The Witcher - Netflix **Spoilers**

Brief_Lives

Blood origins is fairly bad, no point searching out the thread, to point this out to fans..

What I got out of it so far, is that the dwarf loves her axe... a lot..

notahappycamper

Blood Origins - the Witcher Oirish style “pain in me hole” to quote the lead Irish actor.

Varik

So by the opening premise this was meant to be a story to be retold to give hope to the elves.

That story being elves were pretty much just pointy ear humans and also assholes to the point you'd forget they were meant to be ealves( costumer didn't give everyone fake ears)

Spoiler Warning

They took dwarves land and about to lose it after trying to conquer other worlds, and I'm pretty sure they just reinvented the wild hunt origin maybe so no tir na lia.

Slydice

My very first thought!.. Hey Jaskiers in this! 🙂

Blood Origins. 1.1: Oh this is great! Michelle Yeoh absolutely handing it to a pair who thought they could bring it! Loved it! 🙂

Spoiler Warning

Story feels a right jump back even further than Nightmare of the Wolf. Maybe with one part short-cutting the House of the Dragon issue.

Wipe everybody out in one go.. problem solved

but even still more issues.

Goodies and Baddies in play and .. is this building up a Magnificent Seven storyline? The opening story bit felt like it hinted at it.

I'd be guessing then that the ..

Spoiler Warning

seven warriors will join up and maybe have a Magnificent Seven / Seven Samurai style ending

the monoliths will turn out bad news like the monoliths from the Witcher.. a legion to come to the world sounds like an invasion

someone will become a type of proto-witcher.. so like maybe an amped up Elf.. maybe Fjall or maybe Éile.. but maybe they are holding someone or a kid in reserve for that

Had a quick check of the reviews and can see I'll have to watch the series to get an actual impression of the show.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12785720/ratings/

theseFuckersAgain.jpg

Slydice

Blood Origins. 1.2: 😲 Yep, definitely time to run. It almost feels like..

Spoiler Warning

there's been only the one monster introduced to this world.

Also no humans about.

Maybe they're due to arrive from this two moon place.

For the rest of the bigger story, definite vibes of a Magnificent Seven showdown coming up. Guessing the dwarf is number seven. Thought her intro story was done well.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120038436#Comment_120038436

I found the series a bit boring, but the writng and dialogue was not terrible and definitely doesnt deserve to be be downvoted the way it is, not a lot of grownups voting in imdb. Cant see the Witcher universe surviving too long after Cavill leaves.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120038436#Comment_120038436

Haven't watched the series yet (not even sure that I will cos feeling a bit down on High Fantasy ATM TBH) ...

... but I want to take a moment to appreciate the filename of Slydice's image: theseFúckersAgain.jpg

I know exactly how you feel. It's Pavlovian at this stage from some.

silverharp

the critics hate it too so by any measure its a below average show that wont go anywhere

Cordell

Seeing the reviews I had low expectations but holly crap this is bad. Why did they do this?

Slydice

Blood Origins. 1.3: Well. That sure took a few twists and turns but setup for the finale well enough. Felt like some shortcuts were taken in the story to get there a bit.

Spoiler Warning

Still feeling a bit magnificent seven. Guessing not everyone is going to come out alive.

Also, look who turned up! 🙂 One nut! 😁

johnnyskeleton

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120039816#Comment_120039816

Just to be clear, are you suggesting that some people will give 1 star reviews to every fantasy series these days without even thinking about it, or am I missing the point?

Because if so, 2021/22 was a very bad time for fantasy shows. Shadow and Bone and the House of the Dragon were two professionally produced and immersive shows (irrespective of whether you ultimately like them or not) but the Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, Willow and Blood Origins have all been absolutely shocking in terms of their low quality. TROP had good cgi landscapes, but overall these shows suffered from bad dialogue, plot holes, one dimensional characters, poor acting, cheap costumes props and sets and overall give the impression of fantasy shows created by people who dont like, or even actively hate, the source material / genre.

Blood Origins suffers from the same problems. Take the Irish guy SPOILERS: They put in the scene where he is banished because that happens in fantasy shows where someone honourable feels shame or is mistreated and starts them on a redemption arc. He ends up in a prison with his nemesis. He is then released by his father bribing the guards (how they knew he was there or why they would so easily be bribed is unclear). In any event, when offered redemption from his father he says "no thanks, pub instead". He has no money for the pub but wants to give them a valuable (and possibly sentimentally important) necklace, which turns out to have been stolen by his nemesis. He risks his life to save his nemesis from baddies (unspecified) and gets injured so that he can get this necklace back. The necklace that he was going to sell to buy hooch. But then has no further interest in the pub because he wants to go a questing with his nemesis. Then they find out all their families are killed, by his ex girlfriend, and he wants revenge (even though his family banished him, not her).

This character is full of contradictions, like they put several generic fantasy tropes into a blender and hoped a character would pop out

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120052240#Comment_120052240

I think you are only going to leave a 1 out of ten star vote on a show/movie in the numbers seen for this show as part of vote brigading exercise. I have watched Willow, wheel of time and this show and all have high production values, middling scripts and middling dialogue but nothing is terrible. Scifi, fantasy and superhero fans have shown quite a number of times now that they will downvote a show to high heaven in imdb, RT and metacritic if a show/movie in their genre displays a theme or relationship they are not comfortable with.

sydthebeat

Willow shouldn't be thrown into the same conversation as TROP and Wheel of time.

At least willow knows it's all ridiculous, and has fun with it

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120053013#Comment_120053013

True not unlike the original film where the trolll was just a man dressed in a obvious monkey costume. TROP was boringly serious as was wheel of time, though some episodes of wheel of time were better than others

Slydice

Finished! Overall that was ok for what it looked to be setup to do. Michelle Yeoh and her performance stood apart from the show by miles in all her scenes.

Though a big step down in investment from netflix or cd projekt it felt. Some effects and scenes looked like the had minimal money or effect from directors put in. On the other side, some scenes looked like they had a lot of money splashed onto them. At a guess, they'll be used as flashbacks in the next Witcher season.

Blood Origins. 1.4: Definitely with the credits scene and the end song, it felt like this was setup for the coming Witcher season.

I did like the ending which setup a lot of the future for the world of the Witcher. This show did get across how it came to be.. especially taking Nightmare of the Wolf into account.

Also season two of the witcher.. those elves

Spoiler Warning

just really seemed to set themselves down a path

The one thing I'm not sure on is

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Eredin. Feels like maybe I should know who he is from earlier but no. Not a clue. Maybe they're just setting him up as the next baddie here what with the mask and all. A few hundred years in that chaos place and I'm guessing he'll come out with more that just that chaos power.

Jackiebt

Absolutely loved the Witcher so was excited to watch the spin off Blood Origins. I lasted two episodes, jaysus it's terrible.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120053005#Comment_120053005

you are mind reading the people leaving reviews and giving a cop out to the people behind these shows. A 1star review to me just means they expected more, wanted the show to be good and were disappointed. If a show is any good it should be getting lots of > 7s . if someone leaves a 1/10 against a 4/10, both are saying the show is basically crap

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120054111#Comment_120054111

It is a guess for sure but if a show gets an average 6 on imdb you are more likely to give it a chance then if it gets an average 3 ( a diifference of 3) so i wouldnt lump in individual scores of 4 with a 1. For me to give a score of 1 i would really have to despise it.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120054148#Comment_120054148

I was thinking using a scale of 10 is too specific, basically there is, an abomination, not worth watching, average, above average and top tier. Indeed despise/abomination means something, along the line of its disrespecting source material and doing it badly. Take for instance Amazon's lotr , if I was to leave a review , i'd give it the lowest score because I have something to compare it too, if on the other hand I knew nothing about the show or pretend there is no history it might straddle the not worth watching/average. That's the show maker's problem though not the viewers, if the makers keep going back to the well with their re-imaginings, they will hit the same problems.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120054440#Comment_120054440

it is not that specific though, I think scores 1-3 terrible 4-6 average 7-10 good/great. Stephen king always thought the Shining disrespected the original novel but it definitely shouldnt be given a 1 for that! It is not hard to recognise that when a show gets a lot of 1 scores and its not of Sharknado level of crapness that there is some organised voting based on some political woke/anti woke agenda of the voters. it is a pet peeve of mine that such voting may drive away viewers who has less attachment to the material and may enjoy the show.

I do like the witcher but I presumed it will be murdered in rating once the lesser Hemsworth comes on board. Always preferred the games though to be honest than the books.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120054508#Comment_120054508

I dont think a review score affects viewership when the show is on necessarily , people will have heard about a show some other way that has got their interest. Also I dont think you could find an example of a show that is a genuine ~7 or 8 that has been dragged down by RT scores? it didnt happen to shows like House of the dragon.- Honestly I think people just have a good sense of what makes a good show, a logical plot, likable characters etc. The fact that show makers arent getting these basics right is on them, and they should have their feet held to the fire.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120054879#Comment_120054879

I still havent watched the power of the rings because it has been sh!t on so much online, just not that bothered now and I know the House of the Dragon was panned by a lot of these so called fans initially after first few episodes until it was clear to nearly everyone it was a good show. You are probably right that voting on imdb corrects itself after a while but I see wheel of time tv show that was is extremely ordinary is rated 7.1 on imdb because 22% of votes are 10 out of 10- so voting manipulated in the other direction! Its annoying that you cant really rely on critic or user votes on many sites as the score may not reflective of the actual quality of the show but some reaction to an unknow controversy or social issue, if you are not in the loop, or a purity test against the source material.

I imagine that if the rebooted Battlestar Galactica and 1960's Batman Tv series were made now they would be vote brigaded as the former replaced a main male character with a female and the other replaced the serious tone of the comic with a comedy version of Batman.

Cordell

While there are indeed shows which are review bombed by fans or for political reasons, this ain't one of those. This one is panned by both critics and audiences, which is the clear measure of being pure crap.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056052#Comment_120056052

That is true if panned by both they are usually bad- which Blood origins is.

mewso

Finally watched Blood Origin. First 2 episodes I was thinking meh not great but not terrible but oh boy episode 3 and 4 took one hell of a nose dive. Embarrassingly bad writing. You could play a drinking game based on the moments of pure cringe. Unfortunately proof for me that The Witcher is not in safe hands if they continue to deviate from the material.

Pawwed Rig

I was looking forward to this and put on episode 1 last night. I don't see why they made the characters elves. They just seem to be humans with pointy ears. No "Elvin attributes" as I would have known them.

Also similar to WOT the diversity thing constantly takes me out of the story. No issue with the main characters being diverse as the different tribes being different races is fine but when you have a mix of races in a village that is remote and pre industrial it makes no sense.

FunLover18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120080789#Comment_120080789

Amazing when it comes to fantasy stories about elves and monsters, it's the introduction of non-white people wherr people struggle to suspend their disbelief.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081005#Comment_120081005

That's absolutely not at all what was said, and pretty disgusting of you to suggest there's a racist card being played here.

Sudden Valley

Skin colour diversity in fantasy always does seem a bit strange like they must be representative of the real world where the races didnt mix for centuries. I guess in terms of the Witcher, the games had pretty much all humans being white and the flagship fantasy series for many Lord of the Rings also was mostly white.

Pawwed Rig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081005#Comment_120081005

Fair point 🤣

But the elves and monsters don't take me out of the story as they are part of the premise. 2 different races living in a small village for generations without breeding each other stretches even fictional credibility unless we are to assume the village operates a strict apartheid that would put Mississippi to shame 😉

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056022#Comment_120056022

Reboots and continuations shows were grand up until 2012 or so, Star Trek and Battlestar had great female and diverse characters, but if Battlestar had been remade in 2018, it probably would have been a sht show , essentially a Battlestar version of Discovery...shudders! lol

FunLover18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081072#Comment_120081072

Since when did races not mix for centuries? @Pawwed Rig mentioned that it didn't make sense pre-indudtrialisation, the vast majority of colonialism occurred pre-industrialisan, people did travel and mix but it's not often portrayed in media. I just think it's interesting that people can suspend disbelief when it comes to fantastical elements like dragons and elves but when it comes to fantastical elements like racism not existing or cultures mixing, that sticks out. And I'm not calling anyone racist as I was accused of above but I think it's important to acknowledge that a lot of these views on history come from media which we know has engaged in conscious or unconscious white washing on an industrial scale and/or was created in extremely racist times.

Pawwed Rig

Ah here. It is was a comment about how these things take me out of the story. I have no interest in debating colonialism with you as it is irrelevant to the series.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081523#Comment_120081523

No one is talking about "history" or "media" here though, and that's what you fail to understand. You're projection reality onto fantasy here, and completely out of context.

As a regular reader of fantasy books, both established and contemporary, tribes, races etc are usually described in the main as being pretty homogeneous, it's quite necessary for world building. One race might be aloof and haughty, and described as being tall, pointy eared, pale skin and short haired (let's call them fennicks) etc. While another might be described as quick to anger, short, stocky with shallow skin and hirsute (let's call them pluters)

These descriptions are usually necessary in world building for fantasy worlds, in order to be able to push the plot without individual character development over and over when a new character is introduced. Thus if you're half way into a story a fennick comes across a pluter you know anyway what the actions / reactions etc are going to be. You don't need turgid dialogue to develop the character (see TROP for the where this detracts from a story)

It is absolutely necessary for the immersion and acceptance that this is fantasy.

Having different tribes which have all kinds of differently described people's completely jarrs against this on a tv screen, and shows that push this suffer for it.

There's absolutely nothing stopping a story writer as exhalating a black race above others (see wakanda) and the story in no way suffers for it, because despite your history and media references above, people are not intrinsically racist or preprogrammed to see blackness as lesser.

FunLover18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081570#Comment_120081570

"One race might be aloof and haughty, and described as being tall, pointy eared, pale skin and short haired (let's call them fennicks) etc. While another might be described as quick to anger, short, stocky with shallow skin and hirsute (let's call them pluters)"

If you take out the references to skin colour, these descriptors still do exactly the same thing in terms of world building. It's also a very common trope in fantasy and scifi where entire races/species/tribes can fit into these neat little boxes in terms of character, Star Trek is notorious for it. It's completely unrealistic but again it's interesting what aspects of reality people want reflected in their fantasy worlds.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081730#Comment_120081730

"It's completely unrealistic"

FFs..... That's the whole point

People DON'T want aspects of reality reflected in fantasy worlds, and the shoe horning of it into them severely detracts from the story

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081730#Comment_120081730

Oh and by the way , star trek is lauded for breaking down racials barriers before anyone else was doing it

https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/star-treks-most-significant-legacy-is-inclusiveness

pixelburp

Not for nothing, but monolithic cultures in genre fiction is a stupid idea in the first place, symptomatic of it's reductive tendancies. The Planet of the Hats from Star Trek being a good example elsewhere, if only for making it easier for audiences to "get" concepts. Even the persistent races still have this simplicity with Klingons et al having exactly one type. Often its generalised, abstracted made up bollix, but not always. It was a handy shorthand for building complexity through arbitrary delineations but it was vulnerable to cliché at best, outright racism at worst. Whether it was intentional racism is where the debate lies.

And as neat and tidy as it might be to have an entire species described in broad personality or genetic strokes, the problems were often how (say) the inscrutable, warlike races from the East suddenly looked or dressed suspiciously Middle Eastern or oriental. It's not great, like. That's when people got a little legitimately concerned about accidental(?) profiling. Fantasy was always more guilty of that given its fondness of fictional races, but Sci-Fi could do it too. "Code of Honour", an early Trek Next Generation episode, possibly the nadir or that exact problem, stopping short of its primitive natives chucking spears. "Up the Long Ladder" an infamous example of Irish stereotypes in the same vein.

To the Witcher, I really really couldn't care less what race the actors are. It's so far down the list of things wrong with the show as to be irrelevant. Yeah your backwards village in the mountains probably shouldn't have much racial diversity. And in Wheel of Time that was a bit daft - but the twee LARPing costumes were a much larger problem.

Cordell

If we are to give the proper respect to the original vision, which is based on medieval central Europe, with inspiration from norse mythology then everyone should be white simply because this is how the original author imagined it. But we are of course past that, what he originally envisioned is not that relevant, this is a new show based of his original work and not a reproduction. This is fine, all things considered, as long as they don't go too far and from what I've seen they didn't.

But this is not the problem. Blood Origin is bad because it's bad, not because of diversity or because fans are upset.

FunLover18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120081745#Comment_120081745

I'm sorry, I genuinely am confused. I was referring to the fact that monolithic cultures are completely unrealistic (as pixelburp says, they serve a purpose at times)

The original criticism seemed to be that the diversity was unrealistic and took the viewer out of the show.

Also I wasn't questioning Star Trek's credentials, it's a fantastic show for breaking barriers in a lot of respects.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120082564#Comment_120082564

I'll let pawwed rig speak for themselves, but they never mentioned the word "unrealistic" in their op, but more that the point that there wasn't suitable deliniation between villages that was to the detriment to the story.

I've agreed with this, and given my reasons why.

As far as monolithic cultures being "unrealistic"... Absolutely, that's why they belong in and are integral to lots of fantasy stories

mewso

One wonders though if in a fantasy/sci-fi show a village had a mix of white and pink skinned people would people still complain about it not adhering to some kind of reflection of medieval Europe? As has been said Blood Origin's writing is the big problem here. Thats not to say that sometimes injecting 'diversity' can be a problem as it takes precedence over good writing. It can be done well but when a show champions it I worry it's because they don't have much else to say.

Sad Professor

I guess fantasy books can get away with vague descriptions of a particular character's fictional ethnic/racial traits but a tv show needs to cast actual actors whose identity markers have never been the subject of more scrutiny. Having an almost all white cast simply isn't an option anymore nor is having a token black guy. Streamers are probably issuing edicts to producers to ensure a certain percentage of the cast is non-white. Having every culture in your sci-fi fantasy show be monolithic probably don't make sense but I am not sure having them all being diverse makes sense either. I think the main reason we are less likely to see monolithic cultures on screen anymore is because no filmmaker wants to think about the implications of making x fantasy/sci-fi race all played by African Americans etc, especially in an open-ended tv show when writers don't have time to be thinking about these things. Also if you were trying to avoid wading into woke culture war/identity politics arguments, making all your tribes equally diverse in terms of casting is probably the simplest way to do so. As a result in many cases I think we get colour-blind diversity casting in which you just aren't meant to think about it.

FunLover18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120082583#Comment_120082583

They said it "made no sense" in a world set pre-industrialisation which I took to mean unrealistic, perhaps I misunderstood.

In terms of delineation, I personally don't think race has to be delineating factor. Lots of fantasy manages to delineate between human tribes that are all whit, there are a lot of visual ways to do this in costuming, so I don't see why they can't do it when the people are diverse.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120086690#Comment_120086690

so I don't see why they can't do it when the people are diverse.

the point of fantasy stories is to create races who arent "of this earth"... so the fact that regular human people are diverse shouldn't at all be a factor. Fantasy stories are not documentaries. If the story is based on earth in say 100 years time, and the narrator presents a certain race as 'lesser' then yes certainly you can make accusations of racism or at least ignorance. But if the story is presented as clearly being in a fantasy world or fantastical races, then contemporary social protocols just dont apply.

lets take Dune for example, regularly considered among the best of Fantasy novels ever written.

Herbert writes different races as being very homogenous.

Bene Tleilax are diminutive, bland, xenophobic and isolationist.

Phibians are tall fish people with green skin, are of limited intelligence and vocabulary

Futars are feline humanoids of limited intelligence bred and kept by handlers, but have great loyalty to their masters.

Races ARE delineated in most fantasy stories. This does not at all make the story racist.

Do you get upset when a klingon is presented as a war mongering part animal? Or a dwarf in lord of the rings is presented as short tempered and insecure about their height..?? is that racist?

so you can tell immediately when a character is introduced in a fantasy story as a "X" what their traits are. it enables the story to flow because you dont have to do character development for all andever small fleeting character.

FunLover18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120086758#Comment_120086758

I don't know why you insist that I'm accusing people of being racist.

I've not watched Blood Origins but my understanding is we're not talking about races, we're talking about villages, the initial complaint was that the populations of villages were too diverse because it didn't make sense.

Now if we do talk about individual races such as say Klingons, they have been played by actors who are both white and black and yet they all look they same thanks to make up because Star Trek has decided that all Klingons are brown (although I believe we've seen paler ones in Discovery). However Vulcans have also been played by black actors as well as white, and now elves. I don't think it's out of the realms of possibilities that just as humans evolved with different pigmentations, Vulcans and even other species on earth such as dwarves and elves also did the same. Skin colour doesn't need to be a deliniation. Take for example Game of Thrones, a show of predominantly white characters but you yet they delinieate regions using costumes and accents. This could have just as easily been done with a diverse cast as it is done with an all white cast.

Sudden Valley

Most animals on Earth have different skin or fur colours so it would not be surprising if elves, dwarves,orcs etc had different skin colours. But i could see how if a village was in a very remote region of the fictional world such as real life Easter Island or Artic circle that there may be only one skin colour present.

For practical reasons, for cheapness of applying makeup and ease of creating whole armies of a race in a CGI battle scene I could see why movie/tv productions would have all orcs as black, etc.

I would agree that Western streaming shows will continue to have diverse casts in every genre of show to appeal to the largest audience, so there is no real point in complaining about it.

Cordell

I really can't understand this discussion. If it was a good show review bombed because of this ridiculous reason I would understand, but it is not the case. Just like the Rings of Power pile of crap this one is also a streaming pile of crap and that's only because of bad writing and not following and respecting the lore and source material.

Sudden Valley

I would agree Blood origins, rather than the main Witcher show, is not a great show because of bad writing but respecting the lore or source material has nothing to do with the quality of the show. That only ruins the enjoyment for die hard book fans. It is surprising that the Witcher series would be not faithful though since the original author is involved in the project, but perhaps the creator doesnt care about the changes.

Cordell

The original author might like money more than having a faithful adaptation. He did try to sue CDPR for more money than they originally agreed, instead of being happy for becoming a world known author.