Witcher netflix series
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Very late to the show here since I rarely read this thread, but I think it's also worth mentioning that while the Peter Jackson films were still part of a for-profit industry, much of the work that went into them was more like an infinite-budget soviet auteur film like War and Peace. If you watch the behind-the-scenes footage you find countless examples of props and sets designed using traditional materials with far more effort than was necessary. They had armourers working full time making hundreds of coats of chainmail. In the scenes with Gandalf and the Hobbits indoors they have a segmented set that moves with the camera to give the illusion of a height difference. It's insane, at least by today's standards.
While there is some dumb stuff in those films especially in Return of the King, they threw money at (non-CGI) artists in a manner that honestly hasn't been seen since. This was also right at the tail end of the Fantasy genre rinsing itself out of relevance in the late 90s. It thus makes it even more of a contrast when you compare it to The Hobbit Trilogy or this Rings of Power show, where they use a lot of the same iconography, but doing it all in CGI in the former's case and seemingly pissing it down a drain in the latter's case.
Been watching the first part of season 3. The show is completely dead now.
The quaint charm of the main characters is gone, and all the dialogue is dull. It's puzzling how they can make this fantasy world so boring.
Generally the story is a bit more focused now, which is nice, and the first episode, which centered around the 3 main characters, worked well. But the whole thing is flat with none of the other characters being of any interest.
Also:
The quaint charm of the main characters is gone, and all the dialogue is dull. It's puzzling how they can make this fantasy world so boring.
Generally the story is a bit more focused now, which is nice, and the first episode, which centered around the 3 main characters, worked well. But the whole thing is flat with none of the other characters being of any interest.
Also:
Did Geralt just beat the ghostly "wild hunt" by flicking a finger (as they were pursuing Ciri)?
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Pentagathoos
Squire
You've convinced me to watch the LOTR trilogy again, congrats.
The first and fifth episodes are alright, but not up to par with most of the episodes in the first season. The greatest weakness of the first season was how disjointed it felt by being in seemingly random chronological order, the second season's weakness was its significant deviations from source material, and the third season shares that weakness while also having a cast that seem like they've gotten bored with it. They also downplay the namesake of the show and what he's best known for doing (killing monsters, duh) by having fights with monsters take up a combined total of less than 10 minutes screen time across 5 episodes.
As for your spoiler, yes. Yes he did. That whole scene made them feel like a sideshow at a circus rather than a credible threat to anything.
I think after they put out the last 3 episodes (bringing S3 up to a total of eight) they've finished with the season, and it's not good TV. There's no hope it gets any better going forward with the change in casting and how phoned-in so much of S3 was. Best to just pretend the show never progressed past season one, and view that one season more like an anthology. Enjoy the little stories in each episode and don't dwell too much on the big picture.
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All the negative buzz surrounding this last season, and the accompanying elegiac praise of the first season, actually got me to go back to watch the latter again. I think my initial impression was somewhere along the lines of a 6/10 overall and damn, I was generous. Just terrible, terrible filmmaking overall, numerous continuity errors, dodgy visual effects, horrid performances from some of the main cast, bad fight choreography...
I busted out laughing at the big battle scene in the first episode (Cintra vs. Nilfgaard) - there's a moment where, with a lack of confidence in the audience's ability to reason and understand on-screen events, the Cintran king screams out "WE'RE LOSING!" in the middle of the fighting. Unfortunately such utter incompetence in a big-budget fantasy series has become the norm rather than the exception. I hope these simultaneous strikes burn it all down.
I busted out laughing at the big battle scene in the first episode (Cintra vs. Nilfgaard) - there's a moment where, with a lack of confidence in the audience's ability to reason and understand on-screen events, the Cintran king screams out "WE'RE LOSING!" in the middle of the fighting. Unfortunately such utter incompetence in a big-budget fantasy series has become the norm rather than the exception. I hope these simultaneous strikes burn it all down.
Even if you disregard the technical and script-related problems like continuity errors, it's easier to puzzle out the chronology of Dark than the first season of the Witcher, and Dark is a much better show in all respects. Not in the same genre, but it was the first show to come to mind with a significantly jumbled timeline (though it actually serves a purpose in Dark, and is unnecessary in the Witcher).
