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What they did to Eskel in the series is an absolute sham. The books all but state that Eskel is pretty much Geralt's equal in every aspect of skill and talent. Killing him like a schmuck was such a weird ass move.
My fav part about that is how Lauren Hissrich said she will not change characters or kill them for shock value but she did exactly that to eskel. She said they wanted an action scene and someone to die, but not be obvious, so if they had killed a not named character everyone would have known. So they relegated a named character to become an extra and killed him unceremoniusly all in the name of "subvering expectations". These writers are so careless and stupid it hurts my soul Eskel (a beloved character both in books and games) died because they wanted a battle scene in the supposedly safest place Ciri can travel to... I still get mad about this, not to mention other stupid decions they made like butchering the character of Vesemir and Yennefer
Not that the rest is that much greater but... That whole second season was garbage. Even if you disregard everything in the books, it's still unbelievably badly written.
47:20 one of my most hated tropes is that women can never have like indigestion or a stomach flu or food poisoning or ibs; if they throw up, they're pregnant. then the writers waste time on "OoOoOh WhAt CoUlD Be WrOnG WiTh HeR?!?!" when it's always pregnancy
I have a sensitive stomach that often decides it randomly doesn't like a food and is going to make me vomit at 2 am for it. Now I'm gonna start joking that I'm the Virgin Mary any time it happens.
In the book Geralt just somehow predicted she was pregnant and Pavetta knew beforehand too it was Duny who didnt know and that was the point of the request
interestingly, in the books Triss Merigold actually gets food poisoning while on the journey to the temple of Melitele and Geralt and Ciri have to take care of her on the road! Sapkowski has his issues and his attitude to women both in the books and in real life can sometimes be questionable (example: everyone in the books is obsessed with having the horizontal mambo with Ciri when she's still very young - and most of them don't want it just to get her magic child! The way she starts her relationship with Mistle is definitely creepy, Mistle basically saves her from AS just to go on and AS her herself a minute later, but it's presented as okay, because, I guess, no penis? And she's a giver?). But I would chalk it up more to ingrained "old uncle" ideas very common among men of a certain generation, while on the conscious level he definitely goes out of his way to try and present a wide range of female characters, all of them strong and vulnerable and imperfect in their own ways, while also not shying away from making them very physical, like with said food poisoning, menstrual care, sexuality whether purely for unabashed pleasure or as a way to seek closeness, miscarriage etc. And the sorceresses basically run the show in-universe. So yeah, that's pretty cool!
"geralt is good at killing things but not reading the instructions first" me throwing the box for my frozen pizza in the trash and then digging it out again when i remember i didnt check how long it cooks
Have you ever thought about doing it via food Poison roulette? I just put it in on 180 degrees and take it out when it starting to look too crispy. I've been fine so far...
I really hated that they had so many Witchers because, it's very important to note even though the games take place later, a lot of the "technology" required for making Witchers was lost, They can't reproduce because their genetics are altered that much, they have issues expressing emotion because they have PTSD just from their training because THAT is how many of them died doing it "the right way," I think the number of boys who would survive the training was stated as 3 out of 10. They're so complex and interesting, the show basically just went, "Screw that, too much work." Just wanted to edit in my favorite Geralt quote, every time someone asks if he carries a silver sword for monsters and a steel sword for humans, "They're both for monsters."
Also the Witcher orders are notably in decline during the time of the books, partly because generations of Witchers hunting monsters have made actual monster attacks much rarer and also advancements in other, more mundane technologies like metallurgy and engineering are implied to have begun levelling the playing field between at least the weaker monsters and regular people. This is actually really important for Geralt's characterisation. He isn't just a member of a dying breed and profession because of knowledge being lost. He's also simultaneously slowly being made redundant.
when you alienate new people and your existing audience, who is left? obviously the youtuber who has to watch it to make a video essay on the whole thing
@@CourierSixGaming Allow me to make you a tiny bit more depressed. Geralt isn't losing his place in the world only because his kin, profession and entire way of existence is dying. He also actively refuses to use his skills for other causes, namely murdering people on demand - which other characters advise, ask, or offer to pay him for numerous times within the first few books. So what's making him redundant is partly his own moral code. Now for the tragic part: he's repeatedly tricked, manipulated and strong-armed into doing it anyways. He tries to act by his internal rules, which makes him predictable, and people regularly use it to have him do the very thing he tries to avoid - killing other humans for someone's' gain. The show was trying so hard to be grand and epic and fantastical that it skipped over how deeply tragic Geralt's character is. (It skipped over many things. I'm very mad about Yennefer.)
@@karakanb3039 I already knew that he doesn't kill for money, my favorite line from the games is, "They're both for monsters." I also know how often he gets tricked and betrayed, because being a decent person when you have combat skills, it isn't easy. People suck and will do everything that they can to get what they want, my own older brother trash talks me despite the fact we both left the military the same rank, he just did 20 years and I was under 5 because he needs me to be a loser. I really feel like, when I play the games, I kind of get Geralt right. The "kind of" is because I go with Triss, met Yen in the third game, "What a bitcharoonidoonie..."
The first warning sign was seeing "big company wants to capitalize on big franchise." Maybe it's just me, but hearing something advertised as, for example, "Netflix's Adaptation" instead of "-Director-'s Adaptation" makes it feel a lot more like a product than proper adaptation or reimagining.
I remember when they marketed the 2005 King Kong as ‘Peter Jackson’s King Kong’, and yeah, it definitely felt like that instead of just Universal Pictures’s. The lack of any creative leadership behind a project really brings it down.
@@SaberRexZealot Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie may have been born as the obvious cash grab to go with the movie (as was the style at the time), but god damnit was it an *amazing* game and the studio behind it put so much damn effort into it. You can FEEL the passion inside it, much like with the movie.
As a polish person I really hated the netflix series. The timeline was a mess, Geralt's portrayal was way too cold, overall it felt a bit like an insult to our culture too but I don't want to open that can of worms because it could've been good! But the pacing and writing were the main culprits.
Fellow Pole here, I don't feel insulted by the series specifically as a Pole, but I do feel insulted as a fan of the books and generally a fan of well-written series with characters one can actually care about haha. And I had such huge hopes for it before it came out! Me and my siblings had a special get-together over Christmas to binge season 1 and... yeah we were all disappointed AF.
And if the work of a non-white author was butchered like that, there would be a public outrage, screams of "cultural appropriation" and demands for an utter boycott. ... feeling your pain from Czechia.
@@irena4545It's at the very least a lack of nuanced understanding of "diversity", and at worst, a bigoted and false sense of moral superiority. To them, anyone who's caucasian, and looks "white" doesn't deserve to present their culture in media.
I'm not from Poland (or any other Slavic country) but one of the things I really enjoyed while reading the Witcher books was that they made use of all this Slavic mythology, giving the books a distinctly different feel from the western and northern fantasy tales I was used to reading. It was its own, unique thing and Hollywood could have made something really cool with it, but fumbled and wasted all that potential. Agreed that the pacing and writing were the main culprits - they're not even internally consistent, but vary wildly between the seasons. Such a sham.
@@irena4545cut out your abhorent racism lol. This has nothing to do with it and if you haven't studied any current or historical events, no, non-white people are not treated better (kinda the fucking opposite) 😂
I absolutely hated the inclusion of the eels…it really doesn’t make sense to me, since a lot of sorceresses at Aretuza actually come from aristocratic families, so in the books it specifically states that failed sorceresses still go on to have respectable careers, like lawyers. Additionally, the show tries really hard to make us look at characters like Tissaia and Yennefer as ultimately morally good in the end, if questionable. Turning little girls into eels is heinous and a fate worse than death, and all the mages associated with Aretuza are complicit in the act..In my mind, it makes them morally irredeemable and I struggle to accept that Yennefer would go along with it.
That and the fact Aretuza also provide mages for Nilfgaard for some reason when Nilfgaard has its own institutions of training/employing mages. And Fringilla is also changed to a Northerner instead of being from Toussaint.(If they really want to introduce her earlier they can just make her an exchange student of some sort.)
100% this comment. One of the many little changes which, while designed to make us feel for the characters, actually turn them from complex and often selfish but ultimately well-meaning people into horrible people who at the same time keep whinging about how bad their life is when they are actually the last people in-universe who should say that (one is Yennefer, the other one they butchered was queen Calanthe who just came across as incredibly boorish and a horrible leader to boot, while going all "poor little me" when she's a literal queen in her own right!). I couldn't watch past the 1st season, the show felt like no time was spent on creating it, and that also includes costuming, the non-existent opening credits (compare it to the jaw-dropping opening credits for the Game of Thrones, I was hooked just after seeing that intro), oh, and the stupidest final battle scene I've ever seen (a mage goes to fight an enemy leader one on one, gets his sword thrown out of his hand and magics himself another sword instead of, I don't know, using the magic to defeat the opponent!). I think literally the only thing I liked about it was Henry Cavill as Geralt and the actress who played Tissaia - she had that gravitas she has in the books. As a massive fan of the books, this show was a massive disappointment not just in its treatment of the original material, but as a story standing on its own (which it doesn't). Ah, also they aged Ciri up for understandable reasons while still making her behave mostly like the little girl she was in the books initially. Yeah, she dumb.
@@SebiHemke Awe, that's sad as I love eels, I think they're kinda cute. But I'm someone who's really freaked out by rabbits, so I'm not really one to judge.
Regarding Yen's transformation - the Witcher books are in part about how forcefully controlling others' reproduction is evil. I don't think the story (in the books at least) is at all interested in whether someone has a kid or not. It's only saying that they should have the right to decide for themselves. Yennefer and Geralt are both infertile because of the transformations forced upon them as kids. That is framed as a horrifying injustice done to them. The horror and injustice don't come from the lack of reproductive capabilities, however, but from the fact that they were given no choice. They were taken as children, horrifying damage was done to them and the ability to choose was stolen from them. They then come together as adults and move the entire world in order to protect their adoptive daughter from a fate of being used as an unwilling broodmare by powerful ruling men. The books are very much pro-abortion, too. It's pretty much always framed as a nessecary medical operation that a woman has a right to. It's very cool when you consider they were written in the 80's and the 90's in Poland. I could honestly write an entire essay about the witcher, gender and abortion. There is a lot of stuff there :D
I think the problem with the show is that Yennifer basically forced the dude to do it to her? So while Im fine with her changing her mind about it over the decades "the ability to have a child was taken from me" comes of as her being delusional.
Historical context: Writing in the 80s means the author grew up in socialist Poland, which had rather progressive values. Abortion was legal there before, for example in Sweden. In the 1960s, Swedish women traveled there to get abortions which were illegal at the time here.
A "monster of the week" season or two, expertly weaving in bits of the overarching plot as it went on, would have been exactly the kind popcorn-schlock I could have become unreasonably attached to.
That is basically how the 2 books of short stories work. There's always a short monster hunt story and then another chapter of an introductory story to Geralt. The 5 main books then focus much more heavily on Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer and some other characters. Dandelion/Jaskir has his own chapters for example, but so do some antagonists. That would have been the perfect format imho. Use 2 seasons as introduction and lay the foundations of your character relations, then go heavy into the whole plot.
@@Bannschwertthe books are so fucking cinematic and perfectly ripe for a STRAIGHT TO SCREEN, NO BULLSHIT adaptation, that it baffles me how much they got wrong. Like, holy fuck they were TRYING to mess it up, there is no other possible explanation.
For me, a slavic person, the biggest problem with Netflix version - is how... "Westernized" it became. Like, "Witcher" is a polish IP, that draws its vibe heavily from slavic cultures, and the Netflix just made it bland, dark "somewhere-in-western-medival-europe" type of thing and like??? Why??? And that feeling extends on every part of production: locations, coatumes, characters, story. Like, i get that they're are making it for the American audience, but thought Americans like to preach about how we need more non-western cultures represented on screen? So, where is it? Witcher was a perfect opportunity to make something unfamiliar and new, yet understandable and touching for the American audience and they are blew it in exchange for bland dark fantasy that everybody already seen a thousand times. I mean, then the Witcher 3 came out, i remember many people saying that the thing that really got them about the game is who unique the world is and how the slavic undertones are really interesting. In short, it is really disappointing.
I mean, I get the sentiment as a polish person, but Witcher is as much slavic at it is celtic with making elven language irish, using holidays like belleteyn or just referencing arthurian legends almost word for word. The polish touches are great in Witcher 3, but for me the biggest charm of the series are characters, that could be placed in a futuristic tale or chinese folk story and they still wpuld be great lol.
I'm Czech, born in the US, and I adore Slavic media because my grandmother straight up refused to teach me anything about where I came from. She came here during a time where immigrants were expected to integrate at all costs, erasing their heritage, and so she was afraid to do anything other than share her recipes with me. I cherish them, but I now have no choice but to connect to my history my proxy. I know The Witcher is Polish and not Czech, but there's so much overlap between the two. It's so rare to have a wholesale fictional mythology come out of an eastern Slavic country, and it's especially rare for it to enter into the public consciousness. The Witcher is a celebration of eastern Slavic culture, and it pains me that Netflix didn't think that was enough.
@@WobblesandBean I think its like that because Americans can't comprehend the concept of "nations" The main discourse in america is always about race, so I guess they think that if all of Europe is "white" race-vise - so our culture is basically the same everywhere. So for them it's all the same - they don't distinguish western, eastern, anything really, and just make something "europish", which is so stupid I hate it
Agreed. My husband is Polish and he introduced me to the games and I got into the books on my own afterwards. And it was so fun having him as a source for all my questions and it made me want to visit his homeland and family even more!
6:35 Sapkowski may claim his prose is functional and plot-serving, but he is actually a much better writer that he gives himself credit for. I read the books in my and his native Polish - and the prose is feather-light, funny, quick, humorous and full of several layers of literary references and inspirations (it is actually rather post-modern in its intertextuality, retellings and references). There are also several smart uses of old words and phrases giving the vocabulary a unique flair without sounding fake-medieval or inauthentic. It absolutely reads like works of someone who is well-versed in both language and culture. He speaks several foreign languages (he actually worked in international trade before becoming a writer full time) and has a very deep knowledge of both science fiction and fantasy. I know the English translation is much different in tone and loses some of the context from time to time. If I were to compare Sapkowski's writing style to someone, I would say Jerome K. Jerome or William M. Thackeray. (edited to finish an incomplete sentence and add clarity in another one that was phrased badly)
I had my issues with his prose (specifically: there exist other punctuation marks than the period, haha), but what I love about his writing is that there's a very palpable difference in the way different characters speak: peasants speak like peasants, educated sorceresses and mages speak like intellectuals, it gives much more depth to his world, plus the allusions and references are hilarious (make peace not war - make poop every morning)
His prose is excellent. Especially short stories - so much layers in a few pages, every sentence having a meaning! Once Netflix started gutting these stories to shove Yen and Ciri into the show early, the quality of storytelling was doomed to plummet. The omission of Tridam ultimatum made first episode dumb. The omission of Geralt and Ciri meeting at Brokilon made their entire relationship dumb. Ironically, the episodes least based on Sapkowski’s stories turned out to be better. I once believed Netflix would do best by abandoning Witcher franchise entirely and just starting generic fantasy franchise, so that they need not suffer comparison to Sapkowski. Then they produced “Blood Origin”.
@@MajkaMajko If you enjoy the anger of the conservatives over Witcher and its progressive narratives, may I recommend the essay series about Witcher from the RUclipsr Sophie from Mars. She did a couple of films (Witcher as himbo, Witcher as carelord etc.) where she analyses exactly that.
I felt the same about the English translation! It's much lighter and quicker than most fantasy prose in a way that is really refreshing -- I found that it put more emphasis on characterization and interpersonal relationships than the minute world details that a lot of fantasy gets bogged in
Just wanna say, Geralt is not meant to be ugly. He is the only one who describes himself as such but man is quite popular with women. He's probably average but with a literally enhanced physique.
One thing that really stuck in my mind was one of the Sorceresses he has sex with remarking, that he is just so completely different than any other man she ever had. Sorceresses get really old and they are so attractive, few men reject them. So at some point they get bored by normal men and Geralt is unqiue. But I also think, that his heart and personality make him much more attractive than his freakish body alone would.
My biggest beef with the show is the costumes tbh. I'm mad into historical fashion and character design, and seeing their fits look like drop-ship cosplay hurt my soul... I've seen diy ren faire outfits that blow these out of the water. It's all so, so bland and unmemorable, and sometimes it even undercuts an entire character! Like Jaskier (whose name should have stayed Dandelion)- who would hire a bard that dresses in drab, muted brown-red or grey-blue? The point is that their colors catch your eye so you'll stick around!! Performers are in an attention economy!! But noo, we have to keep our under-saturated Game of Thrones and late Harry Potter ~aesthetic~
It mostly bothered me how everything looked the same. I had never read or played any of the witcher media before watching season one and I was extremely confused. The three timelines thing only dawned on me during the last episodes and it made the whole experience so much worse. Not to mention the confusion around the kingdoms. Why, oh why, couldn‘t they have gotten different aesthetics for different times??? Of course fashion changes drastically over the course of hundreds of years. Of course different countries have different cultures. This would not only have made the costume design a million times more intricate but actually would have noticably improved the quality of the story itself. The best decision ever made on GOT was to color code all the houses. I firmly believe it would have been near unwatchable if all of westeros and essos had the same clothes and environment.
Not to mention the clothes that King on that ball was wearing. Like, WTF!? It looked like some sort of modern attempt at replicating medieval rich people clothing. Then they just slapped a crown on his head and thought "That’ll do it!" No heraldry, nothing. Just bland white or beige.
One of the best and most unique things about The Witcher is how much of a medieval fantasy it is. It's not your typical high fantasy; it's essentially the Middle Ages with fantasy elements that are also often inspired by real folklore. CD Projekt understood this, and that's why they created a fantastic and unique visual style for the games, where some of the armor looks exactly like medieval originals (Temeria, Redania, Kaedwen, and other Northern Kingdoms), or it's just subtly modified but still heavily inspired by medieval armor and can be considered relatively historically accurate (as in the case of Nilfgaard). Someone at CD Projekt who designed these things must have done really good research and found out what all these things looked like. They probably took a lot of inspiration from photos of reenactors. Netflix, on the other hand, decided to hire a costume designer named Tim Scotti-Henson (known as Tim Aslam at that time). As stated on his personal website, Tim studied fashion design, which is why the costumes look the way they do. On his website, he even has pictures of his designs, showing what inspired him, and many of these concepts have photos of models at fashion shows. So, instead of researching historical accuracy, this costume designer mixed modern high fashion with his confused idea of the Middle Ages. Anyway, I will be doing a video specifically about this topic in the future if anyone would be interested.
The danger of using magic and the associated ethical implication of its destructive potential are discussed at length in the books. Also magic comes in many shapes and forms in Sapkowski's stories and is not exclusive to sorcerers and sorceresses. You have priestesses using healing and prophetic trans, you have dreamers able to see past events, you have Wild Hunt projecting themselves into another dimension and so on and on. The rules for magic in the TV show make no sense, after all Witcher signs are a form of magic too, why isn't Geralt withering away every-time he uses one? What cost was paid to fuel various spells during the battle of Soden? The idiotic phrases like 'preserve your chaos' as if chaos was mana points in the show are particularly cringy but also go against the whole flower and stone scene. In the books sorcery as a kind of magic is particularly dangerous because it draws power from the elements, the more chaotic the element the harder it is to control that energy and every-time you risk triggering a runaway entropy cascade. That is why using fire, the most chaotic element, as a source for magic is forbidden, not using magic to create fire (I mean ffs Geralt's Igni sign is fire magic).
its forbiden for ciry, in time she is learning, by yen becouse its way to dengerous for her in thath moment in time... specific example for specific moment spun in to general "fire bad" in the show
Fans: Henry Cavill is awesome as Geralt. We want more of him. Netflix: We're giving Henry less screentime. Fans: But why? Netflix: Liam Hemsworth is replacing him in season 4. Fans: ...... Netflix: Hey, why isn't anyone watching the show?
Netflix : We are also overriding any input Henry has for the character, just because he had read the books and played the games doesn't mean he is a better writer or has a better understanding of the character when compared to out hack team in the writers room. Fans : Very well then, consider my patronage over.
In my experience, truly the worst thing you can do to a casual viewer of the Netflix Witcher series, is introduce them to the books (as long as they don't bounce off of them completely at least, which would also be understandable). The show can be mostly enjoyed as a fun fantasy story, albeit a bit all over the place, but with book knowledge, you're cursed to realize just how much of the interesting tapestry of the series is being overwritten by the most generic tropes a writer could come up with.
This comment made me laugh because I was a casual viewer who went on to read the books (and watch play throughs of the games) and now I can’t look at the show without inwardly screaming “WE WERE ROBBED.”🤣
Also I hate how in the show they call the bard character Jaskier like it's his name. It's a nickname, specifically a type of flower growing in Eastern Europe, some types of it are decorative, but others grow in the wild, it suits his personality a lot - pretty, bright, approachable, friendly, unserious. Game adaptation calls him Dandelion and it's a good choice, it has the similar connotations. It helps a lot - when you first meet him in the books you can easiely figure out his personality based on his nickname alone, while "Jaskier" tells absolutely nothing to an english-speaking viewer.
Buttercup (the English name of the flower) as a diminutive and/or ironic and possibly slightly insulting nickname is also already a thing in English, so it's not like anything would really be lost in translation there. Then again, maybe that's why they decided not to go with it, because they didn't want to colour the audiences perspective of the character prematurely or something? Personally I would think that that's exactly the point of the name, but whatever.
Thought that they decided to go with Jaskier instead of Dandelion to keep the polish version of his name as like an ''attempt'' (or an easter egg) to show the roots of the whole franchise. It was actually the only change i liked.
Like most things in the show, they rushed it and expected the audience to already be attached to a character based on name recognition alone without properly developing the character.
@@stolenrelicthat and the fact that in the show Eskel is a complete and utter asshole-more like Lambert than anything-instead of the sweet goat-loving badass he is in the games. And then he dies.
I didn't watch the show, but I looked up some clips when my sister told me (she was wtrching that tripe and gave up after that episode). They did him really dirty, the only thing they did right was have him look more like Geralt.
@@williamtimonen6814I read books long time ago, but I remember loving Yen and Ciri scenes in Blood of Elves. And as for the adaptation, I would've made a season that consists of BoE and ToC till the Thanned Coup as a season finale.
blood of elves is book 3, book 4 chronologicaly, he meant the silver sword, and last wish which are just compendium of short stories originaly published separately in magazines
YES. I was - still am - so mad that they took a perfect TV series material and threw it away in their rush to get to a GOT-esque plot. They didn't even have to really do anything to the stories, they're perfect for the medium. Just present the plot in a way adjusted for the medium. You get a season of monster-of-a-week episodes and within those short adventures, the viewers get to know Geralt, people around him and the world they all reside in. Fun, engaging, full of cool shit and a great introduction. 80% OF THE WORK WAS DONE FOR THEM ALREADY THE SHORT STORIES GRADUALLY INTRODUCE THE BASIS FOR THE BIG PLOT THEMSELVES I'M SO MAD
Witcher a show that would have be very good if the writers decided to stick to the source material instead of mocking it and trying to change it into their version of the witcher felt sorry for Henry Cavil for being a big fan of the books and games that i don't blame him for leaving a sinking ship.
They lost me at the beginning of season 2 ... introducing Eskel, and then straight up killing him off because hes infected with leshen disease (?) what? what even was that...
Eskel was frustrating but wasn't nearly as bad as the handling of Kaer Morhen as a whole. Depicting the witchers as a bunch of axe wielding bandits who invite an entire town's worth of women up to their ultra secretive and hidden castle was just mind boggling.
Yeah, Yenn in the games is so elegant, mature, refined, confident. Yenn in the show always seemed like an immature petulant child who never knew what she actually wanted. It felt to me like the only reason why she wanted a child is because it's the ONE thing she knows that she can't do, not that she actually wanted to be a mother. It's like she just wanted something impossible to fight against. She never felt like she matured from the beginning, just the same unsure insecure girl despite 30+ years passing
And besides that how could they cast indian? The whole story is based on Slavic mythology. Slavic women are white. I'm fed up with this forced diversity
@@slavicgirl9106 I don’t see you or any other racist complaining that Henry isn’t Slavic. But also Anya is half white and is British. She’s just as European as anyone else in the cast- and more importantly she’s a phenomenal actress.
@@slavicgirl9106but the whole premise was that the humans weren't originally there. They came over during the conjunction of spheres along with the monsters from other worlds or alternate universes. They could have explained that the crossover with our world pulled over people from a large area. Depending on the time period the conjunction happens in our world there were many Indians living in Britain after India became a province of England. I think you could argue that this portion of the world was joined to Poland and only Polish people pulled over. Or you could easily spin a different story. Sapkowski was never specific on the this. So, the different nationalities didn't bother me. Edit: although 60 generations over 1500 years would have homogenized the local populations.
The show was brutalised by a gross overcorrections by Netflix and the showrunners. And it was obvious that there wasn't enough talent in the room to make any of that work. It took incredible original and extended source material and replaced almost all of it with the most banal and cliched "writers room" ideas. It was incredibly frustrating to watch because of how absolutely unnecessary all of that carnage was. But perhaps it was because Netflix and the showrunners didn't really respect the extended material because it was "just video games", And that coloured their entire perception of the original source material. And it didn't really have enough of its own identity apart from the video games, at least outside of Poland, to demand that respect. I like that Netflix and the showrunners initially took a risk by making the first season an adaptation of the first book (rather than the first novel) which was a collection of scattered short stories. But at the same time, it was obviously very confusing for viewers. And for fans of the books, it was a bit confusing too, when reading it. But when you're reading, you have a higher tolerance for that kind of confusion, and it generally sparks an interest in you to explore deeper. And of course, the first novel is sitting right there, ready for you to read. On television (especially streaming, with its instant gratification and endless bubble gum content) that kind of confusion typically makes people get frustrated and they give up ... which is easy when there is practically unlimited other content to consume. And the showrunners and Netflix seem to have received that feedback but then grossly overcorrected. And their arrogance towards the original and extended source material compounded that overcorrection. Perhaps Netflix thought it was safer to test the waters first by starting with the short stories. I can see the merit in that logic, but I wonder if it didn't shoot them in the foot in the long run. Perhaps it would have been better in the long run if the show had begun with the first novel in the series and attempted to reintegrate the short stories into that main story as best they could, e.g. as linear events, flashbacks, flash-forwards, side stories and so on. It wouldn't have been perfect, but it might have been much better, and the show would have been more popular, so Netflix and the show runners wouldn't have had to hack it to pieces.
Irony: A series of books that gained international popularity with a game adaption, but then they botched the netflix adaption because "just video games". They really don't get that when you try and capitalize on a franchise because it has gained popularity, you actually have to take a proper look at exactly why that is. You have to care about the material you are adapting for television to tell a good story, and they did neither in the end.
@@Gen-o3j Exactly. Thinking about the way that Netflix continously underminded the adaptation with knee-jerk reactions and corporate/focus-group ideas still makes me mad!
I don't think the confusion came from the series starting with a handful of loosely connected stories. The confusion came from the terribly executed time jumps between different characters, most of which came about as a result of straying from the books. I had read the saga and I was still mainly lost at the Ciri parts.
@@karakanb3039 No not at all. The short stories they adapted for series 1 also jumped around in time like that with no explicit indication of how much was jumped, just like the first series was. That was not "straying" from the source material at all.
I remember being so excited to see Eskel and Vesemir and Lambert again and especially for the Geralt and Jaskier apology. I was sorely disappointed. Haven’t watched a single minute of season 3
Listening to you talk about the first episode of the series makes me realise how much I enjoyed it based on my knowledge of Geralt from the other mediums such as the games. I felt like I was returning to a great character, not being introduced to him. You’re right, it’s a shit introduction to him, but I loved it because in my head it wasn’t an introduction. Now that you’ve said it and made me realise it, I have to wonder how much the games did the heavy lifting for what I did (however few and far between those moments are) enjoy. So thanks, you’ve ruined those small parts of the series that I DID enjoy 😅
You see, knowing the books additionally ruined it for me, because all my excitement was squashed by seeing a weird brooding macho man take the place of my favourite pathetic-yet-deadly walking disaster called Geralt.
My husband who didn't read the books or play the game was so confused in this episode. At no time did you know that the main plan, before Geralt took out the minions, was to execute villagers until the wizard came out. It was only stated after that she would kill villagers and it seemed like a reaction to what Geralt did. I had to explain things in almost every episode. We had discussions on whether I was telling him things that the series didn't want non-book readers to know quite yet. We later realized that no, nothing in the series was going to explain it. Very disappointing story telling.
Something that rubbed me the wrong way more and more as the show went on was how much time was spent making up Yen's backstory while also excluding important information that was actually in the books. Especially considering the source material for Geralt's screentime in S1 was the freaking prologue stories, where we actually get specific encounters and glimpses into the times they spent living with and traveling together. There was so much runtime that could have been spent giving important insight into how they were both emotionally stunted or hurt each other at times. Istredd being part of the story in name but serving no use to developing the background of Geralt and Yen's relationship was such a waste. And thus far all of Geralt's other trysts were absent, even though he learns something about the way he feels about Yen from each of them (in fact, the exclusion of the Essi Daven story, which develops both Geralt AND Dandelion, is an injustice I will never get over). Idk if the showrunners thought audience couldnt handle seeing G&Y with other people, but the result is that there is no emotional payoff to when they get back together or for how their respective bonds with Ciri ultimately lead to them committing to each other.
I loved the ending of the Essi Daven story in the books, it was so sad but also so tender and Dandelion/Jaskier's relationship with her gave a whole new dimension to his character.
Warning for longer post and bit broken english. I do not like how witcher series was handled. I really hoped it would show slavic culture in different way than it is usually portrayed. We are usually depicted as russians or criminals or russian criminals. Beatifull story isnpired by central european slavic folk tales was turned into generic fantasy. I also think show really missed nuances of The witcher books . They try to portray story as black and white, while it is grey. For example in first episode they portray Stregobor as woman hating bigot who hunted Renfri for his pleasure. In books Stregobor trully believes she is cursed and by killing her he is saving world. And the best part is, Sregobor could be right because even Geralt is not able to either confirm or deny exitence of the curse of black sun. I personaly prefer book version, because it show dangerous side of righteousness and doing things for "greater good", and how most hyenous thing can be done with best intentions. Thanks for reading my little rant.
I think the parallel between Yennefer and the Striga princess is supposed to be more along the lines of "women without agency being physically changed for the benefit of men and masculine dominated systems", I don't think it's really meant to imply anything about Yennefer's personal monstrous-ness. That being said, the show could have made that more clear, especially since it shows Yennefer "choosing" (in so far as she had a choice, considering the alternative was a fate worse than death) to undergo the transformation. Also her losing her ability to bear children is probably not intended as like a bad character trait (like it's not morally negative that she can' have children), but more that it's like an injury that's been inflicted on her by the people at and the institution of Aretuza, as a parallel to Geralt's own infertility due to the Witcher trials.
I figured it seemed a bit more surface level than that. The monster turns back into a princess having the spell broken, an the girl has the spell put on them to become something less human and more monstrous, the same processes simultaneously occurring both ways.
You say the Witcher is not parody or satire, but it sort of is, the Netflix version just sort of ignores that it's meant to satire fairy tales and fantasy tropes, so they can have their version of Game of Thrones
You could read the loss of yenifers utirus as the possibly of her future choices being torn from her for the benefit of men . But i don't feel that the show runnners whwre smart enough for that
Others have likely pointed out, but I'd like to remind people, Witcher 3's intro starts with the dream sequence which is taken from Blood of Elves, the first of the mainline series, wherein small details are changed, and Geralt reflects on it not feeling right, because it's 90% the same, but not fully. The show literally could have started there, and chose not to. And instead, focused on an (albeit probably the best the Netflix series has to offer) adaptation of the most well-regarded short story, and got 95% of it right, but fell short when it came to the meaning behind why Geralt was conflicted in his responses and why he ultimately made the decisions which cast him as the Butcher of Blaviken, and ignored why he tried to save Renfri, just to have it fail under him.
I’m like a bit of a Yennefer apologist lol but I interpreted her saying that the corpse in the garden was just a piece of meat as an attempt to convince herself that she hasn’t just done something completely disgusting out of desperation. And when they’re confronted for killing the garden, Geralt tries to justify or apologise but Yennefer interrupts to take 100% of the blame
Yeah! Yennifer's characterisation puzzles me sometimes. I have no idea why she gets offended when they call her a sorceress and tell her to leave :'(( she acts like they called her a slur. Like sister you will outlive these people tenfold, maybe have some perspective that they're upset about the tree
@@MertKayKay I dont think that she is offended i think she does feel bad for them but Ciri comes first, and yes i imagine being banished is somewhat hurtful. She can be mean but she is not heartless and she would do anything for Ciri. In the books it led to her being tortured so she is willing to sacrifice not only others but also herself.
@@marketamala1032 Adding to that, there's also the fact that this is *Freya* 's garden, who, in the books, did her a huge solid. So there's that added layer of guilt (at least, I choose to read that into the scene; it's not actually mentioned in the game.)
Yennefer trading her uterus to be beautiful and powerful and get a good job (and then later desperately trying to have a child) gives me big "ain't it a shame all these women are having 'careers' instead of starting families? if you don't start popping out babies you're gonna regret it!" energy.
I thought it was kind of cute, actually. In the books, it was very much like this but it's not like every single Sorceress thought this way. It made the fact that Yennefer adopted Ciri even cuter. The moment, where Ciri called Yennefer mother and Yennefer called Ciri daughter in the books, is where I bursted out into tears. I would understand your argument if it was actually every single Sorceress but Yennefer is the only one that feels this way from what I can remember.
In books sorcereses does not have their uterus removed, they become infertile as side effect of using magic. Most of them come to terms with the fact but Yennefer is exception.
I wouldn't have a problem with it if it was shown why she came to want a child in the first place (when most sorceresses don't care about it at all). But the way it's presented in the show is: today she goes and literally says "take my uterus, I don't care, just make me pretty", then tomorrow she whinges about how she was deprived of a choice and how unfair it is, and her life is rubbish because everyone just sees her as a woman - lady! Take some accountability! You don't get to complain about being forced when you literally made a very conscious choice, and you don't get to make a victim out of yourself when you're literally one of the most powerful sorceresses in the world, a mover and shaker and an adviser to kings who can do whatever! Literally any woman in-universe, from a peasant girl to an aristocratic daughter sold into marriage, has more reason to bemoan her fate than her! She's unbearable! And these are all changes introduced by the TV series to make her... I guess more 'sympathetic' to the public, except that she already was plenty sympathetic and beloved by readers of the books and players of the games, with all her faults like pride and arrogance and temper - she was such an interesting and complex and powerful character, and she was absolutely beloved! Aaaargh! (Yeah I wound myself up haha)
@@AW-uv3cbYeah honestly. I don't think it was a choice in the books. They get taught magic pretty young and infertility is a byproduct of using magic, as far as I can remember.
While I think that it wasn't like that in the the books, it definitely comes off like this in the series. Books, for me, was about 2 people who can't have biological family (both don't have parents, both are infertile) and they get to have a found family. Their friends and adopted daughter is their family.
i watched the show before playing tw3, and i remember being so confused with the timeline of events in the first season. i remember that netflix (i think?) had made a timeline on their website for the first season, and looking back, i really don’t think they should have /had/ to do that. like seriously, was it so hard to throw a thing of text on screen that said something like “30 years before the fall of cintra”? as a new viewer, the story made no sense, but i grew to love it and that’s when i started play tw3, and it’s now one of my favorite games of all time. i’m still working my way through the books, but man, the witcher universe has so many unique and interesting views and stories that i’m sad netflix didn’t want to share fantastic video as always Mert
Seriously how do you screw this up? You not only have a book series that is finished but also have the games as a sequel series and Visual Understanding of the books.
I gave up on the show when it was made clear that there has been time skips within episodes. It just pissed me off, especially since there was no reason to hide it. Might give the books a try some time, but I don't think I will ever try rewatching the show
There are no time skips within the short stories the first season kinda tries to be based on. There obviously are jumps between the stories, but one story=one timeline. You can obviously start with the novels, but for me the short stories add a certain charm and perspective to the saga.
As for the "tangible real risk of magic" that they show in that Aretuza scene - it is very much is present in the games. In the mission The Calm Before the Storm (a main story mission) in Witcher 3: Yennefer reanimates the corpse of a young man who had contact with Ciri before his death. In order to do this (or rather sustain the type of magic), she drains the life energy of a sacred garden of a local deity and leaves it barren, after getting the information she wanted. It's there, most magic wielders we meet are just pros and know what they are doing.
That's true! I actually reference that scene later when making a different point so I have no idea how I missed it. That said, the corpse reanimation seems like a super difficult, extreme kind of magic. But levitating a rock? Why does that rot your arm
in books its explained as kind of a internal batery you need to replenish from diferent outside sources, you can use concentrated ones like ley lines preferably their crossings (island of thed, or temple of neneke where yen teavhes ciry) or elemental sources (air, earth, fire, water) each having pros and cons fire being most dengerous to draw power from... but its just sources of it, you master storing it in you... not defending the show tho, how they portrayed it is surface level understanding with lots of stupid
I have always felt that The Witcher tv-series came out a decade too late. It would have fitted right in between the accepted a-monster-per-episode era of Supernatural and Grimm, and not the political drama era of Game of Thrones.
As a Polish person, it means so much to me that you pronounced the names correctly, especially the author’s surname „Sapkowski” . It always annoys me how many video essayists don’t even try to pronounce Polish/Slavic names, it’s better to try and fail than to not try at all. Thank you!
@@MertKayKay It’s ok! The times when you did pronounce them correctly still count, the intent is still there, it shows that you not only researched foreign media but also respect it. Things like that matter. Polish pronunciation is difficult so of course there are times when you slip up, but I appreciate that you had at least shown effort
@@MertKayKay Another Pole here and yes, I'm still only partway through the video but I've noticed the care you took to get Andrzej Sapkowski's name right the first time (and it sounded really correct, so kudos!). It stood out to me because it's so rare, and I also appreciate it very much indeed (and don't worry about any slip-ups, they're bound to happen, we know our language is not easy for English speakers and it's okay! What matters is that you clearly took care to check it and made an effort to get it right in the first place!) Dziękujemy! :-)
35:08 untrue. We see this exact concept during the quest where Geralt and Yen raise Skjal from the dead in Freya’s garden. Yen has to use the life force of the garden in order to perform necromancy and succeeds but as a result, the whole garden dies.
True, BUT I'd argue the "literal necromancy that NEEDS to have a cost or it'll make certain scenarios too easy" spell is quite a huge exception to the typical rule
@@MertKayKay very good point, personally i love the concept of taking life in order to give it. I really wish they had that more frequently in the games. Its by far one of the best uses of how strenuous magic is and how talented you have to be in order to use it compared to other franchises such as lord of the rings or elder scrolls, hell even harry potter.
When the first season came about and people were praising it, my friend and I thought we were insane. We hated it. Like vehemently. We had read the books.
I usually thoroughly enjoy all of your videos despite never having played or watched the games/shows of discussion, so imagine my delight as you cover a series I’ve thoroughly played and watched. It’s like Christmas arrived early
I really hate the way they destroyed Yen's character and character arc. The books are written in a way that makes sense for her arc, the games build on her arc, the TV show completely undermines it by failing to realized why her backstory wasn't explained to the audience when we first meet here character in the story. Hissrich made a major mistake by trying to jam both Ciri's and Yens stories into the first season when the first season should have been about fleshing out Geralt. It would have fit perfectly into the timeline of the book chronology.
They had a passionate lead, an overall decent cast, a Netflix budget and everything from the beginning and end of the story laid out for them. It's not a perfect parallel, but I'm reminded of the Halo TV series adaptation. You have a writing team that seems to hold the beloved source material in contempt and just wants to make up their own universe while wearing the skin of something currently successful. The meterial, the cast and the fans deserved better.
Unpopular opinion: I actually really like season 1, though after watching this, I can recognize how writing mistakes in season 1 directly led to everything I hated about seasons 2 and 3. I had never connected those dots before. This video essay is so cathartic to watch after not even being able to finish watching season 3.
I never thought Geralt's looks in the show were *that* big a problem. I always took Geralt's perception of himself as ugly as just another example of his shockingly low self-esteem. Kind of like Arthur Morgan in RDR2. Enough people find him so insanely bone-able, it's hard to believe he's that unappealing.
Same. That's always been my interpretation. Because otherwise, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be so successful with the ladies. Jaskier also might not idolize him as much otherwise since the man is as shallow as they come.
I mean Geralt was meant to be gaunt and thin and kind of odd looking in the first game he did look like this then in the next two they made him handsome Henry doesnt look like either versions tho he also lacks the scars Geralt is suppose to have
@@lotusthemermaidi mean what women find attractive is subjective sometimes Geralt is also somehow charming i guess. I am pretty sure he is suppose to be weird looking i dont think its just a perception thing
@@chandlerburse I guess a lot of women in the books are sort of fascinated by him, both because he's a witcher (so a sort of novelty/celebrity factor) and because of his clearly not-douchy (despite external gruffness) personality. But while HC doesn't look the way he's described in the books, I think he captured him really well and felt very charismatic in the role, so I have no issues with him, he was one of perhaps 2 casting choices I actually loved about the series (the other being Tissaia de Vries - completely not like I imagined her, but still possessing the same gravitas and authority as in the books). [Edit: I do really like the OP's suggestion that perhaps his self-image was worse than he actually looked like due to him thinking of himself as a monster. Other characters seem to mostly notice him for his white hair - and the double swords - so it doesn't seem like he stands out that much on a regular basis. Except, of course, when he takes his potions!)
I watched Season 1 of The Witcher back in early 2020, and I came away from it feeling like it had the seeds of compelling ideas that never quite got growing. This video sort of validates my decision not to continue watching the show. Think I'll check out the books instead now, since I'm not a gamer. Anyone else strangely hungry for pancakes after watching this video?
The show changes the magic system of the books quite significantly....I mean it's pretty comprehensibly explained in books...sorcerers/mages draw energy from the elements, natural forces fo the world Fire, Water, Earth, Air and that energy fuels their spells, if they use more than they draw (and charged themselves) they are drawing energy from their very bodies...Ciri in Time of Contempt actually feels the effect of draining herself and also the whole process of drawing energy being difficult and painful is stated first in the short stories: ""'Enchanters,' explained Krepp, 'draw their power from the forces of nature, or to put it more accurately, from the so-called Four Elements or Principles, commonly called the natural forces. Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Each of these elements has its own Dimension which is called a Plane in the jargon used by enchanters. There's a Water Plane, Fire Plane and so on. These Dimensions, which are beyond our reach, are inhabited by what are called genies-' 'That's what they're called in legends,' interrupted the witcher. 'Because as far as I know-' 'Don't interrupt,' Krepp cut him short. 'The fact that you don't know much was evident in your tale, witcher. So be quiet and listen to what those wiser than you have to say. Going back to the genies, there are four sorts, just as there are four Planes. Djinns are air creatures; marides are associated with the principle of water; afreet are Fire genies and d'ao, the genies of Earth-' 'You've run away with yourself, Krepp,' Neville butted in. 'This isn't a temple school, don't lecture us. Briefly, what does Yennefer want with this genie?' 'A genie like this, mayor, is a living reservoir of magical energy. A sorcerer who has a genie at their beck and call can direct that energy in the form of spells. They don't have to draw the Force from Nature, the genie does it for them. The power of such an enchanter is enormous, close to omnipotence-'" Then in the main saga especially seen through Yennefer magic lessons to Ciri in Blood of Elves: ""“Why do we always draw the force from water veins? Magical energy, after all, is everywhere. It’s in the earth, isn’t it? In air, in fire?” “True.” “And earth… Here, there’s plenty of earth around here. Under our feet. And air is everywhere! And should we want fire, it’s enough to light a bonfire and…” “You are still too weak to draw energy from the earth. You still don’t know enough to succeed in drawing anything from air. And as for fire, I absolutely forbid you to play with it. I’ve already told you, under no circumstances are you allowed to touch the energy of fire!” Blood of Elves ... "'You focus yourself quickly. Let me remind you: control the flow of the force. You can only emit as much as you draw. If you release even a tiny bit more, you do so at the cost of your constitution. An effort like that could render you unconscious and, in extreme circumstances, could even kill you. If, on the other hand, you release everything you draw, you forfeit all possibility of repeating it, and you will have to draw it again and, as you know, it's not easy to do and it is painful.'" Inexperienced can get overwhelmed by the most volatile energy source..fire element which isn't forbidden as it is for whole magic community but more Yennefer forbids it to Ciri.
42:00 Wasn't book yennifer, yearning to be a mother too, wasn't the entire reason she was there for the dragon hunt, because she heard of some rare treatment that would heal her infertility
Yeah. But it's really different in context. Show Yen wants to cure her infertility that she herself caused because.....? In the books it's because she didn't have a choice, magic can cause infertility over time, abd while it's not an established practice there is a good chance she was affected by Tissaia's push for firced sterilisation.
My favourite part of book Geralt is how pathetic he is in a way. He's a classic hero archetype - brave, honest, selfless, strong, - but with all its flaws and limitations pointed out. He's single-minded, easily manipulated, ignorant at times. His ideals stop him from adapting to the changing times and sometimes lead to people suffering (the whole Blaviken situation). He doesn't want to be responsible for people and avoids attachments in favour of performing his solo saviour act. He has a soft heart and very low self-esteem, and people around him exploit that with no hesitation. As a result he's a lone, lonely wolf, stuck in the past, watching everything around change and leave his world behind with him in it. Most people don't see or appreciate his heroism and good intentions, they just see the Butcher of Blaviken, a freak they can use and discard. He's not respected or liked, just feared. He's deadly and competent and smart, yet somehow powerless in a very palpable sense. I love that he can be a sad underdog despite being a badass, without it feeling forced or dishonest. The gruff, unflappable macho-man from the Netflix version was such a crushing disappointment for me from the start, it colored the reception of the whole show for me. Then they butchered Yennefer's character and I was done. Loved Jaskier's portrayal though! EDIT. Why am I not mentioning my teenage self's second favourite character, Ciri? Because I didn't hold out long enough for her to become a real character, unfortunately. What I saw wasn't awful, but it was definitely unsatisfying. EDIT.2. Your accent combined with style of talking remind me to an uncanny degree of Dominic Noble, I had to do a double take at the start
The thing is, Netflix writers are all egotists who think they can always do it "better" and they end up fucking it all up cos they have no idea what they're working with. Same thing happened with the halo series, the lead writer thought he was "above" the storytelling of the games and figured he could "re-imagine" it and make it how he wanted it to be instead of what it was, and he completely shat the bed and fucked it all up. All streaming and movie studios need to stop hiring these out of touch egotists amwho think they're inherently better than the original story writers.
I enjoyed season 1 as it was mostly accurate and the monsters looked sick and close to how I imagined, but it just kept getting worse and worse. It's so sad cause Cavil is such a nerd and I know he hated watching it go down hill like that.
Love this video, but there's one thing I want to add: You've mentioned how the show does a poor thing of characterizing Geralt and how Sapkowsky being influenced through sword and sorcery made Geralt a rather stiff, already developed character. I don't fully disagree, but I also think that book-Geralt is granted with a lot of of character flaws and a lack of experience that make the friends and companions in his life much more impactful and him more interesting. While loving her and giving his all for her safety, book-Geralt isn't really "in touch" with the needs of a teenage girl, neither are any of the other witchers. As a result, Triss teached her about her period and tells them how dangerous the witcher ritual would be for her. Yennefer gives her basic sex-ed and teaches her manners (which she then ignores :D). Dandelion is a funny guy who enjoys life to the fullest, so for the brief time they meet, he jokes around with her and entertains her. In the show, Geralt is weirdly portrayed as the perfect dad, always knowing the right thing to say and do. It makes him incredible boring and it leaves no room to shine for his friends. And you make a great point about Freya Allen being too old. Another thing I would disagree with concerning the video: The books are highly interested in global politics, consistently switching POVs between the people making major political decisions and our ground level characters feeling the gruesome results of them. The problem with the show is, that Netflix never understood the connections between these scenes and just wanted things to be like GoT. That's why these scenes fall so flat. Man, I love these books so much, my absolute favorites, and the games are a spot on adaptation. It's so disappointing to see Netflix completely miss the point of them.
The witcher 3 has so many references to the books material and its all done so respectfully. When I first played I had no idea what any of this stuff was. Upon replaying, I'm constantly going: "I remember that! I know him! I know her! I wonder if they'll talk about... oh they did!" Its like a sequel to the books with all the political machinations and witty writing I got from the books without all of the melodrama and drawn out monologues that made them an absolute slog. Some of the best adaptation and original writing I have ever seen. Akin to the superfan stuff we saw from peter Jackson. My only gripe being the white frost but I understand why they depicted it this way. And idk, maybe Ciri can warp space time enough to stave off the axis tilt thay causes the planets to freeze over, who knows?
I really like that shirt! And this is a great video essay! I never got into the Witcher series, not for any bad reasons, there's just so many games these days that I never had a chance to spend time with the Witcher specifically. (For instance, I've only just recently finished Dark Souls 1 haha) Your video, despite spoilers, makes me want to check out the series.
6:10 just one thing, Elric was a sorcerer, he didn't despise magic, he was a master of it, what he despised was his kin, the evil melniboneans, who killed for pleasure and drank human blood
If anyone is curious, I've contacted one of the writers for the game's lore , and got a lot of insight if people are curious what the different Witcher schools are about: Order of Witchers:the first one, an unethical experiment done on children taken by mages through human trafficking. Lost funding when the Witchers it produced weren't as magically powerful as promised. It then broke up into the modern day schools as the Witchers were left to run things on their own by the majority of the mages, and got to infighting over the ideals they should follow. This is the school that originated all the magic signs, potions, and sword techniques later schools would put their own spins on. School of the Bear: a very Lambert like school, who hated how they were forced into Witcher life, and wanted to be left alone to live their lives. Violently broke away, and will sometimes attack other Witchers to be the first to complete a monster contract, though never kill them, and if that other Witcher stands up for himself, the Bear will buy them a drink and suggest to go after the beast together. They train students with a survival of the fittest method, so there are less of them that live through the trials than the other schools. They use heavier armor because they prefer the solitude of snow based hunts, where it's often harder to dodge and move, though they are still just as agile as other Witchers. According to the writer, they HATE authority, and prefer to hang out with groups who treat them as equals, such as Skellige, and the Dwarf settlements. Additionally, if you earn a Bear Witcher's friendship and respect, you make a friend for life who will die for you without hesitation, as their school encourages it's students to choose their own ideals, and people to care for rather than have the school force ideals on them. School of the Viper: A secretive school founded to fight the wild hunt, initially made up of those who supported the Bear's bid for freedom, they left the Bears after trying to kill their leader to turn the Bear school against the wild hunt. They use ambush tactics and dual wield. They also often take assassination jobs. School of the Manticore: the third group that followed the Bears leader, they left after the Viper's failed coup and set themselves up as a school backed by the Kingdom of Zerrikania. They used shields due to the extra poisonous monsters of Zerrikania's deserts. School of the Cat: hearing of these new schools, the Cats set out to bring respectability to Witcher's by offering a wider variety of services. Not just slaying monsters, but assassination, spy work, and mercenary work. This backfired and their keep was raised, but a group of half elves they were experimenting in escaped and now run their own sub school with the Dyn Marv caravan, and help the Scoi'atel. They experimented with the Witcher mutagens, and may have uncovered how to more safely make women Witchers. School of the Griffin. After the Cats' debacle soured people even further on Witchers, the Griffins left to try and achieve the Orders original goals of knights with great spellcasting ability and bring respectability to the Witcher name. They never achieved this impossible task, as Witchers could never be very strong in magic, and their knightly virtues made the powerful see them as pawns to manipulate. According to the writer I contacted, Cody Pondsmith, the powerful of the continent would weave stories of how innocent monsters were actually evil, and the naive Griffins would believe them and murder the innocent beasts. This is why they hunt dragons, believing it their "knightly duty". School of the Wolf: while the Griffins set their sites on futiley chasing what Witchers were intended to be, the Wolves focused on what was the best, most realistic way to live Witcher life. They perfected the Witcher sword style into a dance, and taught how to mix the other parts of the Witcher skillset into it seamlessly, making for realistic, professional, adaptable Witchers, that were by far the most successful of the schools, that produced the largest number of Witchers.
I remember the jaskier is immortal fan theory going around before the show runners just came out and admitted they forgot to age him up in the time skips if that doesn't further show how little they cared I'd what
I get that Yenns arc is supposed to be an metaphore for how women sacrifice the chance to have a family for there careers/power/money (at least i think?) but it just doesn't work, because she didn't make a choice between a normal life vs magic girlboss, the choice to be part of the magic political games was already made for her father when he sold her, but the narative frames the concequences of that as if they were her own fault?
Um..... what? GOT is waaaay more low fantasy than the Witcher. GOT is literally just humans doing politics in a world with a few grounded magical elements. 3 dragons, wargs, prophecies, face changers, and mentions of ancient magic thats mostly gone. The Witcher is the high fantasy out of the two of those. Multiple races, lots of magic, magical creatures and monsters and mcguffins. Like so many of the characters are literally witches and cast spells. GoT doesnt really have much of that. If you meant epic fantasy instead of high fantasy then sure GOT has a much larger world and stakes.
I've never watched or read GOT but i've heard a lot of people online describe it as fantasy for people who don't like fantasy so it's kind of hard to believe that it would be considered high fantasy if that former statement about is true
40:31 Being generous, I would propose that the intention was to show a rebirth, from a life of hatred, fear, and abuse due to their apparent nature, to a life where they are valued and loved. Maybe as dark parallels: the strigga becomes valued for who she is, while Yennifer is now valued for what she appears to be. I dunno, I don't like the writing in this show, and it's been a while. But it's a possibility. And regarding the transformation, I think you're maybe reading a little too far into it. I would argue that what they're trying to convey is Yen's determination/desperation and short-sightedness, where she sacrifices something she clearly values (being a mother) in exchange for this new life. Later, when the glitz and glamour has worn off, she realizes that this cost was either too much (where she vainly tries to undo her youthful foolishness), or unfair (where her pride demands she have both), depending on how she's portrayed. I do like your take on "creating life in exchange for unending life" though.
I loved this video! I’m a prime example of someone who had no prior knowledge of the material (i know OF the games, this is the first time I’m hearing about books), was never invested in the universe but willing to get deep into a fun universe for a good show. I still overall liked netflix’s Witcher but that’s perhaps because, again, the whole universe was new to me. And it was just something to do. It’s a shame the show was pried out of the hands of people who seemed to have respect and love for the source material, that makes me sad for the fanbase. What a great retrospective, thanks for making this!
My problem with Calante in the show is that it is the stereotypical women that has to act like a men for them to respect her, when in the book she is respected just for who she is, she is very elegant and very well spoken and smart, in the book she doesn't need to enter the room in armor for her to comand respect, she was the one that made the party for Paveta, she planned the timing of the bells for everyone to see Dunny's transformation but at the end she decides to upheald her husbands promise an later Dunnys promise to Geralt regarding Ciri. her future husband talks to her with love and reverence, not like in the show that they introduced them making sexual jokes in front of they're granddaughter 🤦
I think the idea of the "emotionless" Witcher is more of a product of the objectification of the Witcher's duties and, in turn, the mystical happenings that occur in the world of the Witcher. As is seen in the books and games, Geralt often solves the "problems" of the monsters by solving the monsters' problems. This wouldn't translate as well to the everyday individual in a world that is constantly torn apart by war, famine and the whims of the aristocracy. As such, it probably benefits the Witchers to maintain the image of being dispassionate and emotionless as it helps substantiate their role as "monster removers" rather than as a "remover of monsters' problems". It probably benefits the Witchers to be seen as a monstrous force rather than as sympathetic humans. Otherwise their actions and emotions would be questioned relative to their subjective person rather than their objective Witcher-ness.
I f*cking ran here when i saw you uploaded a new video. I think i watched through nearly all of your content. I enjoy your takes on media, especially when you explain horror media (im too much of a p*ssy to watch them myself but love the symbolism that can only be conveyed through this type of media... its strangely helpful in healing my traumas). The witcher series is especially dear to my heart, thank to it being my only source of comfort a few years ago when i went through the most difficult time in my life to date. Thank you for what you do❤
from the perspective of a person who grew up with only Polish and Russian cinema; I can only add that the "slow eastern cinema" that Alik Sakharov vouched for; you see when "Eastern Cinema" is one of the arguments for Panslavicism - a.k.a Soviet Russian tube propaganda that we east, west and south slavic are the same (SPOILER; WE AREN'T; as a Polish I can't read nor write cyrilic script), but there is a grain of truth about "Eastern Cinema" in the East part of Europe (the continent); you see most of relevant Polish cinematography came to be in the late 60s, 70s and 80s, such as "Sami Swoi" movie series that in the spam of 3ish movies tell a story of two neighbors who hate each others guts so much after coming back home from WW2 that they argue about a piece of fence, and later when their children grow up they still argue even when the boy and the girl are about to get married; they finally reconcile, BUT Pawlak's cow steps on the old b00mb from WW2 because of Kargul and these two neighbors they argue again! btw, that's where the Polish cow meme COW came from; like it all boils down to this old 1967 film; that even as a person born 2002 knows; Needless to say; cinema, art and writing during Soviets control over Poland from 1945 to 1989 characterises itself as: - no talk about politics - focus on the small joys of everyday life - huge ensemble of characters; usage of "power of the community" The same would go for Tartakovsky's cinema from Russia, or the influence Polish cinema left on Kieslowski's films like Double life of Veronique; the beginning is convoluted, and it takes more than 25 minutes into 1hour 30 minutes to realize what's this movie is about which is NOT BAD as American cinema would make you believe that everything has to be clear within 50 seconds because if not you're losing an audience; but they forget that when in East Central Europe you buy a ticket, the audience sits till the end sign; And ngl I'd love to see a series treated with the slow pace; that's basically what Sapkowski's work is too, even when people suppose that "slow = no action", it's not necessarily slow means... we're moving more like 1 year through 1 season and not; 30 years in 3 seasons
If you think the witcher is Netflix worst adaptation, youev *_clearly_* not watched Netflix Death Note. It makes the witcher look like a god damn master piece.
0:08 As a polish I will say from all english people I've heard, you were the closest to say his name right how it should be pronounced in polish. Most english speaker just got lazy and call him Andrew instead of Andrzej or say Sapkaouski instead of Sapkovski. 27:28 "she's not over designed whatsoever" YES SHE IS! Netflix Bruxa just look straight up stupid with her one hundred teeths and oversized eyes. It's like they could gave just a normal vampire design, and instead they made her completely over the top only becouse they could.
Damn I’m literally at the start of the Jarre section of The Lady of the Lake (finding it a bit hard to get through) and even though I knew Geralt died I didn’t take THE WARNING. AHHH this is a mental reminder to come back to this video in a couple of days
Honestly the only thing I liked was Henry Cavill as Geralt. At first I had my doubts about his ability to play the character, but once I saw him on screen... DAM! I honestly can't think of anyone else to play our white wolf now. You don't know how bad I feel for Henry, the poor guy just wanted the source material to be respected.☹️
Usually when Hollywood executives allow their productions a lot of creative freedom the end result is better for it. To me this show is the rare example of creative freedom actually damaging the product. If they had only stuck to what people are familiar with from the Witcher games they would have been able to focus on making a compelling story rather than fussing about with their "vision" for the franchise.
I’m pretty sure Yen’s desire for a child was actually in the books as it’s what she wanted from the djinn she tried controlling after meeting Geralt in the first place.
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Thats the first time your name and the word 'cool' have been put together.
1:23.33 thx i really wanted some pancakes. do you got some more recipes?
What they did to Eskel in the series is an absolute sham. The books all but state that Eskel is pretty much Geralt's equal in every aspect of skill and talent. Killing him like a schmuck was such a weird ass move.
They also turned him into a complete prick for no reason. #notmyEskel
My fav part about that is how Lauren Hissrich said she will not change characters or kill them for shock value but she did exactly that to eskel. She said they wanted an action scene and someone to die, but not be obvious, so if they had killed a not named character everyone would have known. So they relegated a named character to become an extra and killed him unceremoniusly all in the name of "subvering expectations". These writers are so careless and stupid it hurts my soul
Eskel (a beloved character both in books and games) died because they wanted a battle scene in the supposedly safest place Ciri can travel to... I still get mad about this, not to mention other stupid decions they made like butchering the character of Vesemir and Yennefer
Not that the rest is that much greater but... That whole second season was garbage. Even if you disregard everything in the books, it's still unbelievably badly written.
We have TW3' Eskel at least.
Yup :( my partner and I (huge Eskel stans) could not continue after that horrible decision.
47:20 one of my most hated tropes is that women can never have like indigestion or a stomach flu or food poisoning or ibs; if they throw up, they're pregnant. then the writers waste time on "OoOoOh WhAt CoUlD Be WrOnG WiTh HeR?!?!" when it's always pregnancy
I have a sensitive stomach that often decides it randomly doesn't like a food and is going to make me vomit at 2 am for it. Now I'm gonna start joking that I'm the Virgin Mary any time it happens.
Hahaha! Yes! Pavetta is at a huge feast! Maybe the pork was off
@@MertKayKay Geralt comes back after fourteen years to find a twelve year old Ciri and a note from Calanthe saying “congrats on your new donkey”.
In the book Geralt just somehow predicted she was pregnant and Pavetta knew beforehand too it was Duny who didnt know and that was the point of the request
interestingly, in the books Triss Merigold actually gets food poisoning while on the journey to the temple of Melitele and Geralt and Ciri have to take care of her on the road! Sapkowski has his issues and his attitude to women both in the books and in real life can sometimes be questionable (example: everyone in the books is obsessed with having the horizontal mambo with Ciri when she's still very young - and most of them don't want it just to get her magic child! The way she starts her relationship with Mistle is definitely creepy, Mistle basically saves her from AS just to go on and AS her herself a minute later, but it's presented as okay, because, I guess, no penis? And she's a giver?). But I would chalk it up more to ingrained "old uncle" ideas very common among men of a certain generation, while on the conscious level he definitely goes out of his way to try and present a wide range of female characters, all of them strong and vulnerable and imperfect in their own ways, while also not shying away from making them very physical, like with said food poisoning, menstrual care, sexuality whether purely for unabashed pleasure or as a way to seek closeness, miscarriage etc. And the sorceresses basically run the show in-universe. So yeah, that's pretty cool!
Girl what did you do to yourself?? Watching all the 3 Seasons of the Witcher? Thats pretty much torture
Season 2 was so rough :'(
I didn't even get through an episode, idk how she did it
@@MertKayKayseason 2 is where I had to give up. The show did get me into the books, though. Worked out in the end
Take notes, Guantanamo Bay!
Wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy
Honestly the adaptation is bad when it's very easy to believe the rumors about writers actively mocking the source material lol
"geralt is good at killing things but not reading the instructions first" me throwing the box for my frozen pizza in the trash and then digging it out again when i remember i didnt check how long it cooks
Isn't that the proper way to do pizza?
Have you ever thought about doing it via food Poison roulette? I just put it in on 180 degrees and take it out when it starting to look too crispy. I've been fine so far...
@@jackgrattidge6236 no rules just vibes
@@jackgrattidge6236 180 degrees? Did it sweat a little?
I really hated that they had so many Witchers because, it's very important to note even though the games take place later, a lot of the "technology" required for making Witchers was lost, They can't reproduce because their genetics are altered that much, they have issues expressing emotion because they have PTSD just from their training because THAT is how many of them died doing it "the right way," I think the number of boys who would survive the training was stated as 3 out of 10. They're so complex and interesting, the show basically just went, "Screw that, too much work."
Just wanted to edit in my favorite Geralt quote, every time someone asks if he carries a silver sword for monsters and a steel sword for humans, "They're both for monsters."
Also the Witcher orders are notably in decline during the time of the books, partly because generations of Witchers hunting monsters have made actual monster attacks much rarer and also advancements in other, more mundane technologies like metallurgy and engineering are implied to have begun levelling the playing field between at least the weaker monsters and regular people.
This is actually really important for Geralt's characterisation. He isn't just a member of a dying breed and profession because of knowledge being lost. He's also simultaneously slowly being made redundant.
@@PhileasLiebmann why do you have to make me more interested and depressed?
when you alienate new people and your existing audience, who is left? obviously the youtuber who has to watch it to make a video essay on the whole thing
@@CourierSixGaming Allow me to make you a tiny bit more depressed.
Geralt isn't losing his place in the world only because his kin, profession and entire way of existence is dying. He also actively refuses to use his skills for other causes, namely murdering people on demand - which other characters advise, ask, or offer to pay him for numerous times within the first few books. So what's making him redundant is partly his own moral code.
Now for the tragic part: he's repeatedly tricked, manipulated and strong-armed into doing it anyways.
He tries to act by his internal rules, which makes him predictable, and people regularly use it to have him do the very thing he tries to avoid - killing other humans for someone's' gain.
The show was trying so hard to be grand and epic and fantastical that it skipped over how deeply tragic Geralt's character is.
(It skipped over many things. I'm very mad about Yennefer.)
@@karakanb3039 I already knew that he doesn't kill for money, my favorite line from the games is, "They're both for monsters." I also know how often he gets tricked and betrayed, because being a decent person when you have combat skills, it isn't easy. People suck and will do everything that they can to get what they want, my own older brother trash talks me despite the fact we both left the military the same rank, he just did 20 years and I was under 5 because he needs me to be a loser. I really feel like, when I play the games, I kind of get Geralt right. The "kind of" is because I go with Triss, met Yen in the third game, "What a bitcharoonidoonie..."
The first warning sign was seeing "big company wants to capitalize on big franchise." Maybe it's just me, but hearing something advertised as, for example, "Netflix's Adaptation" instead of "-Director-'s Adaptation" makes it feel a lot more like a product than proper adaptation or reimagining.
I remember when they marketed the 2005 King Kong as ‘Peter Jackson’s King Kong’, and yeah, it definitely felt like that instead of just Universal Pictures’s. The lack of any creative leadership behind a project really brings it down.
@@SaberRexZealot Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie may have been born as the obvious cash grab to go with the movie (as was the style at the time), but god damnit was it an *amazing* game and the studio behind it put so much damn effort into it. You can FEEL the passion inside it, much like with the movie.
@@SaberRexZealot Exactly💯👍. Passion, fun and creativity wins every time. Enough said.
As a polish person I really hated the netflix series. The timeline was a mess, Geralt's portrayal was way too cold, overall it felt a bit like an insult to our culture too but I don't want to open that can of worms because it could've been good! But the pacing and writing were the main culprits.
Fellow Pole here, I don't feel insulted by the series specifically as a Pole, but I do feel insulted as a fan of the books and generally a fan of well-written series with characters one can actually care about haha. And I had such huge hopes for it before it came out! Me and my siblings had a special get-together over Christmas to binge season 1 and... yeah we were all disappointed AF.
And if the work of a non-white author was butchered like that, there would be a public outrage, screams of "cultural appropriation" and demands for an utter boycott.
... feeling your pain from Czechia.
@@irena4545It's at the very least a lack of nuanced understanding of "diversity", and at worst, a bigoted and false sense of moral superiority. To them, anyone who's caucasian, and looks "white" doesn't deserve to present their culture in media.
I'm not from Poland (or any other Slavic country) but one of the things I really enjoyed while reading the Witcher books was that they made use of all this Slavic mythology, giving the books a distinctly different feel from the western and northern fantasy tales I was used to reading. It was its own, unique thing and Hollywood could have made something really cool with it, but fumbled and wasted all that potential. Agreed that the pacing and writing were the main culprits - they're not even internally consistent, but vary wildly between the seasons. Such a sham.
@@irena4545cut out your abhorent racism lol. This has nothing to do with it and if you haven't studied any current or historical events, no, non-white people are not treated better (kinda the fucking opposite) 😂
I absolutely hated the inclusion of the eels…it really doesn’t make sense to me, since a lot of sorceresses at Aretuza actually come from aristocratic families, so in the books it specifically states that failed sorceresses still go on to have respectable careers, like lawyers. Additionally, the show tries really hard to make us look at characters like Tissaia and Yennefer as ultimately morally good in the end, if questionable. Turning little girls into eels is heinous and a fate worse than death, and all the mages associated with Aretuza are complicit in the act..In my mind, it makes them morally irredeemable and I struggle to accept that Yennefer would go along with it.
That and the fact Aretuza also provide mages for Nilfgaard for some reason when Nilfgaard has its own institutions of training/employing mages. And Fringilla is also changed to a Northerner instead of being from Toussaint.(If they really want to introduce her earlier they can just make her an exchange student of some sort.)
100% this comment. One of the many little changes which, while designed to make us feel for the characters, actually turn them from complex and often selfish but ultimately well-meaning people into horrible people who at the same time keep whinging about how bad their life is when they are actually the last people in-universe who should say that (one is Yennefer, the other one they butchered was queen Calanthe who just came across as incredibly boorish and a horrible leader to boot, while going all "poor little me" when she's a literal queen in her own right!). I couldn't watch past the 1st season, the show felt like no time was spent on creating it, and that also includes costuming, the non-existent opening credits (compare it to the jaw-dropping opening credits for the Game of Thrones, I was hooked just after seeing that intro), oh, and the stupidest final battle scene I've ever seen (a mage goes to fight an enemy leader one on one, gets his sword thrown out of his hand and magics himself another sword instead of, I don't know, using the magic to defeat the opponent!). I think literally the only thing I liked about it was Henry Cavill as Geralt and the actress who played Tissaia - she had that gravitas she has in the books. As a massive fan of the books, this show was a massive disappointment not just in its treatment of the original material, but as a story standing on its own (which it doesn't).
Ah, also they aged Ciri up for understandable reasons while still making her behave mostly like the little girl she was in the books initially. Yeah, she dumb.
yes ...!!!!! not to mention that i have a phobia of eels
Yeah after that scene I was just like "Wait...are we...sre we caring about this???"
@@SebiHemke Awe, that's sad as I love eels, I think they're kinda cute. But I'm someone who's really freaked out by rabbits, so I'm not really one to judge.
Regarding Yen's transformation - the Witcher books are in part about how forcefully controlling others' reproduction is evil.
I don't think the story (in the books at least) is at all interested in whether someone has a kid or not. It's only saying that they should have the right to decide for themselves.
Yennefer and Geralt are both infertile because of the transformations forced upon them as kids. That is framed as a horrifying injustice done to them.
The horror and injustice don't come from the lack of reproductive capabilities, however, but from the fact that they were given no choice. They were taken as children, horrifying damage was done to them and the ability to choose was stolen from them. They then come together as adults and move the entire world in order to protect their adoptive daughter from a fate of being used as an unwilling broodmare by powerful ruling men.
The books are very much pro-abortion, too. It's pretty much always framed as a nessecary medical operation that a woman has a right to. It's very cool when you consider they were written in the 80's and the 90's in Poland.
I could honestly write an entire essay about the witcher, gender and abortion. There is a lot of stuff there :D
Damn this is so interesting! And so valid too. Thank you for sharing. I love this.
@@MertKayKay Thank you for sharing your thoughts and analysis on the show, too! ❤️🙏
I think the problem with the show is that Yennifer basically forced the dude to do it to her? So while Im fine with her changing her mind about it over the decades "the ability to have a child was taken from me" comes of as her being delusional.
Historical context: Writing in the 80s means the author grew up in socialist Poland, which had rather progressive values. Abortion was legal there before, for example in Sweden. In the 1960s, Swedish women traveled there to get abortions which were illegal at the time here.
There's an entire section in Baptism of Fire about this. Needless to say, the protagonists are all supportive
A "monster of the week" season or two, expertly weaving in bits of the overarching plot as it went on, would have been exactly the kind popcorn-schlock I could have become unreasonably attached to.
That is basically how the 2 books of short stories work. There's always a short monster hunt story and then another chapter of an introductory story to Geralt. The 5 main books then focus much more heavily on Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer and some other characters. Dandelion/Jaskir has his own chapters for example, but so do some antagonists. That would have been the perfect format imho. Use 2 seasons as introduction and lay the foundations of your character relations, then go heavy into the whole plot.
@@Bannschwertthe books are so fucking cinematic and perfectly ripe for a STRAIGHT TO SCREEN, NO BULLSHIT adaptation, that it baffles me how much they got wrong. Like, holy fuck they were TRYING to mess it up, there is no other possible explanation.
For me, a slavic person, the biggest problem with Netflix version - is how... "Westernized" it became.
Like, "Witcher" is a polish IP, that draws its vibe heavily from slavic cultures, and the Netflix just made it bland, dark "somewhere-in-western-medival-europe" type of thing and like??? Why??? And that feeling extends on every part of production: locations, coatumes, characters, story.
Like, i get that they're are making it for the American audience, but thought Americans like to preach about how we need more non-western cultures represented on screen? So, where is it?
Witcher was a perfect opportunity to make something unfamiliar and new, yet understandable and touching for the American audience and they are blew it in exchange for bland dark fantasy that everybody already seen a thousand times.
I mean, then the Witcher 3 came out, i remember many people saying that the thing that really got them about the game is who unique the world is and how the slavic undertones are really interesting.
In short, it is really disappointing.
Yeap I grew up lengthen and Thorgal.him polish and I can't stand what the y did with it I'm glad Thorgal wasn't touched by Netflix !
I mean, I get the sentiment as a polish person, but Witcher is as much slavic at it is celtic with making elven language irish, using holidays like belleteyn or just referencing arthurian legends almost word for word. The polish touches are great in Witcher 3, but for me the biggest charm of the series are characters, that could be placed in a futuristic tale or chinese folk story and they still wpuld be great lol.
I'm Czech, born in the US, and I adore Slavic media because my grandmother straight up refused to teach me anything about where I came from. She came here during a time where immigrants were expected to integrate at all costs, erasing their heritage, and so she was afraid to do anything other than share her recipes with me. I cherish them, but I now have no choice but to connect to my history my proxy.
I know The Witcher is Polish and not Czech, but there's so much overlap between the two. It's so rare to have a wholesale fictional mythology come out of an eastern Slavic country, and it's especially rare for it to enter into the public consciousness. The Witcher is a celebration of eastern Slavic culture, and it pains me that Netflix didn't think that was enough.
@@WobblesandBean I think its like that because Americans can't comprehend the concept of "nations"
The main discourse in america is always about race, so I guess they think that if all of Europe is "white" race-vise - so our culture is basically the same everywhere. So for them it's all the same - they don't distinguish western, eastern, anything really, and just make something "europish", which is so stupid I hate it
Agreed. My husband is Polish and he introduced me to the games and I got into the books on my own afterwards. And it was so fun having him as a source for all my questions and it made me want to visit his homeland and family even more!
6:35 Sapkowski may claim his prose is functional and plot-serving, but he is actually a much better writer that he gives himself credit for. I read the books in my and his native Polish - and the prose is feather-light, funny, quick, humorous and full of several layers of literary references and inspirations (it is actually rather post-modern in its intertextuality, retellings and references). There are also several smart uses of old words and phrases giving the vocabulary a unique flair without sounding fake-medieval or inauthentic. It absolutely reads like works of someone who is well-versed in both language and culture. He speaks several foreign languages (he actually worked in international trade before becoming a writer full time) and has a very deep knowledge of both science fiction and fantasy.
I know the English translation is much different in tone and loses some of the context from time to time. If I were to compare Sapkowski's writing style to someone, I would say Jerome K. Jerome or William M. Thackeray.
(edited to finish an incomplete sentence and add clarity in another one that was phrased badly)
I had my issues with his prose (specifically: there exist other punctuation marks than the period, haha), but what I love about his writing is that there's a very palpable difference in the way different characters speak: peasants speak like peasants, educated sorceresses and mages speak like intellectuals, it gives much more depth to his world, plus the allusions and references are hilarious (make peace not war - make poop every morning)
His prose is excellent. Especially short stories - so much layers in a few pages, every sentence having a meaning! Once Netflix started gutting these stories to shove Yen and Ciri into the show early, the quality of storytelling was doomed to plummet. The omission of Tridam ultimatum made first episode dumb. The omission of Geralt and Ciri meeting at Brokilon made their entire relationship dumb. Ironically, the episodes least based on Sapkowski’s stories turned out to be better. I once believed Netflix would do best by abandoning Witcher franchise entirely and just starting generic fantasy franchise, so that they need not suffer comparison to Sapkowski. Then they produced “Blood Origin”.
The Witcher is a peak of postmodernism! So progressivists and conservatives are pissed off equally by their common enemy.
@@MajkaMajko If you enjoy the anger of the conservatives over Witcher and its progressive narratives, may I recommend the essay series about Witcher from the RUclipsr Sophie from Mars. She did a couple of films (Witcher as himbo, Witcher as carelord etc.) where she analyses exactly that.
I felt the same about the English translation! It's much lighter and quicker than most fantasy prose in a way that is really refreshing -- I found that it put more emphasis on characterization and interpersonal relationships than the minute world details that a lot of fantasy gets bogged in
Forever thinking about the wig they had Henry in for the first season lol.
I'm so mad about the wigs lmaooo surely somewhere there's a drag queen who's a big enough fan of The Witcher to help??
It was the contacts for me.
Such a big budget to just stick him in a temu synthetic wig…
Lmao, y'know, I could have been fine with it, if the writing had been good.
Just wanna say, Geralt is not meant to be ugly. He is the only one who describes himself as such but man is quite popular with women. He's probably average but with a literally enhanced physique.
Aww you've given me an entirely different reading on him. Geralt my sweet summer flower
One thing that really stuck in my mind was one of the Sorceresses he has sex with remarking, that he is just so completely different than any other man she ever had. Sorceresses get really old and they are so attractive, few men reject them. So at some point they get bored by normal men and Geralt is unqiue.
But I also think, that his heart and personality make him much more attractive than his freakish body alone would.
He is a mutant. His features are intense, and glowing yellow eyes are a centerpiece.
@@MertKayKay He's rough-looking and very masculine, he's just not conventionally handsome ;-)
My biggest beef with the show is the costumes tbh. I'm mad into historical fashion and character design, and seeing their fits look like drop-ship cosplay hurt my soul... I've seen diy ren faire outfits that blow these out of the water. It's all so, so bland and unmemorable, and sometimes it even undercuts an entire character!
Like Jaskier (whose name should have stayed Dandelion)- who would hire a bard that dresses in drab, muted brown-red or grey-blue? The point is that their colors catch your eye so you'll stick around!! Performers are in an attention economy!! But noo, we have to keep our under-saturated Game of Thrones and late Harry Potter ~aesthetic~
Remember the Dol Blathanna elves from season one! One of the girls looks like she's wearing some New Look dress
It mostly bothered me how everything looked the same. I had never read or played any of the witcher media before watching season one and I was extremely confused. The three timelines thing only dawned on me during the last episodes and it made the whole experience so much worse. Not to mention the confusion around the kingdoms. Why, oh why, couldn‘t they have gotten different aesthetics for different times??? Of course fashion changes drastically over the course of hundreds of years. Of course different countries have different cultures. This would not only have made the costume design a million times more intricate but actually would have noticably improved the quality of the story itself.
The best decision ever made on GOT was to color code all the houses. I firmly believe it would have been near unwatchable if all of westeros and essos had the same clothes and environment.
Jaskier is his original name from the books, so it wouldn't have "stayed" as Dandelion since that isn't his canon name.
Not to mention the clothes that King on that ball was wearing. Like, WTF!? It looked like some sort of modern attempt at replicating medieval rich people clothing. Then they just slapped a crown on his head and thought "That’ll do it!" No heraldry, nothing. Just bland white or beige.
One of the best and most unique things about The Witcher is how much of a medieval fantasy it is. It's not your typical high fantasy; it's essentially the Middle Ages with fantasy elements that are also often inspired by real folklore. CD Projekt understood this, and that's why they created a fantastic and unique visual style for the games, where some of the armor looks exactly like medieval originals (Temeria, Redania, Kaedwen, and other Northern Kingdoms), or it's just subtly modified but still heavily inspired by medieval armor and can be considered relatively historically accurate (as in the case of Nilfgaard). Someone at CD Projekt who designed these things must have done really good research and found out what all these things looked like. They probably took a lot of inspiration from photos of reenactors. Netflix, on the other hand, decided to hire a costume designer named Tim Scotti-Henson (known as Tim Aslam at that time). As stated on his personal website, Tim studied fashion design, which is why the costumes look the way they do. On his website, he even has pictures of his designs, showing what inspired him, and many of these concepts have photos of models at fashion shows. So, instead of researching historical accuracy, this costume designer mixed modern high fashion with his confused idea of the Middle Ages. Anyway, I will be doing a video specifically about this topic in the future if anyone would be interested.
The danger of using magic and the associated ethical implication of its destructive potential are discussed at length in the books. Also magic comes in many shapes and forms in Sapkowski's stories and is not exclusive to sorcerers and sorceresses. You have priestesses using healing and prophetic trans, you have dreamers able to see past events, you have Wild Hunt projecting themselves into another dimension and so on and on. The rules for magic in the TV show make no sense, after all Witcher signs are a form of magic too, why isn't Geralt withering away every-time he uses one? What cost was paid to fuel various spells during the battle of Soden? The idiotic phrases like 'preserve your chaos' as if chaos was mana points in the show are particularly cringy but also go against the whole flower and stone scene. In the books sorcery as a kind of magic is particularly dangerous because it draws power from the elements, the more chaotic the element the harder it is to control that energy and every-time you risk triggering a runaway entropy cascade. That is why using fire, the most chaotic element, as a source for magic is forbidden, not using magic to create fire (I mean ffs Geralt's Igni sign is fire magic).
its forbiden for ciry, in time she is learning, by yen becouse its way to dengerous for her in thath moment in time... specific example for specific moment spun in to general "fire bad" in the show
Fans: Henry Cavill is awesome as Geralt. We want more of him.
Netflix: We're giving Henry less screentime.
Fans: But why?
Netflix: Liam Hemsworth is replacing him in season 4.
Fans: ......
Netflix: Hey, why isn't anyone watching the show?
Netflix : We are also overriding any input Henry has for the character, just because he had read the books and played the games doesn't mean he is a better writer or has a better understanding of the character when compared to out hack team in the writers room.
Fans : Very well then, consider my patronage over.
Were Henry Cavill was a good Geralt for beginning with?
In my experience, truly the worst thing you can do to a casual viewer of the Netflix Witcher series, is introduce them to the books (as long as they don't bounce off of them completely at least, which would also be understandable). The show can be mostly enjoyed as a fun fantasy story, albeit a bit all over the place, but with book knowledge, you're cursed to realize just how much of the interesting tapestry of the series is being overwritten by the most generic tropes a writer could come up with.
This comment made me laugh because I was a casual viewer who went on to read the books (and watch play throughs of the games) and now I can’t look at the show without inwardly screaming “WE WERE ROBBED.”🤣
Also I hate how in the show they call the bard character Jaskier like it's his name. It's a nickname, specifically a type of flower growing in Eastern Europe, some types of it are decorative, but others grow in the wild, it suits his personality a lot - pretty, bright, approachable, friendly, unserious. Game adaptation calls him Dandelion and it's a good choice, it has the similar connotations. It helps a lot - when you first meet him in the books you can easiely figure out his personality based on his nickname alone, while "Jaskier" tells absolutely nothing to an english-speaking viewer.
Buttercup (the English name of the flower) as a diminutive and/or ironic and possibly slightly insulting nickname is also already a thing in English, so it's not like anything would really be lost in translation there. Then again, maybe that's why they decided not to go with it, because they didn't want to colour the audiences perspective of the character prematurely or something? Personally I would think that that's exactly the point of the name, but whatever.
Thought that they decided to go with Jaskier instead of Dandelion to keep the polish version of his name as like an ''attempt'' (or an easter egg) to show the roots of the whole franchise. It was actually the only change i liked.
@@Isus24-s8e Kind of a hollow gesture though, when that's pretty much the only thing they did to pay homage to the franchise's roots.
Might as well have just called him Julian at that point
I still cant forgive them for what they did to my boy eskel
Like most things in the show, they rushed it and expected the audience to already be attached to a character based on name recognition alone without properly developing the character.
@@stolenrelicthat and the fact that in the show Eskel is a complete and utter asshole-more like Lambert than anything-instead of the sweet goat-loving badass he is in the games. And then he dies.
I didn't watch the show, but I looked up some clips when my sister told me (she was wtrching that tripe and gave up after that episode).
They did him really dirty, the only thing they did right was have him look more like Geralt.
the first 2 books where really good for a story per episode. In my opinion. The foundation was there. they did nennika dirty. Un forgivable
I know that Im the rare hater but how the fuck do you turn Blood of Elves into a good season of television?
@@williamtimonen6814I read books long time ago, but I remember loving Yen and Ciri scenes in Blood of Elves. And as for the adaptation, I would've made a season that consists of BoE and ToC till the Thanned Coup as a season finale.
blood of elves is book 3, book 4 chronologicaly, he meant the silver sword, and last wish which are just compendium of short stories originaly published separately in magazines
YES. I was - still am - so mad that they took a perfect TV series material and threw it away in their rush to get to a GOT-esque plot.
They didn't even have to really do anything to the stories, they're perfect for the medium. Just present the plot in a way adjusted for the medium. You get a season of monster-of-a-week episodes and within those short adventures, the viewers get to know Geralt, people around him and the world they all reside in. Fun, engaging, full of cool shit and a great introduction.
80% OF THE WORK WAS DONE FOR THEM ALREADY THE SHORT STORIES GRADUALLY INTRODUCE THE BASIS FOR THE BIG PLOT THEMSELVES I'M SO MAD
Witcher a show that would have be very good if the writers decided to stick to the source material instead of mocking it and trying to change it into their version of the witcher felt sorry for Henry Cavil for being a big fan of the books and games that i don't blame him for leaving a sinking ship.
It's ironic when the games with completely made up plots _are_ actually the Witcher while the series using the source material are anything but.
They lost me at the beginning of season 2 ... introducing Eskel, and then straight up killing him off because hes infected with leshen disease (?) what? what even was that...
Eskel was frustrating but wasn't nearly as bad as the handling of Kaer Morhen as a whole. Depicting the witchers as a bunch of axe wielding bandits who invite an entire town's worth of women up to their ultra secretive and hidden castle was just mind boggling.
@@Koalavater Yeah, that was completely out of touch ... or at the very least a good measure removed from the picture thats painted in the books
Yeah, Yenn in the games is so elegant, mature, refined, confident. Yenn in the show always seemed like an immature petulant child who never knew what she actually wanted. It felt to me like the only reason why she wanted a child is because it's the ONE thing she knows that she can't do, not that she actually wanted to be a mother. It's like she just wanted something impossible to fight against. She never felt like she matured from the beginning, just the same unsure insecure girl despite 30+ years passing
And besides that how could they cast indian? The whole story is based on Slavic mythology. Slavic women are white. I'm fed up with this forced diversity
@@slavicgirl9106 I don’t see you or any other racist complaining that Henry isn’t Slavic.
But also Anya is half white and is British. She’s just as European as anyone else in the cast- and more importantly she’s a phenomenal actress.
@@slavicgirl9106but the whole premise was that the humans weren't originally there. They came over during the conjunction of spheres along with the monsters from other worlds or alternate universes. They could have explained that the crossover with our world pulled over people from a large area. Depending on the time period the conjunction happens in our world there were many Indians living in Britain after India became a province of England.
I think you could argue that this portion of the world was joined to Poland and only Polish people pulled over. Or you could easily spin a different story. Sapkowski was never specific on the this.
So, the different nationalities didn't bother me.
Edit: although 60 generations over 1500 years would have homogenized the local populations.
I felt a disturbance in the youtube algorithm, and here I am.
The show was brutalised by a gross overcorrections by Netflix and the showrunners. And it was obvious that there wasn't enough talent in the room to make any of that work. It took incredible original and extended source material and replaced almost all of it with the most banal and cliched "writers room" ideas. It was incredibly frustrating to watch because of how absolutely unnecessary all of that carnage was.
But perhaps it was because Netflix and the showrunners didn't really respect the extended material because it was "just video games", And that coloured their entire perception of the original source material. And it didn't really have enough of its own identity apart from the video games, at least outside of Poland, to demand that respect.
I like that Netflix and the showrunners initially took a risk by making the first season an adaptation of the first book (rather than the first novel) which was a collection of scattered short stories. But at the same time, it was obviously very confusing for viewers. And for fans of the books, it was a bit confusing too, when reading it.
But when you're reading, you have a higher tolerance for that kind of confusion, and it generally sparks an interest in you to explore deeper. And of course, the first novel is sitting right there, ready for you to read.
On television (especially streaming, with its instant gratification and endless bubble gum content) that kind of confusion typically makes people get frustrated and they give up ... which is easy when there is practically unlimited other content to consume.
And the showrunners and Netflix seem to have received that feedback but then grossly overcorrected. And their arrogance towards the original and extended source material compounded that overcorrection.
Perhaps Netflix thought it was safer to test the waters first by starting with the short stories. I can see the merit in that logic, but I wonder if it didn't shoot them in the foot in the long run. Perhaps it would have been better in the long run if the show had begun with the first novel in the series and attempted to reintegrate the short stories into that main story as best they could, e.g. as linear events, flashbacks, flash-forwards, side stories and so on. It wouldn't have been perfect, but it might have been much better, and the show would have been more popular, so Netflix and the show runners wouldn't have had to hack it to pieces.
I agree with every single statement here haha
Irony: A series of books that gained international popularity with a game adaption, but then they botched the netflix adaption because "just video games". They really don't get that when you try and capitalize on a franchise because it has gained popularity, you actually have to take a proper look at exactly why that is. You have to care about the material you are adapting for television to tell a good story, and they did neither in the end.
@@Gen-o3j Exactly. Thinking about the way that Netflix continously underminded the adaptation with knee-jerk reactions and corporate/focus-group ideas still makes me mad!
I don't think the confusion came from the series starting with a handful of loosely connected stories. The confusion came from the terribly executed time jumps between different characters, most of which came about as a result of straying from the books. I had read the saga and I was still mainly lost at the Ciri parts.
@@karakanb3039 No not at all. The short stories they adapted for series 1 also jumped around in time like that with no explicit indication of how much was jumped, just like the first series was. That was not "straying" from the source material at all.
58:16 had me in stitches. "It's fine. Chill out. Joey Batey isn't gonna finger you. You don't need to be jealous."
A tough life lesson
I remember being so excited to see Eskel and Vesemir and Lambert again and especially for the Geralt and Jaskier apology. I was sorely disappointed.
Haven’t watched a single minute of season 3
Listening to you talk about the first episode of the series makes me realise how much I enjoyed it based on my knowledge of Geralt from the other mediums such as the games. I felt like I was returning to a great character, not being introduced to him. You’re right, it’s a shit introduction to him, but I loved it because in my head it wasn’t an introduction. Now that you’ve said it and made me realise it, I have to wonder how much the games did the heavy lifting for what I did (however few and far between those moments are) enjoy. So thanks, you’ve ruined those small parts of the series that I DID enjoy 😅
This comment made me realize the same thing! I was so excited to see him on screen I wasn’t even paying attention to the flaws!
As someone to whom Gerald was introduced for the very first time, in any media, I did not mind it either.
You see, knowing the books additionally ruined it for me, because all my excitement was squashed by seeing a weird brooding macho man take the place of my favourite pathetic-yet-deadly walking disaster called Geralt.
My husband who didn't read the books or play the game was so confused in this episode. At no time did you know that the main plan, before Geralt took out the minions, was to execute villagers until the wizard came out. It was only stated after that she would kill villagers and it seemed like a reaction to what Geralt did. I had to explain things in almost every episode. We had discussions on whether I was telling him things that the series didn't want non-book readers to know quite yet. We later realized that no, nothing in the series was going to explain it. Very disappointing story telling.
Someone should give you a medal for putting up with this show 😭
Something that rubbed me the wrong way more and more as the show went on was how much time was spent making up Yen's backstory while also excluding important information that was actually in the books. Especially considering the source material for Geralt's screentime in S1 was the freaking prologue stories, where we actually get specific encounters and glimpses into the times they spent living with and traveling together. There was so much runtime that could have been spent giving important insight into how they were both emotionally stunted or hurt each other at times. Istredd being part of the story in name but serving no use to developing the background of Geralt and Yen's relationship was such a waste. And thus far all of Geralt's other trysts were absent, even though he learns something about the way he feels about Yen from each of them (in fact, the exclusion of the Essi Daven story, which develops both Geralt AND Dandelion, is an injustice I will never get over). Idk if the showrunners thought audience couldnt handle seeing G&Y with other people, but the result is that there is no emotional payoff to when they get back together or for how their respective bonds with Ciri ultimately lead to them committing to each other.
I loved the ending of the Essi Daven story in the books, it was so sad but also so tender and Dandelion/Jaskier's relationship with her gave a whole new dimension to his character.
babe wake up, mertkaykay dropped another long elaborate video essay about a netflix tv show!!
"Gary the Metrosexual Fruitcake" and "He is so racist he spontaneously combusts" actually made me cackel, thank you.
Warning for longer post and bit broken english.
I do not like how witcher series was handled. I really hoped it would show slavic culture in different way than it is usually portrayed. We are usually depicted as russians or criminals or russian criminals. Beatifull story isnpired by central european slavic folk tales was turned into generic fantasy.
I also think show really missed nuances of The witcher books . They try to portray story as black and white, while it is grey. For example in first episode they portray Stregobor as woman hating bigot who hunted Renfri for his pleasure. In books Stregobor trully believes she is cursed and by killing her he is saving world. And the best part is, Sregobor could be right because even Geralt is not able to either confirm or deny exitence of the curse of black sun. I personaly prefer book version, because it show dangerous side of righteousness and doing things for "greater good", and how most hyenous thing can be done with best intentions.
Thanks for reading my little rant.
"Liam Hemsworth of Hemsworth fame"
There goes my coffee.
How many Hemsworth are there?
@@samflood5631 it's not a question of how many Hemsworths, but how many are Hemsworthy.
@@itscarlosreally Probably a lot since the Hemsworths I know are now successful and famous actors.
Good thing Geralt came Back To life and Changed his name to Triple H.
This was such a really good overlook! I’m so glad I found this
Omg Princess Weekes! I love your videos!! Thanks for stopping by
What they did to my best boy Cahir was unforgivable
Omg I know!!
I think the parallel between Yennefer and the Striga princess is supposed to be more along the lines of "women without agency being physically changed for the benefit of men and masculine dominated systems", I don't think it's really meant to imply anything about Yennefer's personal monstrous-ness.
That being said, the show could have made that more clear, especially since it shows Yennefer "choosing" (in so far as she had a choice, considering the alternative was a fate worse than death) to undergo the transformation.
Also her losing her ability to bear children is probably not intended as like a bad character trait (like it's not morally negative that she can' have children), but more that it's like an injury that's been inflicted on her by the people at and the institution of Aretuza, as a parallel to Geralt's own infertility due to the Witcher trials.
I figured it seemed a bit more surface level than that. The monster turns back into a princess having the spell broken, an the girl has the spell put on them to become something less human and more monstrous, the same processes simultaneously occurring both ways.
You say the Witcher is not parody or satire, but it sort of is, the Netflix version just sort of ignores that it's meant to satire fairy tales and fantasy tropes, so they can have their version of Game of Thrones
You could read the loss of yenifers utirus as the possibly of her future choices being torn from her for the benefit of men . But i don't feel that the show runnners whwre smart enough for that
It’s a crime not mentioning the old polish Adaptation.
At least the dragon.
The baby dragon especially
Others have likely pointed out, but I'd like to remind people, Witcher 3's intro starts with the dream sequence which is taken from Blood of Elves, the first of the mainline series, wherein small details are changed, and Geralt reflects on it not feeling right, because it's 90% the same, but not fully.
The show literally could have started there, and chose not to. And instead, focused on an (albeit probably the best the Netflix series has to offer) adaptation of the most well-regarded short story, and got 95% of it right, but fell short when it came to the meaning behind why Geralt was conflicted in his responses and why he ultimately made the decisions which cast him as the Butcher of Blaviken, and ignored why he tried to save Renfri, just to have it fail under him.
I’m like a bit of a Yennefer apologist lol but I interpreted her saying that the corpse in the garden was just a piece of meat as an attempt to convince herself that she hasn’t just done something completely disgusting out of desperation. And when they’re confronted for killing the garden, Geralt tries to justify or apologise but Yennefer interrupts to take 100% of the blame
Yeah! Yennifer's characterisation puzzles me sometimes. I have no idea why she gets offended when they call her a sorceress and tell her to leave :'(( she acts like they called her a slur. Like sister you will outlive these people tenfold, maybe have some perspective that they're upset about the tree
@@MertKayKay I dont think that she is offended i think she does feel bad for them but Ciri comes first, and yes i imagine being banished is somewhat hurtful. She can be mean but she is not heartless and she would do anything for Ciri. In the books it led to her being tortured so she is willing to sacrifice not only others but also herself.
@@marketamala1032 Adding to that, there's also the fact that this is *Freya* 's garden, who, in the books, did her a huge solid. So there's that added layer of guilt (at least, I choose to read that into the scene; it's not actually mentioned in the game.)
Yennefer trading her uterus to be beautiful and powerful and get a good job (and then later desperately trying to have a child) gives me big "ain't it a shame all these women are having 'careers' instead of starting families? if you don't start popping out babies you're gonna regret it!" energy.
I thought it was kind of cute, actually.
In the books, it was very much like this but it's not like every single Sorceress thought this way. It made the fact that Yennefer adopted Ciri even cuter. The moment, where Ciri called Yennefer mother and Yennefer called Ciri daughter in the books, is where I bursted out into tears.
I would understand your argument if it was actually every single Sorceress but Yennefer is the only one that feels this way from what I can remember.
In books sorcereses does not have their uterus removed, they become infertile as side effect of using magic. Most of them come to terms with the fact but Yennefer is exception.
I wouldn't have a problem with it if it was shown why she came to want a child in the first place (when most sorceresses don't care about it at all). But the way it's presented in the show is: today she goes and literally says "take my uterus, I don't care, just make me pretty", then tomorrow she whinges about how she was deprived of a choice and how unfair it is, and her life is rubbish because everyone just sees her as a woman - lady! Take some accountability! You don't get to complain about being forced when you literally made a very conscious choice, and you don't get to make a victim out of yourself when you're literally one of the most powerful sorceresses in the world, a mover and shaker and an adviser to kings who can do whatever! Literally any woman in-universe, from a peasant girl to an aristocratic daughter sold into marriage, has more reason to bemoan her fate than her! She's unbearable! And these are all changes introduced by the TV series to make her... I guess more 'sympathetic' to the public, except that she already was plenty sympathetic and beloved by readers of the books and players of the games, with all her faults like pride and arrogance and temper - she was such an interesting and complex and powerful character, and she was absolutely beloved! Aaaargh! (Yeah I wound myself up haha)
@@AW-uv3cbYeah honestly. I don't think it was a choice in the books. They get taught magic pretty young and infertility is a byproduct of using magic, as far as I can remember.
While I think that it wasn't like that in the the books, it definitely comes off like this in the series.
Books, for me, was about 2 people who can't have biological family (both don't have parents, both are infertile) and they get to have a found family. Their friends and adopted daughter is their family.
i watched the show before playing tw3, and i remember being so confused with the timeline of events in the first season. i remember that netflix (i think?) had made a timeline on their website for the first season, and looking back, i really don’t think they should have /had/ to do that. like seriously, was it so hard to throw a thing of text on screen that said something like “30 years before the fall of cintra”?
as a new viewer, the story made no sense, but i grew to love it and that’s when i started play tw3, and it’s now one of my favorite games of all time. i’m still working my way through the books, but man, the witcher universe has so many unique and interesting views and stories that i’m sad netflix didn’t want to share
fantastic video as always Mert
Seriously how do you screw this up?
You not only have a book series that is finished but also have the games as a sequel series and Visual Understanding of the books.
I gave up on the show when it was made clear that there has been time skips within episodes. It just pissed me off, especially since there was no reason to hide it. Might give the books a try some time, but I don't think I will ever try rewatching the show
Books are great!! It deserved so much better
There are no time skips within the short stories the first season kinda tries to be based on. There obviously are jumps between the stories, but one story=one timeline.
You can obviously start with the novels, but for me the short stories add a certain charm and perspective to the saga.
As for the "tangible real risk of magic" that they show in that Aretuza scene - it is very much is present in the games. In the mission The Calm Before the Storm (a main story mission) in Witcher 3: Yennefer reanimates the corpse of a young man who had contact with Ciri before his death. In order to do this (or rather sustain the type of magic), she drains the life energy of a sacred garden of a local deity and leaves it barren, after getting the information she wanted.
It's there, most magic wielders we meet are just pros and know what they are doing.
That's true! I actually reference that scene later when making a different point so I have no idea how I missed it. That said, the corpse reanimation seems like a super difficult, extreme kind of magic. But levitating a rock? Why does that rot your arm
in books its explained as kind of a internal batery you need to replenish from diferent outside sources, you can use concentrated ones like ley lines preferably their crossings (island of thed, or temple of neneke where yen teavhes ciry) or elemental sources (air, earth, fire, water) each having pros and cons fire being most dengerous to draw power from... but its just sources of it, you master storing it in you... not defending the show tho, how they portrayed it is surface level understanding with lots of stupid
I have always felt that The Witcher tv-series came out a decade too late. It would have fitted right in between the accepted a-monster-per-episode era of Supernatural and Grimm, and not the political drama era of Game of Thrones.
As a Polish person, it means so much to me that you pronounced the names correctly, especially the author’s surname „Sapkowski” . It always annoys me how many video essayists don’t even try to pronounce Polish/Slavic names, it’s better to try and fail than to not try at all. Thank you!
I'd love to take credit but I foolishly slipped up a few times in this video ; - ; I'm so sorry in advance
@@MertKayKay It’s ok! The times when you did pronounce them correctly still count, the intent is still there, it shows that you not only researched foreign media but also respect it. Things like that matter. Polish pronunciation is difficult so of course there are times when you slip up, but I appreciate that you had at least shown effort
@@MertKayKay Another Pole here and yes, I'm still only partway through the video but I've noticed the care you took to get Andrzej Sapkowski's name right the first time (and it sounded really correct, so kudos!). It stood out to me because it's so rare, and I also appreciate it very much indeed (and don't worry about any slip-ups, they're bound to happen, we know our language is not easy for English speakers and it's okay! What matters is that you clearly took care to check it and made an effort to get it right in the first place!) Dziękujemy! :-)
35:08 untrue. We see this exact concept during the quest where Geralt and Yen raise Skjal from the dead in Freya’s garden. Yen has to use the life force of the garden in order to perform necromancy and succeeds but as a result, the whole garden dies.
True, BUT I'd argue the "literal necromancy that NEEDS to have a cost or it'll make certain scenarios too easy" spell is quite a huge exception to the typical rule
@@MertKayKay very good point, personally i love the concept of taking life in order to give it. I really wish they had that more frequently in the games. Its by far one of the best uses of how strenuous magic is and how talented you have to be in order to use it compared to other franchises such as lord of the rings or elder scrolls, hell even harry potter.
When the first season came about and people were praising it, my friend and I thought we were insane. We hated it. Like vehemently. We had read the books.
I usually thoroughly enjoy all of your videos despite never having played or watched the games/shows of discussion, so imagine my delight as you cover a series I’ve thoroughly played and watched. It’s like Christmas arrived early
I really hate the way they destroyed Yen's character and character arc. The books are written in a way that makes sense for her arc, the games build on her arc, the TV show completely undermines it by failing to realized why her backstory wasn't explained to the audience when we first meet here character in the story. Hissrich made a major mistake by trying to jam both Ciri's and Yens stories into the first season when the first season should have been about fleshing out Geralt. It would have fit perfectly into the timeline of the book chronology.
26:13 aka the episodes that feel like an exact recreation of the "Witcher contract" side missions in Wild Hunt (which I mean as a compliment)
God thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one that got so confused by the timeline hopping. I had to quit after season one it got so hard to follow.
They had a passionate lead, an overall decent cast, a Netflix budget and everything from the beginning and end of the story laid out for them.
It's not a perfect parallel, but I'm reminded of the Halo TV series adaptation. You have a writing team that seems to hold the beloved source material in contempt and just wants to make up their own universe while wearing the skin of something currently successful. The meterial, the cast and the fans deserved better.
Unpopular opinion: I actually really like season 1, though after watching this, I can recognize how writing mistakes in season 1 directly led to everything I hated about seasons 2 and 3. I had never connected those dots before. This video essay is so cathartic to watch after not even being able to finish watching season 3.
I never thought Geralt's looks in the show were *that* big a problem.
I always took Geralt's perception of himself as ugly as just another example of his shockingly low self-esteem. Kind of like Arthur Morgan in RDR2.
Enough people find him so insanely bone-able, it's hard to believe he's that unappealing.
Same. That's always been my interpretation. Because otherwise, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be so successful with the ladies. Jaskier also might not idolize him as much otherwise since the man is as shallow as they come.
I mean Geralt was meant to be gaunt and thin and kind of odd looking in the first game he did look like this then in the next two they made him handsome
Henry doesnt look like either versions tho he also lacks the scars Geralt is suppose to have
@@lotusthemermaidi mean what women find attractive is subjective sometimes
Geralt is also somehow charming i guess.
I am pretty sure he is suppose to be weird looking i dont think its just a perception thing
@@chandlerburse I guess a lot of women in the books are sort of fascinated by him, both because he's a witcher (so a sort of novelty/celebrity factor) and because of his clearly not-douchy (despite external gruffness) personality. But while HC doesn't look the way he's described in the books, I think he captured him really well and felt very charismatic in the role, so I have no issues with him, he was one of perhaps 2 casting choices I actually loved about the series (the other being Tissaia de Vries - completely not like I imagined her, but still possessing the same gravitas and authority as in the books). [Edit: I do really like the OP's suggestion that perhaps his self-image was worse than he actually looked like due to him thinking of himself as a monster. Other characters seem to mostly notice him for his white hair - and the double swords - so it doesn't seem like he stands out that much on a regular basis. Except, of course, when he takes his potions!)
I watched Season 1 of The Witcher back in early 2020, and I came away from it feeling like it had the seeds of compelling ideas that never quite got growing. This video sort of validates my decision not to continue watching the show. Think I'll check out the books instead now, since I'm not a gamer.
Anyone else strangely hungry for pancakes after watching this video?
The show changes the magic system of the books quite significantly....I mean it's pretty comprehensibly explained in books...sorcerers/mages draw energy from the elements, natural forces fo the world Fire, Water, Earth, Air and that energy fuels their spells, if they use more than they draw (and charged themselves) they are drawing energy from their very bodies...Ciri in Time of Contempt actually feels the effect of draining herself and also the whole process of drawing energy being difficult and painful is stated first in the short stories:
""'Enchanters,' explained Krepp, 'draw their power from the forces of nature, or to put it more accurately, from the so-called Four Elements or Principles, commonly called the natural forces. Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Each of these elements has its own Dimension which is called a Plane in the jargon used by enchanters. There's a Water Plane, Fire Plane and so on.
These Dimensions, which are beyond our reach, are inhabited by what are called genies-'
'That's what they're called in legends,' interrupted the witcher. 'Because as far as I know-'
'Don't interrupt,' Krepp cut him short. 'The fact that you don't know much was evident in your tale, witcher. So be quiet and listen to what those wiser than you have to say. Going back to the genies, there are four sorts, just as there are four Planes. Djinns are air creatures; marides are associated with the principle of water; afreet are Fire genies and d'ao, the genies of Earth-'
'You've run away with yourself, Krepp,' Neville butted in. 'This isn't a temple school, don't lecture us. Briefly, what does Yennefer want with this genie?'
'A genie like this, mayor, is a living reservoir of magical energy. A sorcerer who has a genie at their beck and call can direct that energy in the form of spells. They don't have to draw the Force from Nature, the genie does it for them. The power of such an enchanter is enormous, close to omnipotence-'"
Then in the main saga especially seen through Yennefer magic lessons to Ciri in Blood of Elves:
""“Why do we always draw the force from water veins? Magical energy, after all, is everywhere. It’s in the earth, isn’t it? In air, in fire?”
“True.”
“And earth… Here, there’s plenty of earth around here. Under our feet. And air is everywhere! And should we want fire, it’s enough to light a bonfire and…”
“You are still too weak to draw energy from the earth. You still don’t know enough to succeed in drawing anything from air. And as for fire, I absolutely forbid you to play with it. I’ve already told you, under no circumstances are you allowed to touch the energy of fire!” Blood of Elves
...
"'You focus yourself quickly. Let me remind you: control the flow of the force. You can only emit as much as you draw. If you release even a tiny bit more, you do so at the cost of your constitution. An effort like that could render you unconscious and, in extreme circumstances, could even kill you. If, on the other hand, you release everything you draw, you forfeit all possibility of repeating it, and you will have to draw it again and, as you know, it's not easy to do and it is painful.'"
Inexperienced can get overwhelmed by the most volatile energy source..fire element which isn't forbidden as it is for whole magic community but more Yennefer forbids it to Ciri.
42:00 Wasn't book yennifer, yearning to be a mother too, wasn't the entire reason she was there for the dragon hunt, because she heard of some rare treatment that would heal her infertility
Yeah. But it's really different in context. Show Yen wants to cure her infertility that she herself caused because.....?
In the books it's because she didn't have a choice, magic can cause infertility over time, abd while it's not an established practice there is a good chance she was affected by Tissaia's push for firced sterilisation.
My favourite part of book Geralt is how pathetic he is in a way. He's a classic hero archetype - brave, honest, selfless, strong, - but with all its flaws and limitations pointed out. He's single-minded, easily manipulated, ignorant at times. His ideals stop him from adapting to the changing times and sometimes lead to people suffering (the whole Blaviken situation). He doesn't want to be responsible for people and avoids attachments in favour of performing his solo saviour act. He has a soft heart and very low self-esteem, and people around him exploit that with no hesitation.
As a result he's a lone, lonely wolf, stuck in the past, watching everything around change and leave his world behind with him in it. Most people don't see or appreciate his heroism and good intentions, they just see the Butcher of Blaviken, a freak they can use and discard. He's not respected or liked, just feared. He's deadly and competent and smart, yet somehow powerless in a very palpable sense.
I love that he can be a sad underdog despite being a badass, without it feeling forced or dishonest. The gruff, unflappable macho-man from the Netflix version was such a crushing disappointment for me from the start, it colored the reception of the whole show for me. Then they butchered Yennefer's character and I was done.
Loved Jaskier's portrayal though!
EDIT. Why am I not mentioning my teenage self's second favourite character, Ciri? Because I didn't hold out long enough for her to become a real character, unfortunately. What I saw wasn't awful, but it was definitely unsatisfying.
EDIT.2. Your accent combined with style of talking remind me to an uncanny degree of Dominic Noble, I had to do a double take at the start
The thing is, Netflix writers are all egotists who think they can always do it "better" and they end up fucking it all up cos they have no idea what they're working with.
Same thing happened with the halo series, the lead writer thought he was "above" the storytelling of the games and figured he could "re-imagine" it and make it how he wanted it to be instead of what it was, and he completely shat the bed and fucked it all up.
All streaming and movie studios need to stop hiring these out of touch egotists amwho think they're inherently better than the original story writers.
I enjoyed season 1 as it was mostly accurate and the monsters looked sick and close to how I imagined, but it just kept getting worse and worse. It's so sad cause Cavil is such a nerd and I know he hated watching it go down hill like that.
Once again my favorite youtube yapper
Love this video, but there's one thing I want to add: You've mentioned how the show does a poor thing of characterizing Geralt and how Sapkowsky being influenced through sword and sorcery made Geralt a rather stiff, already developed character. I don't fully disagree, but I also think that book-Geralt is granted with a lot of of character flaws and a lack of experience that make the friends and companions in his life much more impactful and him more interesting. While loving her and giving his all for her safety, book-Geralt isn't really "in touch" with the needs of a teenage girl, neither are any of the other witchers. As a result, Triss teached her about her period and tells them how dangerous the witcher ritual would be for her. Yennefer gives her basic sex-ed and teaches her manners (which she then ignores :D). Dandelion is a funny guy who enjoys life to the fullest, so for the brief time they meet, he jokes around with her and entertains her. In the show, Geralt is weirdly portrayed as the perfect dad, always knowing the right thing to say and do. It makes him incredible boring and it leaves no room to shine for his friends. And you make a great point about Freya Allen being too old.
Another thing I would disagree with concerning the video: The books are highly interested in global politics, consistently switching POVs between the people making major political decisions and our ground level characters feeling the gruesome results of them. The problem with the show is, that Netflix never understood the connections between these scenes and just wanted things to be like GoT. That's why these scenes fall so flat.
Man, I love these books so much, my absolute favorites, and the games are a spot on adaptation. It's so disappointing to see Netflix completely miss the point of them.
The witcher 3 has so many references to the books material and its all done so respectfully.
When I first played I had no idea what any of this stuff was.
Upon replaying, I'm constantly going: "I remember that! I know him! I know her! I wonder if they'll talk about... oh they did!"
Its like a sequel to the books with all the political machinations and witty writing I got from the books without all of the melodrama and drawn out monologues that made them an absolute slog.
Some of the best adaptation and original writing I have ever seen. Akin to the superfan stuff we saw from peter Jackson.
My only gripe being the white frost but I understand why they depicted it this way. And idk, maybe Ciri can warp space time enough to stave off the axis tilt thay causes the planets to freeze over, who knows?
I really like that shirt! And this is a great video essay!
I never got into the Witcher series, not for any bad reasons, there's just so many games these days that I never had a chance to spend time with the Witcher specifically.
(For instance, I've only just recently finished Dark Souls 1 haha)
Your video, despite spoilers, makes me want to check out the series.
Aw Red I think you would really enjoy it! It's such a good game
American “Death Note” movie.
6:10 just one thing, Elric was a sorcerer, he didn't despise magic, he was a master of it, what he despised was his kin, the evil melniboneans, who killed for pleasure and drank human blood
If anyone is curious, I've contacted one of the writers for the game's lore , and got a lot of insight if people are curious what the different Witcher schools are about:
Order of Witchers:the first one, an unethical experiment done on children taken by mages through human trafficking. Lost funding when the Witchers it produced weren't as magically powerful as promised. It then broke up into the modern day schools as the Witchers were left to run things on their own by the majority of the mages, and got to infighting over the ideals they should follow. This is the school that originated all the magic signs, potions, and sword techniques later schools would put their own spins on.
School of the Bear: a very Lambert like school, who hated how they were forced into Witcher life, and wanted to be left alone to live their lives. Violently broke away, and will sometimes attack other Witchers to be the first to complete a monster contract, though never kill them, and if that other Witcher stands up for himself, the Bear will buy them a drink and suggest to go after the beast together. They train students with a survival of the fittest method, so there are less of them that live through the trials than the other schools. They use heavier armor because they prefer the solitude of snow based hunts, where it's often harder to dodge and move, though they are still just as agile as other Witchers. According to the writer, they HATE authority, and prefer to hang out with groups who treat them as equals, such as Skellige, and the Dwarf settlements. Additionally, if you earn a Bear Witcher's friendship and respect, you make a friend for life who will die for you without hesitation, as their school encourages it's students to choose their own ideals, and people to care for rather than have the school force ideals on them.
School of the Viper: A secretive school founded to fight the wild hunt, initially made up of those who supported the Bear's bid for freedom, they left the Bears after trying to kill their leader to turn the Bear school against the wild hunt. They use ambush tactics and dual wield. They also often take assassination jobs.
School of the Manticore: the third group that followed the Bears leader, they left after the Viper's failed coup and set themselves up as a school backed by the Kingdom of Zerrikania. They used shields due to the extra poisonous monsters of Zerrikania's deserts.
School of the Cat: hearing of these new schools, the Cats set out to bring respectability to Witcher's by offering a wider variety of services. Not just slaying monsters, but assassination, spy work, and mercenary work. This backfired and their keep was raised, but a group of half elves they were experimenting in escaped and now run their own sub school with the Dyn Marv caravan, and help the Scoi'atel. They experimented with the Witcher mutagens, and may have uncovered how to more safely make women Witchers.
School of the Griffin. After the Cats' debacle soured people even further on Witchers, the Griffins left to try and achieve the Orders original goals of knights with great spellcasting ability and bring respectability to the Witcher name. They never achieved this impossible task, as Witchers could never be very strong in magic, and their knightly virtues made the powerful see them as pawns to manipulate. According to the writer I contacted, Cody Pondsmith, the powerful of the continent would weave stories of how innocent monsters were actually evil, and the naive Griffins would believe them and murder the innocent beasts. This is why they hunt dragons, believing it their "knightly duty".
School of the Wolf: while the Griffins set their sites on futiley chasing what Witchers were intended to be, the Wolves focused on what was the best, most realistic way to live Witcher life. They perfected the Witcher sword style into a dance, and taught how to mix the other parts of the Witcher skillset into it seamlessly, making for realistic, professional, adaptable Witchers, that were by far the most successful of the schools, that produced the largest number of Witchers.
babe wake up MertKayKay posted a new video essay
I remember the jaskier is immortal fan theory going around before the show runners just came out and admitted they forgot to age him up in the time skips if that doesn't further show how little they cared I'd what
I get that Yenns arc is supposed to be an metaphore for how women sacrifice the chance to have a family for there careers/power/money (at least i think?)
but it just doesn't work, because she didn't make a choice between a normal life vs magic girlboss, the choice to be part of the magic political games was already made for her father when he sold her, but the narative frames the concequences of that as if they were her own fault?
You put it so well, especially the problem with Yennifer's ascension, thank you!
The problem with the Netflix Adaptation is they tried it to make it a high fantasy like GOT but in reality The Witcher is low fantasy.
Um..... what? GOT is waaaay more low fantasy than the Witcher. GOT is literally just humans doing politics in a world with a few grounded magical elements. 3 dragons, wargs, prophecies, face changers, and mentions of ancient magic thats mostly gone.
The Witcher is the high fantasy out of the two of those. Multiple races, lots of magic, magical creatures and monsters and mcguffins. Like so many of the characters are literally witches and cast spells.
GoT doesnt really have much of that.
If you meant epic fantasy instead of high fantasy then sure GOT has a much larger world and stakes.
@@BooksRebound absolutely agree
Got is many things but high fantasy is not one of them, like at all
Wasn’t the Witcher Books more of a dark comedy fantasy where there were a few moments played for laughs?
I've never watched or read GOT but i've heard a lot of people online describe it as fantasy for people who don't like fantasy so it's kind of hard to believe that it would be considered high fantasy if that former statement about is true
Thanks for another fantastic video! It’s the perfect cure for my long work day blues.
40:31 Being generous, I would propose that the intention was to show a rebirth, from a life of hatred, fear, and abuse due to their apparent nature, to a life where they are valued and loved. Maybe as dark parallels: the strigga becomes valued for who she is, while Yennifer is now valued for what she appears to be. I dunno, I don't like the writing in this show, and it's been a while. But it's a possibility.
And regarding the transformation, I think you're maybe reading a little too far into it. I would argue that what they're trying to convey is Yen's determination/desperation and short-sightedness, where she sacrifices something she clearly values (being a mother) in exchange for this new life. Later, when the glitz and glamour has worn off, she realizes that this cost was either too much (where she vainly tries to undo her youthful foolishness), or unfair (where her pride demands she have both), depending on how she's portrayed. I do like your take on "creating life in exchange for unending life" though.
I loved this video! I’m a prime example of someone who had no prior knowledge of the material (i know OF the games, this is the first time I’m hearing about books), was never invested in the universe but willing to get deep into a fun universe for a good show. I still overall liked netflix’s Witcher but that’s perhaps because, again, the whole universe was new to me. And it was just something to do.
It’s a shame the show was pried out of the hands of people who seemed to have respect and love for the source material, that makes me sad for the fanbase.
What a great retrospective, thanks for making this!
My problem with Calante in the show is that it is the stereotypical women that has to act like a men for them to respect her, when in the book she is respected just for who she is, she is very elegant and very well spoken and smart, in the book she doesn't need to enter the room in armor for her to comand respect, she was the one that made the party for Paveta, she planned the timing of the bells for everyone to see Dunny's transformation but at the end she decides to upheald her husbands promise an later Dunnys promise to Geralt regarding Ciri. her future husband talks to her with love and reverence, not like in the show that they introduced them making sexual jokes in front of they're granddaughter 🤦
12:43 Wolf school masterworked armour?
New game+ spotted 👁️
That Afreet was a pain in the ass. At least the armour was worth it. Looks cool.
I think the idea of the "emotionless" Witcher is more of a product of the objectification of the Witcher's duties and, in turn, the mystical happenings that occur in the world of the Witcher.
As is seen in the books and games, Geralt often solves the "problems" of the monsters by solving the monsters' problems. This wouldn't translate as well to the everyday individual in a world that is constantly torn apart by war, famine and the whims of the aristocracy. As such, it probably benefits the Witchers to maintain the image of being dispassionate and emotionless as it helps substantiate their role as "monster removers" rather than as a "remover of monsters' problems". It probably benefits the Witchers to be seen as a monstrous force rather than as sympathetic humans.
Otherwise their actions and emotions would be questioned relative to their subjective person rather than their objective Witcher-ness.
dont know anything about the witcher but how can i not watch the over hour long mertkaykay video
How can you say this is the worst Netflix adaptation when Netflix Death Note exists.
I f*cking ran here when i saw you uploaded a new video. I think i watched through nearly all of your content. I enjoy your takes on media, especially when you explain horror media (im too much of a p*ssy to watch them myself but love the symbolism that can only be conveyed through this type of media... its strangely helpful in healing my traumas). The witcher series is especially dear to my heart, thank to it being my only source of comfort a few years ago when i went through the most difficult time in my life to date. Thank you for what you do❤
Aww thank you Lili! I hope you really enjoyed my video :')
You're probably the most underrated creator on RUclips right now. Keep up the amazing work!
I couldn't make it through season 1 so to see all this is fascinating.
You have brilliantly articulated how I feel about this show! Great video!
from the perspective of a person who grew up with only Polish and Russian cinema; I can only add that the "slow eastern cinema" that Alik Sakharov vouched for; you see when "Eastern Cinema" is one of the arguments for Panslavicism - a.k.a Soviet Russian tube propaganda that we east, west and south slavic are the same (SPOILER; WE AREN'T; as a Polish I can't read nor write cyrilic script), but there is a grain of truth about "Eastern Cinema" in the East part of Europe (the continent); you see most of relevant Polish cinematography came to be in the late 60s, 70s and 80s, such as "Sami Swoi" movie series that in the spam of 3ish movies tell a story of two neighbors who hate each others guts so much after coming back home from WW2 that they argue about a piece of fence, and later when their children grow up they still argue even when the boy and the girl are about to get married; they finally reconcile, BUT Pawlak's cow steps on the old b00mb from WW2 because of Kargul and these two neighbors they argue again! btw, that's where the Polish cow meme COW came from; like it all boils down to this old 1967 film; that even as a person born 2002 knows;
Needless to say; cinema, art and writing during Soviets control over Poland from 1945 to 1989 characterises itself as:
- no talk about politics
- focus on the small joys of everyday life
- huge ensemble of characters; usage of "power of the community"
The same would go for Tartakovsky's cinema from Russia, or the influence Polish cinema left on Kieslowski's films like Double life of Veronique; the beginning is convoluted, and it takes more than 25 minutes into 1hour 30 minutes to realize what's this movie is about which is NOT BAD as American cinema would make you believe that everything has to be clear within 50 seconds because if not you're losing an audience; but they forget that when in East Central Europe you buy a ticket, the audience sits till the end sign;
And ngl I'd love to see a series treated with the slow pace; that's basically what Sapkowski's work is too, even when people suppose that "slow = no action", it's not necessarily slow means... we're moving more like 1 year through 1 season and not; 30 years in 3 seasons
If you think the witcher is Netflix worst adaptation, youev *_clearly_* not watched Netflix Death Note.
It makes the witcher look like a god damn master piece.
0:08 As a polish I will say from all english people I've heard, you were the closest to say his name right how it should be pronounced in polish. Most english speaker just got lazy and call him Andrew instead of Andrzej or say Sapkaouski instead of Sapkovski.
27:28 "she's not over designed whatsoever"
YES SHE IS!
Netflix Bruxa just look straight up stupid with her one hundred teeths and oversized eyes. It's like they could gave just a normal vampire design, and instead they made her completely over the top only becouse they could.
Damn I’m literally at the start of the Jarre section of The Lady of the Lake (finding it a bit hard to get through) and even though I knew Geralt died I didn’t take THE WARNING. AHHH this is a mental reminder to come back to this video in a couple of days
Honestly the only thing I liked was Henry Cavill as Geralt.
At first I had my doubts about his ability to play the character, but once I saw him on screen... DAM! I honestly can't think of anyone else to play our white wolf now.
You don't know how bad I feel for Henry, the poor guy just wanted the source material to be respected.☹️
"we'll peel back the flesh of this particular rotten tomato" ✍️ 🔥 🔥
Usually when Hollywood executives allow their productions a lot of creative freedom the end result is better for it. To me this show is the rare example of creative freedom actually damaging the product. If they had only stuck to what people are familiar with from the Witcher games they would have been able to focus on making a compelling story rather than fussing about with their "vision" for the franchise.
I’m pretty sure Yen’s desire for a child was actually in the books as it’s what she wanted from the djinn she tried controlling after meeting Geralt in the first place.