The Witcher (Netflix)

[Bugg]

This could be brilliant - fingers crossed!

Netflix to Produce The Witcher TV Series - IGN

Platige Image - THE WITCHER Saga on Netflix

Now who do they get to play Geralt?

 

[Caledfwlch]

That's easy!!

You get the famous Geralt Cosplayer "Maul Cosplay" to play him!

This is him in a short fan film

He also has this wonderful video - a sick girl who is a huge Witcher fan won a replica sword on his website.
So he made a surprise visit, in full costume to present it to her, and its wonderful

 

[Bugg]

Mark Hammill on suggestions he should play Vesemir in the tv series:

 

[Bugg]

Henry Cavill Will Play Geralt In Netflix’s The Witcher Series

Nope, did not see that coming at all

 

[Bugg]

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Incidentally I'm just finishing the fifth novel after reading the whole series in a few weeks (how come these books/games/series do not have their own thread here?).

If the teaser is any indication of what the show will be, I think it could be disappointing. Too many digital FX, too large a scale, too grandiose. To me, the books felt like a more intimate look into characters journeying through the dilapidated landscape of a land torn by war. It's also slightly disappointing if the slavic origins and myths behind the original material are not exploited to give this show a distinctive flavour. If it just looks, sounds and feels like Game of Thrones with a little more magic, I don't see the point.

Of course, not much can be said from a trailer - but I was hoping it would dissipate my fears, and it did not.

It looks great in terms of cinematography and production design, but when we're talking about these kinds of budgets, the least they can do is make it look good.

I also don't understand why every male protagonist these days has to look like a freaking bodybuilder. That's really not how I pictured Geralt, but then again I guess it's too much to ask of Mr. Gym-Nut Superman to lose 20 pounds for a role. He looks like a freaking lobster, not like a feline sword master.

 

[Caledfwlch]

The full trailer is now out. The Elves are worrying. They appear to be dressed in leaves in the only shot. Though the voice over is saying something about humanity invading and taking the elves land so maybe it's a flashback shot of elves in the past. Witcher Aen Seidhe elves aren't wishy washy Disneyesque beings frollpcking in the woods, they are real people and certainly squirrels will be in armour and armed to the teeth.

Dunno about ignoring the slavic roots and mythology as welsh, Irish and general European mythology is as big an influence on the books author - in lady in the lake andreij even uses the Welsh for Snowdonia Y Wyddfa. And of course the elven nickname for Gerallt is Gwyn Blaidd the Welsh for white wolf.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Yes, and Sapkowski's Elvish is packed full of Irish words too, to the point where I was trying to make sense of it before I realised he had actually just picked words that he liked without a care for their actual meaning (and that's OK).

It's not so much that the Witcher series ought to acknowledge the author's Slavic heritage but that I think it's a damn shame that the producer didn't use that heritage as an excuse to give the show a distinct identity and make it feel fresh, as opposed to an umpteenth fantasy production following the path already trodden bare by LOTR, D&D, GoT, and all their clones, even if the books themselves were majorly influenced by them (and Arthurian legends, etc.)

Of course, that's all based off a 2 minute trailer so maybe my worries are unfounded, and I hope they are.

 

[Caledfwlch]

Given the current climate some genuinely audience thought provoking and divisive episodes could be done just on the scoia'tel.

I'm just waiting for the fools to start ranting that nothing looks like in the games, being too daft to realise Netflix haven't licenced the games and thus their look but the books

 

[Bugg]

 

[Bugg]

Don't. Touch. Roach.

 

[olive]

It's about to start and I need to work!

 

[olive]

It's pretty good and made me very happy. Haven't finished it, starting the 4th episode. I'm trying to binge it 'slowly' whatever that means, lol. I mean savour I guess.

But I haven't read the books, just a big fan of the last game. I'd love to hear reviews from the readers.

 

[Boneman]

Watching it tonight!

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

No time to binge watch it, I'll probably watch the first episode tonight. The first two if I'm lucky - and still awake.

I haven't read the books, just a big fan of the last game. I'd love to hear reviews from the readers.

Big fan of the books. I binge read them recently too. I'll post a review once I've seen it but I'm one of those people who will be disappointed if the series doesn't depart from the original material. I don't need to see what I've already read - I need something more.

 

[Bugg]

Watched the first episode. Really enjoyed it. Definitely has more of the feel of the books, which - much as I love the games - is fine by me. Made me wince a couple of times, too

If it keeps up or improves on that standard I'll be wishing there were more episodes.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Two episodes in. It is extremely promising but also uneven because of a low budget that is clearly limiting the filmmakers. That came as a surprise to me as I thought the huge success of the third game and Cavill's star power would be enough for Netflix to go out on a limb and write a blank check to the producers. A few thoughts:

The good first
- The writing is great. I love what they're doing with the origin stories of all the protagonists.
- Yennefer. At this stage I'm ready to commit to watching dozens of hours of a spin-off dedicated to her origin story. While her origin was mentioned here and there in the books, most of what the TV series shows is brand new content and you can tell the showrunner loves this character and spent a lot of time figuring out how to flesh her out while both staying true to who she was in the books and giving her a different dynamic in this version of the story. Great character development, some powerful scenes, I'm looking forward to discovering more.
- The natural sets are beautiful. It definitely has that European feel to it. The 'matte paintings' (are they even called that anymore?) or digitally-enhanced sets (Posada) are amazing.
- The fight between Geralt and Renfri's men was brutal and well choreographed.
- Those two episodes made me want to read through the entire saga again just to rediscover those scenes and characters in the context of the books and work out how every little detail matches or differs from the TV show. Which to me is a good thing.

The average:
- I was concerned when they gave the part to Cavill. Now I think he's okay. I am not seeing the Geralt from the books at all. Cavill's physicality and cockiness are his own. But I don't mind it as much as I thought I would. I'm ready to see more of him.

The not-so-good now:
- What is up with the cinematography? Whoever is lighting and framing this is really not doing a good job of enhancing the good and ironing out the bad (some of the costumes, make-up, and even mise en scène look cheap). The lighting at times makes it look like you're watching a cosplaying reunion shot by a friend.
- Those contact lenses are horrendous. Distractingly so.
- The Massacre of Cintra really suffered from the lack of a proper budget. I'm not big on huge action scenes and that's also why I love The Witcher so much, as most of the time you just tend to follow a small group of people interacting with each other, with very little big battle scenes involving dozens or hundreds of people. But when you go for scale, you need to really go all out. The wide shots of the city in flames stuck out like a sore thumb as the CGI didn't really work, the extras were too few and had no idea what they were doing... The sense of scale was missing entirely and it felt painfully obvious that the filmmakers tried to suggest more than they were showing not because they wanted to but because they had to.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Looking forward to see the rest of it and I hope season 2 gets the budget it deserves.

 

[svalbard]

I haven't read the books or played the games so I struggled with the story. I found some of the dialogue difficult to hear or even understand. However the fight scene between Geralt and Renfri at the end won me over. I am intrigued.

 

[Anthoney]

- Those contact lenses are horrendous. Distractingly so.

I enjoyed their use of colored contacts (some looked like cgi). Specifically, Ciri and Yen's. I thought Yen's purple eyes were fantastic. I comment on it in an episode by episode comment section on Track.tv.

I binged the whole thing.

 

[olive]

From the beginning, my problem with Henry Cavill was that he is too neatly and delicately handsome. He is too handsome. Muscle is not enough to create a tank look. I don't know the Witcher in the books, but to me, the one in the game is too neat looking too. No body hair, a delicate, small unbroken nose, clean appearance... When my mind is given this kind of material, my imagination insists on a really shabby, dirty, hairy, rough-tough character. He is an outdoor living warrior. Anyway, it works. The voice works. Bigger nose. Voice affects me a lot, it is incredibly important and I think he made it. I wouldn't be surprised if they checked first the voice while casting. Overall, It wasn't as bad as I thought, it was good. My fear is that as the series develop, they are going to make him more neat and clean.

About that particular light and the quality of shiny cosplay feel is that I think it is on purpose. I think they didn't want to give a realistic, darker, historical feel, but a game and fairy tale come true feel. It feels like they are aiming for more Merlin than Game of Thrones. Strategically it is a clever move in my opinion. It is more 'sincere'. Especially, because it is released after GoT. People are still talking about it. For example, if they created the massacre of Cintra in the scale and detailing of the burning of the King's Landing: it wouldn't fit the whole, it would be too epic for a first season first episodes; unbalanced in these two senses. It would remind a very successful, very highly hyped just ended series. And those scenes in Got is in the last season, it is even final there.

About the eye make up, I don't think the problem is that it is just badly done. They are good. This is a general proıblem in movie industry with traditional make up or cgi. Yes they can blend it now much better, but the problem is that there are no human eye colours of the sort in reality and eyes are very highly expressive. Our minds have no reference points for these eye colours and their expressions, we don't know what/how to match yellow or purple eyes with some expression in reality. How does a pair of yellow eyes differ in giving an expression of anger or resentment? Purple is obviously easier than bright yellow, so Yen's eyes look better. They tried to give a sense of natural, changing in light look to her eyes, but you'll see this time people will complain that her eyes are different colours in some scenes.