I am getting worried. As stated, I did not like The Mandalorian much. I just watched The Witcher episodes 1 and 2, and had to force myself to watch the second one. It reminds me of that Dungeons and Dragons movie some years back. Flat characters, melodramatic and wooden acting, no real story worth talking of. And a 93% audience score on Rotten tomatoes!
I don’t get it. I looove both sci-fi and fantasy, but the recent samples seem amateurish to me. But the public seems to love it all. Am I going crazy or something? What is it that I am missing here…?
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I doubt that the ‘public’ seem to love it from what i read so far. Not only is there a huge discontent over the the diversity of the cast but also that they hired a SJW to write the script. I hated every minute of it.
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Let’s face it: SF always got terrible scripts. The few exceptions are to the history: alien, blade runner, more recently inception, interstellar.
Fantasy is in even worrisome conditions; we had to wait 50 years to have a decent(well, quite good indeed) LOTR and something like Harry Potter.
Writing for SF and Fantasy is difficult. There aren’t simply a sufficient number of decent writers to satisfy the movie pollution.
I liked The Witcher. But it has some pretty severe pacing problems with the story/writing, so I could understand why some wouldn’t like it. Especially anyone not familiar with the books (or maybe the games, but I’m not familiar with those).
I don’t really have any interest in Star Wars. I haven’t liked anything in that franchise since Empire Strikes Back, honestly.
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I played all the games and thus can maybe understand the show well.
Fun fact is that after people watched the show there was big uptick in Witcher 3 downloads.
There are many beautiful shots and scenes in the movie. Costume design is often very good.
In some fighting scenes Gerald sword skills are killer.
I can even understand the confusing time jumps in the episode. Instead of the usual linear progression in season one it seems they put down all the main plot elements for season two to continue with.
But I agree otherwise this show feels flat, rushed, not really elaborating enough. Trying to do to much to fast or I don’t know.
The main idea about Witcher is how he approaches problems, sources material to make potions, how to defeat monsters, undo spells etc.
Obviously this is not going to be Game of Thrones - maybe also Witcher is just a too complex of a story to really explain in few episodes.
Game of thrones is much less complex.
I am TRYING to watch episode 3 now. It occurs to me that it reminds me of those old Xena and Hercules shows, on a better budget and with lots more nudity.
Re SJW, all that talk is honestly BS. One review calls it SJW propaganda, another cheers that it has no SJW shady agenda. Whenever someone talks about SJW I know to just disregard whatever is being said, sadly …
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The first season is based on books of short stories. So yeah, it’s kind of “monster of the week” like Xena and Hercules. Season 2 should cover Blood of Elves, which is the first part in a five part novel series. So I’m hoping it turns out a lot less disjointed than season 1 did.
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Dude, don’t watch shows you don’t like. Simple as that. I do think the Witcher short stories are good, and recommend them even if you don’t like that show. I heard a lot of the charm of the books is gone in the show. No more subtlety or slavishness.
That would make a lot of sense! It feels very disjointed, like all side quest and no core story. But it keeps suggesting that there IS a core story in there, which really confuses me…
I want to broaden my horizons. Also, I need a fix of SOME kind. I just feel like I missed the cutscene that explains why people love things like Mandalorian and Witcher and it bugs me…
I liked The Witcher more than The Mandalorian. The latter did get better over the course of the show, but it didn’t get really interesting until the final episode where all the characters started to gather up for the final confrontation. The Witcher on the other hand is a bit more flawed in places compared to The Mandalorian, but it had some really engaging moments that made me come back for more until the final episode.
Don’t really understand where you get the wooden acting from, OP. The only one of the main three characters I could consider a little bit bland is Ciri, but she had definitely her moments when the plot called for it (Her story was the least interesting of the three.). Geralt is supposed to act somewhat emotionless, but with hints of humanity in him, and Henry Cavill honestly nailed it. Yennefer was pretty solid as well. Jaskier’s actor was pretty enjoyable with his songs being one of the highlights of the season (Especially episode 2 with “Toss a coin to your Witcher!”.).
One issue with the pacing of the story is when you have to puzzle things together before you realize that each storyline is set in different timelines. It wasn’t too hard to figure out where in the timeline each story beat was set after an episode or two of paying attention, but I can understand if some people found the time skipping frustrating.
I really liked it and I hope they keep improving on the show now when the timeline skipping is done and over with.
As for the SJW stuff, the most SJW thing about this show is the casting of non-Europeans in a show very much set in a medieval central European setting. It is odd to say the least, but at least it didn’t distract too much for me. I do hope they will not keep Americanizing the story which Hollywood often tends to do.
By ‘wooden’ I mean they talk like Obiwan and Anakin in the sequels. Like they are reciting lines for dramatic purposes, not speaking naturally. I get the whole TV fantasy tone (see Xena or Hercules again), but it ruins it for me. Plus, apart from sudden spouts of proclamation, there is so little emotion or intensity at all. Geralt has an excuse, but everyone just seems arrogantly sedated…
I think the whole sedated thing might be part of what bugged me in Mandalorian, too, come to think of it.
I loved the games, so I will probably watch it. But I think the last good genre show I have seen in recent years was the expanse. I didn’t like game of thrones (to violent. I am becoming more sensitive), Disney ruined star wars for me, and I felt discovery went against the tenets of Star trek. (Although I will mention blood, sex and robots, which is very interesting).
I must assume therefore that I’m really not the target audience for these shows. Luckily we still have books!
I’m on episode 5 and personally enjoying the show so far. The timeline jumping feels a bit random and disconnected, but overall it’s entertaining. I don’t expect every piece of entertainment I consume to be an Earth shattering 10 out of 10.
Mind you, I’ve not read the books. Nor have I played the first 2 games. I only just picked up Witcher 3 about a month ago as it was on sale. So I haven’t spent enough time in the world for my expectations of how the characters should act and events to unfold to be cemented.
There have been a few instances where only having played The Witcher 3 has left me confused though:
Spoiler
The scene where Duny comes to claim Pavetta had me scratching my head, because I was expecting Emhyr var Emreis. This prompted me to pause and look it up. I didn’t know they were the same person. I’m sure this will be explained further in the show, but at the time I felt like I was missing something.
What I enjoyed the most about the expanse similar to battle star galactica was how much it was bit Star Wars or Enterprise like silent fights in space etc.
The expanse is a pretty well written and made TV show unlike the new lost in space.
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If you know consider who and what Ciri will be it makes sense that she rather treads lightly in season 1.
Hi man, did you see The Witcher Polish produccion ?
Hope you can enjoy it.
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Netflix is unfortunately a sjw nest and i knew it was going to be bad, Triss as a black girl in her late 40 and all the other ethnic groups force included in a Slavic tale!
I wonder what kind of reaction we would see if they would cast all white character in a Roots series?
Geralt is not even the lead it’s Yennifer(another atrocious casting choice)and other girl in the show. My girlfriend have the same opinion. Geralt is just an accessory for the strong woman lead.
What make me really sad is that many people will lose their jobs and some already lose their job because of some franchise infested and ruined by political agenda.
I am certain some of these sjw are probably already here but i just want to put the record straight that i have absolutely not an once of racism in me and that i have absolutely nothing against gay, lesbian and transgender but what i have against is hypocrites using existing ip forcing their political agenda in it and ruining franchise after franchise.
By the way i am not even conservative or liberal i consider myself as an apolitical type of person who appreciate common sense over idiocy.
If they so desperately want a movie or series where you have a black girl as the lead actress, an Asian, a Mexican, a latino and a gay + a lesbian and to finish a transgender then why they are not making their own IP to see how it is going to work at the box office?
Since the last jedi i am boycotting any single series, movies and games that have any form of sjw hypocrisy in it.
The witcher was my favorite game of all time and the minute i saw Cavill to be cast as the witcher i knew it was going to be bad, he doesn’t look even remotely like Geralt and the ridiculous obvious wig and his chin in the shape of butt cheek was a big no go for me.
If i was to have the budjet and the green light to make that series i would go to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau since he is Slavic and he look almost exactly like Geralt here a little photoshop work i did tto show my point ;
How many more movies and series will get to be ruined by these hypocrites…
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Wait.
…what?
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Well i don’t get what you don’t understand in that sentence but if you think there was no sjw element in the last jedi then just do a little Google over it!
But let’s not derail the thread since it’s about the witcher.