THE WITCHER, episode 1 on NETFLIX. . .
. . . was awful.
So, having heard that Netflix was doing this adaptation, I read the first book of Andrzej Sapkowski's series, which the bookstore had, and ordered the rest. The Last Wish (1993) was pretty good --straight-up sword and sorcery, mostly, but a cool interweaving of fairy tales, some fine writing, a few surprisingly moving parts. I especially liked the first short story, "The Witcher."
But this Netflix adaptation.
Some people complained on Twitter that the plot was bewildering. Thanks to having read The Last Wish, I managed to piece together what was going on
The real problems were twofold.
First, the acting. Mainly, none of the male actors did it, or even tried doing it. Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt of Rivia, joins Jamie Dornan (the guy from the Fifty Shades of Grey movies) and Joel Kinnaman (Altered Carbon) as physically amazing-looking male actors with the expressive range of wooden spoons.** Cavill is especially bad, though, because the director's instructions evidently included, "Try for grim, silent, brooding. A man of few words, but imposing. Maybe a dark past."
Unfortunately, rather than imposing or grim, the result was simply dull. The little girl who played Marilka was hilarious, but her part was finished after the episode's first 10 minutes, and her vivaciousness just made Cavill look ten times more statue-esque. Worse, Cavill completely flubbed all the funny lines from the book, e.g., "Good prophecy's should rhyme." And it almost physically pained me to see him trying to deliver Geralt's "The Lesser Evil" speech with anything like believability -- "phoning it in" might be too kind. Sadly, in The Last Wish, Sapkowski's short story about lesser evils is maybe his most complex and interesting. Episode 1 of The Witcher just botched it completely.
The other male actors were just as bad. Stregobor was another intriguing (though unlikeable) character from the book, but the actor decided to read every line as if it Portended Ominous Doom . . . this cliché in fantasy film just won't die, apparently. Really, scripts have to earn their ominous doom -- not just have a gravelly-voiced baritone actor say doom-like things before the plot has even properly begun.
Which brings me back to the second issue. This Witcher adaptation is evidently going for a grimdark / gritty atmosphere. Okay, fine. You're obviously copying Game of Thrones and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, but it's currently popular, this is sword-and-sorcery, so whatever.*** The first problem, though, as mentioned, is how badly the series failed to pull grimdark off. "Boring" does not equate to "intimidating," and what why were so many actors speaking in Dread Whispers, even when having totally normal conversations talking about totally normal things? Speaking of that whole princess sub-plot, by the way, the less said, the better.
The second, problem, though, is that Sapkowski's book isn't grimdark at all. Geralt of Rivia actually has a bit of personality, and while no one will confuse him with Mr. Chuckles, much of Sapkowski's material is surprisingly PG-13. It's one thing for an adaptation to put its own spin on things, but it always astounds me when an adaptation completely fails to recognize what made the original fun in the first place.
---------
**Actually, Joel Kinnaman can at least deliver his lines, but he's never going to win any academy awards.
***It's possible that the series is building more off the video game, which I haven't played or seen.
So, having heard that Netflix was doing this adaptation, I read the first book of Andrzej Sapkowski's series, which the bookstore had, and ordered the rest. The Last Wish (1993) was pretty good --straight-up sword and sorcery, mostly, but a cool interweaving of fairy tales, some fine writing, a few surprisingly moving parts. I especially liked the first short story, "The Witcher."
But this Netflix adaptation.
Some people complained on Twitter that the plot was bewildering. Thanks to having read The Last Wish, I managed to piece together what was going on
The real problems were twofold.
First, the acting. Mainly, none of the male actors did it, or even tried doing it. Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt of Rivia, joins Jamie Dornan (the guy from the Fifty Shades of Grey movies) and Joel Kinnaman (Altered Carbon) as physically amazing-looking male actors with the expressive range of wooden spoons.** Cavill is especially bad, though, because the director's instructions evidently included, "Try for grim, silent, brooding. A man of few words, but imposing. Maybe a dark past."
Unfortunately, rather than imposing or grim, the result was simply dull. The little girl who played Marilka was hilarious, but her part was finished after the episode's first 10 minutes, and her vivaciousness just made Cavill look ten times more statue-esque. Worse, Cavill completely flubbed all the funny lines from the book, e.g., "Good prophecy's should rhyme." And it almost physically pained me to see him trying to deliver Geralt's "The Lesser Evil" speech with anything like believability -- "phoning it in" might be too kind. Sadly, in The Last Wish, Sapkowski's short story about lesser evils is maybe his most complex and interesting. Episode 1 of The Witcher just botched it completely.
The other male actors were just as bad. Stregobor was another intriguing (though unlikeable) character from the book, but the actor decided to read every line as if it Portended Ominous Doom . . . this cliché in fantasy film just won't die, apparently. Really, scripts have to earn their ominous doom -- not just have a gravelly-voiced baritone actor say doom-like things before the plot has even properly begun.
Which brings me back to the second issue. This Witcher adaptation is evidently going for a grimdark / gritty atmosphere. Okay, fine. You're obviously copying Game of Thrones and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, but it's currently popular, this is sword-and-sorcery, so whatever.*** The first problem, though, as mentioned, is how badly the series failed to pull grimdark off. "Boring" does not equate to "intimidating," and what why were so many actors speaking in Dread Whispers, even when having totally normal conversations talking about totally normal things? Speaking of that whole princess sub-plot, by the way, the less said, the better.
The second, problem, though, is that Sapkowski's book isn't grimdark at all. Geralt of Rivia actually has a bit of personality, and while no one will confuse him with Mr. Chuckles, much of Sapkowski's material is surprisingly PG-13. It's one thing for an adaptation to put its own spin on things, but it always astounds me when an adaptation completely fails to recognize what made the original fun in the first place.
---------
**Actually, Joel Kinnaman can at least deliver his lines, but he's never going to win any academy awards.
***It's possible that the series is building more off the video game, which I haven't played or seen.
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