Perhaps this is a hot take, but this show was never particularly good. Its early success was more to do with Cavill lust and the mainstream success of The Witcher 3 than anything else. It’s no surprise interest has faded as The Witcher 3 has become increasingly irrelevant and forgotten as it has aged and newer, bigger games have taken its place. The Netflix adaptation was already losing viewers and performing poorly before Cavill left, and now that he’s gone it is lacking the major ingredients that made it a hit originally.
Holy shit, this crap us still airing?
Gawd
ratings for the show’s fourth season were down sharply, with a 50% decline in viewership. Season 4 was the first without Henry Cavill and the first for Liam Hemsworth, which likely played a role in the audience decline.
I don’t have strong opinions one way or another about Liam Hemsworth’s acting chops, but the show ended for me when Henry Cavill quit over “creative differences.” When the famously nerdy star of a fantasy show quits after three seasons because the writers seem to have open contempt for the source material it’s probably time for the audience to bail too.
Exactly. Liam Hemsworth is perfectly fine, generally speaking, but when Henry Cavill decides to leave a project under such circumstances, I’m quitting too.
Apparently, 50% of the audience felt the same.
I kind of got the impression that he was a dick on set and they were happy to part ways. I don’t really know what Cavill’s criticisms were but slavish devotion to source material would make for a terrible adaptation. Probably not a popular view online but the books are not filmable as written.
Really depends. You can twist it around the other way too. If, as multiple sources have confided, they did have contempt for the source material it isn’t a stretch that they’d have no patience for Cavill’s criticisms. They would have viewed Cavill as a dick for being more loyal to the author’s vision. They certainly did put out that propaganda to save their own skins. And given how the quality of the show declined and viewership along with it, reality favors Cavill.
Just a lead actor constantly trying to overrule the EP and writers is probably sufficiently bad on-set behaviour, but I’ve read other things as well. It’s really only rumours anyway. Sapkowski seems totally fine with their adaptation. Plus, that Cavill dude hasn’t even played Blood and Wine? Fucking tourist! (that was a joke, relax)
I’m not exactly sure what “contempt” for the source material means here. There’s some weird shit in those books that was never going to be in any adaptation. Just two examples off the top of my head:
<weird shit>
Triss Marigold begging Geralt to fuck her while she’s shitting herself to death in a cart wasn’t ever gonna make the cut. It’s both gross and not really believable.
Geralt fucking a 16-year-old Shani to then have Phillipa owl-on-in to comment on how hottt 16-year-olds are and how much hotter Yennefer would be if she was underage… is a weird scene. A scene I doubt Cavill went to bat for.
Is not including those scenes “contempt” for the material?
Other criticism I often see online has to do with additions to the story. Like, “the elves didn’t do that in the books!” But the elves don’t really do anything. There are no scenes in the books that explain the conditions of the elves. The narrator just tells you about it. Having either a text crawl or narrator explaining things are both super lame in film. “Long, long ago on a Continent far, far…” You have to show, not tell. Is that contempt? The story as written is fine for a book, but just doesn’t work for film.
Or also “Yennefer didn’t do that in the books!” But:
<Yennefer>
Yennefer is barely in the books! Geralt mostly just thinks about her all the time. But thinking isn’t particularly cinematic and that character is important to the story. You want a great actor to portray her and your actors need shit to do. She can’t just be a thought bubble over Geralt’s head. In the third season (IIRC), Anya Chalotra would have one scene in the first episode, two brief scenes in the last episode (the first of which would be just pissing herself in a puddle), and spend the rest of the season as a jade statuette. What actor would agree to commit up to a decade of the most lucrative years of their career to your project if that’s the work you’re giving them? It doesn’t matter in the books because Yennefer isn’t under contract. And, as importantly, if she’s mostly absent in the show, the bond between her, Geralt, and Ciri is totally unearned and won’t make any sense to the audience.
Again, I don’t know Cavill’s specific criticisms, but so many complaints I’ve seen online are about deviations from things that wouldn’t translate to film. I think the book is written in a way that just doesn’t make it easily adaptable. Unlike, say, GRRM or James S.A. Corey who both (err… all three) seem very influenced by film such that their novels are almost laid out scene by scene. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were thinking about adaptations as they were writing. I don’t think Sapkowski shares that influence and if you tried to adapt it exactly, you’d make something bad.
Sapkowski seems totally fine with their adaptation.
I’m pretty sympathetic to the general point here, and I’ll even say that a lot of pretty shit (or at least slim) source material is getting adapted these days and I don’t fault TV writers one bit for not sticking to it (cough halo cough).
That said, IIRC Sapkowski sold the game rights for a very small one time payment and remains salty about it, so it’s maybe not surprising that he’s publicly favoring the Netflix adaptation.
“the most anticipated releases of the year”
For the four people still watching it…
I am a Witcher fan, liked the books and the game. But the Netflix series was terrible.
My wife didn’t read the books nor played the games, but she likes fantasy so she wanted to like that series, but didn’t.
It’s utterly dog shit. The fact they are still making it is the only disappointment.
I am a Witcher fan, liked the books and the game. But the Netflix series was terrible.
As someone who didn’t read the books, and only played the games after watching the show, I found seasons 1 and 2 pretty enjoyable, but season 3 was a bit “meh“. But after Henry Cavill left, I wasn’t gonna bother with it anymore.
They decided they could do better than the source material. They were wrong.
