplify the political intrigue the show could explore. Don't even get me started on that weird ass penis armor shit that they wear. I still felt that overall it was entertaining and worth a watch, but the writers definitely still have some work to do if they really want to make this a great show because it's not there yet.
I've started reading the books. Highly recommend. They are a lot less confusing than the show and are a really enjoyable read.