Vikings up until season 5 (it should have ended with Ragnar's death) was great. TLK doesn't suck, not really. It's consistent and it delivers.
Jessica Jones season 1 fucking sucked but I'm not into comic series usually. I'm a big Punisher fan and am sad to see it go, though.
Thing is, Hissrich doesn't have the chops for a scenario as dark as The Witcher and Netflix will regret their choices in making this.
To be honest, they probably picked her because she was cheap and they worked with her before, so there's a familiarity and less of a 'risk' involved. Carrying a Dark Fantasy series is incredibly difficult, as this one is more 'fantasy' than GoT was, which you have to carefully manage or shit becomes expensive quick. The thing is that she basically almost turned it down because she was like, "I don't live and breathe fantasy, so I'm probably not the right person." She was right, she wasn't. But Netflix worked with her before, figured that if they had problems they could lean on that. And I do give Hissrich props for not shitting all over the fans. Also she said this:
“The truth is, 20 years ago we needed to be giving young women more opportunities. That’s the only way you get me in my position now,” she says. “What you don’t want is just to say, ‘All showrunners need to be half women and half men,’ because then, for men and women, you could get inexperienced people doing those jobs, failing, and then not getting the opportunity to do them again.”
So I don't really think she's pushing the super diverse agenda mega hard, because of the amount of shit she'd get from saying this. Her and Cavil seem to be rebuffing the media attempts to just shit all over people. I mean, some faggot from the LA Times asked him about GamerGate and the 'toxic gamer community' and he just said 'People in the community are very active and passionate and don't have any other connection than the internet, so they tend to say not so nice things to each other.' That's a dude that knows tact and how not to be baited. I would not be surprised if Henry Cavil was a secret shit poster on the internet.
Cavil also DESPERATELY wanted the role. I mean, its sad its not better, but it is LEAGUES better than Game of Thrones from Season 6 onwards. He is also reportedly getting paid $400k per episode, which is why everything else looks cheap. When you factor him in, with CGI and props, money runs out quick.
I do agree with you that Hissrich was probably the wrong choice. I don't think Netflix picked her for diversity points however. Even they're not that fucking dumb. Good showrunners with tons of experience are expensive and really hard to manage. They also probably had to factor in cost, had a working relationship and probably could get her for a lot cheaper than others.
Sure, but she gives her up pretty much immediately and by making that girl the helper of Stregobor, it kinda made the girl the only one she had to threaten. A lot different than getting ready to massacre an entire village.
A bit into episode two now. I'm not sure if it's the lighting, cinematography, overall production values, or what... but something makes it feels like a bigger budget CW show. Really, I don't think it seems much better than The 100.
She said in the episode she'd kill as many people as she needed to get Stregobor to come to her. Most of their budget was tied up in CG and Henry Cavil, so its hard to blame them.
I don't like diversity casting either but that's very far from the show's weakest link.
I wish diversity casting was its only problem. Sadly, it is not. And it isn't that really big of a deal. I wish they'd kept it so that the black actors were in specialized roles, like the guy that ran scouts for Cintra, which makes it so you could think there was some far off land that lords recruited these dudes to do some work for them, like you'd see merchants and shit, but not regular people. But its not a big deal, and I'd rank it basically on the bottom of the shows problems.
The music is another thing. Compare basically the main theme from 'The Witcher' OST, which follows throughout all the games:
to 'The Witcher's Theme:
Like you get that really awesome musical sting with the games and there's this awesome theme for Geralt. The violin really expresses the loneliness and desolate nature of the setting and the character of Geralt, who walks his own path. You then get a nice bit of heavy metal going for Epic Ballad territory.
The show's theme is merely 'OK' compared to it. It just feels lacking in character in comparison.
Honestly, it does feel like the games are superior to the show. When I'm watching it, a lot of the time I'm like, "Why am I not playing the game?" Like the track 'Dancing with Monsters' pops on, or the theme from the cinematic trailer and its just boom. I guess its not really fair to compare a sort of Ok show to one of the best games ever made and possibly the greatest RPG in the history of gaming.
I know its based off of the books, but you've got to contend the games shot Witcher into the stratosphere. So most people are going to compare it to that. I just don't think Netflix had the right amount of money to pull this off.
