The Witcher - Season 1 Review

Ah, Hollywood, when they're not making disgustingly disconnected and self-aggrandizing political speeches, rigged ceremonies where they basically reward each other for being the best at faking things, literally minutes after being gloriously mocked for doing the same thing, no They enjoy nothing. better than chasing a good trend because you know that making good original content for purely artistic reasons and allowing it to stand out on its own merits, regardless of what is currently considered cool, is not scripted, insults, self-ops, that's the magic of movie people when watching a movie or television. The show puts on its big boy pants and somehow manages to push its way past the bouncer and into the warm glow of the tavern of success.

It's not long before a host of lesser imitators try to follow in his wake, each one eager to swallow. that sweet beer of ad revenue and clumsy flirting with attractive bar waitresses of awards

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, just as the unexpected success of Star Wars inspired a series of spin-off sci-fi films back in the 1980s. Shipman is basically the reason Star Trek came back from the grave. The triumph of Game of Thrones in recent years has triggered a similar effect on television, where studios are desperate to find thousand-page fantasy novels written by overweight bearded men with extremely slow work ethic that are reflected in every our screens like a tidal wave. of sperm over the next year we can expect television adaptations of the Lord of the Rings The Wheel of Time Conan the Barbarian The Dark Tower, the shadow and the bone and many others.

I don't care the point is that everyone wants to be the next Game of Thrones, which brings me neatly to the topic of today's video, The Witcher, a fantasy adventure series about a monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia, based on a series of books of this type. Now I can't say that I do too. I'm familiar with the book series, but I know I'm a big fan of The Witcher video games. They were violent, gritty, full of swearing and plenty of nudity and laced with a dry sense of dark humour, a bit like Christmas in the Drinking House.

I was interested to see what they could do with the television adaptation, whether it would manage to create a compelling but believable fantasy world or descend into madness and farce, whether it would stay faithful to the dark and unforgiving source material or succumb to the recent trend of forcing walk the cultural policy of progressive diversity towards stories and settings that are completely inappropriate and it turns out that it actually does a little bit of everything, let me explain the silhouette, sure, that's right, your typical medieval fantasy world of magical monsters and mayhem, the story centers on Geralt of Rivia, a genetically enhanced monster hunter known as a Witcher, not to be confused with an actual witch or witch hunter, which are totally different things in this universe that just happen to share the same name.

Geralt travels from place to place like a kind of sword for hire. He eliminates the pest controller and kills dangerous creatures for money. He's also kind of someone who treats everyone else like they drink too much. He takes drugs to make himself stronger. He hits people who bother him. He sleeps with women indiscriminately and basically doesn't get out of bed in the morning. unless there's a bag of coins for him, it's nice to see myself reflected on the screen in the latest performance matters people Garrett's various misadventures bring him into contact with Yennefer, a beautiful but jaded sorceress with ambitions for power who is also trying to Finding a cure for the infertility that resulted from removing her hunchback from the worst, to be honest, Gera also becomes the protector of Ciri, a young princess with mysterious magical powers who is forced to flee when her kingdom is conquered. by an invading army led by an evil man.

She is a magician who used to work with Yennefer and spends most of the

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s trying to find a girl and fulfill her destiny. It's so simple, right, wrong, unfortunately, it's a little more complex than that. The events of this season are shown out of sequence depending on the character. You're following a scene that may have happened months, years, or even decades before the scene that follows it, but some characters also span multiple timelines and interact with each other at various points to set up future events. I'm going to have to do some to get it done. sense, so hold on to your laxatives because I'm going to throw out a lot of them in the next few minutes.

Syria is probably the easiest story to follow because it all takes place in the same time period where she is a teenage princess who has been living in some sort of shelter. Life in the kingdom of Sintra protected by her queen grandmother: Although she looks 20 years older than Siri and I really thought she was her mother until the fifth episode, I guess she wasn't paying enough attention at the time. , but later. the nilfgaard empire invades for reasons and there is a big battle and central losses and quinn is currently seriously injured in the fight sing what are you doing?

There is a very logical reason why generals, monarchs and high military commanders lead their armies from the rear, it keeps them safe. so they can give orders and reposition troops without having to constantly worry about dying. Do you have any idea how easy it is to die in a medieval battle? Why would you risk the fate of your entire army and your nation fighting on the front lines where you could die at any moment. Furthermore, you are a slender middle-aged woman who looks like she can barely lift a sword. How useful do you think you would be in a massive infantry engagement?

But the script says no, that's how it will be. Well, that's good enough for me anyway, so enough guards broke into the capital and Siri is currently being told to look for Garel of Rivia for reasons, then he gets sad and falls over a window and Siri runs away, but he connects with The Prince of Rivendell and leaves. to take a walk through a forest and wait for why elves aren't black, in fact why there are a conspicuously large number of ethnically diverse people in basically every scene and location when it doesn't make any sense for a show set in a very obviously from northern Europe.

I mean, I could understand things like the Council of Wizards attracted people from all corners of the world, but how did this guy end up working in Sintra or this guy or these people? Game of Thrones also had a pretty diverse cast, but it was done in a way that made sense in the context of the world, black and Asian actors tended to play characters from hot, sunny countries like Dorne and those because that's where people like that would have been. evolved naturally, but when you get to cold and dark places like Winterfell you can guess the type of people who have adapted to living there, they even comment on this in later seasons, when northerners are exposed to people of different races and are a bit cautious and curious about them, which allowed the show to cast diverse actors in an organic way that played within the worlds' rules, but at Whitshire everyone is crowded together and no one seems to think this is strange or unusual and If I didn't know better, I'd say this was done because the show runners wanted diversity. but they couldn't think of a way to make it work within the limitations of the

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universe so they just said it and did it anyway so the series was hunted down by the nilfgaard army because she is important to them for reasons and from time to time she.

She will get angry and send him a magical explosion that will surprise everyone in her vicinity. She clearly has some kind of power that could be dangerous, but she doesn't understand the nature or limitations of it. Jennifer's story is probably the longest of the bunch because it spans like three. decades and is divided into two parts, the first part shows her as a crippled and deformed teenager who is sold to a traveling magician by her abusive father. Lovely stuff that reminds me of my childhood, anyway, she was recruited against her will into a Magical Academy for the Gifted.

Youngsters, You're a Wizard Harry by Harry Parr initially struggles to master the force, sorry, chaos and fuck, not only is he instantly better and more popular than everyone else, he struggles to learn even basic skills, and is mocked and belittled. Because he resembles the Hunchback from Notre Damn and takes her own ability, she even attempts suicide at one point, but this type of adversity gradually hardens her and makes her more determined. She learns from her failures and flaws, little by little she becomes stronger. result, I won't, the star horse is dead to me anyway, there are conspiracies and intrigues and everyone spies on everyone else and people turn into eels for some reason, but eventually Yennefer finishes her training and becomes a powerful sorceress.

Mission accomplished, fast forward 30 years. and Yennefer seems to have everything she ever wanted, she is beautiful and desired by everyone and works as a royal advisor to kings and queens, but she is bored and disenchanted with her life and when an assassination attempt results in the death of a baby in her care , she worries about having her own children, the problem is that the old friends are infertile, so she ends up traveling the world in search of some kind of cure, when she runs into Geralt and they have some adventures together and then, but Then We are separated by the growing conflict with Nilfgaard.

Meanwhile, Geralt is the glue that holds all of this together. The narrative generally focuses on him as he travels from place to place, meeting people and killing things that he has hired to eliminate some creature that has been terrorizing the world. local population, he does some research and eventually discovers that the creature is less to blame for the situation than the people who created it. What is that devilishly insightful script? Human greed, jealousy and ambition are the true monsters of this world with which you are leaving us speechless. the originality is now not you, but there is also a growing revelation of garrett's involvement with ciri over the years and the events leading up to the invasion of nilfgaard.

The three timelines eventually catch up and merge around a grand final battle. to try to stop Nilfgaard from invading the rest of the continent and save the world and that's basically season 1 of The Witcher, so what the hell do we do with all this? Well, I went into Witcher expecting a solid but fairly predictable fantasy tentpole. that would offer a lot of violence and nudity and not ask too much of its viewers, and while I was right about the violence in the nudity portion, my expectations were really subverted when it came to the rest of The Witcher's Complex. and demanding short that requires you to pay attention and retain a lot of information to understand what is happening and this is not an easy task for a man with alcohol and brain damage caused by juices, there is no way to hold his hand with this one, don't worry.

It does a lot of comforting exposition and world building in the opening episodes, you're just thrown right into the story and expected to figure it out and to be honest I think that's to its detriment, it expects too much of the audience from the start. , but I'll talk more about that later. First, I will say that there are things this show does exceptionally well, starting with the characters. I wasn't sure about Henry Cavill when he was first announced as Geralt and the first promotional images didn't exactly fill my heart. with confidence, but watching him in action you can tell he really gets the character, he's gruff and dismissive, he drinks too much, sleeps with prostitutes and clearly has no problem killing people who piss him off, this is not the type of guy who organizes about the morality of what he does and never allows himself the luxury of feeling sorry for himself, I doubt that being said there is enough humanity underneath it all to give him a redeeming advantage when he is hired to deal with monsters, he will do what he can to avoid killing them . his friends are hurt or in trouble, he will risk his life and make great sacrifices to help at the time he respects the value of promises and oaths even when they go against him, in short, he is tough and ruthless Balta mattli, a just man and honorable, yennefer is The highlight of the show for me is more powerful than Garel but also more imperfect, complex and human.

She basically came out of nowhere and made her way through a mix of hard work and natural ability, but once she guesses what she wants, she gradually catches on. that none of it really makes her happy and maybe it wasn't worth what she sacrificed to get there, where this kind of character development was once seen before going on a pretty remarkable journey over the course of the series, from a naive and desperate young woman. from a woman to a powerful but unhappy sorceress, to a jaded and cynical hired gun searching the world for a way to heal, and finally, to a reluctant hero willing to sacrifice everything to help others.

She is an excellent piece ofcharacterization and I'll give her the show's props to make her a complex, multi-layered character, Ciri on the other hand are okay but overall a little bland, she's probably the least interesting of the big three and the script doesn't really suit her. asks a lot, she's more of a goal that everyone is fighting for rather than an independent character with her own agency, they obviously wanted an actress who could convey a mix of childlike innocence and adult wisdom and I think they found a good one in Freya Allen, she He is 18 years old in real life but Sheila is much younger. on screen, although he has that weird, creepy blonde thing where he looks like he has no eyebrows, there's also you, a skier, a traveling minstrel who connects with Jarrell and becomes a sort of reluctant friend to him, not one of the main actors in the story, but I'm going to mention it here because it bothers me so much that I honestly can't decide if I like this guy or absolutely hate him.

Clearly he is there to give Geralt someone to play with and although the contrast between the two characters creates some fun scenes it might just put him off a bit and what really bothers me is that he talks and acts like he just walked off the street. and nowadays I know he's supposed to be the voice of the audience, but that's two steps towards hyperactive and trying too hard to be funny all the time and, as we know from experience, when you have to try too hard to be funny, well You're not very funny on that topic.

Although the show manages to capture the dark, irreverent sense of humor of the books and games, even during intense dramatic moments when lives are at stake, the characters still manage to spout deadpan one-liners that provide some much-needed levity. Fantasy always runs the risk of becoming pompous and silly when it takes itself too seriously, but The Witcher never falls into that trap in terms of production value and direction. This season is good overall, the fight scenes are nice and brutal, although I can't help but think of a few less jumps. the cuts would have been good, the castles and towns look quite convincing and there are some gorgeous landscape shots in later episodes that I assume were real places;

That being said, the CGI is probably a step below Game of Thrones, especially when it comes to creature effects which I probably managed to use sparingly in its first few seasons because there really was no budget for it, but The Witcher is all about killing monsters. , so there really is no choice here and yes, some of them look pretty fake like the dragon and well, whatever the This must be anyway, enough playing with my food, let's get into the real meat of this

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. There are two major problems with The Witcher and they both feed off of each other.

The first is the way he tells this story. I said before that the story is told in non-chronological order and generally speaking, this means that we start about three-quarters of the way through and then gradually jump back to the original point before going further to reach the resolution, The reason for I Guess This is to recontextualize the nature of certain characters and their relationships, gradually shedding light on events and decisions that don't initially seem to make much sense, introduce some sort of mystery that needs to be solved, or the writers took a big hit. from the clever Fox and wanted to show how clever we are, unfortunately this type of complex story talent requires experience in subtle narrative skills and a keen sense of how much information the audience can retain.

It also depends on us having a good understanding of the world and the characters. who live in it, which brings me clearly to the second big problem: world-building, if world-building is extremely important in fantasy, for obvious reasons, we know nothing about the world, the story unfolds in what are the rules of this place, what kind of people live in it? How do they interact with each other? What are the main factions, nations and cities? Is there anything that has happened in recent history that affects the world as it is now? These are all important questions that need to be answered one way or another because if you don't understand the world in which the story takes place, then there is no context for what is happening and it becomes impossible to engage with it.

God help me. I hate to praise Game of Thrones for anything these days except one of the show's greatest narrative achievements was establishing its fictional world quickly and efficiently in the first few episodes of Season 1. Most people with two fingers up front they had a working knowledge of the major locations, factions, and characters of Westeros. They roughly understood where things were, who was on what. Regardless of who was in charge and who was on the run, because we understood the mechanics of the world and what was at stake, we were able to quickly and easily get involved in the story.

Good world building provides a way in for the audience, but this is where Witcher really falls apart instead of taking the time to help us understand how things are in this world, it just throws itself into the story with no preparation beforehand. Before you know it, armies are fighting, cities are burning and people are jumping out of windows. and none of it means anything because I don't know who these people are or what they want or why they're fighting each other. I don't know why the villains want to find Ciri or why they send Ciri to find Garrow or why some elves are forced to live as outlaws, but others seem to be working alongside humans, like it's totally cool.

Gareth goes from place to place fighting monsters, but I don't know where he is because there's no sense of the geography of it. world, he just wanders around generic towns where the weather, buildings, and clothes look more or less the same. Basically, what I'm saying with all this talk is that you can compromise on some storytelling as long as you have strong, consistent world-building or you can compromise on world-building if you tell a strong, compelling story, but you can't sacrifice both and expect for people to accept it and this is the problem at the core of The Witcher, yes it eventually does.

Put it together and answer most of these lingering questions and as long as you're willing to suffer through the first few episodes, there's definitely a compelling story here, you just have to really invest the time and effort to get to it and I can't help but feel like the writers have made this much harder than necessary. I think the show also suffers from its use of some of the weakest source materials available, as I understand the first season has been cobbled together from a collection of short stories. and shows that he is fragmented and confused and desperately needs a stronger backbone to hold it all together.

It feels like it's a backstory that establishes the characters and sets the stage for a narrative that hasn't really started yet and that's hell. If it's a risky way to start a new show in general, then The Witcher seems like a short with a lot of potential that hasn't yet come into its own, but I'm sure it's holding back its best stuff for future seasons; there could be a smart move. long term, but it's also a pretty risky bet considering there are half a dozen other shows like here waiting to make their way into that tavern of success, honestly, although I hope the gamble pays off because the show has a lot of flaws that I like .

The Witcher is flawed and unrefined and the heavy-handed diversity starts to grate on the nerves at times, but it captures the spirit of the characters and the world quite effectively and I think there's a decent show lurking beneath the confusing narrative and Shoddy world building. It will be interesting to see if he actually manages to fight in season 2 anyway, that's all I have for today, go now.