Hello again my Beautiful Watchers, I am just here to remind you that I’m having to take
some downtime from hosting my own episodes due to damaged vocal cords.
This week's episode is being covered by my good friend Garrett, aka Il Niege.
Do remember that all the writing and editing is still mine so if there any glaring mistakes
I’m the one who made them. Enjoy.
Hello Dom’s Beautiful Watchers, I’m Il Niege and welcome to ... every thought Dom
has on The Witcher in no particular order.
This is neither a Lost in Adaptation, nor a book review, nor a history of video but
a combination of three. This could be an interesting new format for Dom to try or some nonsensical
rambling that he’s saddled me with. Yay.
~Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, oh valley of plenty, oh valley of plenty, oh oh oh~
The Witcher or Wiedźmin is a dark fantasy adventure series started in 1993 currently
consisting of 8 books written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
While the first two are composite novels of short stories originally written for various
competitions and magazines, the next five tell a more cohesive saga and the current
last book is a stand alone novel that takes place quite early on in the chronological
timeline.
The books were translated into multiple languages including English and have consistently sold
well worldwide.
They tell the story of Geralt, a man with magically enhanced strength and abilities
who lives in a pseudo-medieval fantasy land of magic and monsters, making a living hunting
and killing said monsters to protect humanity.
His rather thankless profession is known as being a Witcher.
Occasionally joining him is Yennefer, a very powerful sorceress and his on again off again
girlfriend and his adopted daughter Ciri, a former princess usurped from her home by
foreign invaders whom he has to protect from all manner of people who want her dead, or
worse.
Aside from just being a pretty solid set of books, what sets The Witcher series apart
from other fantasy series is the unusually plentiful and varied mediums into which it’s
crossed over the years, boasting an impressive array of sequels, spinoffs and adaptations.
A run of comic book adaptations followed the book’s publication very quickly in 1993.
The first on screen adaptation took the form of a 2001 Polish film, which itself spawned
a sequel in the form of a 13 episode TV series.
The English title of the film is The Hexer. A less popular interpretation of Wiedźmin
that was used in early translations of the book.
Sapkowski apparently has a very low opinion of the film and the series judging by the
fact that the word he uses to describe them can’t be uttered in polite company.
A video game titled the The Witcher: Crimson Trail was released in 2007. Intended as a
sequel to the novels, the story involved many of the book’s characters but takes place
many years later.
This was followed by The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in 2009 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
in 2015, the latter being so popular it's sometimes regarded as one of the greatest
video games of all time and almost certainly revitalized mass interest in the book series.
Even card and board game adaptations have sprung up here and there.
Aaaand finally there's the 2019 Netflix adaptation starring Superman himself Henry Cavill.
Going forward there will be spoilers for said Netflix series so be warned and at peace with
that if you choose to venture forth.
Reception to this latest dive into the world of The Witcher seems to be mixed to good,
with people enjoying a return to the slightly more campy Xena warrior princess style fantasy
setting after we were all burned by the disappointing nose dive Game of Thrones took in its final
season.
And no doubt even if you haven’t seen it yet you’ll have heard someone humming the
song from episode two that went viral on social media. And if you haven’t, I have a cover
of it right there.
Cross promotion!
Some critics weren't super impressed with Henry Cavill's performance but honestly I’d
say a character who just grunts and swears all the time is perfect for a performer of
his range.
The most common complaint with the series is the confusion that arises from the fact
that despite sharing comparable screen time, the three main characters of the show are
all working through three completely different and vastly unevenly lengthed timelines that
barely overlap until they finally converge in the final episode of the season.
This is not explicitly stated at the start of the show, instead being revealed with less
and less subtle hints throughout until it's fairly unmissable, sparking mid season comments
such as:
“Wait isn’t that the incest King from the last episode?”
“Did she just say it’s been 30 years? Why hasn’t anyone aged?”
“Hang on, she was definitely dead, what the hell?”
As best as I can discern Yennefer’s story takes place over about 70 years, Geralt’s
is at least 15, possibly much longer, and the young Princess Ciri’s is barely 2 weeks.
Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich claimed that this was partly inspired by the 2017
film Dunkirk which used a similar format.
To be fair, while the decision to let the realisation creep up on you can cause a distracting
amount of confusion, the timelines are not inaccurate to the book. If they wanted to
tell these stories chronologically with no overlap the first few episodes would be exclusively
about Yennefer, and Ciri wouldn’t show up until the last two.
Season one is an adaptation of multiple books. For Geralt it almost exclusively draws from
The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, the short story compilations that started the series
off.
Ciri’s story is an extrapolation and expansion of what she was up to during the very last
story of The Sword of Destiny with a lot of foreshadowing of things to come in the main
saga.
Yennefer’s part of the show is mostly backstory that was revealed in parts over several books
(though mostly in flashbacks in The Blood of Elves) and of course the parts where she
featured in Geralt’s story.
So yeah, that's why Ciri and Yennefer have relatively cohesive series arching plots and
clearer goals and Geralt spent most of his time bouncing between monsters of the week.
The writers had a lot more wiggle room with female characters because they were very much
background characters in the first two books, and what they did include was from the storyline
Sapkowski eventually decided to stick with for 5 full novels.
Geralt’s plot was the most accurate to the books but it seems more disjointed because
it's literally a different story with every episode.
Going back to the books for a second, let's take a closer look at the first one.
Well actually there's some contention about which book actually is first because of the
order in which they were publushed but as far as I’m concerned, this is the first
one.
The Last Wish is named for the final short story in the collection. The book starts with
a framing device that is then cut back to between each longer story.
It's about Geralt resting from his wounds at a temple, bonking the priestesses, whining
about his love troubles with Yennefer, and occasionally being harassed by a bunch of
asshole knights.
The first story is about the job that got him so badly wounded and in need of some R&R,
then it seems to jump back to the earliest point in this book’s timeline and work forward
from there.
After the last short story the framing device narrative is concluded…. Then it jumps back
to just before it was concluded to reveal something more dramatic and significant about
Geralt's multi-book spanning fate.
So yeah say what you want about Netflix, the fact that The Witcher has a confusing timeline
is super accurate to the books. This is something that calms down a bit in the main saga which
seem fairly linear from what I can tell.
If you look at which stories match up with which episodes, Netflix seems to be sort of
following the basic structure but with some notably out of sequence.
However if we sort the stories into chronological order…. It doesn't help at all and I don’t
know where I was going with that.
The episodes that were working from the first book really don’t do a bad job adaptation
wise. The three that were pulled from Sword of Destiny do take a few liberties but not
to the point of being in name only.
Were this show to feature in a Lost in Adaptation some day, specifically regarding Geralt's
parts taken from The Last Wish, it might actually get a pretty good review. The only parts that
might stand out are:
They brought Jaskier into more stories than he was originally involved in, correctly predicting
that his bromance with Geralt would be a crowd pleaser.
The elves didn’t exactly come to an accord or mutual respect with Geralt, they fully
intended to murder him over the sylvan’s frantic objections but they were told to let
him go by a powerful nature spirit they worshipped who happened to turn up at just the right
moment.
Trish wasn’t involved in or around for the Shtriga incident. She’s only mentioned in
passing by Yennefer in the first book.
Geralt invoked the rite of surprise not as a joke but in hopes that they would have a
son and he could become a Witcher.
Yennefer knew what Geralt's mysterious last wish was all along and was initially deeply
moved by it.
And, right at the first episode Renfri mentioned that in addition to the dickhead wizard and
the huntsman he paid to kill her, she was also screwed over by her wicked step-mother,
that she’d teamed up with 7 gnomes at one point and she’d spent some time frozen by
magic before being brought back to life by a noble prince.
Yeah… It's pretty obvious her story is basically “Snow White who bangs” in the book.
Which brings me to the sweeping change that seems to have applied to the series as a whole,
the suppression of the extremely heavy influence of famous fairy tales.
Another good example of this is the one story in the first book the show didn’t touch,
because it’s best described as a Brothers Grimm-esque retelling of Beauty and the Beast
where Belle is a powerful bloodthirsty vampire.
:vampire screeching:
Hissrich seems to be trying to push the unique
elements of Sapkowski’s world and suppressing the parts where he was parodying existing
myths and legends with either a dark or ironic twist.
This is ok for now but it leaves me wondering how they’re going to handle the later books
in the saga if they get that far. My prediction is they’re going to deviate further and
further from the source material as time goes on.
Speaking of, as I said there are more liberties taken with the three episodes based on the
Sword of Destiny stories. I won't go into all of them but some of the more interesting
ones are:
The omission of the bathtub orgy between Geralt, Broch the dragon and his two bodyguards.
They made up the third act break up between Geralt and his one true love, Jaskier. He
is going to have to buy him so many flowers in season two dammit.
And ironically enough, when the three plots finally link up in the last episode, that
is when the show is least accurate to the book timeline wise as there was a full year
between The Battle of Sodden Hill and when a wounded Geralt was taken through the area
on the back of a grateful merchant’s cart to meet his destiny.
In conclusion, I enjoyed The Witcher books and I enjoyed what Hissrich and Netflix made
of them but that’s just an opinion. I would never tell another fan of the books that they’re
wrong to be annoyed if they feel that the adaptation missed the point or just wasn’t
very good compared to the original.
I’m just saying that I’ll probably keep tossing coins to Nextflix when they make season
2 and whatever else might come from this multi-medium spanning franchise.
There's a lot more to talk about regarding it as an adaptation so I’m sure it will
make for a good episode of LiA…. In about 2 years when Dom has finally worked through
his long, long list of paid requests.
Thank you for joining me Dom’s Beautiful Watchers. Don’t forget to toss a like and
comment to your youtuber, and if you're new here consider tossing that subscribe button
around for more content.
And don’t be afraid to toss a share on social media to help spread the word around… :snort:
Toss.
If you’ve enjoyed our time together and would like to engage with some of these nerdy
franchises a bit more musically, then you might consider clicking my channel right up
there. Have a most pleasant day and I hope to see you soon.
Much love and appreciation to my Patrons of Honor: Shelby Hotz, and Matthew J. Brysch.
Hello again my Beautiful Watchers. I just wanted to take this opportunity to give you
a quick reminder that there’s a wonderful website called Patreon that’s been allowing
online producers to actually make a living doing what they do, since apparently YouTube’s
decided that they shouldn't anymore. Basically, they offer the chance to pledge a certain
amount of money per month or per video in exchange for various rewards offered by the
creator. There’s a variety of stuff you can earn by becoming one of my patrons, including
early access to all videos and taking part in that survey you see at the start of every
Lost in Adaptation episode. That’s actually a very important part of the process, as I
use it to gauge how much I’m going to need to explain about the book and the film before
I start comparing them. If you decide to become a higher level contributor your name will
be added to the credits that you’re seeing right now and you’ll be given the option
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keen enough to join the topmost tier of patronage, you’ll earn the most coveted of all the
rewards: the chance to pick a future adaptation to be reviewed by yours truly. However, if
right now you are thinking, my goodness The Dom, I can’t do that, according to the rather
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a most pleasant day and I will see you in the next episode.
You need a nap!
Toss your witcher off.
‘Ello, I’m Jason Statham, and I’m here to talk to you about The Witcher.
:Dom offscreen: That’s the LAST British accent you’re allowed to do during this
entire filming.
Uh, when you say British, do you mean all of the UK, or?
Dom offscreen: All of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
You need a nap!
Dom offscreen: It was j-I thought you were dying, you little shit, you just wanted to come in?
:laughs:
I shit my pants, and he’s just like “Hello!”
Dom Noble, 2020. I thought you were… :laughs: I thought you were dying, you little :laughs:
~If you let me in, I wanna go out~
Oh he does not like this, wow. He’s like, no, fuck you.
Not the song, not the song!
-into which it’s crossed over the years. That is, that’s an edit that *I* wanted
to make, and now I’m struggling with it. Damn.
I will dance like a little monkey.
I need you to move the script for me. Where are my gummy bears?
First you pluck the Wiedźmin.
Dom offscreen: Stop doing things to Wiedźmins!
And then you m…
Dom offscreen: I told you what would happen if you did the accent.