The Witcher series (Netflix)

Emlyn_Dewar said:
If IGN's movie reviews are anything like their game ones then it can probably be ignored. The Guardian... No thanks.
Don't know about comicbook.com but looking at the titles of all their recent reviews, they seem to mostly like everything. :D
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You can safely ignore IGN and The Guardian for reviewing anything, one has clearly sold out, and the other is politically driven.
 
Richeh said:
You didn't click Score Details did you? Again, i'm not saying its a brilliant show but the whole point of the discussion had so far is that is was review bombed.
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I think it's not well known that the RT score shown on the main page is just a percentage of how many "rotten" reviews vs "good" reviews there is and not what the actual review scores out of 10 are. So for Blood Origin there's 67% of reviews are "rotten" leaving it with just 33% of "good" reviews whilst the average review score was 5.4/10 (or 5/10 from "top reviewers").
 
Series 2 of this was dreadful compared to the first.

Just watching the new mini series as some mindless background watching whilst feeling hungover. No expectations.

Seems ok one episode in. Nothing has struck me as terrible so far. Just a standard TV affair.
 
Finished it.

Was far better than the meandering season 2 IMO. Probably because it had a fair run time at around 3.5 hours in total, which is about all a basic story like this needs to be… no tedious, redundant subplots for the sake of padding. Also, quite liked the dwarf character!

Worth a punt if you fancy an easygoing, short fantasy romp.
 
Watched it last night and also reckon it was better than Season 2 of Witcher BUT I hadn't realised it was 4 episodes long (don't ask) so that took me by complete surprise and I was raging afterwards. Half a bottle of rum in me wasn't helping.

The show is a mess but quite watchable. Not entirely sure how the hell Lenny F'ing Henry keeps appearing on my screen or how he has landed another job in a fantasy show though. Biggest complaint I personally have is the Elves are portrayed wrong - hell they're essentially humans with pointy ears in this show when they're meant to be somewhat elegant and sophisticated. The princess being an exception here and looked just the part, despite being a complete nutjob.

I was hoping to learn more about the Conjunction of Spheres so you could imagine my surprise when it was barely touched on as the show ended. Either way, I'm done with the Witcher series and I'll keep the good memories of Season 1 and Cavil in my head.
 
Watched the first episode a couple of nights ago. Was really pumped for this just having finished reading all the Witcher Novels over the last couple of months. Sadly just didn't gell, apart from the first couple of minutes with Dandelion we were then off to some distant past with little or no connection to the events that unfold around Geralt in the stories. If they wanted to do a standalone story then they should have done Season Of Storms, or at least an abridged version of it - at least the focus would have been on the familiar elements. Guess I'll go back and finish watching the rest of the episodes but not expecting to love them.

Edit: Second episode not much better. By the time they assemble the team, they'll have run out of episodes!
 
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Unfortunately Blood Origin for me is let down by poor writing and poor casting in key roles. i e. While Lenny Henry is passable in his role in Ring of Power he is totally unsuited here. OK so Christoph Waltz was unavailable but an actor with more gravitas was needed for that central role.

This is typified in many key roles. Also, just littering the dialogue with the f word just for the sake of it does not suddenly transform it into good writing, it actually has the opposite effect.

The saving grace are the fight/action scenes, which on the whole are done pretty decently.

I'd give it 4/10 which is slightly higher than I'd be inclined to go in part thanks to Michelle Yeoh who brings a little bit of quality to most of the scenes she's in.
 
Just watched the first episode of Blood Origin. I actually really enjoyed the first half, thought the setup with Jaskier was cool and felt very witcher-y (Gaunter O'Dimm vibes!). The pacing is so weird though
I felt like I'd missed a scene or two when the betrayal happened

It also just feels really rushed like it could have done with more time.

positives so far:
Some cool lore and bits from previous Witcher books and games
Costumes are great (armour in particular on King Alvitir was not good though)
Locations and set dressing are all fantastic
Cast seems fine overall, Michelle Yeoh is obviously the big win. (I actually thought Lenny Henry was fine personally, didn't even realise it was him until I checked afterwards, haven't seen RoP yet though)
Fight scenes are great

negatives:
Pacing feels far too hurried
CGI was a bit naff on the monster
Some of the writing in the second half in particular felt very unnatural

First half of the episode 8/10 Second half 4/10 so overall about a 6 at the moment!
 
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Finished it.. Good concept poorly executed. 5 or 6 out of 10 is probably fair. Had some good moments but needed more episodes and better writing. Everything felt very rushed, I have no idea what timespan things were supposed to be happening in. The romance in particular felt really forced. I wanted more screen time for the side characters, the main two were a bit bland. The ending scenes were good though.

Had no problem with Lenny Henry. What I can't figure out is what Dylan Moran was doing in it. He seemed to serve no purpose and was incredibly jarring, and I'm a big fan of his!
 
I have not seen the Witcher.

But i watched Blood Origins. Purely because i done some acting for it. But my scene was cut.

I know the shot a huge more bunch of scenes for this and they was cut. It felt very short and rushed to me. Character stories could have been more in depth. Lenny Henry is pants.
 
I thought Blood Origins was thoroughly enjoyable. Cheesy fantasy, sure, but with great characters and lots of fun. Dunno the framing device with the bard from the main series really added nothing worthwhile.

Lenny Henry was surprisingly good, the dwarf lass was different gravy, but the Dylan Moran cameo felt kinda jarring.
 
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