Netflix and The Witcher

    If you had not been living under a rock, you would have either heard about or watched the latest big budget series from Netflix to capitalize on the legend, Geralt of Rivia. If you still need a clue, it's called "The Witcher", an adaptation from the book and not the game. It's a lore filled with monsters and magic to tickle your dark fantasies and the traditional battle between good and evil. It was trumpeted to fill the void left by GoT from HBO, but fell way short of its expectation from my humble opinion. That is my thought and let me break it down, as I try to understand it myself.

    Readers be warned... there be spoilers ahead.

• The timelines of the story were not in sequence and they were intentional. But as your brain was trying to make sense of it, you were always pushed to get to the end of the story. The push was there to make sense of the timeline, rather than taking the time to savor the scenery. Having all the episodes readily available, did not help in reducing that friction.
• The witches and sorcerers looked manufactured and rigid. Seemed like their clothing did not allow them to move elegantly and be part of the environment. It was more like rocks tumbling, instead of water streaming, to fill the bowl.
• Visualizations and the building architecture wanted you to be part of the folklore, but the actors stood in your way as a glaring reminder, that this isn't real. To be fair, this was for few scenes only, but they stuck onto my memory far better than the good ones.
• Some of the scenes were confusing and you were led to, just push it under the rug. I still did not understand, why the djinn attacked the bard? All I know is that, djinn are supposed to give you three wishes and the Witcher seemed to be the benefactor. The bard was just a segue for the Witcher to meet Yennefer. But still, why did it attack the bard?

    Now, now, not all of it was dreary, as I portray it to be. Bad ones always seem to be highlighted.

• I did love the assassination attempt and the epic failure of Yennefer to save the baby
• The first fight scene between Renfri and Geralt was riveting... with its epic moves

    Whom were the targeted audience of this series, the gamers, the readers of the book or noobs that just wanted to watch a fantasy series? I consider myself in the last category and my observations are from that view point.

    I am pretty sure that Netflix has the data about, how many viewers just kept forwarding scenes to the end. That should provide them a good feedback of which scenes were really riveting compared to few, that acted as fillers for the story.

If you had seen the series... let me know your thoughts on the comments section.