Fantasy Netflix's The Witcher - General Discussion Thread

[Silvermoth]

I’m glad they kept the bathtub scene. I predict that will be this generations ‘cruel intentions’ moment

 

[Reek]

Is it safe to say I'm not a fan of this trailer?

I'm glad that fighting shots in the trailer don't have shaky camera, so that's one positive thing to say, but their movement is pretty slow and lackluster. I've seen better choreographed armored fights in Martin Lawrence's the Black Knight, so I'm not sure I should excuse the heavy gear in this one.

Henry was talking American most of his trailer lines until near the end of it. Is this change in accent going to be a thing that will happen often? I hope not, but it might. Why does he sound American while everyone else is using English accent? I'm watching the trailer a second time as I type this to make sure I did not make a mistake there.

Also; expositional narration by the woman talking to Geralt in the trailer makes me wonder how much of the show's dialogue is going to be exposition by someone talking to the main character.

you've never played the games or read the books at all have you?

sounds pretty damn close to the game to me.

it's a fictional world people.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

you've never played the games or read the books at all have you?

sounds pretty damn close to the game to me.

Nope. I've only seen the trailer cause a certain individual got me interested in it.

 

[Lilbaz]

Everyone comparing it to got lol. No wonder you're a bit disappointed, got was the greatest sword and sorcery tv series ever (by a long way). Most series have been of the level of legend of the seeker and xena, compare it to them and this looks amazing.

Manage your expectations and you might love this show. Set them too high and even if it is very good you will be sad.

 

[harlequinade]

GoT1 had a far better cast though. You had Bean, Dance, Dinklage - people everyone knew can act. Also Lena Headey was already quite well known there. This only has Cavill and he is only decent when he is supporting

 

[Reek]

the cast? we were talking about the look and cgi of it.

 

[OutOfBoose]

Game of Thrones first season wasn't some mindblowing thing visually...

It wasn't? I see people measuring everything to GoT quality. Better, worse, matches...

I personally was positively shocked how "hi-budget" GoT looked in 2011, even without dragons burning cities. For TV series it's still a high standard. Almost 10 years later.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Yeah when GoT was first announced, I wasn’t interested because up until that point, fantasy TV shows had pretty much been cheap, poorly made and trashy. But I heard good things so I gave it a shot and after one episode I was hooked because it was obviously of higher quality than pretty much everything that had come before.

While I wouldn’t say The Witcher looks like it’s quite at that level (from what we’ve seen) I would say that it looks closer to GoT than Hercules and Xena and the other kitschy attempts at fantasy shows that plagued TV stations for years.

 

[P Supreme]

I think this could surpass Game of Thrones if they do it right.

I don't know maybe but for this to happen I feel Yennefer has to deliver one of the many aspects of GOT popularity is how many people gravitated to Dany and Arya and no coincidence that Dany's Turn soured a lot of people because people fell I in love with her from day 1

 

[P Supreme]

Charles Dance was a voice in the game shame that they couldn't get him to be in this

 

[OutOfBoose]

Yeah when GoT was first announced, I wasn’t interested because up until that point, fantasy TV shows had pretty much been cheap, poorly made and trashy. But I heard good things so I gave it a shot and after one episode I was hooked because it was obviously of higher quality than pretty much everything that had come before.

While I wouldn’t say The Witcher looks like it’s quite at that level (from what we’ve seen) I would say that it looks closer to GoT than Hercules and Xena and the other kitschy attempts at fantasy shows that plagued TV stations for years.

If this Witcher was released in 2010-2011, it would impress everyone. We're a bit spoiled by now and want everything to look like GoT, Midichlorian and Watchmen or better.

 

[Persona]

The saturated, high-contrast look is pretty unforgiving. Early GoT (before the budget ramped up due to is popularity) was well-made but also looked more up-scale due to a muted color palette and a much lower contrast lighting approach.

I appreciate The Witcher is trying to go for something that is more its own and isn't shying away from some vibrancy, but yeah, not sure they pulled it off as well as they could have. It's not easy to do... I think Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is one of the only times I felt that clarity of image and plenty of color has really worked for fantasy without feeling kitschy. I think The Witcher might have benefited from either toning it down or really leaning harder into it and not have the image look so clean and modern but go for more of that scuzzy, vignette-ish '80s sword & sorcery look, like Legend or Dragonslayer or Willow. I feel like it's trying to combine those types of imagery and I don't know if the craft is up to the task. But it doesn't look BAD, exactly.

 

[Deck Rickard]

If this Witcher was released in 2010-2011, it would impress everyone. We're a bit spoiled by now and want everything to look like GoT, Midichlorian and Watchmen or better.

The Midichlorian?

Don't give me nightmares.

 

[OutOfBoose]

 

[Reek]

as i said... watch the season one trailers of GoT and Witcher.... theres not much that's so special... once again... as I said.. we should at least wait to see the damn show and should prob stop comparing it to the biggest show ever created.

 

[Monsieur Xavier]

I found GoT S1 trailer to be miles better than this. GoT trailer looked like a movie trailer to me ( a movie with a good budget and good acting ).
I also don't like H.Cavill as an actor so it didn't help.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

And yet, this still looks cheaper. This has a $10mil per episode budget, doesn't it? GoT's first season only had $6mil per ep. This should not look cheaper than that. I think it's the claustrophobic cinematography that's partly to blame. GoT had more natural lighting and really showed off its locations.

Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, one thing GoT had all the time was directors that made the most of what they had. They shot the hell out of it, from the start. Just look at something like Ned's execution of the deserter or Dany's wedding.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Does anyone remember the show The Bastard Executioner? That's what sprang to mind when I saw this trailer. It's not that things look bad, or cheap... they just look like props and set pieces. That was my main issue with Bastard. The on-screen product looked like a production mimicking medieval imagery and settings, rather than an actual lived-in world. Like a Renaissance Fair. It really took me out of the show. That's the sense I kinda get from Witcher, albeit with significantly higher production values.

But this is just a trailer, so it's hard to judge it too harshly. It just has that same sheen to it.

This is a very good trailer comparsion imo. I watched the first episode or two (I think they might have debuted together) for that show, and completely checked out as it felt like they were playing at it to me. Well that and Sutter is just a crap writer.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Here's another in camera version of it:

I think GoT did have some nice visuals and eye candy in the first season, but it also sticks out in my mind a lot that the minute a major fight is about to happen Tyrion gets knocked out and the whole thing happens offscreen.

In Season 2 they did definitely step things up with the Battle of Blackwater, which even for me not being a big fan of the show, I think that was a strong, ambitious sequence that came together really well.

the cast? we were talking about the look and cgi of it.

See I feel like there is a bit of a conversation that is at cross purposes. I don't think many are talking about big battles and CGI. I am talking about how the show looks as a whole. The cinematography feels small. The color grading makes it feel cheaper imo. The set design and costume work isn't the best, but beyond that to me it doesn't particularly look well shot. They aren't using what they have to utmost potential. GoT season 1 basically did that. Whether it was a conversation inside a hall or fight in the middle of Kings Landing.

Now the show could come out and make me feel completely differently, and I'd be happy about that. I want this to work, so bad. Mr. Hexer is one of my favorite stories after all. But when they give you a trailer, it is really all you have to go off, and I never felt like the early GoT trailers or the new Mando trailers made the shows feel small or cheap. Especially not for television.

 

[Fincher]

Everyone comparing it to got lol. No wonder you're a bit disappointed, got was the greatest sword and sorcery tv series ever (by a long way). Most series have been of the level of legend of the seeker and xena, compare it to them and this looks amazing.

Manage your expectations and you might love this show. Set them too high and even if it is very good you will be sad.

On the one hand, I never got too interested in seeing Legend of the Seeker precisely because of how it looked. Epic fantasy is one category that needs to reach a certain level before I start caring about seeing TV shows as opposed to movies, or as opposed to seeing urban fantasy shows like Buffy. I'm the same way about space exploration, which is why no matter how much praise it gets, I can't bring myself to care about The Expanse.

On the other hand, The Witcher does meet my expectations, as did Game of Thrones and The Shannara Chronicles. I think GoT looks better than The Witcher, but I still really like the way this looks. I think The Witcher, The Dark Tower, Lord of the Rings, and Wheel of Time all have a chance of becoming my favorite TV show, but then I'm aware that not everyone will be so enthusiastic about epic fantasy and comparisons are going to happen. It's probably good for The Witcher that it got out in front of Lord of the Rings and the other big fantasy shows and that it followed Game of Thrones alienating a lot of fans. That seems to be Netflix's approach, don't make the most ambitious show, just beat everyone to the punch.

 

[TheVileOne]

Since we're making those comparisons, here's the the S1 trailer for Game of Thrones, straight from HBO:



Now some of the earlier stuff in the trailer looks really good, but the rest of the trailer, the editing and all that doesn't really look or feel all that mindblowing either.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Since we're making those comparisons, here's the the S1 trailer for Game of Thrones, straight from HBO:



Now some of the earlier stuff in the trailer looks really good, but the rest of the trailer, the editing and all that doesn't really look or feel all that mindblowing either.

That isn't the season 1 trailer. That is the cutdown version. Season 1 had like 5 trailers. Everything from this ridiculously good teaser:



To this proper trailer:



Which just kind of makes me realize that whoever cut the trailers for the Witcher over at Netflix didn't do nearly as good a job. Mark Addy getting hyped, gets me hyped.

And seriously, kind of strange how much more coherent the GoT trailer is, as opposed to the Witcher one. Which kind of feels like it assumes you know what it is about. The GoT one is setting up characters, mutiple ones. The Witcher one barely sets up Geralt.

 

[Filmfreak]

Those are a decade old. Editing in general has made some considerable steps since then, especially in trailers and marketing. But since we are comparing the early GoT trailers with the Witcher ones, I find the former far more intriguing in terms of characters, setting and plot for anyone who's not familiar with the show or books.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Those are a decade old. Editing in general has made some considerable steps since then, especially in trailers and marketing. But since we are comparing the early GoT trailers with the Witcher ones, I find the former far more intriguing in terms of characters, setting and plot for anyone who's not familiar with the show or books.

Trailers these days have pretty much been the same since Nolan/TDKT. That is the modern template.

 

[I Am The Knight]

If this Witcher was released in 2010-2011, it would impress everyone. We're a bit spoiled by now and want everything to look like GoT, Midichlorian and Watchmen or better.

What the f*** is the Midichlorian?