The Witcher - Review
Jan. 5th, 2020 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI finished binge-watching The Witcher today, wasn't hard, it only has eight episodes.
Overall? It's an enjoyable and rather entertaining character centric fantasy series, with something interesting to say. Also rather innovative -- not at all what I was led to expect. (I trusted the rec's of various folks on my flist, whose taste fits with my own in regards to fantasy/sci-fi at least, and they were right. It's an admirable effort.) The series, which is adapted from the Polish Fantasy novels published back in the 1980s, incorporates various items from Polish and Eastern European Mythology - which makes it different than your run of the mill fantasy series. (Too many fantasy series focus on Celtic and British mythology, which as result has become rather old hat. It's nice to see monsters that I've not hear of outside of Illona Andrews novels -- Illona Andrews also focused on Eastern European mythos.)
There's three time lines that eventually converge into the present one, where the three characters met up. I got a bit confused because the actress who portrays Renfri and the actress who portrays Yennifer look alike. So much alike that it took me a while to realize that no they aren't the same character. (Was a bit disappointed and ultimately relieved by this turn of events.) You begin to figure out the time lines around the fourth episode, and I figured out that Yennifer and Renfri weren't the same person by the sixth episode. It did explain the slight differences in their facial structure. (Yes, I know I should of picked up on it before then -- but alas, I'm horrible at telling people apart. I'm guessing this was deliberate though -- because Geralt gets involved with both -- so apparently Geralt has a type.)
I know the above could be considered a spoiler -- but I thought I'd save others the confusion.
It is violent, although I don't find it any more violent than X-Files, Supernatural, Legacies, Merlin, The Originals, Doctor Who, etc. It's mainly war violence. I certainly wouldn't put it on the same level as say Outlander, Game of Thrones and The 100 (in that we don't really watch people getting raped and tortured, just slaughtered. Hey, everyone has their standards.) If you can watch X-Files and Supernatural, you should be fine for the most part. At any rate the violence in this didn't bother me as much as I expected. I was mainly thinking -- please don't kill the characters I like, kill of the ones I don't like -- thank you. Also don't kill any dragons. (They didn't. Apparently the writers like Dragons too as opposed to the GoT writers who didn't like dragons and kept killing them. Yes, I'm still holding a grudge about that.)
Henry Caville is rather good as Geralt. I was surprised since the actor has never appealed to me all that much. But he's marvelous in this and perfectly cast. So too is everyone else. It's diverse in casting, and has some exceedingly strong female roles, most of which are quite likable -- surprisingly so. It's weirdly feminist in its themes. And the women are the wizards or mages here --- while the men are the witchers. Interesting flip.
There's some cool monsters in there that represent interesting metaphors. The Striatta who turns out to be the cursed child of a brother and sister, who fell in love. They aren't cursed by their mother, no, they are cursed by the sister's intended. The Striatta is hungry and filled with rage, and has to sleep in her crypt. The Witcher manages to undo the curse by forcing her to be exposed to the light -- which makes her human again. He brings her and her heritage into the light and the curse is broken. Prior to that she looks like and this is the word they use - an abortion, or dead thing that should never have been born and ripped itself out of its mother's belly.
This monster represents a heavy theme in the series about the woman's role as mother and how they are controlled, limited, or desirous of that role. Yennefer gives it up for a straightened spine and beauty -- but later yearns for its return and tries various ways to obtain a cure. She discovers she wants to bring life into the world - when she fails to save a child from an assassin. Then we have Geralt, whose mother gives him up to the Witchers -- to be turned into a Witcher, his mother is a mage.
And he loses Yennifer when she realizes he wished her to be connected to him, so he could sleep, releasing the dijinn and making it impossible for her to cure her infertility. He tells her that she is better off not becoming a mother -- because she'd not make a good one, which she does not take well but is later explained when we meet his mother, who was a mage and had abandoned him.
Prior to all this - we have the woman who is married to a king and is being chased by an assassin, because she can't bear the King a male heir. She tells Yennefer that she has it much worse -- since her whole existence is about providing the male heir, she is nothing but a vessel. So, left to her own resources against the assassin, she offers up the female child as a sacrifice.
The relegation of women to subsidiary roles when they can be much more is explored -- and all of the main female characters show how they are able to expand past those traditional roles. Calatha, the Queen of Cintra and Ciri's grandmother, is a warrior Queen, who rules with an iron fist and a sword on her battlefields. She's a rather complex character -- who has done horrible and good things in the name of furthering her own power base and protecting what is hers. Also she is bit arrogant. Then there is Tissia - who runs the school for Mages, and instructs Yennefer on how to control her power or the chaos inside her. And of course Yennifer who is a mage of considerable yet constrained power herself. And Ciri, who we first meet dressed as a boy playing knuckle bones in the street -- in order to fool Geralt who'd come to claim her.
What surprised me about the series was how unpredictable it is. At one point I'd come to the conclusion that Geralt and Ciri would never meet up. (They do actually in the very last scene. Both run into kind strangers that help them. Geralt saves one. Ciri is saved by one. Turns out the strangers are husband and wife. Geralt's brings him to his home -- where Ciri is. Ciri dashes out into the woods just before he arrives hunting him, because in a dream she sees him yelling and searching for Yennefer, which he was doing in his delirium. When he gets there, he overhears the Merchant's wife state that she picked a young girl in the wood. Struck by the wording which is an echo of Renfri's prophecy that he would not be able to out run the girl in the woods -- who is his destiny and he must find -- he goes into the woods to find her, and she races into his arms. Upon reaching him -- she asks, "Who is Yennefer?") I'm hoping they didn't kill off Yennefer, although I doubt it. She seems to be a major character. Yennefer at the end unleashes the chaos inside her and basically burns the Emperor of Nilfald's army to a crisp, only preserving the mages she cared for. Friginalla -- who was assisting and advising the Emperor with her dark magic most likely never saw Yennefer coming.
The series was the exact opposite of what I expected. Fast paced. Interesting world-building and monsters. Complicated and fascinating male and female characters. A tight and twisty plot. And innovative ideas and themes in a fantasy setting.
Highly recommend. Also only eight episodes, and the eight episodes due resolve in a satisfying climax -- psuedo-cliff-hanger. It's hard to make an ending open-ended, a cliff-hanger, and satisfying all at the same time -- but they manage it. And with in eight episodes. Kudos.
Overall? It's an enjoyable and rather entertaining character centric fantasy series, with something interesting to say. Also rather innovative -- not at all what I was led to expect. (I trusted the rec's of various folks on my flist, whose taste fits with my own in regards to fantasy/sci-fi at least, and they were right. It's an admirable effort.) The series, which is adapted from the Polish Fantasy novels published back in the 1980s, incorporates various items from Polish and Eastern European Mythology - which makes it different than your run of the mill fantasy series. (Too many fantasy series focus on Celtic and British mythology, which as result has become rather old hat. It's nice to see monsters that I've not hear of outside of Illona Andrews novels -- Illona Andrews also focused on Eastern European mythos.)
There's three time lines that eventually converge into the present one, where the three characters met up. I got a bit confused because the actress who portrays Renfri and the actress who portrays Yennifer look alike. So much alike that it took me a while to realize that no they aren't the same character. (Was a bit disappointed and ultimately relieved by this turn of events.) You begin to figure out the time lines around the fourth episode, and I figured out that Yennifer and Renfri weren't the same person by the sixth episode. It did explain the slight differences in their facial structure. (Yes, I know I should of picked up on it before then -- but alas, I'm horrible at telling people apart. I'm guessing this was deliberate though -- because Geralt gets involved with both -- so apparently Geralt has a type.)
I know the above could be considered a spoiler -- but I thought I'd save others the confusion.
It is violent, although I don't find it any more violent than X-Files, Supernatural, Legacies, Merlin, The Originals, Doctor Who, etc. It's mainly war violence. I certainly wouldn't put it on the same level as say Outlander, Game of Thrones and The 100 (in that we don't really watch people getting raped and tortured, just slaughtered. Hey, everyone has their standards.) If you can watch X-Files and Supernatural, you should be fine for the most part. At any rate the violence in this didn't bother me as much as I expected. I was mainly thinking -- please don't kill the characters I like, kill of the ones I don't like -- thank you. Also don't kill any dragons. (They didn't. Apparently the writers like Dragons too as opposed to the GoT writers who didn't like dragons and kept killing them. Yes, I'm still holding a grudge about that.)
Henry Caville is rather good as Geralt. I was surprised since the actor has never appealed to me all that much. But he's marvelous in this and perfectly cast. So too is everyone else. It's diverse in casting, and has some exceedingly strong female roles, most of which are quite likable -- surprisingly so. It's weirdly feminist in its themes. And the women are the wizards or mages here --- while the men are the witchers. Interesting flip.
There's some cool monsters in there that represent interesting metaphors. The Striatta who turns out to be the cursed child of a brother and sister, who fell in love. They aren't cursed by their mother, no, they are cursed by the sister's intended. The Striatta is hungry and filled with rage, and has to sleep in her crypt. The Witcher manages to undo the curse by forcing her to be exposed to the light -- which makes her human again. He brings her and her heritage into the light and the curse is broken. Prior to that she looks like and this is the word they use - an abortion, or dead thing that should never have been born and ripped itself out of its mother's belly.
This monster represents a heavy theme in the series about the woman's role as mother and how they are controlled, limited, or desirous of that role. Yennefer gives it up for a straightened spine and beauty -- but later yearns for its return and tries various ways to obtain a cure. She discovers she wants to bring life into the world - when she fails to save a child from an assassin. Then we have Geralt, whose mother gives him up to the Witchers -- to be turned into a Witcher, his mother is a mage.
And he loses Yennifer when she realizes he wished her to be connected to him, so he could sleep, releasing the dijinn and making it impossible for her to cure her infertility. He tells her that she is better off not becoming a mother -- because she'd not make a good one, which she does not take well but is later explained when we meet his mother, who was a mage and had abandoned him.
Prior to all this - we have the woman who is married to a king and is being chased by an assassin, because she can't bear the King a male heir. She tells Yennefer that she has it much worse -- since her whole existence is about providing the male heir, she is nothing but a vessel. So, left to her own resources against the assassin, she offers up the female child as a sacrifice.
The relegation of women to subsidiary roles when they can be much more is explored -- and all of the main female characters show how they are able to expand past those traditional roles. Calatha, the Queen of Cintra and Ciri's grandmother, is a warrior Queen, who rules with an iron fist and a sword on her battlefields. She's a rather complex character -- who has done horrible and good things in the name of furthering her own power base and protecting what is hers. Also she is bit arrogant. Then there is Tissia - who runs the school for Mages, and instructs Yennefer on how to control her power or the chaos inside her. And of course Yennifer who is a mage of considerable yet constrained power herself. And Ciri, who we first meet dressed as a boy playing knuckle bones in the street -- in order to fool Geralt who'd come to claim her.
What surprised me about the series was how unpredictable it is. At one point I'd come to the conclusion that Geralt and Ciri would never meet up. (They do actually in the very last scene. Both run into kind strangers that help them. Geralt saves one. Ciri is saved by one. Turns out the strangers are husband and wife. Geralt's brings him to his home -- where Ciri is. Ciri dashes out into the woods just before he arrives hunting him, because in a dream she sees him yelling and searching for Yennefer, which he was doing in his delirium. When he gets there, he overhears the Merchant's wife state that she picked a young girl in the wood. Struck by the wording which is an echo of Renfri's prophecy that he would not be able to out run the girl in the woods -- who is his destiny and he must find -- he goes into the woods to find her, and she races into his arms. Upon reaching him -- she asks, "Who is Yennefer?") I'm hoping they didn't kill off Yennefer, although I doubt it. She seems to be a major character. Yennefer at the end unleashes the chaos inside her and basically burns the Emperor of Nilfald's army to a crisp, only preserving the mages she cared for. Friginalla -- who was assisting and advising the Emperor with her dark magic most likely never saw Yennefer coming.
The series was the exact opposite of what I expected. Fast paced. Interesting world-building and monsters. Complicated and fascinating male and female characters. A tight and twisty plot. And innovative ideas and themes in a fantasy setting.
Highly recommend. Also only eight episodes, and the eight episodes due resolve in a satisfying climax -- psuedo-cliff-hanger. It's hard to make an ending open-ended, a cliff-hanger, and satisfying all at the same time -- but they manage it. And with in eight episodes. Kudos.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 02:35 am (UTC)Curious have you seen Rise of Skywalker yet?
I did like Witcher a lot better than expected. They marketed it weirdly.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 04:16 am (UTC)I'll find the link later, but basically, Calanthe is a rare example of "fall due to own bad decisions" in female monarchs in fiction. She is not a lady Macbeth, she is Macbeth, of King Lear, in her own right. She doesn't suddenly go crazy, either. We can see how all her dicisions made sense to her when she was making them.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 02:58 pm (UTC)I did see RoS. I gave it a 7, but then I don't demand much from Star Wars movies. It threw out a bunch of stuff from The Last Jedi, which you may like or not depending on how you viewed that movie. It had the usual implausible events and some stirring moments. If you don't mind spoilers, I can say more.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 05:35 pm (UTC)Haven't read the books yet, but am considering it. They appear to be interesting -- compilations of short stories and novels.
Yes, you may share a vague and pleasant spoiler from the books. I don't know if the series will closely follow it or not. But I did look up the books on Wiki -- right now we're trying to figure out whose older Yennefer or Geralt. (Already know that they got married and adopted Ciri as their daughter in the books, and she trains to become a Witcher. Really cool by the way.)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 05:54 pm (UTC)I'm thoroughly spoiled on it. Been thoroughly spoiled since pretty much August. One of the folks on my flist has been tracking and posting the spoilers. So spoil away.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 06:56 pm (UTC)Some other stuff they left out was any romance between Rose and Finn; Rose barely appears in the movie. They also threw out the "Rey is nobody" idea and replaced it with her being Palpitine's grand daughter (unexplained). I didn't like that aspect of it.
As with TFA, it's very clearly modeled on the respective episode from the first trilogy, for good and for bad. There were, as I said, the usual implausible events, but the battle with Palpitine's ships contained some stirring moments even if they were cheesy. They kind of leave a mystery at the end with Rey's lightsaber. This has generated some exceedingly arcane discussions on some boards, but I don't care. While I didn't dislike the movie, I'll be surprised if I re-watch it and I'm pretty much done with the franchise at this point.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 10:57 pm (UTC)Having rewatched the first episode, I got a better glimpse of Calanthe from beginning to end, since we start the season with her final moments. (I would love for them to cast a young Calanthe in season two and have that first memorable battle. Although the actress who currently has the role is amazing, and I hope they can find a way for her to return as well.)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 01:04 am (UTC)the link I was thinking about is this:
https://andromeda3116.tumblr.com/post/190049666868/i-love-that-the-witcher-proves-how-you-can-have-a
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 02:15 am (UTC)I was considering seeing it this weekend, but it sounds like it makes more sense to wait until it becomes available on television. I was pretty much done with the franchise after Last Jedi. That felt like a good ending place.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 02:24 am (UTC)It also does everything that GoT did wrong, right. It's subverts the traditional medieval fantasy -- by providing us with Calanthe, a female warrior hero who is styled like King Lear and MacBeth, but is female. And goes counter to the tropes, yet at the same time reinforces them.
[I may need to write my own meta. I feel a new obsession coming on -- or rather joining a new fandom. I understand why it has a cult fandom across Eastern Europe. ]
I adored Calanthe -- and agree, I really hope she shows up again. I think she might -- since there's an indication that Ciri's heritage is slowly uncovered. Also this series is really good at utilizing the flashback device to develop character. It may well be the most character centric fantasy series that I've seen in a while.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 03:20 am (UTC)Also, Friginalla, Yennefer, and Triss - and how they are portrayed.
Calanthe vs. Tissa - who are the matriarch's. Or Calanthe vs. Venessa - the mother figures.
There's so much here to play with. Also I could write a meta about Geralt and Jaskiar and Borscht (the Golden Dragon).
I'm in love with this series. Thank you so much for reccing it. I keep rolling it over in my mind and find new things to be happy about. It is the rare series that gets better after you think about it for a bit.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 09:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 01:39 pm (UTC)Particularly since we have a female show-runner at the helm, who is progressive. Much better source material than Game of Thrones. (Is it Yennefer or Ciri? I can totally see it being Ciri. Although Yennefer strikes me as bisexual. She seemed to be into men and women.) It's good that it is on Netflix -- for those aspects, Netflix is far more progressive than HBO. (See Sense 8)
The only problem though with Netflix is that it's weird when it comes to renewing shows for future seasons. It doesn't like anything that has more than 30 episodes. And insists on no more than 6-10 episodes per season now for shows that it produces. That's one of the reasons the Marvel series got cancelled, it's also why Dear White People and a few others did. Also, things can get lost on Netflix. And Netflix has a tendency to yank things often without warning. Not the most reliable of television platforms. But -- if a show has a large enough fandom, and is trending well, it will keep it. Critics don't matter as much as they think they do -- because there are a few critically acclaimed series that got dropped (Dear White People), but they do have an effect.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 08:38 pm (UTC)That's what I was thinking. More than likely Yennefer's is before she hooks up again with Geralt. But Ciri scans lesbian to me for some reason?