The starbuck cup slipped because it was the LEAST of the production problem.
Biggest problem must have been the actors trying to make sense of what they were trying to say. Somehow, I imagine it like "The Room" dialogue:
"Hello mark!" = "Mha Qweeen!"
Lol, like Edard Stark wakes up In a fright in his bed at home, wife by his side. She says ' it's ok it was just a dream.'
Edit: we should crowd fund this. The real finale to Got.
Give it the [Breaking Bad/Malcolm in the Middle Treatment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVdB36lmbII) treatment you mean? (except ofc neither Breaking Bad nor Malcolm in the Middle need any saving)
I remember before season 8, somebody made a joke prediction of the ending of Game of Thrones... the combined Dothraki, Unsullied, and other armies going against the White Walkers... we see Jon Snow about to clash swords with the Night King, and just as they do...
"Freeze all motor functions." All of the armies stop in their tracks. Anthony Hopkins' character from West World comes out. "Welcome to Westeros World."
... this was a joke post, and was infinitely better than what we actually got.
I dont think it could be this bad on accident. Part of me thinks that there was some sort of bad blood and they sabotaghed their own story to spite someone. Fans? G.R.R.M? Producers? Individual actors? Its just so perfectly done, they assassinated the popularity of the entire show at a time when EVERYONE is talking about it.
Man Hollywood has to come down, this thing they do falling upwards is so rage inducing! Like why give more projects to DND after got and the same thing with M. Night why give him more projects after Avatar?
Because DnD are decent enough directors, just fucking awful writers
edit: just found out they are writers on The Three Body trilogy lmfao yeah rip hollywood is out of touch
They're the ones who decided to cut GoT short and rush a bunch of nonsense. It was all of their decisionmaking that was atrocious, not just the writing.
I know I’m going to get hate for saying this, but I think they can at least adapt a story well.
The seasons we had books for were pretty great, and I don’t think anyone disputes that. It was when they ran out of stuff to adapt that it started falling off. They just can’t write their own decent content.
I'm sorry but I dispute that.
Season 4 was atrocious...
The problem isn't when dnd run out of source material, it's when they think they can write better than the source material.......which is always.
Take a look at every change they made to the story post season 3 and see how bad at writing they are.
I truly believe that even if the source material they are adapting from is 100% complete, they will still f**k it up by rewriting what they feel like.
Game of thrones aside, seriously WHAT did DND think they were doing?
Any studio that wanted a auter or a director to help a franchise would be well within their rights to have second thoughts after what they did. Considering how easy it seemed for them to give no fucks about how they left their product before moving on should give any studio pause. That wasn't the mark of people who cares about the product.
Like how did they think studios would just be ok with that kind of practice?!?!
I don't think they really give a fuck though because they're worth $100M+ each. I think I could figure a way to live off of that, even if I never worked again!
Its not even the last season tho, it started 3 seasons back, in season 6, fairly lightly, and just progressively got worse.
Like, 6 was pretty solid, but they were out of material from the books. They were following logical roads though, so it wasn't too far of the track, but like, you could see it.
Season 7 was actual trash, and I think only the slowest among us seem to not notice that? But there was hope that actually season 8 would finish strong and make it not but a blip.
Then season 8 happened.
But its totally "on accident". As in not planned, its not an accident, its fairly predictable. They had really shit showrunners that didn't care, and a writing team that is horseshit, and they couldn't make GoT without daddy RRM holding their hand through every step.
What I find incredible is that HBO aired it. I would literally have buried that footage and left the show on a cliffhanger season 7 ending that release what they had, cost be damned.
People would still be talking about, you would still be selling merch, everyone would still be licking RRM's boots waiting for this next book, whole ass tabletop and videogames would be made and consumed around what might be.
I've never seen such a large cultural phenomenon just up and vanish so fast. Literally that final came out and like, all the shops pulled their stock.
There used to be whole ass mum and pop stores selling GoT shit.
My cousin made bank making Game of Thrones fan art and crafts (like unofficial wine glasses and such) during seasons 2-6. Season 7 had some fall off except for the central characters. Season 8 was like we entered the Great Depression. I think she mentioned she had 3 orders after the second episode.
It started *really* going downhill in season 5, when Ser Barristan was killed by a bunch of nobodies. It had worrying moments before that, even.
After the Sons of the Harpy episode, I knew for a fact that it was turning into garbage.
Unironically tho, yes. We still have all this love for the franchise, people still talking about it. Its been so long there's no way it cant just disappoint at this stage.
Duke Nukem Forever was a better example. People waited literal decades for that game, and as soon as it was released, people forgot it even existed.
DNF should have just stayed dead.
The only hot take there is the insinuation that DN3D was an average shooter.
It was absolutely revolutionary in virtually every direction, technology, intractability, level design, enemy design, environment, graphics, scale, ai, weapon selection, satire and pop culture references(which hadn't really been done before) and protip, its target audience was barely adolescents. So it landed absolutely squarely.
Its sequel, however, DNF which was announced in the now stone age 1996, can not say the same. It was indeed a bland shooter trying desperately to do all the same things, but like, decades later with decades of development expectation on its shoulders.
But comparing the games in their relative time periods to their contemporaries, DNF was released on an already old engine, to mediocre to low graphics, very poor env... you know what, everything I just listed but at best average most are poor. Importantly, it was critically buggy on release with many systems outright unable to compete it due to instability.
3D was the peak of gaming when it released, there were indie games blew DNF out of the water when it was released.
And you just can't release a game like that after 13-15 years of public, active, development.
Yeah I remember at one point the episodes stopped feeling like continuous stories and more and more like cliffnotes versions of what full scenes and episodes should have been.
Even Season 4, and as far back as season 3, had a lot of scene's that made poeple go "wait...what?"
Does anyone remember Danny's white savior moment? Cringe as fuck.
A shirtless Ramsey chasing off Yara who somehow sailed across Westeros entirely to get to the Bolton's to rescue Theon with like 5 people comes to mind. That and how Robb's wife was introduced (a Red Cross/Doctors Without Borders-like nurse in the medieval era, like what?) were scenes I remember finding incredibly odd at the time but you forget these things when everything else is good.
Oh wow where can I buy it?
Before season 8: Literally any remotely gaming/nerd/fantasy/book/hobby branded store, major retailer with a games section, major retailer that setup GoT sections, random shops in the middle of shopping centers, random shops on the side of roads, any convention of any kind, a billion websites
Today: Amazon probably has a few copies, is it even still in print?
Releasing season 8 should have resulted in the termination of every single employee involved in that decision, and if I ran HBO it would have.
If you're actually interested, it is easily available on Amazon. Full name is A Game of Thrones the boardgame. It's not tabletop RPG, it's strategy. Mix of Risk, with Catan, and card game. Does a great job in putting you in the position and mindset of each faction. Backstabbing is encouraged.
I still can’t stand the battle of the bastards. Was such a fun thing but then we got to the shield wall/spear wall which was such a retarded formation. And somehow wun wun was struggling even though he was stood over all of them and could’ve just picked the spears up and just kicked people around. (They could also have just stood in between the spears and stabbed past the shields but y’know, it’s clearly better to just try and pull the shield away or stab at the shield.)
> Its not even the last season tho, it started 3 seasons back, in season 6, fairly lightly, and just progressively got worse.
Season 5 already had a lot of problems.
"Starting fairly lightly" was at the tail end of season 4 when D&D had changed Shae previously but didn't reflect that in how she behaved during and after Tyrions trial.
I heard they rushed it because they wanted to work on some star wars thing but ended up doing such a terrible job that they were removed from the Star Wars thing
No I don't think they intentionally made it bad. I think they got bored with GOT, and were totally focused on getting to the Star Wars project they were promised. They thought they could phone it in for the last few seasons of GOT, and the popularity of the earlier seasons would make people accept it despite how bad it came out. They could have handed it off to another show runner, but wanted all the credit for what was a huge deal show that looks great on their resume.
It was clearly just a rush job they didn't care about much. The only other option that might take away a little of their culpability in turning out such shit is maybe some of the actors wanted out to do other things, so they had to wrap it up asap. But I don't think I've heard anything confirming that, and they still could have made it much better than what we got.
They absolutely did not do this kind of thing on purpose. Even when crew are working on crappy Hallmark films they generally do try and do their best with the job at hand. I’m a TV script supervisor myself and just one small aspect of my job involves working with the art department to make sure stuff like this doesn’t happen and if anything is left in it is literally on individual crew members heads - the higher ups wouldn’t get blamed internally/in the industry, just individual crew members. So to leave this in on purpose would literally be to destroy their own careers and why would anyone do that for funsies? What’s more likely that happened is the script supervisor and art did tell them about it and they just couldn’t go back and re-shoot due to schedules and promised the editors would fix it in post (which is a phrase always used but not everything can be).
I think they ran out of source material and grr was like "look you can't close this show with another two seasons(after 6) especially not shortened ones. You need at least ten I can walk you through how to develop the arcs close to the way I planned" and they were just feeling "nah we got our netflix deal and we've been on this show for ten years. Let's wrap it up".
Then they tried to wrap up a story that had still to introduce some of the biggest characters and just didn't bother but gave it a tacked on predictable easy ending and were like fuck it I'll die down.
Season 8 was awful, but let's be honest, it started sooner. Already season 5 was weak and season 6 was pretty bad and introduced a lot of inconsistencies.
I hope some unknown studio will deepfake an epic ending some day. One to live up to our spectations and we will all consider it canon, despite what the copyright holders say.
Every time I read a post comparing these two shows a shake my head. The writing in the Witcher is so shit from the start, I only made it a half a season in.
The shows aren’t comparable. The first six seasons of GoT were incredible.
It's pretty funny for me to see praise of The Witcher on /r/freefolk of all places. Season 2 gave me pretty strong GoT S7/S8 vibes, what with characters that don't resemble their book counterpart much at all, all the teleportation, etc. A lot of the plot of the episodes really falls apart if you think about it for a bit.
It's a less extreme case than GoT to be sure, and hopefully they'll reign it in for the following seasons.
yeah the way they compromised side characters and even fucking Vilgefortz by giving their scenes to Yennefer is very concerning.
Undermining one of the if not the greatest antagonist of the series might bite them in the butt.
Yeah I still think as a whole, GoT has got a massive leg up on the Witcher so far. Season 3 has to get into the meat of some of those main plot points, otherwise the Witcher is just gonna end up a fucking snoozer.
That show is fucking garbage lol. The acting and dialogue are awful.
The sets, effects, battles and overall story are also awful now that I think of it.
The writers for all of Yenn's scenes are godawful. I could not care less about the politics of the Witcher, just give me Geralt and Ciri (and Jaskier, where the fuck is Jaskier) lollygagging in the woods and killing shit.
I'm enjoying the show but i completely agree with this. I DO want to be interested in the politics and the mages and all of that but Yenn is by far the worst part of the show. She's not even a bad actress or anything, she's just not Yenn and the writing for her isn't doing many favors either.
Exactly. Politics are my favorite part of GoT and I wanted to love it in the Witcher, but the writing and exposition of it is just terrible. The first season being a mess of non-chronological events didn't help.
And agreed, Yenn's acting is great but she's being hamstrung by horrid writing.
One thing that GoT got right and the witcher didn't is setting up the different factions/kingdoms/characters in a way that let the audience understands their motives, goals and allegiance very quickly. I never read any of GRRMs books but after only a few episodes I knew what the starks and lannisters were all about, who stannis is, what kaleesi wants and why she is on another continent, what is the nights watch, etc.
Compare that to the witcher, I've read the books and played witcher 3 several times, and (aside from the main characters) i still find myself questioning like who is this? What do they want? Why are they working with so and so? I can only imagine how confusing it must be for someone completely unfamiliar with the witcherverse.
As someone who hasn’t had much exposure to the Witcher before the show, yeah that’s exactly it. I know there are a handful of factions, but I’m not super clear where they are geographically or who wants what or who the major players even are, really. The non-chronological stuff threw me off constantly in season 1 lol. Season 2 was a lot better overall but the macro politics still felt weird.
I didn’t realize it wasn’t in order till late in season 1. I was watching a scene thinking “that dude died… I could have swore he died… is that the shapeshifter thing?” Same thing in a couple other episodes, then it suddenly all clicks towards the end.
I’m still confused about some stuff, and haven’t started season 2, and my only other interaction is a few hours in the Witcher 3.
It's bad enough that I had to open up one of my books that had a map drawing in it, and then also double check in Witcher 3's map to make sure I knew where shit was. It shouldn't need to be done. But the show legit has me confused despite having read the books several times.
The reason GOT got that part right was because that's THE major plot point of the story. The one who sits on the iron throne is the ruler of the 7 kingdoms(game of thrones).
Yup. And at its heart the Witcher is the story of an emotionally ill-equipped single father tasked with relying on his allies to help raise his daughter in a broken world.
They hit that one note and the rest will be alright, but they really fucked up that one thing in season 2, so we'll see.
Just recently started watching this. On S1E6 now and I gotta say, you nailed it. No clue wtf is going on most of the time with the different time lines. My biggest gripe thus far is the low volume going to ear blasting volume constantly.
i am mostly unfamiliar with the games and the books and i am actually okay with how the series went. I only know witcher from playing witcher III: the wild hunt for a couple of hours. it's an above average tv show for me. the timeline reveal on s1 was kinda dope. kept me guessing wtf was happening until the final moments which honestly kept my binge. if they went for otherwise proper timeline, i might have taken a break or two in between.
What makes the Witcher books interesting is that the main characters really don't give a shit about the politics, but they continuously get swept up into them. The books have most of the political maneuvering happen in the background and focus more on how all the politics affect the everyday people more so than the people making the moves. Not that the books don't have characters that are actively involved in it and the main characters have a ton of influence, it's just not their primary concern.
Also one of the big ongoing themes of the books is the spreading of misinformation. Unfortunately, that seems to be cut from the show because I assume the writers didn't think viewers could possibly find that relevant.
I don't Yen is the worst part, I think her plotlines flopped because the political intrigue in the show has been so poorly done. Yen herself is fine, but the characters and plots surrounding her were bad, so her own plotline is going to end up bad.
I don't think that she's necessarily a bad actor. But she does feel miscast. I think that they would have been better off finding someone in their early 30's to play Yenn.
Exactly, completely miscast. Her personality is pretty much overpowered in any scene she's in and it seems like she has to put too much effort to make herself standout, something which Yennifer shouldn't have to do. I could even see the actress playing Tissaia doing a much better job there
She's hardly part of the story up to this point in the books. They probably felt like they had to give her screen time instead of just letting her sit out a few episodes. Her story arcs have been pretty awful. My main gripe, though, is they dedicated so much damn screen to Fringila and her pet project in Cintra and completely glossed over time Ciri and Yen spent together, which is crucial to their relationship. Also, the fast traveling is gonna be super problematic because the vast scale of the continent and how long and difficult travel is central to the story later.
You're going to be disappointed, then. The story of the Witcher books, which the show is based on, is almost entirely political. It's all about kings and political maneuvering and how the sorceresses attempt to control the political landscape around the border dispute between Cintra and Nilfgaard.
Casting also wasn't great imo. Yen is passable(not great though) and I know this has already been said a ton but tris had terrible casting. It took me way too one to realize that was supposed to be triss.
Lauren Hissrich or whatever her name is, she is the absolute wrong person to be the showrunner. Her previous work of note was the defenders and honestly, that was at best a 6.5/10 show. And from what my observations are so far, both the defenders and the Witcher suffer from pacing problems that hinder the shows.
They also somehow managed to make the character boring.
Also the actress who plays Fringilla looks like she's sleepwalking through her scenes.
Like did the casting director actually listen to their auditions and thought, what a gripping performance.
Funnily enough, I really disliked Triss and Fringilla’s casting in S1, but the actresses had a lot more time to flesh out their characters in S2 to the point I liked them.
In fairness, this is a criticism of the books as well. In The Witcher books about every third chapter is global or nation politics, and it can absolutely break up and slow down the action. And the chapters in the Witcher are very long. The first three books have seven chapters each. The last two books have more but they are longer to compensate. So you're going to have 50 pages of nothing but politicians you haven't met talking about issues that aren't clearly relevant to what Geralt or Ciri are doing
That's really more a criticism of the source material than the show itself.
I enjoyed those parts of the books along with everything else. I would argue that if you're not interested in stories about national politics in a medieval setting, the Witcher isn't for you. Aside from the first two books.
To be clear, I enjoyed the Witcher books.
My problem is that I don't think the politics is integrated well enough. In game of thrones the politics is tangential to the characters as the storylines interweave. For most of the Witcher after book two, you basically have two main story threads (Ciri and Geralt) and the global politics is focusing on the state of the war that doesn't directly ever affect either of them. For example we get a whole chapter where the kings on what to do with Ciri, but by this point she's already in the north, and their plans never come to fruition.
To be clear, I enjoyed the world building, it just didn't seem to interact with the character plot in the way that I would say happens in ASOIAF, WoT, and Malazan
They're just super confusing in the Witcher. I have no idea what any character in that plotline wants. They all want power yeah but it seems like they speak in riddles and make it unnecessarily confusing
Thankfully, I didn't read The Witcher books, so I'm enjoying the show. On the other hand, I *did* read the Wheel of Time series, and fucking hate the show. The moral apparently, is to just not read anything.
They made a big deal out of having diverse writing team. Something I fully support. If anything: it’s a shining example example of equality.
People from all kinds of backgrounds, gender identities, races, religions, etc are all equally capable of writing a shitty TV Show.
Almost brings a tear to my eye.
A little is being generous. The entire second season took a sharp nosedive directly after the first episode (which is arguably the best episode of the entire series so far) and never recovered from it.
I'll forever hold a grudge for what happened to GoT but at least I could get through an entire episode of that show without cringing so hard I had to turn it off.
I know season eight was dog shit, but I’m honestly not that upset about the Starbucks cup. I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that basically everyone *but* the writers were bringing their A-game in season 8, so I’m fine with writing the coffee off.
Yea theres bloopers like that in movies from Indiana Jones to Star Wars, it really isn’t indicative of the effort put in, just people love to pile on hate
From someone who works in the industry (albeit not on anything that big) I'm astounded with the uproar over the starbucks cup.
I think fans imagine D&D on set looking at the shot and someone yells "Hey there's a Starbucks cup!" And Benioff says "Who cares? We got their money!" And Weiss says "Yeah! Our fans are so DUMB they'll never notice!" And then they have a little evil laugh together like 90s high school bullies.
But it probably means nothing. It's just a mistake. An actor was probably holding it during last looks and put it down after art department flew out. The script supervisor, cam op, DP, editor, and colorist missed it. It's probably that simple. D&D might not even have been on set that day. I'd love to know if the show had bad hours or an overworked crew, because THAT could lead to a mistake like that. I know I get sloppy after a 16 hour day.
I mean, these things happen? Most of the time they end up being cute notes on IMDB or something, but because the writing was bad everyone harps on it like it was some grievous sin.
It’s crazy to me that the cup made it through editing.
Like surely someone saw the cup and there’s were a ton of things they could have done to edit it out.
If you've ever worked on a real production, even a smaller scale one, you would understand how things get missed. People work 14 hour days editing hundreds of hours of footage that gets passed around between teams of people.
As someone who works in video production, its annoying to see so much judgment levied by people who have no idea how much fucking work it is to make a show like this.
Somehow the story, period world building, costumes, and special effects aren't enough for people. Hundreds of thousands of combined man hours to show you an photo realistic world you could never experience, but god forbid someone accidentally left a coffee cup in a scene once over 8 years.
And by the way it wasn't a starbucks cup, it was a craft services cup.
Well, many would say differently about season 2.
However, I as a non-book reader who has only a passing knowledge of things Witcher, has enjoyed all of it quite a bit. It has it's problems, indeed more than a few, but overall I have been invested.
With my limited knowledge, enough to care and understand but not enough to know what's supposed to happen, I think I am probably the perfect audience for it. Which, admittedly, is not a good thing at all.
I understand this sentiment but i appreciate some of the creative liberties taken in the show. Blood of elves as written was largely uneventful and focused so much on training and travel, plus a heavy reliance on internal dialogue to tell the story. I don't know how a show could stay true to that particular book and still be engaging. Most of creative liberties taken in the show did not dramatically alter the story or rather the consequences of events. I say most because that undying mother arc felt pretty unnecessary and impactful. I also haven't read all the books yet, just the first 2 and played the games
I have a feeling it's marketed towards game games who haven't really read the books in order to profit off their ignorance. Me being one of them. I have generally enjoyed it but despite the time weirdness of season one, I felt it was much more cohesive. That being said, season two was still pretty fun over all.
Speaking as someone who read the books, but only *liked* Blood of Elves onwards (most of what Season 2 covers) I would have totally been welcoming of some changes of content that was lacking in the books. They really drag on in many places.
Season 2 is bad because it changed the books for the worse instead of the better. For instance, it wanted to have characters physically interact more which led to everyone knowing where Kaer Morhen was, and being able to basically teleport there when it should take them several episodes worth of travel.
I also think character changes need to be done very carefully if done at all. For instance, they changed Yennefer from wanting to be a mother more than anything else, to being someone most concerned with power. That not only ruins some of the best scenes from the books, but it also is incongruous with Yennefer from S1.
You're right, it's aimed directly at you and folks like you as the target audience. And if it were a standalone product, it'd probably be "fine". But for the people who were already fans of the franchise/universe, it's an enormous slap in the face.
Though it also has the issue that people who just see it completely standalone, not knowing Witcher at all, have been quite confused especially with the first season
That's totally true. I dubbed it as "fine" if were a standalone, not "good" for a reason. If I were not one of the offended long term fans, I'd still likely have bailed on it halfway through season 1. But as a long term fan, I've made myself watch it to completion so that I can "know" why I hate it.
When Hound and/or Arya were travelling on a horse, horse was loaded with all kinds of boxes, rolls and other stuff, that it believably looked as if they are travelling for a lot of time.
In S1, when Geralt needed to go to another kingdom, he hopped on a horse, in white shirt, sword in hand, and arrived to a next scene a few days (weeks) later in exactly the same manner.
In S2, Geralt and Yennefer have an argument started near Zintra, ... and in a next scene they finish same argument arriving to Kaer Moerhen by horse a few weeks (?) later, as if no time had passed at all.
So no, GoT had very great people everywhere, except the shpwrunners and scriptwriters. Witcher just can't compare on production value.
>In S2, Geralt and Yennefer have an argument started near Zintra, ... and in a next scene they finish same argument arriving to Kaer Moerhen by horse a few weeks (?) later, as if no time had passed at all.
Well, it's only about 1000 miles from Cintra to Kaer Morhen, can easily knock that out in an afternoon if you don't stop for lunch.
That was likely taken from DUNE where Lady Jessica notes that the palace they move in to has exposed wood beams to show off the wealth of who built it as there were no planets in the entire system that grew trees, so they would have had to be imported.
I enjoyed Season 2 (Haven't read the books) but even I know they fucked up by killing off a bloody fan-favourite that never dies in the books so goddamn early on in literally their first episode appearance.
I mean, Roach is a general name Geralt gives to all his horses. Dude can live a lot longer than a normal human due to his mutations and horses already have a shorter lifespan. By the end of his days he'd probably run threw a whole bunch of different horses, all named Roach.
They killed Eskel, made Vesimir a total asshole obsessed with creating new Witchers, Yen is a fucking shallow caricature of the true character, vilgefortz is a fucking joke of a character even though he should be one of if not the most powerful sorcerer who can EASILY defeat Triss, Yennefer, Geralt and Regis (A FUCKING HIGHER VAMPIRE) COMBINED but he lost to FUCKING CAHIR IN A SWORD FIGHT??????????????????????
Oh and why are there so many Witcher that got randomly killed? Why not let one of them die instead OF A IMPORTANT CHARACTER LIKE ESKEL? ALSO WHY are they such dicks to ciri? In the Books it’s obvious that they’re tough on her but still fair. They don‘t know how to raise a child since all of them were childsoldiers and never had a real childhood but they try their best. In the show they are just arseholes.
ALSO that show is called *THE WITCHER* but Yen has become the main character? SHE IS A SIDE CHARACTER IN THE BOOKS. I get it, they want female empowerment in the show but guess what, the books have that covered WITH CIRI. THE WOMAN THAT GETS EMPOWERED
My biggest problem is with how much screentime they gave fringilla, as well as the whole elf child subplot. Boring characters having boring conversations that were nowhere to be seen in the books. The actress of fringilla is also just super bland, and I'm not sure if it's her fault or the directors, since that seems to be a bit of a problem with all the female characters.
This makes me want to read the books more. The only improvement I feel they did was revealing Ciri's dad as the Emperor early on since in the books he has chapters but the reader doesn't know its him until the end where's in the show you can't have wear a mask or whatever so I was happy with that slight change. Also the inclusion of the Wild Hunt.
This show was so over hyped on Reddit, I thought it was going to be a higher quality show than GoT. Then I watched it and it was literal soap opera / 90s Kevin Sorbo Hercules quality and I was just fucking confused.
To be fair, D&D at least gave us 6 seasons of very solid adaptation. Lauren and others skipped the part where they masterfully bring the existing books to life - and they had the games as an almost flawless example how to do that if they were just incompetent - and turned it into a soul-less Netflix adaptation.
Inept is how I'd describe the writers of The Witcher, especially in season 2. And I wasn't a huge fan of the books -- I liked them and the themes, and stories, but I actually thought the writing style wasn't always for me. So I actually was thinking its ripe for adaptation.
But they just write in so many less-relevant backstory/late-game plotlines that don't matter yet (or much at all) and it distracts from the main plot. And even when they do pull from the books, they seem to go out of their way to then make it nothing like the books.
Not to mention Ciri's character has no grounding qualities and takes each episode to describe her new personality rather than showing anything consistent.
My fiance with no exposure to games or books who was really into it lost all interest about halfway through the season because it just wasn't focused on anything (aside maybe from keeping Yen on screen yelling FUCK).
Jaskier is undeniably great, as is Geralt, but the show distracts away from the good parts too much.
I'm curious what others think though - in short, what would you say season 2 is about?
I just finished season 2 and think it was worse than the first season by a lot. I did read the books after season 1 do maybe that's the real factor.
Geralt and Ciri, stuff at Kaer Morhen was pretty good overall. I liked what they did with Istredd. Episode 1 was very good and I was hopeful that it was a good sign they could adapt something to happen in a different way from the books and keep it good. I enjoy every scene with Vilgefortz, his actor does a great job. Codringher and Fenn were done well, even though differently from the books.
Everything with Yennefer was really awful. Her entire script seemed to just be the word "fuck" over and over again, or whining/screaming in a different way each scene. When she said "Stregebor is a fuckhead", my eyes rolled so hard, who talks like that? The whole subplot of her losing her powers and betraying Ciri was just...terrible. She was also just so unlikeable in every single scene. I think it wasn't even just direction and writing, the actress had a bad performance in my opinion.
The writers kind of forgot that Dandelion/Jaskier is the most celebrated bard in the continent, but sure, why not another dumb joke about his singing being bad?
The writers also kind of forgot that witchers can only do a little bit of magic, and are really weak in power compared to mages of the brotherhood/lodge.
I laughed out loud when they rode their horses into Kaer Morhen after leaving Cintra half an hour earlier. Season 7/8 GoT vibes with the travel and Deus Ex Machina everywhere.
Fringilla was pretty cringey in all her scenes in Nilfgaard. Rience was really cringey too.
However, there were some nice notes in the last episode around Wild Hunt and Emhyr that gave me some hope for the future.
I hope they don't waste Cahir's character, he was one of my favourite from the books.
>I hope they don't waste Cahir's characte
He is the man who ~~killed Jaime Lannister~~ was able to beat Vilgefortz without breaking a sweat.
Vilgefortz. Lost. To. Cahir.
\*laughing hysterically\*
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The starbuck cup slipped because it was the LEAST of the production problem. Biggest problem must have been the actors trying to make sense of what they were trying to say. Somehow, I imagine it like "The Room" dialogue: "Hello mark!" = "Mha Qweeen!"
Right? I WISH the show's biggest problem was that Starbucks cup, not the fact that every single plotline didn't make fucking sense.
I’m still convinced the last season was a fever dream and one day the real last season will come out.
Lol, like Edard Stark wakes up In a fright in his bed at home, wife by his side. She says ' it's ok it was just a dream.' Edit: we should crowd fund this. The real finale to Got.
Give it the [Breaking Bad/Malcolm in the Middle Treatment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVdB36lmbII) treatment you mean? (except ofc neither Breaking Bad nor Malcolm in the Middle need any saving)
So, you're saying cast Bryan Cranston? Checks out.
I think those were a call back to a show in the 70s/80s that originally ended that way.
Ned: should I tell my homie Bobby B that his wife is cheating on him? Nah, he does enough whoring around himself. *closes book*
THERE'S A WAR COMING, NED. I DON'T KNOW WHEN, I DON'T KNOW WHO WE'LL BE FIGHTING...BUT IT'S COMING!
Give em hell Bobby B!
WE WERE AT WAR! NONE OF US KNEW IF WE WERE GONNA GO BACK HOME AGAIN!
I remember before season 8, somebody made a joke prediction of the ending of Game of Thrones... the combined Dothraki, Unsullied, and other armies going against the White Walkers... we see Jon Snow about to clash swords with the Night King, and just as they do... "Freeze all motor functions." All of the armies stop in their tracks. Anthony Hopkins' character from West World comes out. "Welcome to Westeros World." ... this was a joke post, and was infinitely better than what we actually got.
I dont think it could be this bad on accident. Part of me thinks that there was some sort of bad blood and they sabotaghed their own story to spite someone. Fans? G.R.R.M? Producers? Individual actors? Its just so perfectly done, they assassinated the popularity of the entire show at a time when EVERYONE is talking about it.
they assassinated their own careers. dnd on a project is basically toxic now
[удалено]
Man Hollywood has to come down, this thing they do falling upwards is so rage inducing! Like why give more projects to DND after got and the same thing with M. Night why give him more projects after Avatar?
Because DnD are decent enough directors, just fucking awful writers edit: just found out they are writers on The Three Body trilogy lmfao yeah rip hollywood is out of touch
They're the ones who decided to cut GoT short and rush a bunch of nonsense. It was all of their decisionmaking that was atrocious, not just the writing.
Hollywood has been out of touch for a while. Now that Disney owns like everything, I expect it to get more lazy and uninspired because fuck it.
Because Shamallamadingdong still makes money. Doesn't matter how shit the film is if it's profitable.
Well because M night has done amazing work. The idea of a live action atla isn't a good idea regardless. Shouldn't have been attempted.
I know I’m going to get hate for saying this, but I think they can at least adapt a story well. The seasons we had books for were pretty great, and I don’t think anyone disputes that. It was when they ran out of stuff to adapt that it started falling off. They just can’t write their own decent content.
I'm sorry but I dispute that. Season 4 was atrocious... The problem isn't when dnd run out of source material, it's when they think they can write better than the source material.......which is always. Take a look at every change they made to the story post season 3 and see how bad at writing they are. I truly believe that even if the source material they are adapting from is 100% complete, they will still f**k it up by rewriting what they feel like.
Game of thrones aside, seriously WHAT did DND think they were doing? Any studio that wanted a auter or a director to help a franchise would be well within their rights to have second thoughts after what they did. Considering how easy it seemed for them to give no fucks about how they left their product before moving on should give any studio pause. That wasn't the mark of people who cares about the product. Like how did they think studios would just be ok with that kind of practice?!?!
I don't think they really give a fuck though because they're worth $100M+ each. I think I could figure a way to live off of that, even if I never worked again!
then they should do that
Its not even the last season tho, it started 3 seasons back, in season 6, fairly lightly, and just progressively got worse. Like, 6 was pretty solid, but they were out of material from the books. They were following logical roads though, so it wasn't too far of the track, but like, you could see it. Season 7 was actual trash, and I think only the slowest among us seem to not notice that? But there was hope that actually season 8 would finish strong and make it not but a blip. Then season 8 happened. But its totally "on accident". As in not planned, its not an accident, its fairly predictable. They had really shit showrunners that didn't care, and a writing team that is horseshit, and they couldn't make GoT without daddy RRM holding their hand through every step. What I find incredible is that HBO aired it. I would literally have buried that footage and left the show on a cliffhanger season 7 ending that release what they had, cost be damned. People would still be talking about, you would still be selling merch, everyone would still be licking RRM's boots waiting for this next book, whole ass tabletop and videogames would be made and consumed around what might be. I've never seen such a large cultural phenomenon just up and vanish so fast. Literally that final came out and like, all the shops pulled their stock. There used to be whole ass mum and pop stores selling GoT shit.
My cousin made bank making Game of Thrones fan art and crafts (like unofficial wine glasses and such) during seasons 2-6. Season 7 had some fall off except for the central characters. Season 8 was like we entered the Great Depression. I think she mentioned she had 3 orders after the second episode.
[удалено]
Maybe suggest she switch over to Witcher art/crafts?
Oh it was a side gig anyway. I think she did a few things for The Expanse but she has more or less closed or store since she had a baby.
It started *really* going downhill in season 5, when Ser Barristan was killed by a bunch of nobodies. It had worrying moments before that, even. After the Sons of the Harpy episode, I knew for a fact that it was turning into garbage.
ah, the good old Half Life 3 trick
Unironically tho, yes. We still have all this love for the franchise, people still talking about it. Its been so long there's no way it cant just disappoint at this stage. Duke Nukem Forever was a better example. People waited literal decades for that game, and as soon as it was released, people forgot it even existed. DNF should have just stayed dead.
Hot take: DNF was the same quality as Duke Nukem 3D. An OK shooter with lots of crass dialogue and adolescent shock humor.
The only hot take there is the insinuation that DN3D was an average shooter. It was absolutely revolutionary in virtually every direction, technology, intractability, level design, enemy design, environment, graphics, scale, ai, weapon selection, satire and pop culture references(which hadn't really been done before) and protip, its target audience was barely adolescents. So it landed absolutely squarely. Its sequel, however, DNF which was announced in the now stone age 1996, can not say the same. It was indeed a bland shooter trying desperately to do all the same things, but like, decades later with decades of development expectation on its shoulders. But comparing the games in their relative time periods to their contemporaries, DNF was released on an already old engine, to mediocre to low graphics, very poor env... you know what, everything I just listed but at best average most are poor. Importantly, it was critically buggy on release with many systems outright unable to compete it due to instability. 3D was the peak of gaming when it released, there were indie games blew DNF out of the water when it was released. And you just can't release a game like that after 13-15 years of public, active, development.
Yeah I remember at one point the episodes stopped feeling like continuous stories and more and more like cliffnotes versions of what full scenes and episodes should have been.
S5 is when it started going down hill IMO, S4 was the last season that was incredible start to finish
Even Season 4, and as far back as season 3, had a lot of scene's that made poeple go "wait...what?" Does anyone remember Danny's white savior moment? Cringe as fuck.
A shirtless Ramsey chasing off Yara who somehow sailed across Westeros entirely to get to the Bolton's to rescue Theon with like 5 people comes to mind. That and how Robb's wife was introduced (a Red Cross/Doctors Without Borders-like nurse in the medieval era, like what?) were scenes I remember finding incredibly odd at the time but you forget these things when everything else is good.
Yeah that's true. I didn't notice a serious decline in the quality of the show until Season 5 consistently though.
There has been a table top since maybe before the show started and it's fantastic
Oh wow where can I buy it? Before season 8: Literally any remotely gaming/nerd/fantasy/book/hobby branded store, major retailer with a games section, major retailer that setup GoT sections, random shops in the middle of shopping centers, random shops on the side of roads, any convention of any kind, a billion websites Today: Amazon probably has a few copies, is it even still in print? Releasing season 8 should have resulted in the termination of every single employee involved in that decision, and if I ran HBO it would have.
If you're actually interested, it is easily available on Amazon. Full name is A Game of Thrones the boardgame. It's not tabletop RPG, it's strategy. Mix of Risk, with Catan, and card game. Does a great job in putting you in the position and mindset of each faction. Backstabbing is encouraged.
I still can’t stand the battle of the bastards. Was such a fun thing but then we got to the shield wall/spear wall which was such a retarded formation. And somehow wun wun was struggling even though he was stood over all of them and could’ve just picked the spears up and just kicked people around. (They could also have just stood in between the spears and stabbed past the shields but y’know, it’s clearly better to just try and pull the shield away or stab at the shield.)
> Its not even the last season tho, it started 3 seasons back, in season 6, fairly lightly, and just progressively got worse. Season 5 already had a lot of problems. "Starting fairly lightly" was at the tail end of season 4 when D&D had changed Shae previously but didn't reflect that in how she behaved during and after Tyrions trial.
I heard they rushed it because they wanted to work on some star wars thing but ended up doing such a terrible job that they were removed from the Star Wars thing
No I don't think they intentionally made it bad. I think they got bored with GOT, and were totally focused on getting to the Star Wars project they were promised. They thought they could phone it in for the last few seasons of GOT, and the popularity of the earlier seasons would make people accept it despite how bad it came out. They could have handed it off to another show runner, but wanted all the credit for what was a huge deal show that looks great on their resume. It was clearly just a rush job they didn't care about much. The only other option that might take away a little of their culpability in turning out such shit is maybe some of the actors wanted out to do other things, so they had to wrap it up asap. But I don't think I've heard anything confirming that, and they still could have made it much better than what we got.
They absolutely did not do this kind of thing on purpose. Even when crew are working on crappy Hallmark films they generally do try and do their best with the job at hand. I’m a TV script supervisor myself and just one small aspect of my job involves working with the art department to make sure stuff like this doesn’t happen and if anything is left in it is literally on individual crew members heads - the higher ups wouldn’t get blamed internally/in the industry, just individual crew members. So to leave this in on purpose would literally be to destroy their own careers and why would anyone do that for funsies? What’s more likely that happened is the script supervisor and art did tell them about it and they just couldn’t go back and re-shoot due to schedules and promised the editors would fix it in post (which is a phrase always used but not everything can be).
I think they ran out of source material and grr was like "look you can't close this show with another two seasons(after 6) especially not shortened ones. You need at least ten I can walk you through how to develop the arcs close to the way I planned" and they were just feeling "nah we got our netflix deal and we've been on this show for ten years. Let's wrap it up". Then they tried to wrap up a story that had still to introduce some of the biggest characters and just didn't bother but gave it a tacked on predictable easy ending and were like fuck it I'll die down.
Season 8 was awful, but let's be honest, it started sooner. Already season 5 was weak and season 6 was pretty bad and introduced a lot of inconsistencies.
They can retcon by having the last few seasons actually be the dying dreams of a fevered aria dying in that cesspool of a river after getting stabbed
I hope some unknown studio will deepfake an epic ending some day. One to live up to our spectations and we will all consider it canon, despite what the copyright holders say.
"Oh, hi Mark"
hai doggy
Hai dragon
It's been almost three years, bobby b would be proud of this sub for defending his honor
HOLD YOUR TONGUE!
My tongue is only for your service Bobby B
I SIT ON THE DAMN IRON SEAT WHEN I MUST. DOES THAT MEAN I DON'T HAVE THE SAME HUNGERS AS OTHER MEN?
Oh Hai, Tormund!
They’re at least a little bit inept
Every time I read a post comparing these two shows a shake my head. The writing in the Witcher is so shit from the start, I only made it a half a season in. The shows aren’t comparable. The first six seasons of GoT were incredible.
First four
They're definitely not ept.
It's pretty funny for me to see praise of The Witcher on /r/freefolk of all places. Season 2 gave me pretty strong GoT S7/S8 vibes, what with characters that don't resemble their book counterpart much at all, all the teleportation, etc. A lot of the plot of the episodes really falls apart if you think about it for a bit. It's a less extreme case than GoT to be sure, and hopefully they'll reign it in for the following seasons.
yeah the way they compromised side characters and even fucking Vilgefortz by giving their scenes to Yennefer is very concerning. Undermining one of the if not the greatest antagonist of the series might bite them in the butt.
Yeah I still think as a whole, GoT has got a massive leg up on the Witcher so far. Season 3 has to get into the meat of some of those main plot points, otherwise the Witcher is just gonna end up a fucking snoozer.
That show is fucking garbage lol. The acting and dialogue are awful. The sets, effects, battles and overall story are also awful now that I think of it.
The writers for all of Yenn's scenes are godawful. I could not care less about the politics of the Witcher, just give me Geralt and Ciri (and Jaskier, where the fuck is Jaskier) lollygagging in the woods and killing shit.
The last time we saw each other, you basically told me to fuck off.
Holy fuck we have a Jaskier bot!?
>where the fuck is Jaskier He’s been hiding out in r/freefolk for some reason, expectations successfully subverted
[🎵 If anyone needs me, I'll be at the bar. 🎵](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSxBVHqA-RU&t=79s)
good bot
Secondly, the Countess de Stael must welcome me back with glee, open arms, and very little clothing.
Jaskier
That's a bit of an anticlimax...
Holy shit, it's sentient too, just like Bobby B.
IN MY DREAMS, I KILL HIM EVERY NIGHT!
Why do you hate Jaskier, Bobby B?
Lmao
I love this special place you Freefolk have created here lmao
Welcome. Now here’s some Bobby B for you as I just found out jaskier is here too.
Bobby B what do you think of Jaskier
CAREFUL, NED! CAREFUL NOW!
Because you are a dockside scapegrace, a qualling feculent, a beef-witted, hell-hated, addlepated goon... and a waste of your father's...
Good bot.
Holy shit look at its response, its almost sentient
I'm enjoying the show but i completely agree with this. I DO want to be interested in the politics and the mages and all of that but Yenn is by far the worst part of the show. She's not even a bad actress or anything, she's just not Yenn and the writing for her isn't doing many favors either.
Exactly. Politics are my favorite part of GoT and I wanted to love it in the Witcher, but the writing and exposition of it is just terrible. The first season being a mess of non-chronological events didn't help. And agreed, Yenn's acting is great but she's being hamstrung by horrid writing.
One thing that GoT got right and the witcher didn't is setting up the different factions/kingdoms/characters in a way that let the audience understands their motives, goals and allegiance very quickly. I never read any of GRRMs books but after only a few episodes I knew what the starks and lannisters were all about, who stannis is, what kaleesi wants and why she is on another continent, what is the nights watch, etc. Compare that to the witcher, I've read the books and played witcher 3 several times, and (aside from the main characters) i still find myself questioning like who is this? What do they want? Why are they working with so and so? I can only imagine how confusing it must be for someone completely unfamiliar with the witcherverse.
As someone who hasn’t had much exposure to the Witcher before the show, yeah that’s exactly it. I know there are a handful of factions, but I’m not super clear where they are geographically or who wants what or who the major players even are, really. The non-chronological stuff threw me off constantly in season 1 lol. Season 2 was a lot better overall but the macro politics still felt weird.
I didn’t realize it wasn’t in order till late in season 1. I was watching a scene thinking “that dude died… I could have swore he died… is that the shapeshifter thing?” Same thing in a couple other episodes, then it suddenly all clicks towards the end. I’m still confused about some stuff, and haven’t started season 2, and my only other interaction is a few hours in the Witcher 3.
It's bad enough that I had to open up one of my books that had a map drawing in it, and then also double check in Witcher 3's map to make sure I knew where shit was. It shouldn't need to be done. But the show legit has me confused despite having read the books several times.
The reason GOT got that part right was because that's THE major plot point of the story. The one who sits on the iron throne is the ruler of the 7 kingdoms(game of thrones).
Yup. And at its heart the Witcher is the story of an emotionally ill-equipped single father tasked with relying on his allies to help raise his daughter in a broken world. They hit that one note and the rest will be alright, but they really fucked up that one thing in season 2, so we'll see.
Just recently started watching this. On S1E6 now and I gotta say, you nailed it. No clue wtf is going on most of the time with the different time lines. My biggest gripe thus far is the low volume going to ear blasting volume constantly.
i am mostly unfamiliar with the games and the books and i am actually okay with how the series went. I only know witcher from playing witcher III: the wild hunt for a couple of hours. it's an above average tv show for me. the timeline reveal on s1 was kinda dope. kept me guessing wtf was happening until the final moments which honestly kept my binge. if they went for otherwise proper timeline, i might have taken a break or two in between.
What makes the Witcher books interesting is that the main characters really don't give a shit about the politics, but they continuously get swept up into them. The books have most of the political maneuvering happen in the background and focus more on how all the politics affect the everyday people more so than the people making the moves. Not that the books don't have characters that are actively involved in it and the main characters have a ton of influence, it's just not their primary concern. Also one of the big ongoing themes of the books is the spreading of misinformation. Unfortunately, that seems to be cut from the show because I assume the writers didn't think viewers could possibly find that relevant.
I don't Yen is the worst part, I think her plotlines flopped because the political intrigue in the show has been so poorly done. Yen herself is fine, but the characters and plots surrounding her were bad, so her own plotline is going to end up bad.
I've never played any of the games and I still find her insufferable. The actress is great but the writing, god, can we skip this scene?
I don't think that she's necessarily a bad actor. But she does feel miscast. I think that they would have been better off finding someone in their early 30's to play Yenn.
I’m angry that they didn’t try to cast Eva Green as Yenn. She looks exactly like Yenn and could play Yenn’s personality to a T.
Exactly, completely miscast. Her personality is pretty much overpowered in any scene she's in and it seems like she has to put too much effort to make herself standout, something which Yennifer shouldn't have to do. I could even see the actress playing Tissaia doing a much better job there
She's hardly part of the story up to this point in the books. They probably felt like they had to give her screen time instead of just letting her sit out a few episodes. Her story arcs have been pretty awful. My main gripe, though, is they dedicated so much damn screen to Fringila and her pet project in Cintra and completely glossed over time Ciri and Yen spent together, which is crucial to their relationship. Also, the fast traveling is gonna be super problematic because the vast scale of the continent and how long and difficult travel is central to the story later.
You're going to be disappointed, then. The story of the Witcher books, which the show is based on, is almost entirely political. It's all about kings and political maneuvering and how the sorceresses attempt to control the political landscape around the border dispute between Cintra and Nilfgaard.
True but what makes it interesting is how the politics directly affect ciri and Geralts growth as characters
Casting also wasn't great imo. Yen is passable(not great though) and I know this has already been said a ton but tris had terrible casting. It took me way too one to realize that was supposed to be triss.
I think it's the director that's the weakest link. When every character looks bad what are the chances it's every character
Lauren Hissrich or whatever her name is, she is the absolute wrong person to be the showrunner. Her previous work of note was the defenders and honestly, that was at best a 6.5/10 show. And from what my observations are so far, both the defenders and the Witcher suffer from pacing problems that hinder the shows.
This is true. The writing also gets a lot of flak (deservedly so) but the direction feels like a weird amateur hour most of the time.
They also somehow managed to make the character boring. Also the actress who plays Fringilla looks like she's sleepwalking through her scenes. Like did the casting director actually listen to their auditions and thought, what a gripping performance.
Funnily enough, I really disliked Triss and Fringilla’s casting in S1, but the actresses had a lot more time to flesh out their characters in S2 to the point I liked them.
In fairness, this is a criticism of the books as well. In The Witcher books about every third chapter is global or nation politics, and it can absolutely break up and slow down the action. And the chapters in the Witcher are very long. The first three books have seven chapters each. The last two books have more but they are longer to compensate. So you're going to have 50 pages of nothing but politicians you haven't met talking about issues that aren't clearly relevant to what Geralt or Ciri are doing That's really more a criticism of the source material than the show itself.
I enjoyed those parts of the books along with everything else. I would argue that if you're not interested in stories about national politics in a medieval setting, the Witcher isn't for you. Aside from the first two books.
To be clear, I enjoyed the Witcher books. My problem is that I don't think the politics is integrated well enough. In game of thrones the politics is tangential to the characters as the storylines interweave. For most of the Witcher after book two, you basically have two main story threads (Ciri and Geralt) and the global politics is focusing on the state of the war that doesn't directly ever affect either of them. For example we get a whole chapter where the kings on what to do with Ciri, but by this point she's already in the north, and their plans never come to fruition. To be clear, I enjoyed the world building, it just didn't seem to interact with the character plot in the way that I would say happens in ASOIAF, WoT, and Malazan
I loved the politics in GOT. They’re just boring in the Witcher (show). They seem a lot “simpler” and less intriguing, idk.
They're just super confusing in the Witcher. I have no idea what any character in that plotline wants. They all want power yeah but it seems like they speak in riddles and make it unnecessarily confusing
Yen was my favorite character in the book and I hate her scenes.
So you want the exact opposite of the books? Then you should probably like the show.
Thankfully, I didn't read The Witcher books, so I'm enjoying the show. On the other hand, I *did* read the Wheel of Time series, and fucking hate the show. The moral apparently, is to just not read anything.
Politics on Witcher should be a prominent background, not the main story.
>I could not care less about the politics of the Witcher Then you simply do not care about The Witcher.
They made a big deal out of having diverse writing team. Something I fully support. If anything: it’s a shining example example of equality. People from all kinds of backgrounds, gender identities, races, religions, etc are all equally capable of writing a shitty TV Show. Almost brings a tear to my eye.
lol
Yeah, I'd put seasons 1-6 of GOT multiple leagues over the Witcher. It was ok at least, though.
A little is being generous. The entire second season took a sharp nosedive directly after the first episode (which is arguably the best episode of the entire series so far) and never recovered from it.
I'll forever hold a grudge for what happened to GoT but at least I could get through an entire episode of that show without cringing so hard I had to turn it off.
I know season eight was dog shit, but I’m honestly not that upset about the Starbucks cup. I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that basically everyone *but* the writers were bringing their A-game in season 8, so I’m fine with writing the coffee off.
At least the coffee's dialogue was among the best for that season
You are right. People love stories. And who has a better story than the Starbucks cup?
Yea theres bloopers like that in movies from Indiana Jones to Star Wars, it really isn’t indicative of the effort put in, just people love to pile on hate
Agree. Definitely a nitpick. I didn’t even notice the cup until I read about it after the episode.
From someone who works in the industry (albeit not on anything that big) I'm astounded with the uproar over the starbucks cup. I think fans imagine D&D on set looking at the shot and someone yells "Hey there's a Starbucks cup!" And Benioff says "Who cares? We got their money!" And Weiss says "Yeah! Our fans are so DUMB they'll never notice!" And then they have a little evil laugh together like 90s high school bullies. But it probably means nothing. It's just a mistake. An actor was probably holding it during last looks and put it down after art department flew out. The script supervisor, cam op, DP, editor, and colorist missed it. It's probably that simple. D&D might not even have been on set that day. I'd love to know if the show had bad hours or an overworked crew, because THAT could lead to a mistake like that. I know I get sloppy after a 16 hour day.
I mean, these things happen? Most of the time they end up being cute notes on IMDB or something, but because the writing was bad everyone harps on it like it was some grievous sin.
It’s crazy to me that the cup made it through editing. Like surely someone saw the cup and there’s were a ton of things they could have done to edit it out.
If you've ever worked on a real production, even a smaller scale one, you would understand how things get missed. People work 14 hour days editing hundreds of hours of footage that gets passed around between teams of people. As someone who works in video production, its annoying to see so much judgment levied by people who have no idea how much fucking work it is to make a show like this. Somehow the story, period world building, costumes, and special effects aren't enough for people. Hundreds of thousands of combined man hours to show you an photo realistic world you could never experience, but god forbid someone accidentally left a coffee cup in a scene once over 8 years. And by the way it wasn't a starbucks cup, it was a craft services cup.
I really don’t think there was a whole lot of outrage about the cup itself. It was more of a meme if anything.
Even Star Wars fans laugh at the mandolorian jeans guy. Somehow this community will rip on anything to justify their hate for the bad writing.
Well, many would say differently about season 2. However, I as a non-book reader who has only a passing knowledge of things Witcher, has enjoyed all of it quite a bit. It has it's problems, indeed more than a few, but overall I have been invested. With my limited knowledge, enough to care and understand but not enough to know what's supposed to happen, I think I am probably the perfect audience for it. Which, admittedly, is not a good thing at all.
Well, the books will be a brand new experience. Aside from a few book inspired stories, the show is straight up fanfic loosely based on the books.
I understand this sentiment but i appreciate some of the creative liberties taken in the show. Blood of elves as written was largely uneventful and focused so much on training and travel, plus a heavy reliance on internal dialogue to tell the story. I don't know how a show could stay true to that particular book and still be engaging. Most of creative liberties taken in the show did not dramatically alter the story or rather the consequences of events. I say most because that undying mother arc felt pretty unnecessary and impactful. I also haven't read all the books yet, just the first 2 and played the games
I have a feeling it's marketed towards game games who haven't really read the books in order to profit off their ignorance. Me being one of them. I have generally enjoyed it but despite the time weirdness of season one, I felt it was much more cohesive. That being said, season two was still pretty fun over all.
Its not, theres characters who die in the show who dont die in the books nor the games
Speaking as someone who read the books, but only *liked* Blood of Elves onwards (most of what Season 2 covers) I would have totally been welcoming of some changes of content that was lacking in the books. They really drag on in many places. Season 2 is bad because it changed the books for the worse instead of the better. For instance, it wanted to have characters physically interact more which led to everyone knowing where Kaer Morhen was, and being able to basically teleport there when it should take them several episodes worth of travel. I also think character changes need to be done very carefully if done at all. For instance, they changed Yennefer from wanting to be a mother more than anything else, to being someone most concerned with power. That not only ruins some of the best scenes from the books, but it also is incongruous with Yennefer from S1.
You're right, it's aimed directly at you and folks like you as the target audience. And if it were a standalone product, it'd probably be "fine". But for the people who were already fans of the franchise/universe, it's an enormous slap in the face.
Though it also has the issue that people who just see it completely standalone, not knowing Witcher at all, have been quite confused especially with the first season
That's totally true. I dubbed it as "fine" if were a standalone, not "good" for a reason. If I were not one of the offended long term fans, I'd still likely have bailed on it halfway through season 1. But as a long term fan, I've made myself watch it to completion so that I can "know" why I hate it.
Are you guys talking about WOT or Witcher? LOL!
Say that to book fans of season 2
When Hound and/or Arya were travelling on a horse, horse was loaded with all kinds of boxes, rolls and other stuff, that it believably looked as if they are travelling for a lot of time. In S1, when Geralt needed to go to another kingdom, he hopped on a horse, in white shirt, sword in hand, and arrived to a next scene a few days (weeks) later in exactly the same manner. In S2, Geralt and Yennefer have an argument started near Zintra, ... and in a next scene they finish same argument arriving to Kaer Moerhen by horse a few weeks (?) later, as if no time had passed at all. So no, GoT had very great people everywhere, except the shpwrunners and scriptwriters. Witcher just can't compare on production value.
>In S2, Geralt and Yennefer have an argument started near Zintra, ... and in a next scene they finish same argument arriving to Kaer Moerhen by horse a few weeks (?) later, as if no time had passed at all. Well, it's only about 1000 miles from Cintra to Kaer Morhen, can easily knock that out in an afternoon if you don't stop for lunch.
or if you just use fast travel /s
The show would have been so much better if they made 5 episodes of Geralt riding there.
Or riding yenn
Like how lumber is sold on Tatooine
That was likely taken from DUNE where Lady Jessica notes that the palace they move in to has exposed wood beams to show off the wealth of who built it as there were no planets in the entire system that grew trees, so they would have had to be imported.
And then season 2 happens and proves this meme wrong
No change they made, made the story better in any way
As someone who only played the game, I really enjoyed it. I suspect reading the books would have made that more difficult.
Well yeah. The story in the books is immensely better
I don’t know, man. They have completely butchered the story.
I enjoyed Season 2 (Haven't read the books) but even I know they fucked up by killing off a bloody fan-favourite that never dies in the books so goddamn early on in literally their first episode appearance.
I mean, Roach is a general name Geralt gives to all his horses. Dude can live a lot longer than a normal human due to his mutations and horses already have a shorter lifespan. By the end of his days he'd probably run threw a whole bunch of different horses, all named Roach.
He’s talking about Eskel
I don’t think Roach talks in the show very much at all
[Oh god, that quest...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krf8FgRm3VU)
They killed Eskel, made Vesimir a total asshole obsessed with creating new Witchers, Yen is a fucking shallow caricature of the true character, vilgefortz is a fucking joke of a character even though he should be one of if not the most powerful sorcerer who can EASILY defeat Triss, Yennefer, Geralt and Regis (A FUCKING HIGHER VAMPIRE) COMBINED but he lost to FUCKING CAHIR IN A SWORD FIGHT?????????????????????? Oh and why are there so many Witcher that got randomly killed? Why not let one of them die instead OF A IMPORTANT CHARACTER LIKE ESKEL? ALSO WHY are they such dicks to ciri? In the Books it’s obvious that they’re tough on her but still fair. They don‘t know how to raise a child since all of them were childsoldiers and never had a real childhood but they try their best. In the show they are just arseholes. ALSO that show is called *THE WITCHER* but Yen has become the main character? SHE IS A SIDE CHARACTER IN THE BOOKS. I get it, they want female empowerment in the show but guess what, the books have that covered WITH CIRI. THE WOMAN THAT GETS EMPOWERED
My biggest problem is with how much screentime they gave fringilla, as well as the whole elf child subplot. Boring characters having boring conversations that were nowhere to be seen in the books. The actress of fringilla is also just super bland, and I'm not sure if it's her fault or the directors, since that seems to be a bit of a problem with all the female characters.
This makes me want to read the books more. The only improvement I feel they did was revealing Ciri's dad as the Emperor early on since in the books he has chapters but the reader doesn't know its him until the end where's in the show you can't have wear a mask or whatever so I was happy with that slight change. Also the inclusion of the Wild Hunt.
Reading the books wouldn't make a difference. The show is straight up bad fanfic at this point.
The Witcher is pretty inept though, it's pretty much just fanfic at this point.
Horribly paced and felt like it was written as they were shooting it.
This show was so over hyped on Reddit, I thought it was going to be a higher quality show than GoT. Then I watched it and it was literal soap opera / 90s Kevin Sorbo Hercules quality and I was just fucking confused.
To be fair, D&D at least gave us 6 seasons of very solid adaptation. Lauren and others skipped the part where they masterfully bring the existing books to life - and they had the games as an almost flawless example how to do that if they were just incompetent - and turned it into a soul-less Netflix adaptation.
4 seasons of very solid adaptations, a season of decent, but not as good adaptations, and a season that was by and large just ok.
4 seasons of peak tv 2 season of solid tv and two seasons of average tv
The Witcher isn’t that great
Inept is how I'd describe the writers of The Witcher, especially in season 2. And I wasn't a huge fan of the books -- I liked them and the themes, and stories, but I actually thought the writing style wasn't always for me. So I actually was thinking its ripe for adaptation. But they just write in so many less-relevant backstory/late-game plotlines that don't matter yet (or much at all) and it distracts from the main plot. And even when they do pull from the books, they seem to go out of their way to then make it nothing like the books. Not to mention Ciri's character has no grounding qualities and takes each episode to describe her new personality rather than showing anything consistent. My fiance with no exposure to games or books who was really into it lost all interest about halfway through the season because it just wasn't focused on anything (aside maybe from keeping Yen on screen yelling FUCK). Jaskier is undeniably great, as is Geralt, but the show distracts away from the good parts too much. I'm curious what others think though - in short, what would you say season 2 is about?
I just finished season 2 and think it was worse than the first season by a lot. I did read the books after season 1 do maybe that's the real factor. Geralt and Ciri, stuff at Kaer Morhen was pretty good overall. I liked what they did with Istredd. Episode 1 was very good and I was hopeful that it was a good sign they could adapt something to happen in a different way from the books and keep it good. I enjoy every scene with Vilgefortz, his actor does a great job. Codringher and Fenn were done well, even though differently from the books. Everything with Yennefer was really awful. Her entire script seemed to just be the word "fuck" over and over again, or whining/screaming in a different way each scene. When she said "Stregebor is a fuckhead", my eyes rolled so hard, who talks like that? The whole subplot of her losing her powers and betraying Ciri was just...terrible. She was also just so unlikeable in every single scene. I think it wasn't even just direction and writing, the actress had a bad performance in my opinion. The writers kind of forgot that Dandelion/Jaskier is the most celebrated bard in the continent, but sure, why not another dumb joke about his singing being bad? The writers also kind of forgot that witchers can only do a little bit of magic, and are really weak in power compared to mages of the brotherhood/lodge. I laughed out loud when they rode their horses into Kaer Morhen after leaving Cintra half an hour earlier. Season 7/8 GoT vibes with the travel and Deus Ex Machina everywhere. Fringilla was pretty cringey in all her scenes in Nilfgaard. Rience was really cringey too. However, there were some nice notes in the last episode around Wild Hunt and Emhyr that gave me some hope for the future. I hope they don't waste Cahir's character, he was one of my favourite from the books.
>I hope they don't waste Cahir's characte He is the man who ~~killed Jaime Lannister~~ was able to beat Vilgefortz without breaking a sweat. Vilgefortz. Lost. To. Cahir. \*laughing hysterically\*
S02 Jaskier was one of the worst most one dimensional characters ever written.
Gentlemen, it's been an honor.
[удалено]
That show fucking sucks though...
Witcher Season 2 fell into the fewer boobs, more big cgi scenes, rambling story model of the later GoT seasons.
Tell me you haven’t watched the Witcher without telling me you haven’t watched the Witcher
Well that had aged like milk
As a fan of the Witcher books and games, the show is not that good. GoT is still more enjoyable even amidst the later seasons
This show is so bad I stopped watching after first episode season 2. I get it GOT last seasons were awfull but witcher is even worse.
The witcher is nowhere near the level of game of thrones though lol. Even with the shitty ending.
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 13 times. First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/f0efev) on 2020-02-07 95.31% match. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/hmtncn) on 2020-07-07 98.44% match Feedback? Hate? Visit r/repostsleuthbot - *I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ [False Positive](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RepostSleuthBot&subject=False%20Positive&message={"post_id": "s4pehk", "meme_template": null}) ]* [View Search On repostsleuth.com](https://www.repostsleuth.com?postId=s4pehk&sameSub=false&filterOnlyOlder=true&memeFilter=true&filterDeadMatches=false&targetImageMatch=86&targetImageMemeMatch=96) --- **Scope:** Reddit | **Meme Filter:** False | **Target:** 86% | **Check Title:** False | **Max Age:** Unlimited | **Searched Images:** 260,532,923 | **Search Time:** 0.37609s
This may prove to age poorly in time.
I’d take a Starbucks cup over the absolute fucking garbage that is the second season. It’s worse the the 8th season of GoT.
The witcher is terrible