The first episode of The Witcher is desperately trying to please everyone at once. For fans of books by Andrzej Sapkowski and games about the adventures of Geralt from Rivia, familiar quotes and familiar scenes are scattered on it. Fans of the series will see a detailed world, unlike either the “Game of Thrones” or the “Vikings”.
However, it is precisely the desire to please both that and the other will fail Netflix: filmmakers simply will not be able to bring together both tasks. Fans will immediately notice that Geralt from a detective with an inhuman reaction turned into a Rocky-like muzzle, for which the main thing is to keep a blow, and not to strike his own. Attempts by scriptwriters to flirt with the audience also fail - quotes and individual scenes drawn from books in a completely different context look almost comical.
Ordinary viewers run the risk of becoming entangled in the plot: almost the entire first season, the authors try to draw three separate lines about different characters, which, among other things, develop at different time intervals. The first three series must be watched almost inseparably, noting the details and carefully following the plot. This is the only way to understand what, where, with whom, and when.
In the next series, Netflix manages to take the reins of the narrative into its own hands and force the storylines to follow some unified logic. That's just obviously not the one that Sapkovsky laid down in his books.
The main problem of the season, obviously, is the writers' attempt to fit the key points of Geralt's biography into one chronological line. In books, these moments represented a set of unrelated stories.
Mutant mutations
Fans must accept the bitter truth - Netflix will not have a “book.” Here, even the witcher is different.
In Sapkovsky’s novels and games in his books, Geralt was not an ordinary killer of monsters. The witcher’s work included a detective element - analysis of evidence, determining the type and subspecies of the monster, searching for features. Then followed the selection of tactics, preparation, and, as the climax, the battle. The battle almost always took place according to the scenario of the White Wolf, played out as if by notes.
The mutations that Geralt went through as a child rewarded him with inhuman strength and speed of reaction, accelerated metabolism and, at the same time, slowed aging. For many years, working with people and traveling made him an excellent negotiator of broad views, sensitively feeling the character of the interlocutor.
The witcher is daily faced with contempt. For all, he is a mutant devoid of human feelings and emotions. A stranger carrying with him some problems.
But Netflix has its own witcher. And his name is Henry Cavill. They tell him about the monster, and he immediately goes to beat his face. He loses his sword along the way, drinks elixirs recklessly, receives new scars and scratches, and then by some miracle wins, wanders into the tavern, where ale whips with a frown and runs into a new fight.
Symbolic here is the cult scene of the battle with the plague. Instead of implementing a clear plan, according to which Geralt reached the victorious end without a single scratch, having gained a psychological victory over the hate-embraced monster, the audience is expected to be stabbed to death. The witcher improvising on the move dodges the monster's blows with varying success. Sometimes swearing.
The expression, of course, of the courageous face of Cavill has remained unchanged all this time - cold and sad. The first smile on the lips of the witcher slips only in the fourth series. And this is in defiance of Geralt from books, which knew how to at least ironically smile, and even completely burst into laughter.
Do not confuse pensive facial expressions and wisdom. One of the other does not follow at all. So, faced with insomnia, the witcher tries to solve the problem in a very non-standard way - to throw a fishing net into the lake until he can get an amphora with a genie and make a wish for him.
Fans will not forgive the authors of the series and the transformation of Buttercup into a romantic idiot. Undoubtedly, the bard and friend of the witcher was never distinguished by outstanding intellectual abilities. But he was well educated and included in all the royal courts.
At Netflix, they decided to take the path of least resistance and contrast the serious, thoughtful Geralt with an eccentric adventurer who was called to dilute the tragic and gloomy world of The Witcher. To do this, I had to sacrifice the integrity of Buttercup, making a walking grotesque out of him, entertaining the unassuming public in taverns of a drunkard. A kind of "joint trip" with the medieval Ice Cube and Kevin Hart.
Fans will not recognize either the Queen of Cintra Kalante or the monarch Temeria Foltest. The islanders with Skellige are all bandits and drunkards. Only the red-clad mater Yarpen Sigrin and the enchantress Jennifer will live up to the expectations of the Witcher fans.
However, experts in the Sapkowski universe will be interested in how Jennifer’s growing up is shown — the writer only once mentioned in books that before becoming a sorceress, she was a hunchback. In addition, fans will see the battle of Sodden Hill, about which almost nothing to learn from the novels.
Audience Search
Of course, evaluating the series solely in terms of compliance with the books would be wrong. In the end, this is another art product aimed at a different, wider audience and made in accordance with special methods of working with the consumer. To create such a product, you just need a change in the storyline, adaptation of characters and reduction of scenes.
But the authors of the series, it seems, do not quite understand who it is - their audience.
It is not clear why the Witcher should spend time for those who are just looking for a new series in a medieval setting. Say, a replacement for the completed Game of Thrones. The Witcher does not interrupt her in terms of plot and dramaturgy, not to mention the scale of the battle and the quality of the bed scenes. Geralt behind Cavill lags behind the charismatic Travis Fimmel in the role of Ragnar from the Vikings.
And yet there are things that, no doubt, cannot but rejoice. Spectators from Eastern Europe, including the Russians, will find landscapes that are dear to their hearts - dense forests, meadows, swamps, swamps and plowed fields, between which houses from an unprocessed log house with carved platbands are scattered. The musical accompaniment is almost always pleasant and immerses in the atmosphere of the series. The selection of costumes and scenery leaves an extremely positive impression. The authors really wondered with the atmosphere: a gloomy, heavy, oppressive world does not let go of the first to eighth series.
- © Shot from the series The Witcher / NetFlix
The dark-skinned characters who were brought into this medieval Eastern European world are very organic in the frame, like any other strangers in the service of local kings. For this, it is worth thanking both the actors themselves (by the way, starring in episodic roles) and their costumers.
However, medieval society, usually saturated with xenophobia and chauvinism, which is generously watered by all strangers, for some reason completely ignores black people. Well, apparently, this is the reality that viewers will have to take for granted.
Given these pluses, the listed minuses may seem less evil to the viewer. However, Geralt himself takes a very definite position on this issue - if you need to make a choice between greater or lesser evil, then he prefers not to choose at all.