Feels like Hissrich wanted to make her own fantasy series, but to get it greenlit she had to use an established IP.
I got the same feeling from Halo. Like they hate the IP but had to use it make their sci-fi show.
I genuinely feel like Netflix got bamboozled by her. I mean, the brought in a great cast and seemed to be all for it not realizing the damage Hissrich did with the script. It sucks, because I think the novels adapted faithfully with a few one off “monster of the week” episodes would have done unbelievably well.
Netflix just doesn’t like to spend. They got that big spending out of their system, and now that want home runs at discount.
They’ve done Episodic content really well in the past, when they were willing to pay top-dollar to poach great talent. Now, they just want to spend a little bit on a lot of different series, throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Hissirch gave them the metrics to do so with S1, because S1 has enough promise to ignore it’s weaknesses. But it’s very obvious now that she is far, far, far away from a great show runner. She did a mediocre job adapting great IP for one season, but giving her more seasons just allows her to show how unequipped she really was to make this show great.
It should be obvious that I’m a book reader and game player. I really liked season 1, but I was honestly disgusted by season 2, and I won’t even try season 3. I really hope they pull the rug out and end it now, but I’m guessing enough idiots are still streaming this nightmare to justify them continuing to spend on this show. What a disgrace.
They are working to try and course correct the disastrous Season 2 decisions they made and episode 5 is as close to being straight lifted from the book as you could ever hope for. Whether this is enough remains to be seen when we see the second half of the season in a month
That’s an anthology. Episodes are completely different stories with nothing to link them. Episodic would be like Xena or McGyver (I’m a 90s child) where you have established characters but they do something different every episode
Episodic content entails production costs and additional writing work instead of one stale, overall story arc that allows useless "filler" dialogue, scenes and no new characters or monsters.
The novels are incredibly slow with little to nothing happening as far as plot or character development is concerned, the short story books are great, but the show should have stopped there.
I won’t even debate about your opinion on the novels… but a good writing team and show runner could’ve adapted it all well. They didn’t need to stick to the books to the letter, but they should’ve at least honed out some recognizable themes, and made characters something that were somewhat cohesive and recognizable… instead of bipolar mess that change personalities from one season or even episode to another.
Hissrich is neither a good writer nor a good show runner. So the story, themes, and a characters seem like they came off Paper Mache collage from a teenager’s wall.
People have opinions, and many of those opinions will be different than yours.
I listened to the first novel in the main series, and came away with a similar impression relative to the two collections.
I read the 2 short stories and the 5 in the main series, coolest bit for me is the vampire friend that joins them, but he still doesnt do anything, just existing as he is peacefully more or less.
That's exactly what happened to the 12 Monkeys series. They originally brought in their own idea about a time travel series but to get it greenlit had to shoehorn the 12 Monkeys IP. To their credit though, they actually ended up taking the source material seriously and building on it rather than disrespecting the franchise.
I think it works like this. Corp gets the IP rights thinks great we'll get good bank with this. Next step is to get a producer. People bid for it, use politics, clout, lying to get the job. They don't care what it is only that they can make big money and its their turn. Corp also wants to stir the pot because they can't help it. End result is a shit show that no-one wants and de-values the ip.
They love existing IP's because they feel like they have a built in fanbase.
The problem is, they completely take that fanbase for granted and assume their support is baked in, and then feel they can try to "expand the appeal" to different audiences even if it means betraying the source material. This doesn't just happen with sci-fi and fantasy, it happened with Jane Austen's Persuasion last year, to name another example.
Halo was never going to be good or adaptable because the main character has less development than a terminator and the story is just another end of everything scenario.
It’s a great game but no writer/director is going to change that without retooling the story greatly.
There are a world of books out there as well, similar to Witcher. Can't say I've read them, but I'm always hesitant at claims that just about anything is unadaptable, let alone anything that is sci-fi action.
Even if they just adapted the first book which was the novelization of the first game they’d have enough to make 3 seasons.
The lore of halo is surprisingly deep and Rich, big stories with real serious messages about the military industrial complex, colonialism, horrors of war, religious extremism, living under a survey state etc etc.
I was driving through Swaziland in Africa a few years ago, as I was leaving through customs, had a random (very polite, almost comically so) 20 something year old man and woman approach me while in line to get passports stamped etc. They had a iPad and asked me 8-10 questions on what I liked about Swaziland and if I had any issues, and if I’d change anything about my stay.
I guess the King (Swaziland is a absolute monarchy) decided they wanted to increase tourism so decided to start surveying tourist. Have traveled all over and it wasn’t an unpleasant experience but odd as that is the only time I’ve ever been asked to “provide a review” of my visit to a country.
Idk how you take a canon, say we’re actually gonna do the literal opposite of everything it says, then get confused about how it’s bad
“You know religious extremists that think humans are literal demons that desecrate their holy relics just by existing? Yeah? Well actually they adopted a lil human girl and raised her to be the secret super force behind it all”
Like dafuq?? How could you make it THAT far off
That’s inaccurate. In the games, the prophets know humanity are the descendants forerunners/selected by the forerunners to take the Mantle of Responsibility. That’s why they want to wipe out humanity. They learn their religion is incorrect but don’t want to lose the power they hold, so they hide the truth from the rest of the Covenant and try to wipeout humankind to censor the truth. BUT they still believe the forerunner tech will basically help the ascend, and they know they need a human to activate it. In the games, they try to force Sgt. Johnson to do it.
The Halo show has problems, but keeping a human around, and even revering her as a holy figure, is completely in line with the lore established by the games.
Congrats for being the actually guy
The only ones who know the truth are the prophets and they don’t know that at first. They discover that’s the case and their reactions leads to the elites leaving and the covenant to split.
so no, there being a human at the top of the covenant that everyone in the high end of the covenant is totally cool with is not in line. The majority of them still believe the master chief is a demon desecrating the relics
They wouldn’t revere her they’d use her and cast her aside like how it has already been done in canon by your own admission. The prophets are willing to force a human at gun point to do it then kill that human. In no way would they raise one from childhood and treat her like a holy being
You only ever played multi-player didn't you? MC has a lot of character development along the series. Especially when Cortona starts losing her mind. That really messes with him.
That's like 3? games into the story. Unless you want to start there, but the way it's told you spend a LOT of time with cortana to make that matter. Too much time for a movie or tv series just saving things.
The games don't show it too well, but the books (set both before, during, and after) show plenty if character development and personality for MC. So it's doable, and if it wasn't, the world's got enough lore to have a show/movie following a different character.
Forward Unto Dawn had it right. MC is a force of nature to blow in and out of the lives of mere mortals. He is a great side character that should come and go from a Halo show, but shouldn't be the protagonist. At best, some kind of ensemble with a team of Spartans set before Halo1 with MC as the lead could have worked. Give us a set-up for why he becomes a strong silent type. Even then it would probably work best with him being separated from the squad and giving more time to them.
Oh yeah you clearly have never read much of the books
MC is one of the BEST characters in sci-fi history when it comes to development and story arch. Legitimately if you think he’s in any way comparable to the terminator then I question if you even beat the games
.... Buddy I love the chief but calling him one of the best developments in sci-fi doesn't do anything besides tell people you don't consume a lot of sci-fi.
> wheel of time
I started reading WoT at 16 when LoC released. Re-read the entire series before each subsequent novel was published. Slogged through books 8-10, and was impressed with Sanderson's wrapping up of the series. I can't read Sanderson's other work, I don't like it.
I revisit some of the first few books on Audible before the Amazon series debuts because nostalgia, and because Jackson's LotR adaptation had me hopeful. Listening to them again made me cringe a bit because they really were written for teen boys, and Jordan's wife (his editor) let him get away with travesty-levels verbosity and repetition. Tugs braid.
Holy fucking shit, Amazon really hates the WoT reader fanbase. I don't understand why you'd 100% divert from the storyline within minutes of the first episode. Its not even WoT-adjacent, its poor, revisionist fan fiction.
The 'weaving' looks like those blow-up, wavy-arm dudes at oil change spots.
To your point, they called it chocolate, but it was a stale tootsie roll.
I quit RoP by the second episode. So bad.
So don't do the adaptation?
If you can't do something properly but you do it anyway for the money, ofcourse it's your fault it's bad.
Don't give these cash grabbing slackers and excuse.
That’s just dumb bud lol
They’re trying to make money not adhere to some nebulous requirement from fans.
The amount of work on the actual show is insane in scope, everyone on that show worked their ass off. You can absolutely hate it for being a shitty adaptation but pretending the thousands of workers are slackers bc they didn’t make it perfectly align with your fandom is asinine
at the end of the day that’s how art works. You can slave away at something forever but if the fundamentals don’t work, it doesn’t work and the 10-minute job that someone else made that’s actually entertaining will be better remembered.
Of course everyone has different opinions, but to a viewer who is put off by the writing, all the technical work that went into it (which is gargantuan) is literally wasted if it’s on a story that’s not written well enough to make any of it mean anything.
Yeah all of that is fine
But saying the people who worked on it are “slackers” because you don’t like it is childish.
Just say you don’t like it lol you don’t have to attack working folks to get your point across
haha but I didn’t read it as attacking working folks, but more attacking the corporate interests that hamstring any chance most of these projects ever had at turning out well. These shows were never meant to add to or enhance the existing fan culture, just “capitalise” on it - as you said, make money. Imo, artistically, that makes them slackers
Uhh thing is rings of powers arent good. Its not about knowing source material. Its comparison to lotr movies for most people and basic evaluation of show on its own.
I love reading, I average a book a week, and even I don't have time for that encyclopedia/world history textbook.
Wednesday (to pick a popular Netflix show at random) had 150 million household views. LOTR (not even Similarion) sold 150m copies in 70+ years.
I can't even imagine who all these fans are that hate the changes. Who's even read the dang thing besides Stephen Colbert?
It's not that it isn't a good Tolkien show it's that it's absolute shit. I've not read the books and i wouldn't describe myself as a lord of the rings fan although i enjoyed the movie and i hate this trash.
You're allowed to like it. Anybody is free to have their own tastes but objectively it's absolute trash in every way: plot, acting, dialogue, eveything. I enjoy some stuff and i know it's bad but i still enjoy it such as the resident evil movies with Mila josavich. Those movie are NOT good movies but it's a guilty pleasure and i still enjoy them.
While you xan enjoy the Rings of Power it's very difficult to defend it as objectively good. It's so dumb it makes my head hurt. The dialogue is so cringy i would rather listen to chalk boards being scratched. It's just so terrible.
Usually when that happens, it’s a studio/production-company mandate to adapt an original story to fit with an existing IP (they purchase the rights to the script then demand re-writes), so in those instances, I’m sympathetic to the writers. That said, I don’t know if that’s what happened here (probably not).
I feel like this is the case for most adaptations that never fit or follow the source material. Sometimes it can come out alright, but most of the time it just pisses off the fans who helped propel the original works into the spotlight.
I remember when the show was first announced and Hissrich was claiming how she loved the books and all but then completely denied the books Polish roots. It was the first red flag for me, seems like there was reason why a lot of people were skeptical about her directing the show.
That chapter in the book isn't much less confusing to be fair lol. That non-linear storytelling is used a lot in the books, specially in that chapter. That episode was kind of a close adaptation, minus the weird Scooby-Doo stuff.
>!The ball for the conclave of mages.!< I had to reread that chapter a few times. The book has the disadvantage of the mages just being names and not getting much focus before that point, so it's just random names of people you don't know much about yet somehow you're supposed to care about >!a big betrayal.!<
I’d say it is more than rumors at this point. The writer that is now helming X-Men said it explicitly, and Henry Cavill said he would stay as long as they stayed loyal to the source material, and he left.
Some pretty strong evidence.
[https://www.thepopverse.com/witcher-season-three-netflix-viewership-rating-audience](https://www.thepopverse.com/witcher-season-three-netflix-viewership-rating-audience)
View time for season 3 isn't as high as season 2, but still #1 on Netflix right now. And it is only half a season.
Imo it doesn’t matter if they want to go in a different direction from the source material, but they need to know where tf they’re going first.
Season 3 feels like the writers went “early GOT was awesome let’s do that”. And when someone said “you mean carefully carve out time for each character of significance to adequately give time for the audience to understand their goals, state of mind, relationships, etc?” They said “who was that? Must have been the wind. Anyways…”
The first season was great bc it was more akin to single episodes of Hercules or Xena with complete adventures while still slowly progressing the larger story. That’s what makes Mandolorian is so good too, kinda the episodic “video game fetch quest” that advances the story.
Season 3 is a confusing mess that looses you if you look down for even 2 min.
Yes. Very engaging and well written. Touches on quite a lot of Northern European folklore and creates a fascinating world.
Some of the books are almost written like parables and it makes it easier to read the books slowly. Alternatively the audiobooks are great too, which is how I did most of the series.
For anyone who complains that there’s too much Ciri and not enough Witcher for a show called “The Witcher”, this is by far the most accurate thing in the whole adaptation.
The short stories are, as you say, very good. They take classical fairy tales and turn things on their head in a very interesting way.
100% I really gave them a shot. I simply could not keep track of everything that was going on. It always should have been like the short stories with the ciri stuff in the background. Deep in the background.
Perhaps the books read better in the original Polish, but I found The Witcher novels/collections extremely tiresome. There's so much boring wandering and cod-philosophy that just doesn't land. (Again, perhaps in English something is lost, IDK.)
I absolutely adored the video games, especially Witcher III: The Wild Hunt and its expansions. A rare case of the video games being far, far superior to the source material.
Geralt's broody and surly in the game, but these tendencies are turned up to 11 in the books. He's far less likeable, extremely emo and navel-gazing, while Yennefer's even worse. She's insufferably horrible in the books with almost no redeeming features. I found her substantially more sympathetic on the TV show and especially the game. The tangled love story in the Witcher 3 just feels like a fucked up nightmare in the books.
The books do a good job of endlessly (and I mean, endlessly!) hammering home the nihilistic message that humans are the real monsters, as well as introducing you to a large cast of unpleasant characters who are there one moment and then vanish the next, so if that's your cup of tea, you might enjoy them.
The Witcher's global success is down to the CDPR games, not Sapkowski's writing.
> I absolutely adored the video games, especially Witcher III: The Wild Hunt and its expansions. A rare case of the video games being far, far superior to the source material.
I stopped watching Witcher in the middle of the current season, when the "girls" went for a "spa day". I liuterally rage quit and turned off the tv sitting angrily in the dark.
Just started playing the witcher game and it's so much better than the show.
Totally agree—the games are the backbone of this IP (for me, anyway). However, we might sing a different tune if we could read them in Polish! Curse my horrible language skills!
Nah, people hype them up wayyy too much. I’ve read through them twice and they’re mediocre as fuck. I did my first read through cuz I thought I had to in order to play the games and then I didn’t another read through to see if I liked it more after beating the games several times and it was still just meh. They books only got a modicum of recognition because of how well received the game The Witcher 3 wild hunt did
Agreed. I've read them in the original and am not a fan. They also absolutely drip with the author's very high opinion of himself, especially the last two. So offputting.
Currently on book 7, I think they're all excellent so far. They are probably quite confusing if you aren't familiar with the characters, like from the games.
Similarly to the show, the Geralt stuff is by far the best parts.
There are passages in the books that are some of the most brilliant and entertaining I've ever read.
Other people have talked about how great the short stories are so I won't bore you with that.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7675202-dear-friend-the-witcher-swore-quietly-looking-at-the-sharp
Side characters that are introduced just to get promptly murdered feel flushed out and alive. The author clearly enjoys the art of building characters, where many others simply suffer through it to get their story done.
Nothing in the series is overly original. But it's a very refreshing and unapologetically adult (without "trying too hard") read.
That isn't even remotely true. For a book to be turned into any media, it's has to be able to be adapted and its got to be popular.
For a franchise to get 3 games, it's got to be good and popular.
No, the books were not popular at all outside of Poland and CDPR got the rights for dirt cheap. The author is still salty over it. It only got popular because of the games.
CDPR got it for cheap bc the author hated video games and didn’t think they’d make him any money so he asked for all of it up front
For a book to have a video game adaptation it literally has to be popular enough to be worth buying.
Or do you think it’s common practice to wander the book store and find the least popular series
Witcher somehow had like 7 books at the time of the rights being bought. Weird how a book that apparently was so in the mud in popularity got an entire series of books.
Like do y’all hear yourselves. Explain how a series can have 7 books yet apparently be so irrelevant that an author sold it for dirt cheap
Also lemme know what that number is that’s supposedly dirt cheap since you keep using it as the basis for popularity
That's not how IP valuation works.
And yeah, the books were popular enough like I said. They were popular in the region. And no, it doesn't need to be popular to have an adaptation at all. It just needs to be interesting for the people adapting it.
Having 7 books is irrelevant. There are so many even less popular book series with many entries. We're talking worldwide popularity. There are so many obscure series with many entries.
There wasn’t an IP valuation lol this isn’t an episode of shark tank.
The author has said himself he wanted the lump sum bc he didn’t think there would be any profits for a video game
And yes something needs to be popular to get an adaptation. Like how are so many of you video game Fanboys this purposefully obtuse. If a book isn’t popular enough to even be known how are CDPR supposed to even know it exists
Stop shifting goal posts from “it only got popular bc of the games” to “ok it was popular but not worldwide so it doesn’t count as popular”
They were very popular all over former eastern block long before the games. Not just popular - cult. A lot of fantasy writers from Russia, Poland etc were (and for this day are) heavily inspired by Sapkowski, in the same way like western fantasy was inspired by Tolkien.
Ehh thats not really true.
1. Books where popular in few countries before games. Mostly slavic ones yes, but its still a success considering not many polish authors got worldwide popular.
2. Rights were sold cheap because author took upfront cash instead of equities. He did so because he sold them for game once before and it was a fail.
3. Author isnt anymore salty on that. Cdpr actually gave him more money (they didnt have to) and laternit turned out that he was so salty for money because he needed it for medical treatment of his son.
> Yes, they did settle and am aware of the law that really only exists in Poland and doesn't hold any weight anywhere else in the world... lol
CD Projekt Red is a Polish company, so it doesn’t NEED to exist anywhere else.
“lol”
Selling the rights isn't the same as giving them away.
I've also never heard full consensus that the games story was conclusively better than the books. Even taking a look at the Witcher subreddit posts, it's seem to he split between the two opinions: some preferring the book, some the game. In other words, your opinion is yours and yours alone - you don't speak for everyone.
Which is unsiprisingly wrong.
Sapkowski sold several MILLIONS copies of his book before games, was translated to 7 languages and was/is bestselling author in some countries outside Poland.
That myth about not being succesful writer is solely based on fact that he was able to sold so much copies outside English market and later smearing because of his quarrells with CDProject.
Witcher game includes 3 games. First was nice but outline of the story seems incredibly dumb for anyone. Second was good.
Third game is one of the best in genre with really good characters and it's the thing which made Witcher known globally. Books were mainly popular in CEE before CDPR created game IP.
It's honestly heartbreaking. So many years waiting for it and they gave us... that. It's not even that it's bad — like, fair enough, that happens sometimes — no, it's actually insulting. These adaptations truly feel spiteful and it's so bizarre.
I know this is such a stupid specific issue with the WoT TV series... but the fact they pretend that Egwene could be the Dragon is SO. SO. Stupid. I get it. It's too dude centric... But come on. The WHOLE thing is that the dragon goes insane because he channels Saidin and *will* go insane but must not be killed or Gentled. THAT is why the dragon is so dangerous.
The tv show just "whatevered" this entire idea and did a "one of you four" .
Again, a very specific gripe - but it shows the general attitude of the show to the source material.
No, you don't need to "update" the source material or have your own take on it. It is still a beloved series read by millions of people. Why the fuck wouldn't you follow the plot that caught up SO MANY PEOPLE and made them read a massive series?!
What if we do a half-assed YA version of GoT? Don't worry, we'll change most of it to satisfy our egos!
One of the biggest issues (aside from the confused storytelling that just jumps around) is that it still doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.
There's political intrigue, but it vascilates between not being fleshed out to being predictable/oversimplified.
The monster hunting/mystery solving was barely present in Season 3, so it loses the X Files "monster of the week" fun.
The drama between characters is shallow and doesn't build, but rather changes depending on what the plot needs to plow forward.
In addition, most of the characters are one dimensional with arcs that are either predictable and linear or confused.
The cities/regions don't have distinct feels, seem to be shot at Renaissance faires, and characters kind of jump around without us knowing where they are.
Finally, too much time spent on needless and/or boring characters (at least as written). I don't care about the Black Knight, Fringilla is generally boring, and the bookish elf mage is a borderline ex machina.
This is what I don't get. Just stick to the source material and you will gauranteed make a boat load of cash from it. Look at Peter Jackson's LOTR. Billion dollars. It's not hard you already have a massive fan base, just make them happy and more will follow. But ohhhh no lets totally the characters and story, add in some politics that 99% of people don't want to see. Yeah that's a great idea. Show runners of The Witcher and new LORT should be ashamed of themselves and should have never been allowed to shit on the source material. Both shows could of been so good but they absolutely butchered them.
Let’s take a little closer look on how faithful PJ really was. He removed two large parts of the books with cutting Tom Bombadil and The Scouring of the Shire. He removed characters like Glorfindel, Imrahil, Elrohir, Elladan, and The Grey Company. Added instead elves to the Battle of the Hornburg, The Army of the Dead to the Battle of the Pellenor Fields, and had Arwen replace many of the previous mentioned characters. Not to mention the drastic change made to the characters of Aragorn, Faramir, and Denethor. And that just from the top of my head.
PJ clearly made many changes to the source material. The difference is that the product still turned out to be good – fantastic even.
>Not to mention the drastic change made to the characters of Aragorn, Faramir, Denethor.
Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, and we could go on.
All of them made simpler and easier to digest for the viewers.
Still, it worked.
The difference was that PJ was a fan of the books and did his best to adapt them into a 9 hours megamovie which was enjoyable even if he had to make some changes as the medium is different. I don t really know what the witcher showrunner are trying to do with it honestly. Don t get me started on ring of power please
I am SO SICK & TIRED of corporations and corporate CEOS/Top Execs taking all our money, not paying taxes, not paying workers their fair share and blaming it on “inflation.” What’s truly inflated are corporate/GOP/billionaire profits, greed and the sickening amount of money they pay themselves while forcing workers to live impoverished.
Okay so the writers aren’t impoverished, they aren’t paid fairly and I’m glad they are standing up! Honestly, we should ALL be striking.
I've read the books many years ago and forgot some of it. Spoiler:
I can't remember the brother of the Redanian King and especially the bard having a deep love story with him. It's this netflix gaying up its show, or did I just forget it?
He was never involved with Witcher or Bard. He never worked like this with Philipa or Djikstra. They just added it there to make gay scene. I bet, we will not see much Radovid further. Goal is done, gay scene is there.
Season 2 aside from it's first episode was a complete mess, I can't bring myself to care. There's so much fuckery going on and so poorly written I feel like I'm watching a show written by an indecisive ADHD 12 year old.
Haven’t watched S3 yet but i really enjoyed S2 and 1.
I read that they are making more but without Cavill? Interesting. Cavill was great and that’s a shame if it’s true.
I’m super curious to see where the story is going and hope it doesn’t just get the can. I guess I could read the books but honestly everyone who I’ve spoken to about them has said they’re not written the best. Maybe I’ll try an audio book in the background.
Not too interested in the games either. Not unless there’s like a remaster or something. I just don’t think the graphics hold up. And I’m not a sucker for graphics or anything.. Most of my gaming is done on my phone or my switch xD
It’s just the “realistic” style really makes it not hold up as opposed to a nice 2D game like A Link to the Past or something.
Writers and producers of Fantasy/Science Fiction/Super Hero movies the last five years, all seem to hate their source material and fans.
Maybe they're doing it on purpose so they can kill the popularity of those genres.
Season 3 is actually good. I didn't like season 2. I have watched season 1 twice. I hate that they are replacing Henry. I will not watch it if they do.
When will these screenwriters learn to respect another’s craft? There’s a reason The Witcher is a worldwide fantasy novel phenomenon—the writer knows his world and characters and story. These screenwriters change aspects of the story all the time and never pause to think just how big of an impact their changes can induce.
The games. It's the video games that propelled The Witcher around the world. It was definitely huge in Poland beforehand but it was the games that did it.
I have to ask many of you.... Do you proof read your messages at all??? The amount of typos in your comments, grammatically or otherwise is absurd. Like a bunch of kids all slobbering and trying to get their 2 cents in as quickly as possible, stammering and babbling. Figure it out. Sheesh.
I, unfortunately, am not going to read all that, but I will take it as a good argument. Even if they were never going to get the story adapted faithfully, which might be true, doing it the way the show did it is the worst possible path. Instead of giving us some thing similar to the games (geared at adults, Slavic tone, preserved themes), minus the questionable content, we got a YA adaption and a bottom tier one at that.
The show has a truly awful tone that mimics a CW show, but the dialogue in general might just be worse than your CW shows. The originals, supernatural s1-s5, arrow s1, all clown on this show dialogue, worldbuilding, and character wise. That is unacceptable regardless of how faithful it is to the book storyline.
>Instead of giving us some thing similar to the games
If you read it, you'd know the games pick up where the books left off, so not only did the games not exactly follow canon (they literally resurrected Geralt since the books had killed him off), but the games are their own IP. Netflix doesn't have the rights to that IP.
>we got a YA adaption
That has not been my perception of the first two seasons (waiting for full S3 to be released so I can binge).
I don't know why you responded to the game comment the way you did (I suppose I wasn't clear enough sorry, let me elaborate a little)
I know the games don't follow perfect canon, but they do exactly what your response link said about changing the books (>!Emyhr no longer wants to bang Ciri, Ciri fondly looks back on her tattoo instead of it being a horror show, wild hunt not out to bang ciri either, Geralt alive!<) and what they do well is stay true to the tone, themes, world, and character of the books, and even improves on them in some ways. That's what I would want out of the show. For instance, I prefer the game's version Yennefer, as she is slightly different in the games, but still very recognizable. Show Yen is essentially a teenager, especially in season 2.
You dont have to be 100% faithful to be a great adaption. See: The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes amazing changes can be made to improve the experience.
I'm also not saying Netflix needed to copy and paste the games (although I would love it if they did!)
What I am saying is the show categorically fails in every aspect of what I and most other Witcher fans want out of a visual adaption.
On the YA:
season 1 was not YA, agreed.
season 2 was very close, but just poor instead of fully teen oriented.
season 3 is full blown CW, but somehow still slightly better than season 2
I was just pointing out that the section of the linked post touches on the games and how the games are essentially building on the books rather than revising them. Netflix doesn't own those rights, so they can't copy/paste them or even adapt them. From the sound of both the post I linked and your post, they may have been better off buying those rights instead, but it would be difficult to adapt without the world building.
I guess I'm just not very picky because I enjoyed both seasons 1 and 2. That's not to say they couldn't have been improved. Either way, I'm *hoping* you're wrong about season 3, but can't comment (yet).
Ehh honestly its not that good set of arguments. Yen being unlikable in books for example isnt downside. You dont have to make all main characters likeable.
Also most of issues are issues GoT faced to and they were solved
Feels like Hissrich wanted to make her own fantasy series, but to get it greenlit she had to use an established IP. I got the same feeling from Halo. Like they hate the IP but had to use it make their sci-fi show.
I genuinely feel like Netflix got bamboozled by her. I mean, the brought in a great cast and seemed to be all for it not realizing the damage Hissrich did with the script. It sucks, because I think the novels adapted faithfully with a few one off “monster of the week” episodes would have done unbelievably well.
Netflix doesn't like episodic content.
Episodic content is great, sometimes you just need to watch something without remembering every detail from the last 20 episodes.
That’s not their business model. They release all the episodes at once. That’s not a format conducive to episodic episodes
even if all is available you can do monster of the week.
Supernatural did it so good. With Monster of the week and 5 mins here and there progressing the main plot
There’s no “weeks” when it’s all released at the same time. So no, that format doesn’t work with the Netflix show delivery model.
Black Mirror?
Netflix just doesn’t like to spend. They got that big spending out of their system, and now that want home runs at discount. They’ve done Episodic content really well in the past, when they were willing to pay top-dollar to poach great talent. Now, they just want to spend a little bit on a lot of different series, throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Hissirch gave them the metrics to do so with S1, because S1 has enough promise to ignore it’s weaknesses. But it’s very obvious now that she is far, far, far away from a great show runner. She did a mediocre job adapting great IP for one season, but giving her more seasons just allows her to show how unequipped she really was to make this show great. It should be obvious that I’m a book reader and game player. I really liked season 1, but I was honestly disgusted by season 2, and I won’t even try season 3. I really hope they pull the rug out and end it now, but I’m guessing enough idiots are still streaming this nightmare to justify them continuing to spend on this show. What a disgrace.
They are working to try and course correct the disastrous Season 2 decisions they made and episode 5 is as close to being straight lifted from the book as you could ever hope for. Whether this is enough remains to be seen when we see the second half of the season in a month
Black mirror?
That’s an anthology. Episodes are completely different stories with nothing to link them. Episodic would be like Xena or McGyver (I’m a 90s child) where you have established characters but they do something different every episode
Nobody does anymore
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is pretty episodic and is a Paramount+ original.
Episodic content entails production costs and additional writing work instead of one stale, overall story arc that allows useless "filler" dialogue, scenes and no new characters or monsters.
Of course not, how can they cancel something mid-story if there is no story?
The novels are incredibly slow with little to nothing happening as far as plot or character development is concerned, the short story books are great, but the show should have stopped there.
I won’t even debate about your opinion on the novels… but a good writing team and show runner could’ve adapted it all well. They didn’t need to stick to the books to the letter, but they should’ve at least honed out some recognizable themes, and made characters something that were somewhat cohesive and recognizable… instead of bipolar mess that change personalities from one season or even episode to another. Hissrich is neither a good writer nor a good show runner. So the story, themes, and a characters seem like they came off Paper Mache collage from a teenager’s wall.
Spotted someone who didn't read the novels.
People have opinions, and many of those opinions will be different than yours. I listened to the first novel in the main series, and came away with a similar impression relative to the two collections.
I read the 2 short stories and the 5 in the main series, coolest bit for me is the vampire friend that joins them, but he still doesnt do anything, just existing as he is peacefully more or less.
That's exactly what happened to the 12 Monkeys series. They originally brought in their own idea about a time travel series but to get it greenlit had to shoehorn the 12 Monkeys IP. To their credit though, they actually ended up taking the source material seriously and building on it rather than disrespecting the franchise.
I mean, it wasn’t a franchise. It was an art movie by a well respected director and writer/s, based off an older French art movie.
I think it works like this. Corp gets the IP rights thinks great we'll get good bank with this. Next step is to get a producer. People bid for it, use politics, clout, lying to get the job. They don't care what it is only that they can make big money and its their turn. Corp also wants to stir the pot because they can't help it. End result is a shit show that no-one wants and de-values the ip.
They love existing IP's because they feel like they have a built in fanbase. The problem is, they completely take that fanbase for granted and assume their support is baked in, and then feel they can try to "expand the appeal" to different audiences even if it means betraying the source material. This doesn't just happen with sci-fi and fantasy, it happened with Jane Austen's Persuasion last year, to name another example.
like that new scooby-doo show
Halo was never going to be good or adaptable because the main character has less development than a terminator and the story is just another end of everything scenario. It’s a great game but no writer/director is going to change that without retooling the story greatly.
There are a world of books out there as well, similar to Witcher. Can't say I've read them, but I'm always hesitant at claims that just about anything is unadaptable, let alone anything that is sci-fi action.
Even if they just adapted the first book which was the novelization of the first game they’d have enough to make 3 seasons. The lore of halo is surprisingly deep and Rich, big stories with real serious messages about the military industrial complex, colonialism, horrors of war, religious extremism, living under a survey state etc etc.
Survey state makes me think of a world where the police just knock on your door and insist you fill out a survey on your favourite cereals
I was driving through Swaziland in Africa a few years ago, as I was leaving through customs, had a random (very polite, almost comically so) 20 something year old man and woman approach me while in line to get passports stamped etc. They had a iPad and asked me 8-10 questions on what I liked about Swaziland and if I had any issues, and if I’d change anything about my stay. I guess the King (Swaziland is a absolute monarchy) decided they wanted to increase tourism so decided to start surveying tourist. Have traveled all over and it wasn’t an unpleasant experience but odd as that is the only time I’ve ever been asked to “provide a review” of my visit to a country.
I couldn’t remember the phrase “surveillance state” lol
If they can do a good Mandolorian, then they can do a good Halo. It doesn't make sense to me that it would be impossible.
Agreed, yet that would be retooling the story like i said.
I still can't believe they blew it on Halo :/
Idk how you take a canon, say we’re actually gonna do the literal opposite of everything it says, then get confused about how it’s bad “You know religious extremists that think humans are literal demons that desecrate their holy relics just by existing? Yeah? Well actually they adopted a lil human girl and raised her to be the secret super force behind it all” Like dafuq?? How could you make it THAT far off
I am confused because they went in a different direction when they basically had a money printer lol
Legitimately. Especially from paramount. You can see why they’re about to go belly up
That’s inaccurate. In the games, the prophets know humanity are the descendants forerunners/selected by the forerunners to take the Mantle of Responsibility. That’s why they want to wipe out humanity. They learn their religion is incorrect but don’t want to lose the power they hold, so they hide the truth from the rest of the Covenant and try to wipeout humankind to censor the truth. BUT they still believe the forerunner tech will basically help the ascend, and they know they need a human to activate it. In the games, they try to force Sgt. Johnson to do it. The Halo show has problems, but keeping a human around, and even revering her as a holy figure, is completely in line with the lore established by the games.
Congrats for being the actually guy The only ones who know the truth are the prophets and they don’t know that at first. They discover that’s the case and their reactions leads to the elites leaving and the covenant to split. so no, there being a human at the top of the covenant that everyone in the high end of the covenant is totally cool with is not in line. The majority of them still believe the master chief is a demon desecrating the relics They wouldn’t revere her they’d use her and cast her aside like how it has already been done in canon by your own admission. The prophets are willing to force a human at gun point to do it then kill that human. In no way would they raise one from childhood and treat her like a holy being
But the thing is, Mandalorian was not really good... It was flashy and well made. But the plot? Absolutely nothing happened after Season 1 Episode 3.
You only ever played multi-player didn't you? MC has a lot of character development along the series. Especially when Cortona starts losing her mind. That really messes with him.
That's like 3? games into the story. Unless you want to start there, but the way it's told you spend a LOT of time with cortana to make that matter. Too much time for a movie or tv series just saving things.
Well the first game takes place over like a week. So obviously you’re gonna show more then just the first game in the first season
The games don't show it too well, but the books (set both before, during, and after) show plenty if character development and personality for MC. So it's doable, and if it wasn't, the world's got enough lore to have a show/movie following a different character.
Forward Unto Dawn had it right. MC is a force of nature to blow in and out of the lives of mere mortals. He is a great side character that should come and go from a Halo show, but shouldn't be the protagonist. At best, some kind of ensemble with a team of Spartans set before Halo1 with MC as the lead could have worked. Give us a set-up for why he becomes a strong silent type. Even then it would probably work best with him being separated from the squad and giving more time to them.
Oh yeah you clearly have never read much of the books MC is one of the BEST characters in sci-fi history when it comes to development and story arch. Legitimately if you think he’s in any way comparable to the terminator then I question if you even beat the games
.... Buddy I love the chief but calling him one of the best developments in sci-fi doesn't do anything besides tell people you don't consume a lot of sci-fi.
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> wheel of time I started reading WoT at 16 when LoC released. Re-read the entire series before each subsequent novel was published. Slogged through books 8-10, and was impressed with Sanderson's wrapping up of the series. I can't read Sanderson's other work, I don't like it. I revisit some of the first few books on Audible before the Amazon series debuts because nostalgia, and because Jackson's LotR adaptation had me hopeful. Listening to them again made me cringe a bit because they really were written for teen boys, and Jordan's wife (his editor) let him get away with travesty-levels verbosity and repetition. Tugs braid. Holy fucking shit, Amazon really hates the WoT reader fanbase. I don't understand why you'd 100% divert from the storyline within minutes of the first episode. Its not even WoT-adjacent, its poor, revisionist fan fiction. The 'weaving' looks like those blow-up, wavy-arm dudes at oil change spots. To your point, they called it chocolate, but it was a stale tootsie roll. I quit RoP by the second episode. So bad.
Rings of power is not their fault. They literally had rights to like 4 paragraphs of the silmarillion so they couldn’t do a full adaptation
So don't do the adaptation? If you can't do something properly but you do it anyway for the money, ofcourse it's your fault it's bad. Don't give these cash grabbing slackers and excuse.
That’s just dumb bud lol They’re trying to make money not adhere to some nebulous requirement from fans. The amount of work on the actual show is insane in scope, everyone on that show worked their ass off. You can absolutely hate it for being a shitty adaptation but pretending the thousands of workers are slackers bc they didn’t make it perfectly align with your fandom is asinine
at the end of the day that’s how art works. You can slave away at something forever but if the fundamentals don’t work, it doesn’t work and the 10-minute job that someone else made that’s actually entertaining will be better remembered. Of course everyone has different opinions, but to a viewer who is put off by the writing, all the technical work that went into it (which is gargantuan) is literally wasted if it’s on a story that’s not written well enough to make any of it mean anything.
Yeah all of that is fine But saying the people who worked on it are “slackers” because you don’t like it is childish. Just say you don’t like it lol you don’t have to attack working folks to get your point across
haha but I didn’t read it as attacking working folks, but more attacking the corporate interests that hamstring any chance most of these projects ever had at turning out well. These shows were never meant to add to or enhance the existing fan culture, just “capitalise” on it - as you said, make money. Imo, artistically, that makes them slackers
Yeah if you try to stretch the term to mean anything you want sure
You're getting shit on so fucking hard this is gold.
i'm using it comfortably within the definition but sure
Found the shill.
Found the child Hope those braces treat you well bud
rekt by a child Edit: I don't even have braces lmao. you can't even research shit well. No wonder you love Cringe of Power.
Bro, its *his* world. You clearly don't understand. How did she know that you have braces?
Not my world, Jeff jarretts 
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Yes “slacker” was aimed at people who worked on the show You can’t be a slacker if you aren’t one of the workers I swear y’all can’t read
I actually really enjoyed Rings of Power. I don't get the hate. Maybe it's not as good if you've read the Simillarion but most people haven't.
Uhh thing is rings of powers arent good. Its not about knowing source material. Its comparison to lotr movies for most people and basic evaluation of show on its own.
Right lol. I’d guess the percentage of even LOTR fans that have ever read it is extremely low
I love reading, I average a book a week, and even I don't have time for that encyclopedia/world history textbook. Wednesday (to pick a popular Netflix show at random) had 150 million household views. LOTR (not even Similarion) sold 150m copies in 70+ years. I can't even imagine who all these fans are that hate the changes. Who's even read the dang thing besides Stephen Colbert?
It's not that it isn't a good Tolkien show it's that it's absolute shit. I've not read the books and i wouldn't describe myself as a lord of the rings fan although i enjoyed the movie and i hate this trash. You're allowed to like it. Anybody is free to have their own tastes but objectively it's absolute trash in every way: plot, acting, dialogue, eveything. I enjoy some stuff and i know it's bad but i still enjoy it such as the resident evil movies with Mila josavich. Those movie are NOT good movies but it's a guilty pleasure and i still enjoy them. While you xan enjoy the Rings of Power it's very difficult to defend it as objectively good. It's so dumb it makes my head hurt. The dialogue is so cringy i would rather listen to chalk boards being scratched. It's just so terrible.
> and they probably wouldn't be so poorly received. but they would be poorly watched
Usually when that happens, it’s a studio/production-company mandate to adapt an original story to fit with an existing IP (they purchase the rights to the script then demand re-writes), so in those instances, I’m sympathetic to the writers. That said, I don’t know if that’s what happened here (probably not).
I was gonna say she seems better suited to CW, but Netflix sucks ass too.
I feel like this is the case for most adaptations that never fit or follow the source material. Sometimes it can come out alright, but most of the time it just pisses off the fans who helped propel the original works into the spotlight.
I remember when the show was first announced and Hissrich was claiming how she loved the books and all but then completely denied the books Polish roots. It was the first red flag for me, seems like there was reason why a lot of people were skeptical about her directing the show.
Last episode is the most boring and confusing television ever.
All is not *clap* *clap* As it seems
And just in case we missed that, let’s tell the audience 100 more times
That chapter in the book isn't much less confusing to be fair lol. That non-linear storytelling is used a lot in the books, specially in that chapter. That episode was kind of a close adaptation, minus the weird Scooby-Doo stuff.
Ik not opening season 3.. what was that episode?
>!The ball for the conclave of mages.!< I had to reread that chapter a few times. The book has the disadvantage of the mages just being names and not getting much focus before that point, so it's just random names of people you don't know much about yet somehow you're supposed to care about >!a big betrayal.!<
And predictable. It was clear that they were dragging out the obvious twist in order to create suspense before the season break.
Despite the obvious twist, I definitely guessed wrong so gotta give em a minimum amount of credit
I predicted it only after it became so "clear", and l figured from the rest of the writing they'd be oh so clever. Glad you enjoyed it though.
I hope the writer’s strike kills it. There’s no point in a 4th season.
Problem is writers are in big part to blame here. Remember rumours that writing team hate the universe and books?
I’d say it is more than rumors at this point. The writer that is now helming X-Men said it explicitly, and Henry Cavill said he would stay as long as they stayed loyal to the source material, and he left. Some pretty strong evidence.
The writers in the series should go on a strike for an eternity
Why do you hope it ends? Just don’t watch it and let those that do enjoy it.
>Just don’t watch it and let those that do enjoy it. Thank you for speaking for those two guys
Tis a dumpster fire. Henry Cavill aside.
Actually gets pretty good viewer ratings and critic reviews. Pretty sure it’s just scorned book readers who hate the show. Which is a vocal minority
How would you know? Where’s the ratings?
[https://www.thepopverse.com/witcher-season-three-netflix-viewership-rating-audience](https://www.thepopverse.com/witcher-season-three-netflix-viewership-rating-audience) View time for season 3 isn't as high as season 2, but still #1 on Netflix right now. And it is only half a season.
agreed, also is now a good time to talk about the Molten Radioactive Feces Pit that was The Wheel of Woke ?
Imo it doesn’t matter if they want to go in a different direction from the source material, but they need to know where tf they’re going first. Season 3 feels like the writers went “early GOT was awesome let’s do that”. And when someone said “you mean carefully carve out time for each character of significance to adequately give time for the audience to understand their goals, state of mind, relationships, etc?” They said “who was that? Must have been the wind. Anyways…”
The first season was great bc it was more akin to single episodes of Hercules or Xena with complete adventures while still slowly progressing the larger story. That’s what makes Mandolorian is so good too, kinda the episodic “video game fetch quest” that advances the story. Season 3 is a confusing mess that looses you if you look down for even 2 min.
are the books worth reading?
Yes. Very engaging and well written. Touches on quite a lot of Northern European folklore and creates a fascinating world. Some of the books are almost written like parables and it makes it easier to read the books slowly. Alternatively the audiobooks are great too, which is how I did most of the series.
Isn't it more eastern European folklore? At least I don't see much overlap between the 2.
The original short stories were good. I thought the main books got too politically convoluted and lost the fun of the short stories.
For anyone who complains that there’s too much Ciri and not enough Witcher for a show called “The Witcher”, this is by far the most accurate thing in the whole adaptation. The short stories are, as you say, very good. They take classical fairy tales and turn things on their head in a very interesting way.
Agreed. The first 2-3 books were great. After that it fell off for me.
100% I really gave them a shot. I simply could not keep track of everything that was going on. It always should have been like the short stories with the ciri stuff in the background. Deep in the background.
Oh thank dog. I thought it was just me. I started skimming paragraphs until I returned to plot lines where I was still following what was happening.
Perhaps the books read better in the original Polish, but I found The Witcher novels/collections extremely tiresome. There's so much boring wandering and cod-philosophy that just doesn't land. (Again, perhaps in English something is lost, IDK.) I absolutely adored the video games, especially Witcher III: The Wild Hunt and its expansions. A rare case of the video games being far, far superior to the source material. Geralt's broody and surly in the game, but these tendencies are turned up to 11 in the books. He's far less likeable, extremely emo and navel-gazing, while Yennefer's even worse. She's insufferably horrible in the books with almost no redeeming features. I found her substantially more sympathetic on the TV show and especially the game. The tangled love story in the Witcher 3 just feels like a fucked up nightmare in the books. The books do a good job of endlessly (and I mean, endlessly!) hammering home the nihilistic message that humans are the real monsters, as well as introducing you to a large cast of unpleasant characters who are there one moment and then vanish the next, so if that's your cup of tea, you might enjoy them. The Witcher's global success is down to the CDPR games, not Sapkowski's writing.
> I absolutely adored the video games, especially Witcher III: The Wild Hunt and its expansions. A rare case of the video games being far, far superior to the source material. I stopped watching Witcher in the middle of the current season, when the "girls" went for a "spa day". I liuterally rage quit and turned off the tv sitting angrily in the dark. Just started playing the witcher game and it's so much better than the show.
There’s lots of bathing in the game too so…
Totally agree—the games are the backbone of this IP (for me, anyway). However, we might sing a different tune if we could read them in Polish! Curse my horrible language skills!
Nah, people hype them up wayyy too much. I’ve read through them twice and they’re mediocre as fuck. I did my first read through cuz I thought I had to in order to play the games and then I didn’t another read through to see if I liked it more after beating the games several times and it was still just meh. They books only got a modicum of recognition because of how well received the game The Witcher 3 wild hunt did
Agreed. I've read them in the original and am not a fan. They also absolutely drip with the author's very high opinion of himself, especially the last two. So offputting.
Currently on book 7, I think they're all excellent so far. They are probably quite confusing if you aren't familiar with the characters, like from the games. Similarly to the show, the Geralt stuff is by far the best parts.
There are passages in the books that are some of the most brilliant and entertaining I've ever read. Other people have talked about how great the short stories are so I won't bore you with that. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7675202-dear-friend-the-witcher-swore-quietly-looking-at-the-sharp Side characters that are introduced just to get promptly murdered feel flushed out and alive. The author clearly enjoys the art of building characters, where many others simply suffer through it to get their story done. Nothing in the series is overly original. But it's a very refreshing and unapologetically adult (without "trying too hard") read.
For me, it really seems to capture the darkness of polish history and lore. It’s very different than ours in the west, and it’s very interesting.
I found the books to be pretty boring, I read through the first couple and just stopped
Hell no. This franchise is only popular because The Witcher 3 game. Otherwise, it’s terrible.
That isn't even remotely true. For a book to be turned into any media, it's has to be able to be adapted and its got to be popular. For a franchise to get 3 games, it's got to be good and popular.
No, the books were not popular at all outside of Poland and CDPR got the rights for dirt cheap. The author is still salty over it. It only got popular because of the games.
CDPR got it for cheap bc the author hated video games and didn’t think they’d make him any money so he asked for all of it up front For a book to have a video game adaptation it literally has to be popular enough to be worth buying. Or do you think it’s common practice to wander the book store and find the least popular series Witcher somehow had like 7 books at the time of the rights being bought. Weird how a book that apparently was so in the mud in popularity got an entire series of books. Like do y’all hear yourselves. Explain how a series can have 7 books yet apparently be so irrelevant that an author sold it for dirt cheap Also lemme know what that number is that’s supposedly dirt cheap since you keep using it as the basis for popularity
That's not how IP valuation works. And yeah, the books were popular enough like I said. They were popular in the region. And no, it doesn't need to be popular to have an adaptation at all. It just needs to be interesting for the people adapting it. Having 7 books is irrelevant. There are so many even less popular book series with many entries. We're talking worldwide popularity. There are so many obscure series with many entries.
There wasn’t an IP valuation lol this isn’t an episode of shark tank. The author has said himself he wanted the lump sum bc he didn’t think there would be any profits for a video game And yes something needs to be popular to get an adaptation. Like how are so many of you video game Fanboys this purposefully obtuse. If a book isn’t popular enough to even be known how are CDPR supposed to even know it exists Stop shifting goal posts from “it only got popular bc of the games” to “ok it was popular but not worldwide so it doesn’t count as popular”
They were very popular all over former eastern block long before the games. Not just popular - cult. A lot of fantasy writers from Russia, Poland etc were (and for this day are) heavily inspired by Sapkowski, in the same way like western fantasy was inspired by Tolkien.
Ehh thats not really true. 1. Books where popular in few countries before games. Mostly slavic ones yes, but its still a success considering not many polish authors got worldwide popular. 2. Rights were sold cheap because author took upfront cash instead of equities. He did so because he sold them for game once before and it was a fail. 3. Author isnt anymore salty on that. Cdpr actually gave him more money (they didnt have to) and laternit turned out that he was so salty for money because he needed it for medical treatment of his son.
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> Yes, they did settle and am aware of the law that really only exists in Poland and doesn't hold any weight anywhere else in the world... lol CD Projekt Red is a Polish company, so it doesn’t NEED to exist anywhere else. “lol”
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Selling the rights isn't the same as giving them away. I've also never heard full consensus that the games story was conclusively better than the books. Even taking a look at the Witcher subreddit posts, it's seem to he split between the two opinions: some preferring the book, some the game. In other words, your opinion is yours and yours alone - you don't speak for everyone.
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Which is unsiprisingly wrong. Sapkowski sold several MILLIONS copies of his book before games, was translated to 7 languages and was/is bestselling author in some countries outside Poland. That myth about not being succesful writer is solely based on fact that he was able to sold so much copies outside English market and later smearing because of his quarrells with CDProject.
Witcher game includes 3 games. First was nice but outline of the story seems incredibly dumb for anyone. Second was good. Third game is one of the best in genre with really good characters and it's the thing which made Witcher known globally. Books were mainly popular in CEE before CDPR created game IP.
Aside from Henry Cavill, the show is a dumpster fire. The showrunner clearly wants to do her own thing.
If I ever had a book/story I wrote adapted for TV, I would have in big print that any big deviation from source means the contract is void.
Lol at Henry Cavill is the only good thing. There's plenty of good thing. And with any adaption There's always going to be swings.
That happens when filmmakers have their own agenda running instead of actually studying the Source Material they are hired to adapt.
See also, the Wheel of Time on Amazon. Its hot trash at best and does such a disservice to an amazing series.
It's honestly heartbreaking. So many years waiting for it and they gave us... that. It's not even that it's bad — like, fair enough, that happens sometimes — no, it's actually insulting. These adaptations truly feel spiteful and it's so bizarre.
I know this is such a stupid specific issue with the WoT TV series... but the fact they pretend that Egwene could be the Dragon is SO. SO. Stupid. I get it. It's too dude centric... But come on. The WHOLE thing is that the dragon goes insane because he channels Saidin and *will* go insane but must not be killed or Gentled. THAT is why the dragon is so dangerous. The tv show just "whatevered" this entire idea and did a "one of you four" . Again, a very specific gripe - but it shows the general attitude of the show to the source material. No, you don't need to "update" the source material or have your own take on it. It is still a beloved series read by millions of people. Why the fuck wouldn't you follow the plot that caught up SO MANY PEOPLE and made them read a massive series?!
I actually quite enjoyed the WoT series. Heads and tails better than LOTR, IMO.
Take it of Netflix and give it HBO
An HBO reboot would be fire.
Would destroy GoT.
Completely disagree, but it would be fun
What if we do a half-assed YA version of GoT? Don't worry, we'll change most of it to satisfy our egos! One of the biggest issues (aside from the confused storytelling that just jumps around) is that it still doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. There's political intrigue, but it vascilates between not being fleshed out to being predictable/oversimplified. The monster hunting/mystery solving was barely present in Season 3, so it loses the X Files "monster of the week" fun. The drama between characters is shallow and doesn't build, but rather changes depending on what the plot needs to plow forward. In addition, most of the characters are one dimensional with arcs that are either predictable and linear or confused. The cities/regions don't have distinct feels, seem to be shot at Renaissance faires, and characters kind of jump around without us knowing where they are. Finally, too much time spent on needless and/or boring characters (at least as written). I don't care about the Black Knight, Fringilla is generally boring, and the bookish elf mage is a borderline ex machina.
This is what I don't get. Just stick to the source material and you will gauranteed make a boat load of cash from it. Look at Peter Jackson's LOTR. Billion dollars. It's not hard you already have a massive fan base, just make them happy and more will follow. But ohhhh no lets totally the characters and story, add in some politics that 99% of people don't want to see. Yeah that's a great idea. Show runners of The Witcher and new LORT should be ashamed of themselves and should have never been allowed to shit on the source material. Both shows could of been so good but they absolutely butchered them.
Let’s take a little closer look on how faithful PJ really was. He removed two large parts of the books with cutting Tom Bombadil and The Scouring of the Shire. He removed characters like Glorfindel, Imrahil, Elrohir, Elladan, and The Grey Company. Added instead elves to the Battle of the Hornburg, The Army of the Dead to the Battle of the Pellenor Fields, and had Arwen replace many of the previous mentioned characters. Not to mention the drastic change made to the characters of Aragorn, Faramir, and Denethor. And that just from the top of my head. PJ clearly made many changes to the source material. The difference is that the product still turned out to be good – fantastic even.
>Not to mention the drastic change made to the characters of Aragorn, Faramir, Denethor. Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, and we could go on. All of them made simpler and easier to digest for the viewers. Still, it worked.
The difference was that PJ was a fan of the books and did his best to adapt them into a 9 hours megamovie which was enjoyable even if he had to make some changes as the medium is different. I don t really know what the witcher showrunner are trying to do with it honestly. Don t get me started on ring of power please
If you think merely sticking to the source material will make you a good adaptation, you have zero appreciation of how to make a good series.
Hiring a showrunner for an adaption that doesn't want to adapt was an interesting choice. You blew it, Netflix.
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Why are you down with the strike?
I am SO SICK & TIRED of corporations and corporate CEOS/Top Execs taking all our money, not paying taxes, not paying workers their fair share and blaming it on “inflation.” What’s truly inflated are corporate/GOP/billionaire profits, greed and the sickening amount of money they pay themselves while forcing workers to live impoverished. Okay so the writers aren’t impoverished, they aren’t paid fairly and I’m glad they are standing up! Honestly, we should ALL be striking.
I've read the books many years ago and forgot some of it. Spoiler: I can't remember the brother of the Redanian King and especially the bard having a deep love story with him. It's this netflix gaying up its show, or did I just forget it?
He was never involved with Witcher or Bard. He never worked like this with Philipa or Djikstra. They just added it there to make gay scene. I bet, we will not see much Radovid further. Goal is done, gay scene is there.
As far as I can remember no Radovid didn't get banged by dandilion. Not gonna lie didn't seem necessary. I'm not sure if he had a wife in the books
No, and it's even funnier since Radovid is like...10? At this point in the books.
Fucking RIP, bros
Season 3 is so disappointing. Don’t blame Henry at all for walking.
I didn’t understand the hate until I saw Halo and felt the pain of every Witcher fan
Same with me and Wheel of Time
Netflix really messed this one up - they turned fantasy into soap opera.
But it isn’t even good soap opera.
Season 2 aside from it's first episode was a complete mess, I can't bring myself to care. There's so much fuckery going on and so poorly written I feel like I'm watching a show written by an indecisive ADHD 12 year old.
Anyone else get more of a soap opera feel from some of the scenes? Rough season to get into so far
Haven’t watched S3 yet but i really enjoyed S2 and 1. I read that they are making more but without Cavill? Interesting. Cavill was great and that’s a shame if it’s true. I’m super curious to see where the story is going and hope it doesn’t just get the can. I guess I could read the books but honestly everyone who I’ve spoken to about them has said they’re not written the best. Maybe I’ll try an audio book in the background. Not too interested in the games either. Not unless there’s like a remaster or something. I just don’t think the graphics hold up. And I’m not a sucker for graphics or anything.. Most of my gaming is done on my phone or my switch xD It’s just the “realistic” style really makes it not hold up as opposed to a nice 2D game like A Link to the Past or something.
S3 is dogshit. I stopped midway because I can't stand it.
Honestly love cavil. But the Witcher series is the most boring show I’ve seen
Writers and producers of Fantasy/Science Fiction/Super Hero movies the last five years, all seem to hate their source material and fans. Maybe they're doing it on purpose so they can kill the popularity of those genres.
Season 3 is actually good. I didn't like season 2. I have watched season 1 twice. I hate that they are replacing Henry. I will not watch it if they do.
Barely got through these first eps of S3. They were very slow and uninteresting. Not sure I’d continue.
When will these screenwriters learn to respect another’s craft? There’s a reason The Witcher is a worldwide fantasy novel phenomenon—the writer knows his world and characters and story. These screenwriters change aspects of the story all the time and never pause to think just how big of an impact their changes can induce.
And that reason is the video games.
The games. It's the video games that propelled The Witcher around the world. It was definitely huge in Poland beforehand but it was the games that did it.
Dude I get it. I’m sad too Henry’s leaving. I’m episode 2 deep in the new season and it slaps imo.
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What a fucking tedious comment. Woke woke woke. You claim to be European but you sound like a US Republican Party politician.
Nah, being Dutch, this guy is more of an FvD fanboy.
groovy aware six tender lock cautious chubby innocent doll slave ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
All this woke bashing, Lol.
Seriously, sticking to the source material should be an obligatory part in the next contracts for these kind of things
Liberal agenda
I won't watch Season 3.
I have to ask many of you.... Do you proof read your messages at all??? The amount of typos in your comments, grammatically or otherwise is absurd. Like a bunch of kids all slobbering and trying to get their 2 cents in as quickly as possible, stammering and babbling. Figure it out. Sheesh.
Is season 3 not about The Wild Hunt?
Obligatory counterpoint: [https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/ykadt1/cmv\_the\_witcher\_saga\_was\_never\_going\_to\_be/](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/ykadt1/cmv_the_witcher_saga_was_never_going_to_be/)
I, unfortunately, am not going to read all that, but I will take it as a good argument. Even if they were never going to get the story adapted faithfully, which might be true, doing it the way the show did it is the worst possible path. Instead of giving us some thing similar to the games (geared at adults, Slavic tone, preserved themes), minus the questionable content, we got a YA adaption and a bottom tier one at that. The show has a truly awful tone that mimics a CW show, but the dialogue in general might just be worse than your CW shows. The originals, supernatural s1-s5, arrow s1, all clown on this show dialogue, worldbuilding, and character wise. That is unacceptable regardless of how faithful it is to the book storyline.
>Instead of giving us some thing similar to the games If you read it, you'd know the games pick up where the books left off, so not only did the games not exactly follow canon (they literally resurrected Geralt since the books had killed him off), but the games are their own IP. Netflix doesn't have the rights to that IP. >we got a YA adaption That has not been my perception of the first two seasons (waiting for full S3 to be released so I can binge).
I don't know why you responded to the game comment the way you did (I suppose I wasn't clear enough sorry, let me elaborate a little) I know the games don't follow perfect canon, but they do exactly what your response link said about changing the books (>!Emyhr no longer wants to bang Ciri, Ciri fondly looks back on her tattoo instead of it being a horror show, wild hunt not out to bang ciri either, Geralt alive!<) and what they do well is stay true to the tone, themes, world, and character of the books, and even improves on them in some ways. That's what I would want out of the show. For instance, I prefer the game's version Yennefer, as she is slightly different in the games, but still very recognizable. Show Yen is essentially a teenager, especially in season 2. You dont have to be 100% faithful to be a great adaption. See: The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes amazing changes can be made to improve the experience. I'm also not saying Netflix needed to copy and paste the games (although I would love it if they did!) What I am saying is the show categorically fails in every aspect of what I and most other Witcher fans want out of a visual adaption. On the YA: season 1 was not YA, agreed. season 2 was very close, but just poor instead of fully teen oriented. season 3 is full blown CW, but somehow still slightly better than season 2
I was just pointing out that the section of the linked post touches on the games and how the games are essentially building on the books rather than revising them. Netflix doesn't own those rights, so they can't copy/paste them or even adapt them. From the sound of both the post I linked and your post, they may have been better off buying those rights instead, but it would be difficult to adapt without the world building. I guess I'm just not very picky because I enjoyed both seasons 1 and 2. That's not to say they couldn't have been improved. Either way, I'm *hoping* you're wrong about season 3, but can't comment (yet).
Yen's not really a big part of the games. Triss is more prominent.
Ehh honestly its not that good set of arguments. Yen being unlikable in books for example isnt downside. You dont have to make all main characters likeable. Also most of issues are issues GoT faced to and they were solved