The Witcher - Netflix **Spoilers**

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.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120090746#Comment_120090746

ah yes I remember he made a bad deal with regard to the royalties, CDPR did have to settle with him. The witcher games are sequels to the books but are not faithful adaptions either but are very good. If you adapt books to tv/movies or games something is probably going to get cut.

Cordell

Of course, different media have different approaches. Books, films and games are different, they work in different ways and you can't have a 100% faithful adaptation between all three. But a Witcher series without a witcher, poorly written and failing to capture a single bit of the things that made the games and books and even the previous series good is something else.

EoinMcLovin

https://youtu.be/EUlC8ue8NFI

Volume 1 of Season 3 (aka Episodes 1–5) returns Thursday, June 29, while Volume 2 (Episodes 6–8) will be held until Thursday, July 27.

DownByTheGarden

I thought he had left the show

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120519609#Comment_120519609

This is the last season he's doing. Think he might have already finished filming Season 3 when that was announced. Liam Hemsworth has been cast as Geralt from next season onwards.

EoinMcLovin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120519609#Comment_120519609

He did but after filming season 3. Liam Hemsworth will be taking over from Season 4 on

Slydice

Looks grand. I think I'll be watching.

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120519634#Comment_120519634

Odd they are going for a younger actor than Cavill, would make more sense to have a time jump and introduce someone older. I'm amazed the witcher survived three seasons and more on Netflix.

EoinMcLovin

https://youtu.be/SzS8Ao0H6Co

____

Slydice

That was fun. Those ferns sure were a shade of green. Felt in spots like the budget wasn't great for some of the greenscreen effects. Maybe they are not finished yet... or maybe netflix just didn't splash the cash.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120692335#Comment_120692335

The FX in The Witcher have always been a bit shonky in places: it's obviously one of Netflix's big hitters yet hasn't always looked the part either (whereas Stranger Things only got bigger and splashier as it went along).

As to the trailer? Can't shake the feeling of a final season TBH, only cos Cavill is heading out the door; have never managed to summon much hype for a lesser Hemsworth stepping in.