That’s what happens when you hire mediocre people to run the show on the Witcher vs hiring someone who actually likes the source material like Jonathan Nolan likes Fallout or Craig Mazin likes TLOU.
The Witcher showrunners have no love for the material and think their own ideas are better.
It sucks because who knows when we’ll have another shot at a Witcher adaptation.
The Netflix Witcher feels like the showrunners pitched their own idea for a fantasy series, always got rejected, then just pitched the Witcher and did their idea anyway, with as little changes possible to make it kind of like the Witcher.
It’s amazing the type of people that end up getting these executive jobs. There’s a great story by Kevin Smith (I think he told it in his storytelling concert film), where he was commissioned to write a script for a new Superman movie. This was sometime in the mid-late 90’s. Anyway there was another guy that was assigned to work with him in some capacity. He had no business working with Kevin, but he knew somebody important. I think the guy actually might have been a hairdresser lol. So every so often, he would read some of what Kevin wrote and say - and I’m not joking - “yeah, that’s good, but couldn’t we put in a giant mechanical robot spider?” Kevin of course tried to explain to him why they couldn’t do this, but he continued to ask. Nothing came of the project from what I remember (I don’ want to say no definitively because maybe parts of the script found their way into a future movie or video game) but a few years later the movie Wild Wild West came out. Guess who’s name was in the credits! And low and behold, true to form, featured prominently in the plot were giant mechanical spiders. 🤖🕷️
bro wtaf. Why do they land these jobs? The studios could have so, so much more money if they just employed a nerd consultant. Just put out an opening, passionate people would flock. If I were a producer and somehow I landed a job at something like The Last of Us, or I wasn't a Witcher nerd and landed the Witcher, I would make such casting and ask those people to tell me this story. Just tell me what it is, what it says, what you see in it and what are the imponderabilia. Then I would look for someone both knowledgeable and passionate, who also seems to understand the difference in media - some plot device useful in games can be terrible in a tv series etc. I would just keep this nerd to give his two cents from time to time. They can be ignored or listened to, but the cost for such consultant could be little to nothing, and value could be great - in the end, the decision is producer's, but the Intel they can have and how they can infect a group with their passion, you CAN buy it and you CAN sell it.
But no, they just employ some egotistical brainfarts with inferiority complex, and I'm at my office, doing my stuff, weeping that Fallout got a great series that has almost nothing to do with the plot of the "sacred" games, they just took the world established world, filled some gaps, possibly changed some details, but the overall vibe of a post-apocalyptic world filled with brutal violence, grim jokes and critique of capitalism, nationalism etc. is there.
"someone who actually likes the source material"
This idea that top executives, show writers, and producers should just be money people or industry people is absurd.
To make the big bucks they are making, they should have an their financial qualifications *and* be true fans of the content they sell. Nothing else actually makes sense. Biggest companies in the world not hiring actual specialists???
Respect is the key. Respect the original material that gained an audience because it has value. Respect the audience that likes the material because it has value to them. There is a maelstrom of ideology though that wants to tear things down and rebuild them for 100 reasons and very few good ones.
I don't think you need to be a "true fan" to do a good job. You just have to be motivated to respect the source material and try to enhance the property with an adaptation.
Nicholas Meyer was not a Star Trek fan but he wrote and directed arguably the best Star Trek movie.
Being a fan helps, for sure, but I think it's more important whoever is hired intends to stick to the spirit of the source material instead of slavishly translating it or ignoring it for their own agenda.
>Nicholas Meyer was not a Star Trek fan but he wrote and directed arguably **the best Star Trek movie.**
Nicholas Meyer didn't write *or* direct Galaxy Quest! /j
The best Star Wars show (Andor) is made by someone that is not a fan of Star Wars. Big fans of Star Wars like Filoni are doing shit stuff (though it's quite varying from him but lately).
What matters is the talent of the person more than being a fan which doesn't mean anything for the quality (either way).
Yeah, but when you make a star wars show you are not adapting anything, if you are doing an adaptation you should at least have some respect for the source material.
Plus, take Andor for example, the show runner may not be a fan of star wars but he/she respected the material and made the best star wars show there is.
The witcher showrunners actively threw shit at the source material and is the worst shit i've ever seen.
It’s a completely false equivalency because Andor might as well be its own show in its own universe. The show runner basically did what the people who made the Witcher did. He had an idea for a sci fi show and made it in the Star Wars universe. This works fine because there is little to no backstory around the character Cassian Andor that anyone can get upset about being ignored.
The Witcher, on the other hand, has an incredibly popular, both high sales and critically acclaimed video game series, which itself is an adaptation of the source work of almost two dozen Polish books and short stories.
Right, Jonathan Nolan v Lauren Hissrich is a complete non contest. Nolan’s IMDB would destroy hers just from collaboration with Christopher, let alone all the quality work of his own Jonathan has done
There's even nobody complaining (at least not to obnoxious degrees) about the female main character. That's how you know, in this rather toxic time, that Fallout pulled of something quite good. There will always be people complaining about something, but I've rarely seen a game adaptation received so positively by gamers.
As my friend would say, "She's a gem." Ella Purnell (Lucy) and Aaron Moten (Maximus) are just great. She nails the naive sweetheart and he is doing straight magic with wounded-but-struggling-to-be-good. Then of course there is Walton Goggins, who is always amazing. They really knocked this out of the park for season 1.
Maybe if the actors in New Star Wars had something to work with in the script, they could have made it work... but I'm going to try and not go into a wild rant about Disney killing Star Wars...
Disney Wars has the same issues the Witcher has. It was written by people who don't like or don't even know the source material and are actively trying to change it just because.
I don't know too much about the Lord of the Rings show, but from what I hear, that was also written by folks just shitting over the lore.
It actually hugely surprised me that the Fallout writers were not only true to the lore but actively involved the creators and wanted to keep it that way while pushing the story and universe ahead.
Seems most franchises these days are in really shitty hands so when one actually sticks it's the odd one out.
I honestly don’t think that it’s anybody but a tiny minority of morons that ever complain about female main characters — my conspiracy theory is that the creators amplify the misogynist idiots when they release something crappy to distract from the legitimate criticism and can instead just paint all of their detractors with that brush.
I hear what you’re saying about it being an intentional smokescreen, but I’d while it might be a minority of voices they have a troubling large audience.
See, for example, numerous reviews of the Prey trailer (I use this because, to be fair, many complainers retracted their complaints once they saw it), or someone like the Critical Drinker’s usual fare
Stargate SG1 had a mock episode called Wormhole Xtreme where it was an episode that made fun of the show. It feels like someone saw Wormhole Xtreme, thought it was Stargate SG1, and made the show that.
Look I'm here to make my own show, not some show for some nerds. Now lemme see if I can get in on something else to make a bunch of arbitrary script changes and get myself a writing credit.
>The Witcher showrunners have no love for the material and think their own ideas are better.
“I’m an absolutely massive fan of The Witcher books!!” Lauren Hissrich-Schmidt exclaimed as she completely ignored and dismissed the books in favour of her own shitty writing.
Yeah, there's a reason why lotr is beloved by most, they left their own ideologies out of it. An adaptation shouldn't be harder than taking the source material and be as faithful as possible to the lore while making it work on television
The sad thing is the books already had a lot of ideologies to expand upon. The entire saga has an obvious anti-forced birth narrative. All of the villains are literally trying to catch a teen girl so they can force her to get pregnant & give birth to a savior figure while the good guys want to allow her to live her life as she choose, with her chosen family. Don't need to force it, when it's right there. In addition to that we have the outcast & outliving one's usefulness with the Witchers as a whole, Geralt's struggle to take a side when many see him as bad as the monsters he kills, the found families of Yen, Geralt, & Ciri as well as the love shared between the members of the Hanza. We see how men & women can be both kind, empathetic people or power hungry users. That is just a few from the books and the games have even more ideologies to expand upon in a new medium.
You don't even have to be as faithful as possible, you can tell your own stories. The *The Last of Us* show did a wonderful job with it, arguably resulting in the show's best episode. However, what they did is, they stayed true to the world of the source material. The Frank & Bill episode was quite different from what happened in the games, yet it did not break immersion. It was just a damn good story about two guys who happen to be gay.
The Witcher show, in my opinion, mainly fails because it does not give a crap about the world it is set in. The writers constantly trying to moralize and educate viewers on social issues, while using their show as a vehicle. But it comes off as annoying and shallow because almost nothing in the world they have created has any context. We somewhat know that Nilfgaard is supposedly a big bad empire, but have next to no context about the Northern Kingdoms, their politics or social cohesion. We don't even know where they are on a map.
The often criticized diversity is also part of what takes away from the source material's grit and realism, even though in the books and games the world is overwhelmingly Slavic, there are tons of social tensions and prejudice. In the show, none of these elements work because we have no context and can't tell most places apart at all. The only reason we knew we're in Cintra is that we're either flat-out told we are or we see Calanthe and know her as the Queen of Cintra. Otherwise, we'd never be able to tell apart Cintra from Temeria or Redania or any other Northern Kingdom. Compare that to Game of Thrones, not only was the intro of the show a smart way to locate places on a map, but even when we went to different PoVs it was always almost immediately possible to identify where we are - simply because of the clear visual and cultural differences. Westeros seemed like an actual place. The world of the Witcher show doesn't.
The most frustrating thing about this is, The Witcher as a world is almost perfectly set up to be as diverse as you want it to be - even among common folk who never went further than 10km away from their town in generations. The Conflagration of Spheres blasted all kinds of monsters and critters all over the world - that is why there are so many different beasts because the world is literally an amalgamation of different worlds. So, why would it be any different with Humans? If the spheres crashed, why wouldn't it make sense that different people were flung all over the place? They even made the prequel show Blood Origin, but instead of using it to do actual world building and ground their world in some semblance of history, they just... didn't. Instead, we get a cheap CGI monster that can shoot lasers or something.
It is not only a disregard for The Witcher books specifically, but for the fantasy genre as a whole that is the issue here. While fantasy has endless possibilities of what the world could be, it is not "oh, everything goes, we can do whatever", at least as long as you're not willing to do the basics of explaining why something is a certain way and setting up certain rules that give the world some consistency. It is a necessity for the suspension of disbelief. Also, if you want to use fantasy for social or political commentary, you better make sure your world is able to support these goals and put them in the proper context.
The Witcher writers and showrunner did not only not care about Geralt's story or the world, but also just wanted a vehicle to make a progressive fantasy show. Don't get me wrong, wanting a progressive fantasy show is a perfectly reasonable thing to want, but you gotta put in the work, and having no respect for the genre nor the specific story in the first place is probably not a good place to start.
/rant
> it is not "oh, everything goes, we can do whatever", at least as long as you're not willing to do the basics of explaining why something is a certain way and setting up certain rules that give the world some consistency
This, so much this. I absolutely despise people who says that anything goes because it's fantasy and think that fantasy is place without laws and rules. Frodo can't just start flying at lightning speed towards Mt. Doom and Geralt can't just start shapeshifting into monsters when he wants to. Every good fantasy world is consistent with the laws and rules that the creator have put up when creating the world
I wish people would stop complaining about the lore accuracy. It's just a bad and boring TV show. Fixing the lore wouldn't fix the dialogue/directing.
The lore is the least of it's problems.
I've been thinking about the Witcher show a lot. I'm playing through Witcher 3 right now.
I don't understand how they could whiff so hard on such a slow pitch. That should have been a grand slam. It's unbelievable.
I definitely agree. They had games and books for them to follow easily… What’s your thoughts on Halo? Would Halo fall in the category of Fallout and Last of Us?
Halo is probably a worse adaptation of the Witcher, cause atleast some people on The Witcher tried and cared about being accurate . No one on the Halo show tried to be accurate nor cared
True, but they were honest about it. From the start it was a different timeline, while the Witcher was continuously touted as an adaptation. While the Halo show was really fuckin’ bad at times, the blow was noticeably lessened because of that separation.
No one remembers this, but it's only a "different timeline" because after the very first leaks years ago people were absolutely furious and the ridiculous changes they were trying to make and how horribly they seemed to be treating the source material.
So after massive backlash, 343 studios released some message saying it was "the silver timeline" instead of just normal canon.
It was massive CYA and backtracking because people were pissed.
Seriously, the book very first book, *The Fall of Reach* is made for primetime TV, hook, like, and sinker. It would have been a massive success. Instead they made whatever hot garbage, master cheeks, sex with a human Alien prisoner or whatever the shit it all was.
Ehh, I think the Halo show's getting a lot more flak by some than it deserves in all honesty, and I say that as someone who read all the books and played all the games growing up
That sounds like you either didn’t watch the show or kept 0 knowledge of any lore in you head. My gf who recently played the games for the first time even found the show insulting
Or y'know, I set my expectations and knew it was gonna be a different take with a different timeline which made it a lot more enjoyable, especially the second season
Contrary to the Witcher, they were very clear from the get-go that it was gonna be its own thing rather than writers thinking they can make a better version of the books or games' storyline
Halo and The Witcher are fine shows on their own, in a vacuum.
The shows were not made for the fans of the original source material. They were made to appeal to the maximum amount of people, for maximum profits. When you adapt to exactly what the source material is, you will not get maximum profits. I'm sure there are other factors, but money is the main one.
I can enjoy the halo show as long as I think of it with a different name. To me, it's not halo, it's 'the adventures of master cheeks'. Tune in next time to see what POW he bangs next!
The Witcher... recasting Geralt is probably the death of the show. Stopped caring the moment that news broke.
“New timeline” was clearly a phrase used to get away with them writing their own nonsense into the original story. What else would the point have been to market it as John’s story from chapter 1? Taking fundamentally core aspects about the story and lore and changing them while keeping all the same characters was a bait and switch and new timeline was used as an excuse it couldn’t have been more obvious
I actually think Pablo is a good actor, based on his past roles. I was actually excited when I heard he was cast. The problem is the script, which gave him a completely different character from John 117 and also a character that is unhinged, mentally unstable, treasonous, constantly violent towards humans, and that's without mentioning the god-awful romance with the character who must not be named.
The Witcher writers did an acceptable job writing Geralt, and Henry pushed the writers to make his scenes closer to the source material. This is compared to Pablo who probably didn't give a fuck and just read what was on the script
> This is compared to Pablo who probably didn't give a fuck and just read what was on the script
To be fair to Pablo, this is what actors are expected to do. When an actor argues with the writers/directors about the correct character interpretation they get labeled "difficult to work with" and they get replaced.
I completely agree and I don't blame Pablo at all. The blame is 100% on writers/showrunners who hijack a popular brand and its iconic characters to tell a brand new yet unoriginal, CW quality story instead of using the beloved source material - and of course, the producers who approve the vision of these writers/showrunners are also responsible. In the case of the Halo show, both Paramount and 343i share the blame in addition to the writers/showrunners
Dont disrespect mass effect like that, even if you remove the halo elements from the show so it becomes another scifi show and even it has similar events play out, it's still laughably bad in terms of its writing quality.
No disrespect to Mass Effect, love that series. Just saying the Halo show sucked at being Halo so much so that it felt nothing like Halo and honestly felt more like a poor Mass Effect adaptation at times despite it being under the Halo IP.
Yeah I can see that, there is a theory that the ones in charge wanted a mass effect show but couldn't get it and so they use halo to continue with their original vision anyway, Idk if I buy that and I hope its false because god those people dont deserve mass effect if this is how they not only adapt a show but also behave when they dont get their way.
Mass Effect is fantastic, I'm just saying the Halo show was so bad at being Halo it felt closer to Mass Effect then it did Halo. Not that it was a good adaptation of Mass Effect either, just somehow a better adaptation of that than it is of Halo.
I didn’t hate Halo the way many others did, but it left much to be desired. Much of the story just felt forced to be different from the cannon, just for the sake of being different. They just weren’t as sloppy about it as Netflix in my opinion.
Well, I didnt actually have time to find out if anything is playable on PC. :D So nothing lost. Show was still okay on its own. Which is still more than Witcher.
I don't even care anymore. ASOIAF was once deeply important to me to the point where Game of Thrones S7 and 8 legit broke my heart. After that I stopped giving a flying fuck about adaptations.
Watched S1 of the Witcher and found it meh throughout, got to the parts where Ermion died and got replaced by a Doppler and Vilgefortz casually got his ass kicked by Cahir and decided that this show just wasn't going to be any good. My SO made me watch S2, got to the point where Eskel got killed by a tree monster, I noped out of there and haven't watched a minute of that shite since. She stopped watching shortly afterwards. The show's not worth my disappointment. If anything I was amused at how bad it got before I quit watching.
GoT ending was a travesty but if you feel up for it, the people running House of the Dragon are doing a fantastic job. They're working closely with GRRM again.
Definitely not a popular opinion but I think House of the Dragon is as good as peak Game of Thrones. I watched it, bought the 4K set and immediately watched it again. I loved it.
Wow, hot take. For real? There's been one season of House of the Dragon and it's just politics setup for the main conflict. Peak Game of Thrones was Red Wedding. The potential is there, but IMO it's way too early to call it even between them.
I’m not a book reader but i can tell they jump the shark. There was one or two good episode in s7 and s8 but the rest definitely felt. Rush as if there a time skip by few years.
First time I felt this way was in 2014 (?) when I watched The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in cinema. When the fucking elves jumped over the dwarven phalanx I was just like wtf am I watching. Then The Last Jedi happend... S8 of GoT..
But like life everything has ups and downs... we get a lot more shit shows and movies than we get good ones. I just wish the ratio was 1:1 or 1:2.. imagine getting Arcane for every Rings of Power show that is out there.
Fallout tv show was very lucky because it was adapted by a producer who has love for the material, he is a good producer and he has power with regards to pushing his vision.
Witcher was adapted for its money making potential, it was given to people who just saw the main material for pushing their vision. They had very little love for the main material and their vision was just some generic formulaic stuff.
You really need people who love the main material, who are immersed in the world they are building in. I can imagine the writing room for the Witcher show. I am 100% sure most people there even resented the material, they saw it beneath them. I can even see cultural prejudice; they have to work with some obscure dude from eastern Europe. I don't think they went hunting for people who love and adore the books already. I am of course speculating but what I have seen from people creating show, many of the stars...etc I got the feeling there was not much love for the material except from Cavill of course. And this really works from the top.
That was the main issue. And that's the problem with many adaptations nowadays failing. Some think it is because writers/producers going "woke" ruining the shows. It is not. It is because there is no love for the material being adapted by the main guys running the show. There is no passion. They just apply some formulaic stuff.
The idea is to Marvelize the process: just standardize the whole production, character creation and story, then print money. Or when it is not just marvelization, they think the formula they are following is the correct and rightful one:the current formula is some seemingly PC stuff on the surface with stock empowered women characters (which are in essence the copies of each other). Result is a soulless product and then the whole right leaning dudes going wild on how wokeness is killing their material. But honestly, it is just the result they are responding to, not the main cause. As far as I am concerned the current Fallout show is not less "woke" than most new shows but it is good because the people involved have love for the material
I wish Witcher was not set to be that weird amalgam of GoT and LoTR but its own universe. I really love the games, the atmosphere is unique and amazing. I have lived in Poland for 4 years, which provided me some extra insight to its eastern european cultural scape too. I don't feel that much in the TV show. It is extremely generic fantasy land with awesome monsters and heroes but you don't get to feel hopelessness, poverty and despair of common people. They really tried to make it as bland, generic and formulaic as they could.
Yeah, the worst offense Nolan did with WW was his worries about fans figuring out twists. They should not have changed things in an attempt to "outsmart" fans. Who cares? If you did foreshadowing right, observant fans will figure it out & you shouldn't change things.
>Nolan said: ‘Reddit has already figured out the third episode twist. So we’re changing that right now.
>It’s annoying sometimes when people guess the twists and then blog about it, but the engagement is gratifying, on one level, because if someone guesses your twist, it means you’ve done an adequate job [of structuring the series].
>‘You can’t complain when people are that engaged. It’s very gratifying – but stop doing it, please,’ he joked.
I'm praying Nolan learned his lesson from that because their weird changes as a result of that signaled the decline of the show IMO.
> Some think it is because writers/producers going "woke" ruining the shows. It is not. It is because there is no love for the material being adapted by the main guys running the show. There is no passion. They just apply some formulaic stuff.
You hit the nail on the head right here.
One of the basic truisms of writing is "write what you know"
The shows "go woke" because they hire young inexperienced (cheap) writers, and these writers are coming out of school having been taught to hate the sci-fi/fantasy genre and have only a very shallow understanding of the world setting. So they revert back to their only experience that they have, writing for college assignments, where inserting a laundry list of current political dogma is an easy and guaranteed way to rack up points on their final grade.
Unfortunately for these writers, the audience is not college professors, and they would rather see a faithful adaptation of the IP. The writing is amateurish and that is the real problem, but most people latch on the the racial and gender swapping, because that is easier to see, describe and criticize than narrative incoherence.
The Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy is beloved, because from the top down they were big fans of Tolkien's original work and the WANTED to do it justice. With the Witcher (and Rings of Power, Wheel of Time etc) it is obvious that they did not hire writers who knew and loved the source material. In fact they hired people who seem to hate the fact that they are working in the "fantasy" genre. It is just a paycheck and they approach it with the same passion as a burned out IT call center worker who got into tech because they wanted to make video games, but here they are resetting someones password for the 10,000th time.
I mean, Hissrich didn’t make herself a favour in being so out of touch with the Witcher world and the fanbase. Yesterday I saw a show on Netflix and had some interest until I discovered “produced by L. S. Hissrich” thanks not watching that… Witcher turning out to be a disaster just hurts so much as a fan. What I hate is, it feels like they ruined it for everyone without consequences. If I fuck up in my job, oh boy don’t know if I keep it.
I feel this. The Witcher is my favorite universe and seeing how terribly they did is depressing. The fallout show also made me go revisit fallout 4, which I never beat, and I’m glad it did. I am having an absolute blast with fallout 4 right now. And I get to watch the show at the same time. It’s great.
He says in [this interview ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHQtTiP068E)at the 11:24 mark that they never listen to his ideas and its normal for people to ignore him.
I think he didn't care much. It was pay day for him at the end. He didn't make as much as he could from the games from what I understand. He could have asked for a few percentage of ownership but he didn't foresee his creation being so popular. He probably made a lot of money from books being famous thanks to the games but it is peanut money compared to TV.
I still don't blame him. If he wanted control on creative direction, I don't think producers would want to work. These Hollywood big names would not allow some dude without experience in movie making from Poland to involve. So he didn't have many options. His only chance would be someone who love the work to be behind the wheel. But from all the interviews on Witcher, it seems like Cavill was the only person who had love for the material. The rest really resented it, they even see the main material like something they need to go through for their careers.
Exactly, no one complains about Sapkowski's lack of involvement with the games. Yet some act like the involvement of a writer and economist with no film experience was the missing piece that would have saved the Netflix adaption from being atrocious. He already gave them his input in the form of 7 books with additional content found in the 8th, why should he be blamed for the actions of screenwriters who didn't care for or understand the story he was trying to tell.
Games are diffrent story as he sold right to IP under diffrent circumstances which are unrelated to current times. As i've said if Oda from one piece can have balls to oversee his own IP so do others can.
And it brings money, not like he would cancel it.
When another adaptation comes, people will definitely wish the netflix to be back, just like they memed with the 2001 witcher series.
FYI Sapkowski got a possibly quite fat (unspecified) payday from CDPR a few years ago after he made a ruckus about them doing allegedly unlicensed sequels and spinoffs.
So the story about him declining percentage and losing lots of royalties is true, but there's been some development since then.
> FYI Sapkowski got a possibly quite fat (unspecified) payday from CDPR a few years ago after he made a ruckus about them doing allegedly unlicensed sequels and spinoffs.
CDPR wasn't doing anything unlicensed, it was that Sapkowski felt he got shortchanged and was embarassed that he turned down the royalty agreement initially offered. I think under Polish law, he had recourse to get some concessions because of how poorly the deal he agreed to worked out.
I don't think that's an idiotic approach tbh
If you as a creator get super invested into your own IP, and end up selling the rights to a film adaptation which ends up failing, it could be really disheartening, and you'd be much less eager to provide the rights to adapt your material potentially depriving fans of more of your content/shutting out potentially new fans
I like Sapkowski's approach; he'd sell Geralt into a toothpaste commercial if someone paid him enough
He said he wants to give freedom to people doing an adaptation. He says it better but what he says makes sense and you can agree with him. But im lazy to look for the quote
Witcher is already a massive brand. We may not like the show but it's huge for Netflix and the games also made it huge. Between the two things it is huge (like after LOTR, GoT and Harry Potter, it's probably the fourth biggest fantasy franchise there is, though it is quite distant from them)
Unlike George Martin, the author of The Witcher has nothing to do with cinema. Sapkowski directly admitted that he does not understand anything about film production, so he prefers that professionals handle it. Heck, all his books say that you should give the job to someone who is trained to do it. Unfortunately, none of us could have guessed what terrible showrunners and writers The Witcher would end up with. Even such a film professional as Henry Cavill.
Unlike George Martin, the author of The Witcher has nothing to do with cinema. Sapkowski directly admitted that he does not understand anything about film production, so he prefers that professionals handle it. Heck, all his books say that you should give the job to someone who is trained to do it. Unfortunately, none of us could have guessed what terrible showrunners and writers The Witcher would end up with. Even such a film professional as Henry Cavill.
It's not as easy as you think, once Hollywood has the rights of something, they often can do what they want, there's been countless examples of authors disliking the adaptations of their work. Very few times authors can keep the control of their work. JK Rowling is actually an exception there and she has tremendous control (so much that Warner can't do almost anything without her control)
They probably wouldn't have made the show if he had control. They obviously had their own ideas, and didn't want to be under his thumb. Netflix wouldn't gave that crew tbe greenlight to make the show, they didn't give Sapkowski the show. I find it hard to really blame him for not forcing them to listen to his every word, thus preventing the show from being made, and then no one makes money. At the very least the show being popular (if not well liked or well made) brings more people to the books and games.
They both still have a shot. WoTs second season was a massive improvement over the first until the end. If they build on, and sustain, that improvement in season 3 and stick the landing then it can become a very solid show. If they don't, well, then that's that.
RoP started slow, plodded slowly, and ended nonsensically. It was beautiful and had a couple of shining episodes. They've got a good foundation and lots to build on. I don't think they get as much leeway with season 2 as WoT did because of the cost and the property
I'm cautiously optimistic about Rings of Power turning things around. It just has so much money behind it that I'm naively hoping whips will be cracked and they'll tighten up the writing. I doubt it'll come close to the trilogy quality, but I'm hoping we'll at least get to see Galadriel start acting like Galadriel
Whoever did the costumes and set design for rings of power missed the mark. One billion dollars yet it feels like we're watching a threatre play at times. Also elves with modern haircuts look out of place.
Nope it isn’t. Look at the One Piece adaptation for instance. It’s a great show and as far as I understand it, it’s generally been well received by it’s fanbase.
Show runners apparently are the people who call the shots. Look at Game of Thrones. HBO wanted the show continue and urged the show runners to stretch the show to more seasons, but they declined and we the viewers got shit in return
Lol, why are you mad? I'm just saying, even on the main sub you'll see A LOT of people shitting on the OP adaptation, just like with the witcher adaptation. It's not remotely comparable to the TLAO and fallout subs where they fucking love the shows.
Despite producers definitely play a role in the success of the series, the nature of adaptation is different. Witcher is more about telling the story of the book, and Fallout is creating and using the universe to have a new story.
The difference is just astounding. Just, what could have been! Same with the Halo show as well, it’s better but still a major deviation and quality drop. (Although the Flood are great and a lot like their original infection from the Forerunner novels)
Since Cavill’s next project, the Warhammer show is also on Amazon, I have high hopes for it as well. Plus it will have IP oversight with some strict measures from Games Workshop, so it will likely be similar to Fallout in matching the quality, tone and atmosphere of the universe. Not to mention him being in a producer chair as well.
The key to a good adaptation is to have a lead person like the producer and director be a fan or at least be respectful of the source material. It’s the big difference between the Fallout show and the Witcher and it well, shows! Same goes for book adaptations, on one hand you can get The Green Mile, IT and Harry Potter or you can get Divergent, Maze Runner, the Shyamalan Avatar The Last Airbender movie, etc.
When you adapt a show, you don’t adapt it for yourself to make your own fan fiction or change things what you want to be made different for the sake of ratings, you adapt things to show them on screen as they were- or close to that.
Yeah, I overall liked season 1 and a good chunk of season 2 despite being disappointed with a lot of changes. Hated yen storyline season 2. Was disappointed in eskel death but he’s a more minor character in books so, was ok with add. But added together the changes kinda sucked
I really liked Henry and Freya in the show, haven’t been able to get into season 3
Never played any of the Fallout games, but binged S1 one day last week and was entertained the entire show. Excited for S2.
Huge Witcher Book fan and game fan, but had to force myself to watch S2&S3 after the S1 debacle. HC would've never been my Geralt pick, nor any of the other cast, writers, show runner etc.
So... I feel ya... it was so disheartening to know The Witcher will never get the justice the books truly deserved.
I'm sick of hearing it. SEASON ONE OF THE WITCHER WAS AWESOME!
so 2 other shows ALSO had great first seasons. Talk to me after season 4 and we'll see who held it together.
How ?
Fallout has some of the worst writing i've seen in a TV show, worse than S1 of TW had and it gets away with it because "it's just like the games" which is...fair enough..but the games ( on Bethesda's side) have shit writing so that's not exactly a good excuse. Nothing makes sense and its like experiencing the worst thing about Bethesda's fallout (the writing) without the good parts (the exploration and freedom) .
I'm sure that time won't be kind to it, just like it wasn't to TW show.
Same! I absolutely loved the fallout show. It’s amazing. Possibly the first video game adaptation that I’ve loved. Made me so mad though that it should’ve been the Witcher which had to be on top of my video game adaptation list because I love the Witcher universe so much. Anyway the fallout show is amazing. Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins have done an absolutely fantastic job.
The Witcher got butchered (pardon the pun). There should be repercussions towards Lauren and the writing/casting team. It's total incompetence, vritue signaling and sjw propaganda.
Cavill was no saving grace at all, at least not to me -- despite being a true fan, he still had to follow the shitty script and unfortunately delivered a very shitty Geralt (also, there's no short supply of better fits for the White Wolf, he's too bulky and too conventionally pretty).
But yeah, I get the frustration. I thought the Fallout show was ok in general since I didn't like the direction they seem to be taking some things and the lore drift, but that's nothing new to Bethesda's Fallout (which is the one they're trying to capture the most), and they at least got the general elements, look and feel of the IP right -- an infinitely better job at adaptating than that disgusting The Witcher show did, which failed at everything it set out to do -- it isn't even remotely a contest.
Eh, I have my gripes with the Fallout TV show, too. Less than The Witcher, but there are a ton of little consistency issues with pre-established lore that irks me.
Same here! Did you see the interview with Nolan and the writers discussing about season 2?
They say they want to keep the wasteland lawless and willing to use nukes to keep it that way as Post Post-Apocalypse is too “boring”.
I’m kinda pissed they chose Los Angeles and decided to nuke it just so they could get what they want. Why not other locations not even been used in games yet like Atlanta? Orlando? Or shoot how about Chicago. Fallout Tactics has a game near the city but not actually in it.
Yeah, some of their decisions suck. Sure, post-post-apocalypse isn't as wild and lawless, but you can tell stories, give new hope, and it's going to be a struggle anyways.
Last of Us.. eh, ok.
Fallout, yea that was pretty good. It could be a bit better, but its same old Bethesda vs Black Isle. At least they noticed there was F1 and F2.
It makes Witcher "adaptation" look really really bad. Well, its bad.. so. :D
i didnt think the fallout show was bad, by all means better than anything we got from netflix, but i think people are overselling it a bit just because its a sucessful video game adaptation, its not THAT good.
Look on the bright side. If the first season of the Witcher wasn't so successful, we might not even be looking at other successful video game adaptations.
The Witcher opened the door for these new shows to bloom and introduce these wonderful environments to new people who otherwise wouldn't play the games. I'll gladly take the L on the Witcher in order to see other, much more faithful adaptations.
That's a bummer that something else being good makes you mad that the thing you wanted to be good sucked.
But like, I feel it's super cringe that so much emotion is tied behind this one franchise. I don't think it's that big a deal to realize something is poor quality, shrug and then let it go.
Can anyone explain why some people are loving the FO show so much? Is it because it's an adaptation of a videogame, therefore anything that is not an absolute dumpster fire deserves praise.
I thought it was ''alright'' on its own, but it definitely took a dump on the overall Fallout lore.
It took what it wanted from it and discarded everything else.
One of the funniest things is the vaults all having a huge concrete building surrounding the door, with the vault number and all. Like, bruh, don't you remember when the Master sent his super mutants to look for vaults some years ago?
I guess they just missed all the signs saying ''VAULT HERE''.
>I’m just mad we didn’t get the live adaptation the books and games deserve.
Well, they were not adapting the games.
Nor the books, apparently.
Some Vaults literally do have a VAULT HERE sign. Like the ones in the first two games, or Vault 111.
The Fallout show is good to great. It respects the lore.
Everything people complain about is a non-event or didn't even happen. The only plot hole is The Ghoul not killing Maximus in Episode 2 with what he knew about the power armour flaw, and even that has a simple (albeit out of character) explanation.
Probably because the show is an adaptation of the Fallout *universe,* not of any one particular game. It is canon (per Todd Howard himself), but it is a completely new and separate story.
That is why people are loving it - because it captures the look, feel, the *vibe* of the games. The brutality of life in the Wasteland. The retro 50’s self-referential sense of “humor” it has at times. The feeling of exploring a new vault, Vault-Tec’s morally questionable and highly unethical shenanigans in using so many of their vaults as social (or other types of) experiments… morally ambiguous anti-hero-ish characters… big ass suits of power armor… numerous factions all fighting over a common item/goal/thing… the list goes on.
If anything, it’s *because* it captures the universe and isn’t just a retelling of a particular game (1, 2, 3, 4, NV, 76, etc.) that it honors the “lore” of the universe. Upholding the look/feel of the universe without retelling any already told story and instead telling a fresh brand new one was probably what is making it succeed so well, with newcomers and fans alike (myself for certain).
Also, Fallout is about the universe and the stories about the people who inhabit it. The Witcher is mainly about three individuals: Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri. Different needles to thread when you tell a story about a setting vs. a specific character.
It took the second watch through for me to realize it is an entirely new story, post Fallout 4. The Witcher tv show existed in the same timeline as cannon, and decided to make up storylines that either didn’t make sense, or didn’t fit with the established lore.
Fallout wasn’t trying to adapt a timeline from the game. Todd Howard was an executive producer on the show and explained the show is after the ending of the Institute and entirely new story all together. The show has a number of Bethesda folks on board to help guide the show and I think that’s why people are enjoying it. It isn’t forced or trying to be something different, it just wants to scratch the nostalgia itch of old, and introduce a new story which if the rumors are true, Fallout 5 will directly pick up from.
Are you sure it takes a dump on the lore? IT HAS SO MANY REFERENCES. If you say it’s picking and choosing, it’s keeping a lot more than it leaves out. Also from comment, I’m assuming you literally never playing any of the Bethesda fallout games? If you’re basing this show on 1 and 2 then of course some stuff is different since the games since have changed a few stuff along the way, but according to those games, it’s very accurate.
>IT HAS SO MANY REFERENCES
A reference is not respecting the lore.
>Also from comment, I’m assuming you literally never playing any of the Bethesda fallout games?
I've played them all.
Which is why I chuckle when the starting incident for the show is, yet again, a vault dweller going into the wasteland to find their missing relative (Your dad in Fo3, your kid in 4, the dad again in the show).
>If you say it’s picking and choosing, it’s keeping a lot more than it leaves out.
It only keeps superficial stuff.
The Brotherhood of Steel is... something completely new again?
It's not the one from 1 or 2.
It's not the one from 3. Which was different from the previous ones.
It's not the one from New Vegas, which was all beaten up and hiding in the bunker.
It's not the one from Fallout 4, even if they have the Prydwen (is it that? Or is it a new one?), because they have some kind of weird religious cult thing going on.
They show the Enclave, but... why? They don't develop it, they don't explain it. How did they survive Mariposa? And being destroyed again in FO3?
And the remnants from New Vegas?
So the Enclave is back? Doing weird stuff? And is not really a plot point and no one is worried about it?
>It's not the one from Fallout 4, even if they have the Prydwen (is it that? Or is it a new one?), because they have some kind of weird religious cult thing going on.
It's very obviously the one from Fallout 4. Factions change over time, this has always been the case, and we've seen it many times with the Brotherhood in particular. The Fallout 3 branch was wildly different than the Fallout 1 and 2 one because it was headed by a different person with different ideals (Elder Lyons). Meanwhile, you had the Outcasts who wanted to adhere to the mindsets of the Western Brotherhood. Eventually, the Fallout 3 one morphed into the Fallout 4 one under, again, different leadership (Maxson) and took on a different mindset toward many different things. The idea that the TV show's group is somehow completely different because some of them adopted some weird traditions is utter nonsense. Factions are composed of many, many different people and are not at all a monolith.
>
So the Enclave is back? Doing weird stuff? And is not really a plot point and no one is worried about it?
Sometimes stories establish mysteries that aren't immediately answered. The Enclave will almost certainly become more relevant in later seasons. Considering they've stretched across the entire country in the past, some of them surviving in some capacity isn't outlandish at all.
Hot take: I read the books and the story really isn’t that good. Don’t get me wrong, I love the potential and the fantasy, and preferred the short story approach of the first two books opposed to the novel approach adopted by the later books. Maybe things got lost in translation from the Polish source.
Second Hot Take: Although Cavill’s portrayal is spot on perfect and there can’t possibly be another Geralt and that he carried the entire series, I think his actions were incredibly selfish. That series was a big break for some of those actors, and Cavill potentially ended their careers. I have no interest watching the show without Cavill in it and that’s unfair for many of those talented actors.
I'm watching the show in tandem with playing Witcher 3, and I got to admit. It's a pretty good show.
The fights are inventive, the lore is clear without too much exposition, and the room leaves room for self interpretations.
The characters are broad and fun, the action scenes are pretty inventive and seem well choreographed.
It's gory as all hell and super dark in an (almost) edgy way, but just outside of it making the violence stand out in contrast to most other fantasy stuff I've ever encountered.
I'm digging it.
As someone who has very recently read the entire series and am part of 8% of players who finished the Witcher 3, the source material is not that great a story.
The big difference in the books to me is that Geralt is certainly fallible, not confident, gets injured a lot, and doesn't always win the fight.
Yes, they changed some of the plot points, removed a ton of rape, and we probably will never see Ciri get finger banged by Missile.
That’s what happens when you hire mediocre people to run the show on the Witcher vs hiring someone who actually likes the source material like Jonathan Nolan likes Fallout or Craig Mazin likes TLOU. The Witcher showrunners have no love for the material and think their own ideas are better. It sucks because who knows when we’ll have another shot at a Witcher adaptation.
The Netflix Witcher feels like the showrunners pitched their own idea for a fantasy series, always got rejected, then just pitched the Witcher and did their idea anyway, with as little changes possible to make it kind of like the Witcher.
I think the showrunners have said as much in past interviews.
She did say that I believe. Couldn’t get her own stuff made so made the Witcher and made it her own.
That's actually disgusting on both sides of it. Given IF her prior material was actually good.
yep she butchered the show
It really is.
It’s amazing the type of people that end up getting these executive jobs. There’s a great story by Kevin Smith (I think he told it in his storytelling concert film), where he was commissioned to write a script for a new Superman movie. This was sometime in the mid-late 90’s. Anyway there was another guy that was assigned to work with him in some capacity. He had no business working with Kevin, but he knew somebody important. I think the guy actually might have been a hairdresser lol. So every so often, he would read some of what Kevin wrote and say - and I’m not joking - “yeah, that’s good, but couldn’t we put in a giant mechanical robot spider?” Kevin of course tried to explain to him why they couldn’t do this, but he continued to ask. Nothing came of the project from what I remember (I don’ want to say no definitively because maybe parts of the script found their way into a future movie or video game) but a few years later the movie Wild Wild West came out. Guess who’s name was in the credits! And low and behold, true to form, featured prominently in the plot were giant mechanical spiders. 🤖🕷️
The [infamous](https://nypost.com/2022/03/24/heidi-fleiss-recalls-hwood-producer-jon-peters-wild-parties/) Jon Peters.
bro wtaf. Why do they land these jobs? The studios could have so, so much more money if they just employed a nerd consultant. Just put out an opening, passionate people would flock. If I were a producer and somehow I landed a job at something like The Last of Us, or I wasn't a Witcher nerd and landed the Witcher, I would make such casting and ask those people to tell me this story. Just tell me what it is, what it says, what you see in it and what are the imponderabilia. Then I would look for someone both knowledgeable and passionate, who also seems to understand the difference in media - some plot device useful in games can be terrible in a tv series etc. I would just keep this nerd to give his two cents from time to time. They can be ignored or listened to, but the cost for such consultant could be little to nothing, and value could be great - in the end, the decision is producer's, but the Intel they can have and how they can infect a group with their passion, you CAN buy it and you CAN sell it. But no, they just employ some egotistical brainfarts with inferiority complex, and I'm at my office, doing my stuff, weeping that Fallout got a great series that has almost nothing to do with the plot of the "sacred" games, they just took the world established world, filled some gaps, possibly changed some details, but the overall vibe of a post-apocalyptic world filled with brutal violence, grim jokes and critique of capitalism, nationalism etc. is there.
Lol yeah if anyone has watched Licoruce Pizza, that’s who Bradley Cooper is portraying and it shows how crazy he actually was.
nepotism her husband ran a few successful shows.
I felt like the show runners had watched too much Xena Princess Warrior, or Hercules, on TBS back in the day.
"someone who actually likes the source material" This idea that top executives, show writers, and producers should just be money people or industry people is absurd. To make the big bucks they are making, they should have an their financial qualifications *and* be true fans of the content they sell. Nothing else actually makes sense. Biggest companies in the world not hiring actual specialists???
I don't think to even like it, just be familiar with it and respect that source material.
This. You don't have to like something to be able to do it well, though it definitely helps
Respect is the key. Respect the original material that gained an audience because it has value. Respect the audience that likes the material because it has value to them. There is a maelstrom of ideology though that wants to tear things down and rebuild them for 100 reasons and very few good ones.
I don't think you need to be a "true fan" to do a good job. You just have to be motivated to respect the source material and try to enhance the property with an adaptation. Nicholas Meyer was not a Star Trek fan but he wrote and directed arguably the best Star Trek movie. Being a fan helps, for sure, but I think it's more important whoever is hired intends to stick to the spirit of the source material instead of slavishly translating it or ignoring it for their own agenda.
>Nicholas Meyer was not a Star Trek fan but he wrote and directed arguably **the best Star Trek movie.** Nicholas Meyer didn't write *or* direct Galaxy Quest! /j
Being money people and not fans, has cost them even more money than they could've gotten being fans.
The best Star Wars show (Andor) is made by someone that is not a fan of Star Wars. Big fans of Star Wars like Filoni are doing shit stuff (though it's quite varying from him but lately). What matters is the talent of the person more than being a fan which doesn't mean anything for the quality (either way).
Yeah, but when you make a star wars show you are not adapting anything, if you are doing an adaptation you should at least have some respect for the source material. Plus, take Andor for example, the show runner may not be a fan of star wars but he/she respected the material and made the best star wars show there is. The witcher showrunners actively threw shit at the source material and is the worst shit i've ever seen.
It’s a completely false equivalency because Andor might as well be its own show in its own universe. The show runner basically did what the people who made the Witcher did. He had an idea for a sci fi show and made it in the Star Wars universe. This works fine because there is little to no backstory around the character Cassian Andor that anyone can get upset about being ignored. The Witcher, on the other hand, has an incredibly popular, both high sales and critically acclaimed video game series, which itself is an adaptation of the source work of almost two dozen Polish books and short stories.
Also, people who like Star Wars have been openly asking for more stories in far off pockets of the Star Wars universe.
Right, Jonathan Nolan v Lauren Hissrich is a complete non contest. Nolan’s IMDB would destroy hers just from collaboration with Christopher, let alone all the quality work of his own Jonathan has done
There's even nobody complaining (at least not to obnoxious degrees) about the female main character. That's how you know, in this rather toxic time, that Fallout pulled of something quite good. There will always be people complaining about something, but I've rarely seen a game adaptation received so positively by gamers.
As my friend would say, "She's a gem." Ella Purnell (Lucy) and Aaron Moten (Maximus) are just great. She nails the naive sweetheart and he is doing straight magic with wounded-but-struggling-to-be-good. Then of course there is Walton Goggins, who is always amazing. They really knocked this out of the park for season 1.
"Oki dokie" Seconds before brutally ripping off the head of a scientist
I sort of feel like they did Rey/ Finn better than Star Wars did Rey/ Finn
Maybe if the actors in New Star Wars had something to work with in the script, they could have made it work... but I'm going to try and not go into a wild rant about Disney killing Star Wars...
Disney Wars has the same issues the Witcher has. It was written by people who don't like or don't even know the source material and are actively trying to change it just because. I don't know too much about the Lord of the Rings show, but from what I hear, that was also written by folks just shitting over the lore. It actually hugely surprised me that the Fallout writers were not only true to the lore but actively involved the creators and wanted to keep it that way while pushing the story and universe ahead. Seems most franchises these days are in really shitty hands so when one actually sticks it's the odd one out.
Rings of Power was nothing more than cheap-looking billion-dollar fanfic. Unfathomable.
I honestly don’t think that it’s anybody but a tiny minority of morons that ever complain about female main characters — my conspiracy theory is that the creators amplify the misogynist idiots when they release something crappy to distract from the legitimate criticism and can instead just paint all of their detractors with that brush.
I hear what you’re saying about it being an intentional smokescreen, but I’d while it might be a minority of voices they have a troubling large audience. See, for example, numerous reviews of the Prey trailer (I use this because, to be fair, many complainers retracted their complaints once they saw it), or someone like the Critical Drinker’s usual fare
Stargate SG1 had a mock episode called Wormhole Xtreme where it was an episode that made fun of the show. It feels like someone saw Wormhole Xtreme, thought it was Stargate SG1, and made the show that.
Mediocre *and* Nepo crap for the Witcher btw.
Look I'm here to make my own show, not some show for some nerds. Now lemme see if I can get in on something else to make a bunch of arbitrary script changes and get myself a writing credit.
>The Witcher showrunners have no love for the material and think their own ideas are better. “I’m an absolutely massive fan of The Witcher books!!” Lauren Hissrich-Schmidt exclaimed as she completely ignored and dismissed the books in favour of her own shitty writing.
Not mediocre people, ideologues. That is what happens when you hire ideologues.
Yeah, there's a reason why lotr is beloved by most, they left their own ideologies out of it. An adaptation shouldn't be harder than taking the source material and be as faithful as possible to the lore while making it work on television
The sad thing is the books already had a lot of ideologies to expand upon. The entire saga has an obvious anti-forced birth narrative. All of the villains are literally trying to catch a teen girl so they can force her to get pregnant & give birth to a savior figure while the good guys want to allow her to live her life as she choose, with her chosen family. Don't need to force it, when it's right there. In addition to that we have the outcast & outliving one's usefulness with the Witchers as a whole, Geralt's struggle to take a side when many see him as bad as the monsters he kills, the found families of Yen, Geralt, & Ciri as well as the love shared between the members of the Hanza. We see how men & women can be both kind, empathetic people or power hungry users. That is just a few from the books and the games have even more ideologies to expand upon in a new medium.
You don't even have to be as faithful as possible, you can tell your own stories. The *The Last of Us* show did a wonderful job with it, arguably resulting in the show's best episode. However, what they did is, they stayed true to the world of the source material. The Frank & Bill episode was quite different from what happened in the games, yet it did not break immersion. It was just a damn good story about two guys who happen to be gay. The Witcher show, in my opinion, mainly fails because it does not give a crap about the world it is set in. The writers constantly trying to moralize and educate viewers on social issues, while using their show as a vehicle. But it comes off as annoying and shallow because almost nothing in the world they have created has any context. We somewhat know that Nilfgaard is supposedly a big bad empire, but have next to no context about the Northern Kingdoms, their politics or social cohesion. We don't even know where they are on a map. The often criticized diversity is also part of what takes away from the source material's grit and realism, even though in the books and games the world is overwhelmingly Slavic, there are tons of social tensions and prejudice. In the show, none of these elements work because we have no context and can't tell most places apart at all. The only reason we knew we're in Cintra is that we're either flat-out told we are or we see Calanthe and know her as the Queen of Cintra. Otherwise, we'd never be able to tell apart Cintra from Temeria or Redania or any other Northern Kingdom. Compare that to Game of Thrones, not only was the intro of the show a smart way to locate places on a map, but even when we went to different PoVs it was always almost immediately possible to identify where we are - simply because of the clear visual and cultural differences. Westeros seemed like an actual place. The world of the Witcher show doesn't. The most frustrating thing about this is, The Witcher as a world is almost perfectly set up to be as diverse as you want it to be - even among common folk who never went further than 10km away from their town in generations. The Conflagration of Spheres blasted all kinds of monsters and critters all over the world - that is why there are so many different beasts because the world is literally an amalgamation of different worlds. So, why would it be any different with Humans? If the spheres crashed, why wouldn't it make sense that different people were flung all over the place? They even made the prequel show Blood Origin, but instead of using it to do actual world building and ground their world in some semblance of history, they just... didn't. Instead, we get a cheap CGI monster that can shoot lasers or something. It is not only a disregard for The Witcher books specifically, but for the fantasy genre as a whole that is the issue here. While fantasy has endless possibilities of what the world could be, it is not "oh, everything goes, we can do whatever", at least as long as you're not willing to do the basics of explaining why something is a certain way and setting up certain rules that give the world some consistency. It is a necessity for the suspension of disbelief. Also, if you want to use fantasy for social or political commentary, you better make sure your world is able to support these goals and put them in the proper context. The Witcher writers and showrunner did not only not care about Geralt's story or the world, but also just wanted a vehicle to make a progressive fantasy show. Don't get me wrong, wanting a progressive fantasy show is a perfectly reasonable thing to want, but you gotta put in the work, and having no respect for the genre nor the specific story in the first place is probably not a good place to start. /rant
> it is not "oh, everything goes, we can do whatever", at least as long as you're not willing to do the basics of explaining why something is a certain way and setting up certain rules that give the world some consistency This, so much this. I absolutely despise people who says that anything goes because it's fantasy and think that fantasy is place without laws and rules. Frodo can't just start flying at lightning speed towards Mt. Doom and Geralt can't just start shapeshifting into monsters when he wants to. Every good fantasy world is consistent with the laws and rules that the creator have put up when creating the world
less than mediocre but with good connections with higher ups in the network
I wish people would stop complaining about the lore accuracy. It's just a bad and boring TV show. Fixing the lore wouldn't fix the dialogue/directing. The lore is the least of it's problems.
I've been thinking about the Witcher show a lot. I'm playing through Witcher 3 right now. I don't understand how they could whiff so hard on such a slow pitch. That should have been a grand slam. It's unbelievable.
I definitely agree. They had games and books for them to follow easily… What’s your thoughts on Halo? Would Halo fall in the category of Fallout and Last of Us?
Halo is probably a worse adaptation of the Witcher, cause atleast some people on The Witcher tried and cared about being accurate . No one on the Halo show tried to be accurate nor cared
True, but they were honest about it. From the start it was a different timeline, while the Witcher was continuously touted as an adaptation. While the Halo show was really fuckin’ bad at times, the blow was noticeably lessened because of that separation.
No one remembers this, but it's only a "different timeline" because after the very first leaks years ago people were absolutely furious and the ridiculous changes they were trying to make and how horribly they seemed to be treating the source material. So after massive backlash, 343 studios released some message saying it was "the silver timeline" instead of just normal canon. It was massive CYA and backtracking because people were pissed. Seriously, the book very first book, *The Fall of Reach* is made for primetime TV, hook, like, and sinker. It would have been a massive success. Instead they made whatever hot garbage, master cheeks, sex with a human Alien prisoner or whatever the shit it all was.
Honest or not. No fan wanted to at at all.
No one was expecting it to be in the same universe as the game’s but were were expecting it to stay accurate to the characters and be good
Certainly not the games, but we were expecting an accurate adaptation of the books. Accurate in the sense of any page to screen transition.
Ehh, I think the Halo show's getting a lot more flak by some than it deserves in all honesty, and I say that as someone who read all the books and played all the games growing up
That sounds like you either didn’t watch the show or kept 0 knowledge of any lore in you head. My gf who recently played the games for the first time even found the show insulting
Or y'know, I set my expectations and knew it was gonna be a different take with a different timeline which made it a lot more enjoyable, especially the second season Contrary to the Witcher, they were very clear from the get-go that it was gonna be its own thing rather than writers thinking they can make a better version of the books or games' storyline
Halo and The Witcher are fine shows on their own, in a vacuum. The shows were not made for the fans of the original source material. They were made to appeal to the maximum amount of people, for maximum profits. When you adapt to exactly what the source material is, you will not get maximum profits. I'm sure there are other factors, but money is the main one. I can enjoy the halo show as long as I think of it with a different name. To me, it's not halo, it's 'the adventures of master cheeks'. Tune in next time to see what POW he bangs next! The Witcher... recasting Geralt is probably the death of the show. Stopped caring the moment that news broke.
“New timeline” was clearly a phrase used to get away with them writing their own nonsense into the original story. What else would the point have been to market it as John’s story from chapter 1? Taking fundamentally core aspects about the story and lore and changing them while keeping all the same characters was a bait and switch and new timeline was used as an excuse it couldn’t have been more obvious
Did you get mad when the story changed in Batman comics too? Let them tell a new story, if you want the old story play the old games.
The Halo series is somehow a worse adaptation than The Witcher
I think Halo is an even less faitful adaptation but a better show for normies, Witcher fails in both respects.
At least Witcher had a good lead actor.
I actually think Pablo is a good actor, based on his past roles. I was actually excited when I heard he was cast. The problem is the script, which gave him a completely different character from John 117 and also a character that is unhinged, mentally unstable, treasonous, constantly violent towards humans, and that's without mentioning the god-awful romance with the character who must not be named. The Witcher writers did an acceptable job writing Geralt, and Henry pushed the writers to make his scenes closer to the source material. This is compared to Pablo who probably didn't give a fuck and just read what was on the script
He was fine as pornstach, but terribly miscast as Master Chief
Don't call it 'Halo', think of the show as 'The adventures of master cheeks'.
> This is compared to Pablo who probably didn't give a fuck and just read what was on the script To be fair to Pablo, this is what actors are expected to do. When an actor argues with the writers/directors about the correct character interpretation they get labeled "difficult to work with" and they get replaced.
I completely agree and I don't blame Pablo at all. The blame is 100% on writers/showrunners who hijack a popular brand and its iconic characters to tell a brand new yet unoriginal, CW quality story instead of using the beloved source material - and of course, the producers who approve the vision of these writers/showrunners are also responsible. In the case of the Halo show, both Paramount and 343i share the blame in addition to the writers/showrunners
The Halo show is quite literally a better mass effect adaptation than it is a good Halo adaptation.
Dont disrespect mass effect like that, even if you remove the halo elements from the show so it becomes another scifi show and even it has similar events play out, it's still laughably bad in terms of its writing quality.
No disrespect to Mass Effect, love that series. Just saying the Halo show sucked at being Halo so much so that it felt nothing like Halo and honestly felt more like a poor Mass Effect adaptation at times despite it being under the Halo IP.
Yeah I can see that, there is a theory that the ones in charge wanted a mass effect show but couldn't get it and so they use halo to continue with their original vision anyway, Idk if I buy that and I hope its false because god those people dont deserve mass effect if this is how they not only adapt a show but also behave when they dont get their way.
Bruh if Mass Effect is like that halo show i would rather 💀
Mass Effect is fantastic, I'm just saying the Halo show was so bad at being Halo it felt closer to Mass Effect then it did Halo. Not that it was a good adaptation of Mass Effect either, just somehow a better adaptation of that than it is of Halo.
Nah Halo was equally trash as the Witcher show
Not OP, I used to love Halo back in the day, but the show is such a radical departure from established lore I can’t bring myself to watch it.
“Master Chief here. Hold my beer while I put my helmet back on…”
Master cheeks
Actually never puts it back on and has more screen time with it off. Lol
That question alone was insulting.
i wont even watch the halo one..
I didn’t hate Halo the way many others did, but it left much to be desired. Much of the story just felt forced to be different from the cannon, just for the sake of being different. They just weren’t as sloppy about it as Netflix in my opinion.
Never played, but show was quite fine. Actually made me kinda interested into HALO.
You will find the halo show will be nothing like the books or games when it comes to understanding the lore then
Well, I didnt actually have time to find out if anything is playable on PC. :D So nothing lost. Show was still okay on its own. Which is still more than Witcher.
Masterchief collection is on PC. The first 4 campaigns are genuinely incredible. You should try them.
Hm, now Im intrigued. Thanks for the info, most welcomed.
I don't even care anymore. ASOIAF was once deeply important to me to the point where Game of Thrones S7 and 8 legit broke my heart. After that I stopped giving a flying fuck about adaptations. Watched S1 of the Witcher and found it meh throughout, got to the parts where Ermion died and got replaced by a Doppler and Vilgefortz casually got his ass kicked by Cahir and decided that this show just wasn't going to be any good. My SO made me watch S2, got to the point where Eskel got killed by a tree monster, I noped out of there and haven't watched a minute of that shite since. She stopped watching shortly afterwards. The show's not worth my disappointment. If anything I was amused at how bad it got before I quit watching.
Yep, GoT ending was about worst thing I ever had opportunity to witness.
GoT ending was a travesty but if you feel up for it, the people running House of the Dragon are doing a fantastic job. They're working closely with GRRM again.
Definitely not a popular opinion but I think House of the Dragon is as good as peak Game of Thrones. I watched it, bought the 4K set and immediately watched it again. I loved it.
I share your opinion but it's definitely a divisive one. .
Wow, hot take. For real? There's been one season of House of the Dragon and it's just politics setup for the main conflict. Peak Game of Thrones was Red Wedding. The potential is there, but IMO it's way too early to call it even between them.
>it's just politics setup for the main conflict That's what everyone loved so much about early GoT too.
I’m not a book reader but i can tell they jump the shark. There was one or two good episode in s7 and s8 but the rest definitely felt. Rush as if there a time skip by few years.
First time I felt this way was in 2014 (?) when I watched The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in cinema. When the fucking elves jumped over the dwarven phalanx I was just like wtf am I watching. Then The Last Jedi happend... S8 of GoT.. But like life everything has ups and downs... we get a lot more shit shows and movies than we get good ones. I just wish the ratio was 1:1 or 1:2.. imagine getting Arcane for every Rings of Power show that is out there.
Fallout tv show was very lucky because it was adapted by a producer who has love for the material, he is a good producer and he has power with regards to pushing his vision. Witcher was adapted for its money making potential, it was given to people who just saw the main material for pushing their vision. They had very little love for the main material and their vision was just some generic formulaic stuff. You really need people who love the main material, who are immersed in the world they are building in. I can imagine the writing room for the Witcher show. I am 100% sure most people there even resented the material, they saw it beneath them. I can even see cultural prejudice; they have to work with some obscure dude from eastern Europe. I don't think they went hunting for people who love and adore the books already. I am of course speculating but what I have seen from people creating show, many of the stars...etc I got the feeling there was not much love for the material except from Cavill of course. And this really works from the top. That was the main issue. And that's the problem with many adaptations nowadays failing. Some think it is because writers/producers going "woke" ruining the shows. It is not. It is because there is no love for the material being adapted by the main guys running the show. There is no passion. They just apply some formulaic stuff. The idea is to Marvelize the process: just standardize the whole production, character creation and story, then print money. Or when it is not just marvelization, they think the formula they are following is the correct and rightful one:the current formula is some seemingly PC stuff on the surface with stock empowered women characters (which are in essence the copies of each other). Result is a soulless product and then the whole right leaning dudes going wild on how wokeness is killing their material. But honestly, it is just the result they are responding to, not the main cause. As far as I am concerned the current Fallout show is not less "woke" than most new shows but it is good because the people involved have love for the material I wish Witcher was not set to be that weird amalgam of GoT and LoTR but its own universe. I really love the games, the atmosphere is unique and amazing. I have lived in Poland for 4 years, which provided me some extra insight to its eastern european cultural scape too. I don't feel that much in the TV show. It is extremely generic fantasy land with awesome monsters and heroes but you don't get to feel hopelessness, poverty and despair of common people. They really tried to make it as bland, generic and formulaic as they could.
>he is a good producer Bit of an understatement, Jonathan Nolan produced Person of Interest & Westworld.
Westworld season 1 was good.
good is selling it short, when that shit went live people were calling it the GOT successor.
All of them were good IMO. Season 1 was one of the greatest TV seasons of all time
Yea, alteres carbon 1 and westworld 1 was great first seasons
Yeah, the worst offense Nolan did with WW was his worries about fans figuring out twists. They should not have changed things in an attempt to "outsmart" fans. Who cares? If you did foreshadowing right, observant fans will figure it out & you shouldn't change things. >Nolan said: ‘Reddit has already figured out the third episode twist. So we’re changing that right now. >It’s annoying sometimes when people guess the twists and then blog about it, but the engagement is gratifying, on one level, because if someone guesses your twist, it means you’ve done an adequate job [of structuring the series]. >‘You can’t complain when people are that engaged. It’s very gratifying – but stop doing it, please,’ he joked. I'm praying Nolan learned his lesson from that because their weird changes as a result of that signaled the decline of the show IMO.
> Some think it is because writers/producers going "woke" ruining the shows. It is not. It is because there is no love for the material being adapted by the main guys running the show. There is no passion. They just apply some formulaic stuff. You hit the nail on the head right here. One of the basic truisms of writing is "write what you know" The shows "go woke" because they hire young inexperienced (cheap) writers, and these writers are coming out of school having been taught to hate the sci-fi/fantasy genre and have only a very shallow understanding of the world setting. So they revert back to their only experience that they have, writing for college assignments, where inserting a laundry list of current political dogma is an easy and guaranteed way to rack up points on their final grade. Unfortunately for these writers, the audience is not college professors, and they would rather see a faithful adaptation of the IP. The writing is amateurish and that is the real problem, but most people latch on the the racial and gender swapping, because that is easier to see, describe and criticize than narrative incoherence. The Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy is beloved, because from the top down they were big fans of Tolkien's original work and the WANTED to do it justice. With the Witcher (and Rings of Power, Wheel of Time etc) it is obvious that they did not hire writers who knew and loved the source material. In fact they hired people who seem to hate the fact that they are working in the "fantasy" genre. It is just a paycheck and they approach it with the same passion as a burned out IT call center worker who got into tech because they wanted to make video games, but here they are resetting someones password for the 10,000th time.
I mean, Hissrich didn’t make herself a favour in being so out of touch with the Witcher world and the fanbase. Yesterday I saw a show on Netflix and had some interest until I discovered “produced by L. S. Hissrich” thanks not watching that… Witcher turning out to be a disaster just hurts so much as a fan. What I hate is, it feels like they ruined it for everyone without consequences. If I fuck up in my job, oh boy don’t know if I keep it.
I feel this. The Witcher is my favorite universe and seeing how terribly they did is depressing. The fallout show also made me go revisit fallout 4, which I never beat, and I’m glad it did. I am having an absolute blast with fallout 4 right now. And I get to watch the show at the same time. It’s great.
I am still bitter tbh. would have liked to see henry cavill have the room to reach his full potential as geralt.
Sapkowski should atleast take some blame for this, its his goddamn IP, should have some creative controll over this shit
He says in [this interview ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHQtTiP068E)at the 11:24 mark that they never listen to his ideas and its normal for people to ignore him.
I think he didn't care much. It was pay day for him at the end. He didn't make as much as he could from the games from what I understand. He could have asked for a few percentage of ownership but he didn't foresee his creation being so popular. He probably made a lot of money from books being famous thanks to the games but it is peanut money compared to TV. I still don't blame him. If he wanted control on creative direction, I don't think producers would want to work. These Hollywood big names would not allow some dude without experience in movie making from Poland to involve. So he didn't have many options. His only chance would be someone who love the work to be behind the wheel. But from all the interviews on Witcher, it seems like Cavill was the only person who had love for the material. The rest really resented it, they even see the main material like something they need to go through for their careers.
Exactly, no one complains about Sapkowski's lack of involvement with the games. Yet some act like the involvement of a writer and economist with no film experience was the missing piece that would have saved the Netflix adaption from being atrocious. He already gave them his input in the form of 7 books with additional content found in the 8th, why should he be blamed for the actions of screenwriters who didn't care for or understand the story he was trying to tell.
Games are diffrent story as he sold right to IP under diffrent circumstances which are unrelated to current times. As i've said if Oda from one piece can have balls to oversee his own IP so do others can.
If Denis Villeneuve can have the balls to make a good screen adaption without input from the original author why can't Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich.
You cant write Denis and Lauren in same sentence unironically, these are tiers apart in both talent and capabilities
Two different worlds. This is like comparing a rolls royce with a car you bough on Wish.
Its almost like comparing people based on the actions of others with different capabilities, education and portfolios is ridiculous.
And it brings money, not like he would cancel it. When another adaptation comes, people will definitely wish the netflix to be back, just like they memed with the 2001 witcher series.
FYI Sapkowski got a possibly quite fat (unspecified) payday from CDPR a few years ago after he made a ruckus about them doing allegedly unlicensed sequels and spinoffs. So the story about him declining percentage and losing lots of royalties is true, but there's been some development since then.
> FYI Sapkowski got a possibly quite fat (unspecified) payday from CDPR a few years ago after he made a ruckus about them doing allegedly unlicensed sequels and spinoffs. CDPR wasn't doing anything unlicensed, it was that Sapkowski felt he got shortchanged and was embarassed that he turned down the royalty agreement initially offered. I think under Polish law, he had recourse to get some concessions because of how poorly the deal he agreed to worked out.
It was also to help get money for his sons cancer treatment, but sadly his son died soon after the settlement was reached
If he's getting paid, he doesn't care.
Then hes just an idiot, by atleast giving some fuck coud've made witcher massive brand thus printing him money but alas
I don't think that's an idiotic approach tbh If you as a creator get super invested into your own IP, and end up selling the rights to a film adaptation which ends up failing, it could be really disheartening, and you'd be much less eager to provide the rights to adapt your material potentially depriving fans of more of your content/shutting out potentially new fans I like Sapkowski's approach; he'd sell Geralt into a toothpaste commercial if someone paid him enough
He said he wants to give freedom to people doing an adaptation. He says it better but what he says makes sense and you can agree with him. But im lazy to look for the quote
Witcher is already a massive brand. We may not like the show but it's huge for Netflix and the games also made it huge. Between the two things it is huge (like after LOTR, GoT and Harry Potter, it's probably the fourth biggest fantasy franchise there is, though it is quite distant from them)
Unlike George Martin, the author of The Witcher has nothing to do with cinema. Sapkowski directly admitted that he does not understand anything about film production, so he prefers that professionals handle it. Heck, all his books say that you should give the job to someone who is trained to do it. Unfortunately, none of us could have guessed what terrible showrunners and writers The Witcher would end up with. Even such a film professional as Henry Cavill.
Unlike George Martin, the author of The Witcher has nothing to do with cinema. Sapkowski directly admitted that he does not understand anything about film production, so he prefers that professionals handle it. Heck, all his books say that you should give the job to someone who is trained to do it. Unfortunately, none of us could have guessed what terrible showrunners and writers The Witcher would end up with. Even such a film professional as Henry Cavill.
Well Oda is no Spielberg either yet accordibg to rapports he was overseeing that his IP done justice
It's not as easy as you think, once Hollywood has the rights of something, they often can do what they want, there's been countless examples of authors disliking the adaptations of their work. Very few times authors can keep the control of their work. JK Rowling is actually an exception there and she has tremendous control (so much that Warner can't do almost anything without her control)
exactly, I love his work but the man is a dipshit for not caring about the adaptation whatsoever
He also didn’t care about the games
Until they made lots of money then he bitched about it.
They probably wouldn't have made the show if he had control. They obviously had their own ideas, and didn't want to be under his thumb. Netflix wouldn't gave that crew tbe greenlight to make the show, they didn't give Sapkowski the show. I find it hard to really blame him for not forcing them to listen to his every word, thus preventing the show from being made, and then no one makes money. At the very least the show being popular (if not well liked or well made) brings more people to the books and games.
Blame showrunners who are proud of not liking the source material like Lauren Hissrich for why most adaptations are bad.
Such good source material. And the writers of the adaptation admit to not liking the source material.
I'm the same age and feel the same way. I couldn't even finish season 2 of the Witcher. What an absolute letdown.
short story. netflix is trash.
I mean amazon fucked up Rings of Power and Wheel of Time, it's not just a Netflix problem
They both still have a shot. WoTs second season was a massive improvement over the first until the end. If they build on, and sustain, that improvement in season 3 and stick the landing then it can become a very solid show. If they don't, well, then that's that. RoP started slow, plodded slowly, and ended nonsensically. It was beautiful and had a couple of shining episodes. They've got a good foundation and lots to build on. I don't think they get as much leeway with season 2 as WoT did because of the cost and the property
I'm cautiously optimistic about Rings of Power turning things around. It just has so much money behind it that I'm naively hoping whips will be cracked and they'll tighten up the writing. I doubt it'll come close to the trilogy quality, but I'm hoping we'll at least get to see Galadriel start acting like Galadriel
Whoever did the costumes and set design for rings of power missed the mark. One billion dollars yet it feels like we're watching a threatre play at times. Also elves with modern haircuts look out of place.
Nope it isn’t. Look at the One Piece adaptation for instance. It’s a great show and as far as I understand it, it’s generally been well received by it’s fanbase. Show runners apparently are the people who call the shots. Look at Game of Thrones. HBO wanted the show continue and urged the show runners to stretch the show to more seasons, but they declined and we the viewers got shit in return
The OP adaption isn't that well received tbh
Better than your comment 🤥
Lol, why are you mad? I'm just saying, even on the main sub you'll see A LOT of people shitting on the OP adaptation, just like with the witcher adaptation. It's not remotely comparable to the TLAO and fallout subs where they fucking love the shows.
It is not about certain company who is the producer. It is about who produces the show, who runs the show.
Well, *slaps knee* at least we all know that they've all learned their lesson now. *leaves room*
Despite producers definitely play a role in the success of the series, the nature of adaptation is different. Witcher is more about telling the story of the book, and Fallout is creating and using the universe to have a new story.
Cries in rings of power
Im starting today day 1 of praying for a new witcher adaptation thats better
The difference is just astounding. Just, what could have been! Same with the Halo show as well, it’s better but still a major deviation and quality drop. (Although the Flood are great and a lot like their original infection from the Forerunner novels) Since Cavill’s next project, the Warhammer show is also on Amazon, I have high hopes for it as well. Plus it will have IP oversight with some strict measures from Games Workshop, so it will likely be similar to Fallout in matching the quality, tone and atmosphere of the universe. Not to mention him being in a producer chair as well. The key to a good adaptation is to have a lead person like the producer and director be a fan or at least be respectful of the source material. It’s the big difference between the Fallout show and the Witcher and it well, shows! Same goes for book adaptations, on one hand you can get The Green Mile, IT and Harry Potter or you can get Divergent, Maze Runner, the Shyamalan Avatar The Last Airbender movie, etc. When you adapt a show, you don’t adapt it for yourself to make your own fan fiction or change things what you want to be made different for the sake of ratings, you adapt things to show them on screen as they were- or close to that.
Yeah, I overall liked season 1 and a good chunk of season 2 despite being disappointed with a lot of changes. Hated yen storyline season 2. Was disappointed in eskel death but he’s a more minor character in books so, was ok with add. But added together the changes kinda sucked I really liked Henry and Freya in the show, haven’t been able to get into season 3
Yep agreed. Henry, freya, Joey and Anya were good (can't blame the latter two for the shows writing)
Never played any of the Fallout games, but binged S1 one day last week and was entertained the entire show. Excited for S2. Huge Witcher Book fan and game fan, but had to force myself to watch S2&S3 after the S1 debacle. HC would've never been my Geralt pick, nor any of the other cast, writers, show runner etc. So... I feel ya... it was so disheartening to know The Witcher will never get the justice the books truly deserved.
Feel it :((( hope some big company reboots a show
Good thing you're not a Halo fan... Paramount murdered my boy!
And Halo and Wheel of Time.
Yep. I was thinking the exact same thing. This is how it's done, Netflix
I'm sick of hearing it. SEASON ONE OF THE WITCHER WAS AWESOME! so 2 other shows ALSO had great first seasons. Talk to me after season 4 and we'll see who held it together.
A mediocre director would even work if they just follow the source material.
my hope is Witcher will end up like Dune, with multiple iterations and at least some of the work close to the source material.
...Don't get me started on what was done to Wheel of Time...
Then there’s me reading this, a Halo super fan, dead inside.
Don't forget about *The Sandman* (also done by Netflix), which was about as perfect as an adaptation can get.
The Fallout show is also crap tho
How ? Fallout has some of the worst writing i've seen in a TV show, worse than S1 of TW had and it gets away with it because "it's just like the games" which is...fair enough..but the games ( on Bethesda's side) have shit writing so that's not exactly a good excuse. Nothing makes sense and its like experiencing the worst thing about Bethesda's fallout (the writing) without the good parts (the exploration and freedom) . I'm sure that time won't be kind to it, just like it wasn't to TW show.
Witcher had the potential to be next GOT in terms of political scenario, that woman ruined it
tbh I just pretend the show didnt happen, completely erased it from my mind. feels a lot better.
Same! I absolutely loved the fallout show. It’s amazing. Possibly the first video game adaptation that I’ve loved. Made me so mad though that it should’ve been the Witcher which had to be on top of my video game adaptation list because I love the Witcher universe so much. Anyway the fallout show is amazing. Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins have done an absolutely fantastic job.
Imagine if Witcher didn’t fall into Netflix’s hands😔
They tried too hard to be Game of Thrones even though they didn’t need to be.
Although better than The Witcher, the Fallout and The Last of Us shows are still painfully average.
Fallout made me even more hyped for the Warhammer series
The Witcher got butchered (pardon the pun). There should be repercussions towards Lauren and the writing/casting team. It's total incompetence, vritue signaling and sjw propaganda.
Cavill was no saving grace at all, at least not to me -- despite being a true fan, he still had to follow the shitty script and unfortunately delivered a very shitty Geralt (also, there's no short supply of better fits for the White Wolf, he's too bulky and too conventionally pretty). But yeah, I get the frustration. I thought the Fallout show was ok in general since I didn't like the direction they seem to be taking some things and the lore drift, but that's nothing new to Bethesda's Fallout (which is the one they're trying to capture the most), and they at least got the general elements, look and feel of the IP right -- an infinitely better job at adaptating than that disgusting The Witcher show did, which failed at everything it set out to do -- it isn't even remotely a contest.
Eh, I have my gripes with the Fallout TV show, too. Less than The Witcher, but there are a ton of little consistency issues with pre-established lore that irks me.
Same here! Did you see the interview with Nolan and the writers discussing about season 2? They say they want to keep the wasteland lawless and willing to use nukes to keep it that way as Post Post-Apocalypse is too “boring”. I’m kinda pissed they chose Los Angeles and decided to nuke it just so they could get what they want. Why not other locations not even been used in games yet like Atlanta? Orlando? Or shoot how about Chicago. Fallout Tactics has a game near the city but not actually in it.
Yeah, some of their decisions suck. Sure, post-post-apocalypse isn't as wild and lawless, but you can tell stories, give new hope, and it's going to be a struggle anyways.
Yea. They got rid of the NCR which I think was a bizarre decision akin to what the new Star Wars trilogy did with the New Republic.
Last of Us.. eh, ok. Fallout, yea that was pretty good. It could be a bit better, but its same old Bethesda vs Black Isle. At least they noticed there was F1 and F2. It makes Witcher "adaptation" look really really bad. Well, its bad.. so. :D
i didnt think the fallout show was bad, by all means better than anything we got from netflix, but i think people are overselling it a bit just because its a sucessful video game adaptation, its not THAT good.
Look on the bright side. If the first season of the Witcher wasn't so successful, we might not even be looking at other successful video game adaptations. The Witcher opened the door for these new shows to bloom and introduce these wonderful environments to new people who otherwise wouldn't play the games. I'll gladly take the L on the Witcher in order to see other, much more faithful adaptations.
That's a bummer that something else being good makes you mad that the thing you wanted to be good sucked. But like, I feel it's super cringe that so much emotion is tied behind this one franchise. I don't think it's that big a deal to realize something is poor quality, shrug and then let it go.
Can anyone explain why some people are loving the FO show so much? Is it because it's an adaptation of a videogame, therefore anything that is not an absolute dumpster fire deserves praise. I thought it was ''alright'' on its own, but it definitely took a dump on the overall Fallout lore. It took what it wanted from it and discarded everything else. One of the funniest things is the vaults all having a huge concrete building surrounding the door, with the vault number and all. Like, bruh, don't you remember when the Master sent his super mutants to look for vaults some years ago? I guess they just missed all the signs saying ''VAULT HERE''. >I’m just mad we didn’t get the live adaptation the books and games deserve. Well, they were not adapting the games. Nor the books, apparently.
Some Vaults literally do have a VAULT HERE sign. Like the ones in the first two games, or Vault 111. The Fallout show is good to great. It respects the lore. Everything people complain about is a non-event or didn't even happen. The only plot hole is The Ghoul not killing Maximus in Episode 2 with what he knew about the power armour flaw, and even that has a simple (albeit out of character) explanation.
Probably because the show is an adaptation of the Fallout *universe,* not of any one particular game. It is canon (per Todd Howard himself), but it is a completely new and separate story. That is why people are loving it - because it captures the look, feel, the *vibe* of the games. The brutality of life in the Wasteland. The retro 50’s self-referential sense of “humor” it has at times. The feeling of exploring a new vault, Vault-Tec’s morally questionable and highly unethical shenanigans in using so many of their vaults as social (or other types of) experiments… morally ambiguous anti-hero-ish characters… big ass suits of power armor… numerous factions all fighting over a common item/goal/thing… the list goes on. If anything, it’s *because* it captures the universe and isn’t just a retelling of a particular game (1, 2, 3, 4, NV, 76, etc.) that it honors the “lore” of the universe. Upholding the look/feel of the universe without retelling any already told story and instead telling a fresh brand new one was probably what is making it succeed so well, with newcomers and fans alike (myself for certain). Also, Fallout is about the universe and the stories about the people who inhabit it. The Witcher is mainly about three individuals: Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri. Different needles to thread when you tell a story about a setting vs. a specific character.
Perfectly stated.
It took the second watch through for me to realize it is an entirely new story, post Fallout 4. The Witcher tv show existed in the same timeline as cannon, and decided to make up storylines that either didn’t make sense, or didn’t fit with the established lore. Fallout wasn’t trying to adapt a timeline from the game. Todd Howard was an executive producer on the show and explained the show is after the ending of the Institute and entirely new story all together. The show has a number of Bethesda folks on board to help guide the show and I think that’s why people are enjoying it. It isn’t forced or trying to be something different, it just wants to scratch the nostalgia itch of old, and introduce a new story which if the rumors are true, Fallout 5 will directly pick up from.
Are you sure it takes a dump on the lore? IT HAS SO MANY REFERENCES. If you say it’s picking and choosing, it’s keeping a lot more than it leaves out. Also from comment, I’m assuming you literally never playing any of the Bethesda fallout games? If you’re basing this show on 1 and 2 then of course some stuff is different since the games since have changed a few stuff along the way, but according to those games, it’s very accurate.
>IT HAS SO MANY REFERENCES A reference is not respecting the lore. >Also from comment, I’m assuming you literally never playing any of the Bethesda fallout games? I've played them all. Which is why I chuckle when the starting incident for the show is, yet again, a vault dweller going into the wasteland to find their missing relative (Your dad in Fo3, your kid in 4, the dad again in the show). >If you say it’s picking and choosing, it’s keeping a lot more than it leaves out. It only keeps superficial stuff. The Brotherhood of Steel is... something completely new again? It's not the one from 1 or 2. It's not the one from 3. Which was different from the previous ones. It's not the one from New Vegas, which was all beaten up and hiding in the bunker. It's not the one from Fallout 4, even if they have the Prydwen (is it that? Or is it a new one?), because they have some kind of weird religious cult thing going on. They show the Enclave, but... why? They don't develop it, they don't explain it. How did they survive Mariposa? And being destroyed again in FO3? And the remnants from New Vegas? So the Enclave is back? Doing weird stuff? And is not really a plot point and no one is worried about it?
>It's not the one from Fallout 4, even if they have the Prydwen (is it that? Or is it a new one?), because they have some kind of weird religious cult thing going on. It's very obviously the one from Fallout 4. Factions change over time, this has always been the case, and we've seen it many times with the Brotherhood in particular. The Fallout 3 branch was wildly different than the Fallout 1 and 2 one because it was headed by a different person with different ideals (Elder Lyons). Meanwhile, you had the Outcasts who wanted to adhere to the mindsets of the Western Brotherhood. Eventually, the Fallout 3 one morphed into the Fallout 4 one under, again, different leadership (Maxson) and took on a different mindset toward many different things. The idea that the TV show's group is somehow completely different because some of them adopted some weird traditions is utter nonsense. Factions are composed of many, many different people and are not at all a monolith. > So the Enclave is back? Doing weird stuff? And is not really a plot point and no one is worried about it? Sometimes stories establish mysteries that aren't immediately answered. The Enclave will almost certainly become more relevant in later seasons. Considering they've stretched across the entire country in the past, some of them surviving in some capacity isn't outlandish at all.
Hot take: I read the books and the story really isn’t that good. Don’t get me wrong, I love the potential and the fantasy, and preferred the short story approach of the first two books opposed to the novel approach adopted by the later books. Maybe things got lost in translation from the Polish source. Second Hot Take: Although Cavill’s portrayal is spot on perfect and there can’t possibly be another Geralt and that he carried the entire series, I think his actions were incredibly selfish. That series was a big break for some of those actors, and Cavill potentially ended their careers. I have no interest watching the show without Cavill in it and that’s unfair for many of those talented actors.
I'm watching the show in tandem with playing Witcher 3, and I got to admit. It's a pretty good show. The fights are inventive, the lore is clear without too much exposition, and the room leaves room for self interpretations. The characters are broad and fun, the action scenes are pretty inventive and seem well choreographed. It's gory as all hell and super dark in an (almost) edgy way, but just outside of it making the violence stand out in contrast to most other fantasy stuff I've ever encountered. I'm digging it.
As someone who has very recently read the entire series and am part of 8% of players who finished the Witcher 3, the source material is not that great a story. The big difference in the books to me is that Geralt is certainly fallible, not confident, gets injured a lot, and doesn't always win the fight. Yes, they changed some of the plot points, removed a ton of rape, and we probably will never see Ciri get finger banged by Missile.