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[The Witcher] Watching Season 2 is Your Destiny, Probably
Kana
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So The Witcher is a series of books by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Nobody outside of Poland really cared about those books until CD Projekt Red made a trilogy of games adapting the story, one of which is extremely good. Then people were like, hey, this game is really well written, maybe the books are really good too? And it turns out that yeah, actually the books really are very good, too. One of the people who played The Witcher 3 and then ate up all the books is extremely yolked supernerd Henry Cavill. When Netflix announced they were producing an adaptation of the book series, he leapt at it, playing the lead role of the titular Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.
Season 1 looks to be adapting at least portions of The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, and Blood of Elves. The first two are sort of short story prequel collections, with the novel series proper starting with Blood of Elves.
The Witcher series stars:
Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher: An absolute unit, a mutated killing machine with the sole purpose of stealing your girl killing monsters. He has two swords, a steel one and a silver one for monsters, but silver swords are fucking expensive so he keeps it in a box. What, did you think he'd carry around TWO swords? That would just be silly!
Cirilla, Princess of Cintra. A bratty plucky tomgirl whose destiny is bound up with Geralt's, assuming you believe in that sort of thing. There's about a dozen prophecies about her, which is a lot to deal with when you're still going through puberty.
Yennifer, sorceress, an asshole nah, an asshole. Well, OK, so she's complex, and has had a hard life. She'd really prefer you focus on her jerky exterior and not on any of the secret softie on the inside. Deep, deep inside.
Roach, a horse. Absolutely flawless.
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So, why am I excited for the series? The Witcher's often compared to Game of Thrones for its thematic focus on politics, the use of power and the consequences of its use. Unlike Game of Thrones though, our characters are rarely near the levers of power, and so instead they struggle more with how to lead good, ethical lives in a world so often filled with bad faith actors. Characters are complex, no one's ever making choices based on full information, and despite Geralt looking like Anime McCoolGuy, he's really a big ol' softie with feelings - and the books are emotionally mature enough to be like, yeah, that's a good thing. They're also surprisingly progressive - multiple lgbtq characters, the politics of racism and racial divisions are commented upon without trying to neatly shoehorn in elves = x minority group, and yeah, generally there's a reason these books have gotten a lot of love.
A new trailer is expected within the next week or so, and season 1 should premiere mid-December. out now! Release date announced as December 20th.
Official Teaser Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSqi-8kAMmM
Season 1 looks to be adapting at least portions of The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, and Blood of Elves. The first two are sort of short story prequel collections, with the novel series proper starting with Blood of Elves.
The Witcher series stars:
Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher: An absolute unit, a mutated killing machine with the sole purpose of stealing your girl killing monsters. He has two swords, a steel one and a silver one for monsters, but silver swords are fucking expensive so he keeps it in a box. What, did you think he'd carry around TWO swords? That would just be silly!
Cirilla, Princess of Cintra. A bratty plucky tomgirl whose destiny is bound up with Geralt's, assuming you believe in that sort of thing. There's about a dozen prophecies about her, which is a lot to deal with when you're still going through puberty.
Yennifer, sorceress, an asshole nah, an asshole. Well, OK, so she's complex, and has had a hard life. She'd really prefer you focus on her jerky exterior and not on any of the secret softie on the inside. Deep, deep inside.
Roach, a horse. Absolutely flawless.
So, why am I excited for the series? The Witcher's often compared to Game of Thrones for its thematic focus on politics, the use of power and the consequences of its use. Unlike Game of Thrones though, our characters are rarely near the levers of power, and so instead they struggle more with how to lead good, ethical lives in a world so often filled with bad faith actors. Characters are complex, no one's ever making choices based on full information, and despite Geralt looking like Anime McCoolGuy, he's really a big ol' softie with feelings - and the books are emotionally mature enough to be like, yeah, that's a good thing. They're also surprisingly progressive - multiple lgbtq characters, the politics of racism and racial divisions are commented upon without trying to neatly shoehorn in elves = x minority group, and yeah, generally there's a reason these books have gotten a lot of love.
A new trailer is expected within the next week or so, and season 1 should premiere mid-December. out now! Release date announced as December 20th.
Official Teaser Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSqi-8kAMmM A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Kana on
+12
Posts
Plus it doing well would really wind up the trolls who've been very upset by various aspects of this show so far.
It helps that Cavill is a huge Witcher nerd and loves the games and books.
Again, even if you've played the games, here be spoilers:
"The Lesser Evil" - As in several of the Witcher short stories, this one is sort of a twist on a fairy tale, in this case Sleeping Beauty. A wizard requests Geralt protect him from a possibly sociopathic princess he once tried to assassinate by order of her stepmother. Now the charismatic princess is a gang leader and is heading back to Blaviken to get revenge... Another good short story, further developing Geralt's often contradictory motivations of wanting to be neutral, and wanting to be kind.
"A Question of Price" - Geralt shows up for a job in Cintra, which turns out to mostly be verbal jousting with Cintra's iron-spined queen. Sets up the future Geralt/ciri relationship with a lot of talking about children, parenthood, Geralt's own feelings of parental abandonment, as well as some hints about Destiny, and Geralt's steadfast refusal to believe in any of that stuff.
"The Edge of the World" - Geralt and Dandelion end up in a very nice, peaceful part of the world, and therefore Geralt's broke. As humanity spreads across the world Witchers are gradually dying out, from lack of need. But so are other races and monsters who cannot, or refuse to, assimilate or adapt into a human-centered world. Introduces us to folks like the Dryads and the separatist elves. It's a good story but somewhat slow-paced, I would guess it might get combined with another of the Dryad-based stories?
"The Last Wish" - Geralt and Dandelion go fishing, and haul up a genie's lamp, despite Geralt's insistence that genies aren't real. Dandelion promptly fucks things up, and now Geralt has to go ask some local sorceress named Yennifer to plz unfuck my friend. Yennifer's like well that was easy, but now I'm gonna harness the power of that genie ("But genies aren't real!" shouts Geralt in the distance), and if that involves flattening the town around me, well hey, you can't make an omelet without squishing some peasants.
"The Bounds of Reason" - Geralt, Dandelion, a foreign wandering knight, his two polyamorous girlfriends, a teenage petty king, Yennifer, some dwarves, one mouthy peasant, and some professional dragonslayers all go dragon-hunting and kind of try not to kill each other. Really establishes the on-again, off-again Geralt/Yennifer relationship that they'll maintain for the next, like, 20 goddamn years.
"The Sword of Destiny" - Geralt's back in Cintra, trying to get Ciri back from the dryads after she went wandering into the Woods You Shouldn't Fucking Go Near. Geralt and Ciri's first real meeting. We've seen Ciri and the dryads in the trailer.
"Something More" - Nilfgaard attacks the north for the first time, overwhelming Cintra, until they're finally turned back at the bloody battle of Sodden. Geralt rushes south to attempt to discover the fate of many of his friends, including Yennifer, Ciri, and Triss. Along the way he meets a merchant on the road, who refuses to leave his wrecked cart. Geralt makes another of his Law of Surprises deals with the merchant to protect him from the incipient monster attack, but in the fight he's badly wounded. The merchant, a surprisingly nice guy, tends to Geralt. The battle of Sodden will apparently be the final episode of the season.
Which just by itself is 8 stories for 8 episodes, although we've also seen some trailer images that happen well into book 1 of the proper series (or maybe they're just teaser-lies, or dream sequences foreshadowing future settings, or who knows what). But also then there's some stuff the show has shown clips of (like Yennifer's backstory) that the novels never explicitly spell out. Also Ciri starts out older in this version than in the books, and queen calanthe also seems to have gotten a bit more screentime based on some quick lines from the short stories. It's a pretty strong lineup, and could easily lead right into book 1/2 for season 2.
.............
I don't really like Henry Cavill but he's doing a really great if slightly flat Doug Cockle voice
(I also appreciate how he's a huge enough nerd to have lobbied for the role)
edit: I really expected the W3 wailing as the logo came in. And oh, both the Wild Hunt trailer and this one sure loves Geralt's "Evil is evil" line without featuring the endpoint of that story
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It's interesting to poke through the cast list on IMDB and see all the footnote-tier characters they've incorporated into the show, presumably as a consequence of trying to elaborate upon Ciri's youth prior to the fall of Cintra (etc...).
Like, the character whom I thought must have been Emhyr in the trailer turned out to be Eist Tuirseach, whom I don't believe you ever meet in the books (though he might be present at the Child Surprise Dinner Party). And he's credited for all 8 episodes!
We also must be getting a fair amount of time spent with Cahir in Nilfgaard, but no Dykstra being a snarky spymaster?! For shame.
https://ogn.theonion.com/the-witcher-producers-assure-gamers-netflix-series-wi-1839499728
I hope that shot of the bridge is when we get to find out why he is 'of Rivia'.
That's true; I'm mostly just assuming a listing of "8 episodes" vs "2 episodes" can be used to gauge some degree of appearance rate. The trailer suggests Eist is present in a big way, seemingly being a dude that aggressively pushes Geralt down the road of prophecy.
The music in this trailer is excellent, really reminds me of the game which also had awesome music.
What little I've seen of Ciri also looks pretty well acted, and I love sassy yennifer!
2004, and I still remember this comic like yesterday
Looking good
good horsey
Episode 2: Four Marks - We look at a sorceress's early days.
Episode 3: Betrayer Moon - A picky eater, a family shamed.
Episode 4: Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials - The Law of Surprise is how one repays.
Episode 5: Bottled Appetites - A fateful meeting, a bard is maimed.
Episode 6: Rare Species - The hunt for a dragon is underway.
Episode 7: Before a Fall - A return to before a kingdom is flamed.
Episode 8: Much More - The Witcher Family, as you all like to say.
Oh this is really cool, because it's doing what I wanted and focusing on the short stories to start
https://www.reddit.com/r/netflixwitcher/comments/e0qbli/megathread_season_1_screener_impressions/
Overwhelmingly positive with particular emphasis on the swordfighting!
Glad to see positive remarks on fight choreography, though I find it always comes down to the editing for me.
Dunno. Doggo pictures, stat?
Somewhat ironic, given the fact that some of the main stories are about racism between humans non-humans
Yeah, people are also mad that Yennefers actress is half Indian. I saw one comment say that they're erasing white European culture by having non white actors.
Funnier story, people of color actually lived in medieval Poland. Checkmate?
They're really going hard on the publicity for this. Henry Cavill will be on The Graham Norton Show next Friday promoting it which is huge!
"Europe was white before the liberals took over" is a fascist shibboleth. It has nothing to do with reality, but it functions quite well to identify people who are plugged into the racist headspace.
Can't wait. Cavill is a really smooth talker.
Now you're telling me he also has an Akita?
I like this man more and more with every bit of news.
Well, listen to him read to you, then!