The Witcher
Credit: Netflix
Netflix has released the first full trailer for Season 4 The Witcher earlier this month, and was met with more than a little backlash. I was hoping for the best, and I’m rooting for it Liam Hemsworth as he takes on the role of Geralt of Rivia from Henry Cavill. It’s hard to fill Cavill’s shoes as he was incredibly popular The Witcher fanaticism.
But the best was not meant to be. The trailer was a mess, and one line in said trailer turned out to be incredibly controversial—and disappointing. During what appears to be a fight scene, Hemsworth’s Geralt shouts, “Let’s f**cking move!” It sounds like something an action hero might say in a military movie. I can imagine Will Smith saying this inside Bad Boys.
It doesn’t sound like something Geralt would say, and it doesn’t ring true for a high fantasy setting. The line is bad, but it’s worse when you consider its implications. Do the writers of this show just not understand fantasy? Do they not understand the source material? Have they completely lost the nuances of Geralt as a character? Definitely Netflix season two and three Game of Thrones The wannabee series would indicate that the answer to these questions is a resounding “No.”
In a recent interview, however, The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich offered a defense of the controversial line. “It’s one of those lines. I mean, you never know what’s going to be controversial. You never know what’s going to work,” he said.
Hissrich notes that she never would have guessed that “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” would have blown up the way it did, and that the context for Geralt’s Season 4 series matters:
“If before Season 1 aired, you’d tell me that ‘Toss a coin to your Witcher’ would be a hit, that’s crazy to me. What I think it is, that line in the context of the battle we’re in — it makes perfect sense. It’s also a kick line. Well, it is. That’s what our Geralt would say. And right now it fits him perfectly. So I can’t wait for audiences to get those moments from the trailer and to really see them in the context of the scenes.”
This is a poor defense of bad writing
The Witcher
Credit: Netflix
While it’s certainly true that you can’t predict whether or not something will be a big hit – or at least it’s very hard to know while something is being made – I think it’s less difficult to predict whether or not a line like this will be controversial.
The problem with Hissrich’s defense is that it reveals how little the show’s creators think about the fans. The Witcher books and toys. Saying “our Geralt” would say that line is pretty telling. Yes, of course an adaptation often makes a story and its characters somewhat different from the books. The entire HBO cast Game Of Thrones he was old, for example. What worked in a novel may not work so well on screen, especially given the sexual violence in that show. A 13-year-old Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) would have terrified the audience on her wedding night to Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa).
But the writers and the HBO show didn’t try to change the fundamental nature of the characters themselves. George RR Martin’s books are very different from the TV show, but Jon Snow (Kit Harington) acts essentially the same on both. When he rallies his fellow Nights Watch to march on Ramsay Bolton (Ivan Rheon) to save Sansa (Sophie Turner) doesn’t end his speech with “Let’s f**king move!” and if he had, we would have been justifiably upset. You can bet I would have posted a very harsh written review of that episode!
The Witcher
Credit: Netflix
Adaptations must make changes, but must also remain true to the spirit and intent of the original. On some level, Hemsworth and Cavill have to make Geralt “theirs” because they have to play the character and then portray that character on screen. Doug Cockle had his own interpretation of Geralt in the CDPR video games (and the game designers made Geralt “their own” to some extent as well). The difference between the games and the TV show, however, is that the games managed to tell a lot of new stories that weren’t in Andrzej Sapkowski’s books while staying true to who Geralt was as a person. The creators of the TV show seem perfectly happy to make Geralt “their own,” regardless of the source material or fans that made this franchise popular enough to be picked up by Netflix in the first place.
The series has made other terrible mistakes in the past. Few exceed the changes made to Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) in Season 2 and her strange betrayal of Geralt and Ciri (Freya Allan). These changes completely warped Yennefer’s character and led to a completely made-for-TV wedge between her and Geralt. There are many, many other changes from the source material that I could list here. Suffice it to say, none of these were improvements.
The only change I appreciated came in Season 1, when the show mixed up the timelines, giving us an out-of-order story, though not obviously out-of-order. I thought that was very clever. It didn’t change too many of the details, but it did change the way they were presented. Although it was by far the most radically different chronology in terms of alterations from the books, it was still the most faithful of the eras so far.
Season 4 of The Witcher lands on Netflix this Thursday, October 30. I will be watching and commenting here on this blog.
