Netflix's The Witcher series

[Your Weird Fetish]

They can't reflect certain realities within the series or even imply them for particular reasons. They knew that the diversity casting was going to divisive for the fans since it came out that they were going to have a black Ciri and people said they'd boycott. So instead they've got these integrated characters, having to settle for being able to hire people in just to be place holders in the story.

The choice to make the Elves explicitly one group of people would work in getting the message across of racial animus something that is undercurrent in the Witcher universe. Though as I said before, the Scoiatel are closer to the Indian wars or the Crusades in Eastern Europe, than anything in the African American experience.

That said I'm not sure if they will address it in the next season. I hope they are brave enough to keep the fact that there is the racial tensions between the Elves, Dwarves and Humans because it does add a layer to the story. (Even a dose of reality) But we will see, it depends on how brave the production team feels and how much opposition they would be able to cut through. Modern writers rooms/producers/etc are basically all PC lefties.

I agree Mark Hamill working on it would come down to three variables, availability, interest, and budget. That said he'd make a great addition to the Witcher cast.

Mentioning that, maybe they should strive for Native American elves? Not a ton of roles for those actors that aren't just "Indian guy".

I see no reason to think they're going to skirt around the the pogroms, terrorism, and counter-terrorist terrorism cycle the north and the Scoia'tael get into. They already had a relatively nice (but clearly bigoted) human stabbed to death by her dwarf servant when things went bad. Plus the bits in Dol Blathana.

 

[Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost]

Mentioning that, maybe they should strive for Native American elves? Not a ton of roles for those actors that aren't just "Indian guy".

I see no reason to think they're going to skirt around the the pogroms, terrorism, and counter-terrorist terrorism cycle the north and the Scoia'tael get into. They already had a relatively nice (but clearly bigoted) human stabbed to death by her dwarf servant when things went bad. Plus the bits in Dol Blathana.

The issue you run into when using Native Americans though is the fact that there aren't a whole lot of them around (trained actors at least) and since this seems to be a mainly European led production at least, then you'd have to justify the costs of having them their. (That said I'm all for giving them more work, there are a lot of really good Native American actors who get pigeon holed unfairly.)

I'm hoping they don't either. I agree the lady being rude to the Dwarf showed more promise of tensions. The meeting of the Elves in Dol Blathana was a little understated, but considering that it took place years before the rebellion it's understandable. But then that again is a writing issue, it's one thing to say, it's another to show, a few starving elves would do way more in terms of message than anyone talking about how they're being starved.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Are there seriously that few North American natives left? I mean I knew things weren't good, but enough it would be a major struggle to fill out an extras list?

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

Mark Hammill seems to be the favourite.

If not him then Johnathan Banks I think would be a good fit for the role. He has experience playing a crotchety old professional with a no nonsense demeanor.

Jonathan Banks - IMDb

Jonathan Banks, Actor: Mudbound. Versatile veteran character actor Jonathan Banks was born in Washington D.C in 1947. While growing up he always had an interest in acting and stage work, so decided to pursue a career in entertainment. To this day he is a very accomplished stage actor. While...

www.imdb.com

 

[Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost]

Are there seriously that few North American natives left? I mean I knew things weren't good, but enough it would be a major struggle to fill out an extras list?

Oh no, in terms of extras there plenty you can round up from the rez for your movie. It just favors movies made in North or South America, because the mass majority of Natives live in those areas.

The issue would be getting people out to Europe for the production, most film studios will use local extras as they're basically the small fry on the production food chain. So filming in Ireland, you use Irish, filming in Malta, you use Maltese. If they wanted to use Amerindians they'd have to justify that production cost and ship them over to Hungary or Gran Canaria where they were filming, even on a bulk buy of air tickets, it's still a huge cost where as even using UK extras is a 30 - 50 quid flight to Hungary.

Most productions prefer to hire locally as well because depending on the economic factors it's going to be cheaper to hire Hungarians or Poles than it is British extras, etc.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Oh no, in terms of extras there plenty you can round up from the rez for your movie. It just favors movies made in North or South America, because the mass majority of Natives live in those areas.

The issue would be getting people out to Europe for the production, most film studios will use local extras as they're basically the small fry on the production food chain. So filming in Ireland, you use Irish, filming in Malta, you use Maltese. If they wanted to use Amerindians they'd have to justify that production cost and ship them over to Hungary or Gran Canaria where they were filming, even on a bulk buy of air tickets, it's still a huge cost where as even using UK extras is a 30 - 50 quid flight to Hungary.

Most productions prefer to hire locally as well because depending on the economic factors it's going to be cheaper to hire Hungarians or Poles than it is British extras, etc.

So what you're saying is they're going to a lot of extra time, effort, and funding whenever you see anyone that's not white or a Paki/Poo-in-loo in this UK production? Or am I terribly mistaken about the demographics in the UK.

 

[Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost]

So what you're saying is they're going to a lot of extra time, effort, and funding whenever you see anyone that's not white or a Paki/Poo-in-loo in this UK production? Or am I terribly mistaken about the demographics in the UK.

Yes to an extent. The UK does have large enough communities to probably be able to cheat things, but productions tend to enjoy the path of least resistance. London tends to get more of a multicultural mix, the majority of Amerindians there though are Colombian or Brazilians.

 

[Still Anonymous For This]

Just finished it on Christmas day. It was honestly a good bit better than I thought it was.

I thought Henry Cavill was great as Geralt. The guy loves the Witcher in real life and I think that comes across with how he portrays Geralt. It's sometimes hard to see past a famous actor and into the character themselves: I sometimes had that issue, but otherwise I believed he was Geralt and saw Geralt on the screen. He does a really good Doug Cockle impression and I picked up some of game-Geralt's mannerisms.

I didn't find the diversity hires jarring, though the actress playing Triss needs better direction. I didn't believe her as Triss - not because of her race or appearance - but because of her behavior. I thought the actress playing Yenn pulled off a fairly believable Yenn and I enjoyed the backstory they told of her. The time skips made it fairly jarring how one minute she couldn't give two hot shits about babies and the next she's got the baby fever.

The problem I have is that the producers had a phenomenally rich culture they could draw from in Zerrikania: they present it in only one episode. The two warrior-women were extremely cool and I bought them being powerful warriors. Instead they just gave all the black actors the roles of white northerners, which made very little sense. It robbed themselves of showing off a really cool culture and turning them into something more than token black guys. Same thing happened in that new Troy TV series where they cast Achilles as a black dude: if you want to tell stories about strong black men, tell stories about men who were actually black. King Memnon was a badass. Write something about him.

The battles involving armies were atrocious and whoever came up with the idea of the scrotum armor should be fired. Otherwise their use of practical effects through a good portion of the show, instead of relying on CGI where possible, was awesome. The hedge(hog) knight looked cool and believable and the 'demon' was fantastic. I liked that. Some of the other CGI they did use wasn't always quite so believable.

I would give it a pretty solid 7/10. I had fun with it. Not the best, but definitely nowhere near as bad as the abortion of V Wars was.

 

[tarni]

Maybe Jaskier could have given exposition in song, even offscreen. Since they actually establish how he embellishes everything, it might have made some characters more intriguing.

 

[dvdlee18]

cavill was the only good thing about this show. the random blacks ruined it for me

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

I thought Henry Cavill was great as Geralt. The guy loves the Witcher in real life and I think that comes across with how he portrays Geralt. It's sometimes hard to see past a famous actor and into the character themselves: I sometimes had that issue, but otherwise I believed he was Geralt and saw Geralt on the screen. He does a really good Doug Cockle impression and I picked up some of game-Geralt's mannerisms.

Cavill actually talks about this in an interview I saw. He started out doing Geralt as just a slightly tweaked version of his natural voice but he kept feeling it wasn't quite right. What he eventually arrived at was modelled much more on the voice Doug Cockle does, only English, and more deep and grunting rather than a gravelly Eastwood-esque whisper. Dude really loves the games and the books.

 

[ElAbominacion]

King Memnon

Or Ogoun, one of the most famous of Yoruba kings, or Shango, or anyone in actual West or East African mythology. There are amazing African stories to be told, using only African actors and actresses, in a way that would make EVERYONE appreciate the effort involved.

The reason why they don't do it is because they want to replace whites, they want to corner whites and they want to instill hate. By the way, there's a movie out on YouTube made by Witcher fans. Give it a look. It's good. Better than the series.

 

[Zaryiu]

Reminder that (i admit i don't know if it has some weight since it's someone that's not the person at the top) but the visual effects supervisor they were taking the fantasy out and focusing on horror (i can see that, they made Eastern Europe have the demographics of New York)

God I hate this series now.

Now? Not after the rest of the wokeness that proved they never cared or lied about adapting the books despite all the changes with no basis in them? I can't even feel bad for the guy that wrote the books, he wanted this tv show after talking shit about the games, he hated those for doing their own things well he hasn't seen his material truly butchered yet

 

[HeyYou]

This show is apparently absurdly successful, by the way, it's almost certainly going to be a full thing. Brought in a bunch of new fans, too. I'm not going to bitch, the games did the same thing. It's going to be funny seeing people play the games and bitch about all the white people, though. Despite all the liberties the games take with the characters (Triss absolutely comes to mind, Wild Hunt too) them all being white is 100% correct.

In other news, CD Projekt Red and Sapkowski are on good terms now. CD Projekt Red will continue to make Witcher shit.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

This show is apparently absurdly successful, by the way, it's almost certainly going to be a full thing. Brought in a bunch of new fans, too. I'm not going to bitch, the games did the same thing. It's going to be funny seeing people play the games and bitch about all the white people, though. Despite all the liberties the games take with the characters (Triss absolutely comes to mind, Wild Hunt too) them all being white is 100% correct.

In other news, CD Projekt Red and Sapkowski are on good terms now. CD Projekt Red will continue to make Witcher shit.

In the coming war between gamefags and tvfags, the bookfag loses no matter who wins.

 

[HeyYou]

In the coming war between gamefags and tvfags, the bookfag loses no matter who wins.

Yeah. The show wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but game fans can rest easy knowing that this was not a perfect adaptation by any means.

 

[InsolentGaylord]

This show is apparently absurdly successful, by the way, it's almost certainly going to be a full thing. Brought in a bunch of new fans, too. I'm not going to bitch, the games did the same thing. It's going to be funny seeing people play the games and bitch about all the white people, though. Despite all the liberties the games take with the characters (Triss absolutely comes to mind, Wild Hunt too) them all being white is 100% correct.

In other news, CD Projekt Red and Sapkowski are on good terms now. CD Projekt Red will continue to make Witcher shit.

Sure much of that isn't just netflix bots shilling for it?

 

[AbyssStarer]

Sure much of that isn't just netflix bots shilling for it?

I'm sure that netflix promotes it to people who watch fantasy, but most people who arent into the games/books have been saying the show is pretty good. Most people who don't like it mostly cite the pacing and diversity hiring, not so much of the writing/dialogue/etc.

At the start of this thread everybody thought it'd be dogshit, so things with it went surprisingly well. I like to think it's because the Witcher itself is a quality series. If the show doesn't add too much more diversity shit (like Yennefer getting black'd whith whites clapping over it) and keeps to what's there in the books, it'll only get more successful.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Sure much of that isn't just netflix bots shilling for it?

I'm sure it is but when every other streaming service also has bots shilling for their next big product to consume I think that variable just kind of washes out.

 

[InsolentGaylord]

I'm sure that netflix promotes it to people who watch fantasy, but most people who arent into the games/books have been saying the show is pretty good. Most people who don't like it mostly cite the pacing and diversity hiring, not so much of the writing/dialogue/etc.

At the start of this thread everybody thought it'd be dogshit, so things with it went surprisingly well. I like to think it's because the Witcher itself is a quality series. If the show doesn't add too much more diversity shit (like Yennefer getting black'd whith whites clapping over it) and keeps to what's there in the books, it'll only get more successful.

I highly doubt it will be the next GoT. And I believe Netflix told a bunch of people (as in paid employees and shills) to sign into the game on Steam in order to boost the player count to generate hype. Do we know if these guys even earned any achievements in games because they could just be idling on the menu?