Ok I clearly missed the ghoul. But what’s going on with the spider chase - Yennefer & Triss escaping with a baby?
Is it just me, or is Henry Cavill playing this character with an American accent?
New trailer is out. Still looking good to me.
Also some character vignettesand what seems like a slightly different version of the previous trailer.
**Broomstick **- it seems like just a gruffer version of his own fairly neutral English accent.
So, it dropped on Netflix today and reviews are all over the map, from sorta awful to fairly good, but seem to be trending at least mildly positive. This reviewer at Forbes who gave it a positive review even got motivated enough to rip into Entertainment Weekly for giving it a shit review.
Anyone taken the plunge yet? Might give it a go this evening.
The Princess gets to unleash the power of Dakota Fanning
I’m just starting episode 8, having marathoned it today.
Um. . .I’ll go with, “mixed bag”. Cavil is good. I played Witcher 3 for a few hundred hours, and if not for that, I think I would be totally lost. As it is, I’m partially lost. I’m gonna need a second viewing to sort out some of this, particularly the timeline. It seems to be jumping around.
Good production values, at least.
Only through episode one so far but I really like that they seem to have done a really, really good job on the fight choreography. I think I forgot why Geralt was called “the butcher of Blaviken”. Now I know.
I am finding the casting a bit hit and miss though but then I too spent hundreds of hours in the game and really identify the characters as those from the game. I know the series is purposely trying to not be the game. Still…
Also, there are times were the sets feel…cheap. Overall liking it though. The Entertainment Weekly review was very unprofessional and waaay off base.
I will certainly watch it before too long. I have Netflix and I don’t have to pay more for it. What I found amusing about the EW review is they mostly criticized things that came directly from the source material. It’s like reviewing Gone With the Wind and writing “What’s up with this Rhett guy? Where did they get him?”
I watched the first two episodes tonight and we would have done Ep.3 except we need to be up fairly early and didn’t want to delay things by another hour. For an intro exposition dump, it was pretty entertaining. I thought the effects were hit and miss but stayed engaged in the story. We had to turn on the closed captioning between the fantasy names and a few actors’ lack of enunciation.
I played some of Witcher 3 but never finished, much less all the extra content and side quests – I know enough to understand the broad strokes but am not invested enough to care if they made a character different. My wife never heard of it before reading about the Netflix series and is mainly looking for some pseudo-medieval swords & monsters to fill the void after GoT.
variety sort of did the same thing but mostly complained the humor was off … heres the review :
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/reviews/the-witcher-on-netflix-tv-review/ar-BBYbeJh
I never played much of the series because the 2nd starts with 2 characters in bed together and they made sure you seen how stacked his gf was… since we had a 7yr old in the room we saved it quickly and changed games until later …
Watched the first two episodes. The sword fight was pretty cool. I’m digging some of the music.
I played a little of “The Witcher enhanced” (free download from GOG via Ars Technica) but not enough to affect my knowledge.
I will continue watching.
Brian
I’ve played the games and read all of the books (except the latest). Given how the series is jumping around the timeline, I’m wondering how anyone who hasn’t read the books is managing to follow what’s going on. Quite possibly, someone who’s less familiar with the story may not have as much trouble as I think, since the jumps back and forth tend to match up thematically, or to match precedence and consequence between important events. For me, though, I’m spending too much energy trying to remember where we are relative to the books.
I’m generally pleased, however. The swordplay is amazing. The tone is pretty close to what I think it should be, and the important themes are addressed much as they were in the books. Cavill’s Geralt is close enough to the game’s version that it’s not jarring or disappointing. There are so many ways this series could have gone horribly wrong (Saturday Morning Witcher!), that I’m just relieved to be able to enjoy the ride.
Jumping around in the timeline?
I know nothing of the story or the game or anything -
I’ve watched Episode 1, will be watching more.
Are you saying that the events @ the castle are not happening at the same ‘time’ as the events in the village? I assume(d) that they were - and that the gist of the story is thier destiny (the witcher and the princess) to meet in the woods and do whatever to get her back in charge?
I had initially thought that the wizard from the castle was the wizard from the village that wanted the dark haired girl killed - but dismissed that.
Give me a clue if it seems neccesary.
Another person unfamillar with the franchise watching the show.
I was completely unaware that the timeline was jumping at all.
I think I got the really important things, like Cintra being invaded and Ciri having a destiny. Geralt’s a brooding, asocial monster killer with some magical as well as sword skills, and Yennifer is a mistreated, abused, deformed girl-child who is going to grow up to be a kick-ass sorceress.
But, I have to ask… in episode two…
… what the HELL is the deal with turning those three girls into eels? I didn’t see a reason or point to it. WTF and WTH? Can someone explain this to me? Is it just the witch in charge being a bitch, or was there some other reason for it?
I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but remember how the court mage told the princess about the princesses locked in towers “many many years ago”, despite the fact that Renfry was only in her 20s? Or how Renfry mentioned the battle the Queen had commanded in her youth, only she describes it as something recent?
Broomstick: The witch is a bitch. It is up to the viewer to decide if the study of sorcery requires methods this harsh, and just how much of a bitch she really is.
As for the “jumping around the timeline” bit I mentioned, I’m not sure how to clarify for those that haven’t gotten far in their viewing yet without undue spoilers, except to say that the storytelling in the series is not strictly linear. This will either become very obvious, or you will become very confused. One of my minor gripes with the series is the lack of indicators when the time frame being shown has shifted, although I’m unobservant enough that I may have missed hairstyle or outfit clues.
In case I was even more unclear than I realize, there are no time travel shenanigans.
Well, watched the first episode and I’d say so far, so good. Not great, but certainly not bad - fairly decent ;).
The battle scene was as garbage as fantasy( or most any medieval )battle scenes generally are, but that’s just the curse of spectacle. The close-combat was excellent if you make allowances for super-strong, super-fast, super-reflexed mutants who can cast simple spells having a lot more leeway to fight in a flamboyant manner. The kikimora did look a little like a big muppet, but that’s budget constraints for you.
Acting was generally fine IMO. Cavil as Geralt is a bit of pretty boy but seemed properly Geraltish in manner. Nobody flat-out embarrassed themselves. Magic was understated.
I personally didn’t have an issue with the time jumps in this one episode - they did telegraph them with the story of girls in the tower. However, that’s because I know some of the backstory. I agree if you didn’t you would have had to have been paying closer attention than usual and leap to some speculative conclusions about the lifespan of sorcerors and witchers.
All in all a decent start and those EW reviewers are idiots. I doubt it is going to win any awards, but it is holding my interest through one.
Just seen the first episode. Will definitely keep watching.
The big clue I picked up - remember when they’re at the party and Ciri says how her grandmother Calanthe won a battle when she was her age?
When Renfri is talking to Geralt in the woods, she mentions that battle as a contemporary event. Something like “Queen Calanthe has just won the Battle of X” or somesuch.
I’m up to episode 5 now and yes, it’s becoming more apparent that there is time-skipping and that all these stories are weaving together, but to someone coming in to the first episode with no prior knowledge of the franchise the time-skipping is not at all obvious, or even particularly noticeable, to at least some of us. And I don’t think that’s a problem. It didn’t detract from my enjoyment. The slow realization of the timeline and how things connect is part of the growing knowledge a viewer acquires as the series goes on. You get that “ah-ha! - so that’s a connection to this other thing” that some of us actually enjoy, as opposed to having everything laid out in an obvious manner.