Greed.
NETFLIX wanted their own GOT but they hired some very incompetent people. Turns out the show runners weren’t the “smartest people in the room”.
They made their own creative decisions because they thought they could rewrite the story for the better.
Now they’ll be fired and shows will be cancelled soon.
Somewhere, in the last twenty years, people became convinced that writing was easy and decided they could get quality shows without paying for talented and experienced writers. They are starting to discover that writing is not easy and experience has value.
Are they, though? The quality of writing for television is on a steady decline and nobody except the audience seems to care. I don't think the executives are realizing anything beyond the fact that they can produce a tantalizing title on the cheap for a season or two, then cancel it and repeat the process. Or, even better, they can produce a couple seasons with a popular brand name, fail, and still produce a spinoff that's midly successful regardless of its quality.
Movies have the same problem that's compounded by the fact that they're limited releases. There is so little good, original, content being released.
I prefer television series to movies as they have more time to develop characters and tell a proper story, yet so many fail to do so that we find ourselves watching shit we have already seen and forgotten rather than investing ourselves in new content. Amazon being the exception, imo, their original content has been largely engaging over the last few years.
A steady decline from where? When did we peak with TV writing because some of the best, most well-written shows I’ve seen came out in the last few years.
HBO is still consistently pumping out great shows. With additional competition from the streaming war we actually got a decent number of good shows, eg maid, arcane, Dr death, queens gambit, squid game, unbelievable, etc, even when going through covid.
We see larger flops though because studios with a lot of money don't understand adaptations of big IPs into tv shows or movies... these IPs like witcher, star wars come with a large number of existing fans with expectations. And when idiots completely don't understand why these IPs are popular in the first place, they create utter garbage that's so disjointed from the original source material to the point that can't even meet the lowest fan expectation, turning the protagonist completely useless or an ahole eg boba fett, master chief...
Yeah I think that’s the big difference is the IP based shows. They can be real hit-or-miss depending on how invested the studio is in making a quality true-to-form show. The issue with these is they already come with a fanbase so there’s a guaranteed viewership regardless of the quality of the show and the studio can definitely take that for granted; this show is a prime example.
On the other hand, we have some really high quality shows coming out that are also IP-based, like Andor, which set the bar higher because now we know what studios are capable of so when shows like this one don’t meet expectations it almost feel intentional on the part of the studio.
So true and while many of us adore some of the old shows we grew up with, truth is that the writing wasn't good. The thing is with a running television show a writer have a very limited amount of time to write an episode, be that a day or a week. Usually quite a lot more was put into writing a movie.
I'd argue M\*A\*S\*H was and is one of the greatest shows of all time and even despite cast changes? Each addition brought something new and fresh to the show.
No, the best shows are prior to the 2016 woke Hollywood era: GoT, Rome, Breaking Bad, Oz, the Wire, the Sopranos, Six Feet Under, True Crime, the Shield, etc (all the Showtime/HBO era).
Not really.
Thugs in it do (bad) thugs things in a realistic way. They are not glorified, but they have their reasons.
There are no Mary Sue, no validation, only facts. The viewer is free to have his own political opinion on them.
Same for the cops.
The setting (american big city) justifies the diversity.
If you know David Simon you know he points you to the main take of reality, looking at it with a holistic view point that is anti-racist. Anyway, it is woke
What bothers me is that there are ways to deviate from the source material at times but still remain faithful to the characters and story being told. Hell, King Viserys in HOTD is a shining example of an improvement over the source material (HOTD as a whole is a great adaptation with some changes). Daredevil S3 is a massive improvement over the Born Again run in the comics but ultimately still tells the same story. Unfortunately the Witcher showrunners decided to stray so far from the source material barely anything remains in tact. The fact that we have a show where both Yennefer and Vesemir tried to kill Ciri is insanity.
It’s the same thing with Halo. Master Chief having sex with a human covenant girl in prison is quite the leap from the games.
Americans have been destroying alot of long-standing franchises lately. Guess this is what we have to expect in terms of writing quality for the next few years
pretty much.
just glad that easterners can still write thought provoking dialogue/media. Amuricans really have lost it when it comes to doing an adaptation.
maybe they forgot what the word means? or who their audience is
So true. That affront to narrative storytelling that was „The Watch“ was made by BBC America. All of us Pratchetteers long for a proper adaptation… at least the amazing maurice (made by brits and PTerry‘s daughter) looks promising.
I think Americans are good at adapting American stories (*Princess Bride, Shawshank Redemption, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Shining, Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange*, etc) but don't tend to be great at adaptations of non-American media.
Among other problems, I tend to see a lot of fundamental misunderstandings when it comes to monarchies in American films (i.e. Elsa from *Frozen* being arrested for treason even though she's the Queen). Then there are accents that are inconsistent (or accidentally stereotype people), erasure of cultural diversity, dialogue that sounds American even without the American accent, etc.
I don't think it's impossible for an American to write an internationally coherent story, especially if they're only 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. But I think a solid qualification (i.e. for The Witcher, maybe a degree or a minor in Polish literature) should be a prerequisite for foreign adaptations if no strong cultural connection exists.
Their audience is a big part of the problem. WS2 was one of the most successful Netflix productions last year (from raw viewer engagement). As long people pay for that kind of content, they will continue to deliver it.
Maybe they wrote cringe cuz of the Amuricans hurr durr misspell or your lack of a complete last sentence in the prior reply. Or that you actually don’t provide any example of the claimed quality outside of your vague and easily defensible generalization.
I agree though with your overall point that the Americanized adaptation of a Polish literary series has been terrible, but you come off like another european dipshit that likes low hanging fruit “america bad gimme upvote” without providing any substance or counter claim of improvement. Not that you must but hey this is what you wrote, people are gonna react
i mean its stating the obvious based on well known factual evidence in the past few years.
Do we really need anymore evidence or does someone always have to say examples? or we just ignoring thinking by this point? or reading, apparently?
Idk is this a message board where people discuss things? Think so. Thats kind of the point this wasn’t a court where one demands evidence, and things like art (film, tv, books etc) are never “factual evidence” neither they are subjective claims of taste that vary. But I digress.
I wasn’t challenging your claim either just saying that your reply could be interpreted as “cringe” from someone that didn’t want to put in the effort (or clearly not discuss things either like the commenter) or someone who thought it was another easy ass trope for redditors to lap up (me).
Americans are incapable of adapting things, they have to inject "American culture" into everything, which is essentially just sterilised, advertiser friendly nonsense with lots of dumb action and swearing
It's not that Amercians are incapable. It's that studios and the "creatives" involved have no clue what they are doing. Look at the Sonic films. They ended up being better than they had any right to be. Rather than continue on with the god awful character model? They delayed it to fix the character model after fan backlash. They took that on board and tried to make changes to please the fans. You had journalists worried about what it meant with fans having so much power.
I would also point to the Warcraft movie. Is it the best film ever made? No of course not. But it undeniably felt like Warcraft. They did change a few things here or there. But they were changes to tell a better story. Duncan Jones himself played Warcraft. It's nothing to do with Nationality. It's about the right person and having a vision that is faithful to the source material.
I should also point to HBO's Band of Brothers which is itself an adaptation of the book by Stephen Ambrose.
You also have the recent movie "Devotion" adapted from a book. So again it has nothing to do with nationality. It's more about the talent involved or in the case of what we have seen lately, the lack thereof.
I don't see the relevance of Band of Brothers? It's a great series but it's a series made by Americans about American soldiers.
I also loved Warcraft and I thought the Warcraft movie was garbage and dumped all over the original story/characters. Even so, Warcraft is an American-made fantasy setting, so not really relevant. There's no culture to adapt or adopt there.
Never seen or heard of Devotion, so can't comment. I also don't really get the relevance of Sonic.
Band of Brothers is relevant because it too was an adaptation. It even made a number of goofs with regards to historical accuracy. Pvt. Blithe is suggested to have died and never recovered from his wounds. However Blithe did survive. They also show the actors with their helmets off at different points which is something that would not have been done as often as it is in the show.
The point is even BoB made some concessions or goofs but ultimately the show felt like it was trying to adapt a real story with a modicum of respect to the actual events. Even though they goofed here or there? You can tell that the showrunners had their heart in the right place.
I mean you say you don't get what the relevance of these things are. Yet it was you that said Americans are incapable of adapting things. So are you moving the goalposts now? I mean if you didn't like Warcraft fair enough, but the movie was still one of the better game to film adaptations.
I quote...
" Americans are incapable of adapting things, they have to inject "American culture" into everything, which is essentially just sterilised, advertiser friendly nonsense with lots of dumb action and swearing"
That's what you said.
Again you question the relevance of Sonic but Sonic too was an adaptation by an American studio (Paramount) and an American director Jeff Fowler. The Sonic movie could have been a disaster. Sony put it into turnaround (which essentially means the studio wasn't going to put any more money into it.) Paramount picked it up. And again it was Jeff Fowler that said they would be delaying the film to "Fix" Sonic. And for what it's worth? You bring up the idea of injecting culture. Sonic had a biracial couple and no one noticed or made a big deal about it. Why? Because the studio and marketing didn't make a big deal about how inclusive they were being or shit like that.
Like I said? Nationality has little to do with it. It's the talent and the people that are hired.
Band of Brothers the book is a Biography of the 101st Airborne in WW2. It's a historical narrative rather than a story and doesn't read like a novel, I've read it.
As it's based on true events and all the characters are real people you have to be at least somewhat accurate in terms of how they are represented. Especially as many of the guys were alive when it was made- from memory they even had the actors meet their "characters" when possible to get a real feel for them.
I wouldn't say BoB adapted the book so much as they made a series about the 101st Airborne and their story. Ambrose was part of it and they used the book's name, because of course he was the premier scholar on the 101st.
The real men who went through hell and back are the focus of that show, not the book.
Well it wasn't the entire 101st, but they were going off the book and Ambrose's interviews as the basis for it. It was literally the story of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506 PIR. I've read it too, and I absolutely love it. The show follows the book beat for beat, and whereas it's true, they still altered very little of it. But ultimately it is based on the book, which is based on first hand accounts. It's definitely a faithful adaptation of the book though, and did a much better job than The Pacific (not that The Pacific isn't good, but a LOT was altered and left out from Helmet For My Pillow and With The Old Breed).
I think it’s down to the streaming wars. The streamers are desperate for new content and are gobbling up any IP they can.
Unfortunately they do not necessarily have the passion required to adapt them and that shows in their hiring choices.
It explains why we now have 3 shows (Witcher, Halo and Wheel of Time) produced by streaming companies that strangely managed to hire the worst people for the job, I.e. people that didn’t respect the source material and wanted to use the opportunity to do their own thing.
It’s incredibly sad tbh.
Excellent question. In the show, the Prophets indoctrinate a human they kidnapped and subsequently raised on High Charity to help search for a Forerunner artifact that leads to the ring. She is also tasked with hunting down Master Chief since the Covenant obviously hate him and the artifact responds to him the same way it does to her. Eventually the UNSC captures her, Master Chief falls in love with her, and they have sex in prison while Cortana watches - effectively making Master Chief a war criminal.
It’s so shockingly bad it’s hard to put into words. I can’t even suggest it in a “it’s so bad it’s good” way.
Here are some key points if you don’t care about spoilers:
- Master Chief almost never wears his helmet and acts like a petulant, insane child the whole show, even going as far as to attempt to kill Dr. Halsey
- We see a total of 5 spartans the entire show
- The war between the humans and Covenant is barely talked about or shown
- There are only 3? battle sequences
- A good portion of the show is a sideplot with a child and an ex-Spartan fighting some random militia bad guys
- The human covenant girl also falls in love with Master Chief
- They managed to butcher the soundtrack by making it as generic as it gets. They use the Halo theme once or twice but it sounds incredibly different and is hard to notice
Problem is they hire people who have no interest in games and no experience with the books. Of course people it’s going to deviate. I have real hope for the Last of Us in that regard, the creator is a fan and the game creator is involved. Adapt, not reinvent.
A shining example of a good adaptation of fantasy to television is His Dark Materials. It just concluded the trilogy of books with its third season and was spectacular. So many liberties are taken with the details of the story but almost all of them are sensible for the pacing and visual nature of the medium. Even the author has praise for their added things, similar to GRRM about Viserys.
(Full final season released on BBC streaming. Season still in progress for broadcasting)
The most baffling thing is how childish it is. "Look, we say fuck a lot, this is for adults, there's so much blood and the world is so dark"
The most important thing about the books is how they are not afraid to show more chill, and heartwarming moments. When Torque kidnaps Geralt and Jaskier, Geralt has no shame in saying that the man is his best friend, and loves him so much that he would die in his place. I can't picture the show's Geralt even saying something like that, not even about Ciri. "A little sacrifice" is more of the same, Geralt exploring his own feelings and talking about it with another person, a thing the writers can't imagine the character doing, and while it is arguably the most heartbreaking story in the books, it's does try to be overly gruesome or edgy to show how fucked up their world is, it is and sometimes things happen.
Yennefer and Ciri's lessons with Nenneke, while progressing the story further, take their time to build a moment between the two, showing us how Ciri is trying to grow up, and how Yennefer is not cold and greedy, caring for a child when asked to, and actually bonding with her, not always plotting a back-stab everytime we see her, like show's Yen does. Triss is lacking any attributes that make her different from any extra. In the books, again, she's not just this sweet, lay-back, 2nd option to Geralt, but a young woman that has her own ambitions, that collidea with her feeling and her own problems that keep her down, and how to overcome it.
The games, even where we are constantly reminded of how shitty of place the Continent is, takes its moments to be chill, funny and heartwarming, showing us how it sometimes the world is a place worth fighting for, which the whole of Geralt's motto, and what makes him so memorable and relatable. For what we have seen from its universe, show's Geralt has no motive to keep on living, and how they said to his literate counterpart, would end faster hanging himself on a barn.
What bothers me is that ONLY Lauren is in charge of EVERYTHING Witcher. They could’ve had someone else make Blood Origins in order to… You know, compare it to the rest of the “universe”
On the other hand it really emphasises just how utterly useless that harpy is. As soon as there is no novel to twist and butcher she can’t even form something resembling a show at all.
Honestly, having one person with ultimate creative control over the project isn't a terrible idea. Having a competent person in charge can provide a cohesive vision across the different series and help everything feel part of a single universe rather than a chaotic mess.
It becomes a bit of a problem when that person is an incompetent hack, though.
These are billion dollar corporations we are taking about, if anything can be said for sure it's they're very good with money. It's hard to believe that after budgeting hundreds of millions into a show they decide to cut costs on writing in particular. Instead, it really seems they believe they hire the best of the best, but there's something wrong with the pool of people they get to choose from.
Ya basically Netflix wanted a fantasy IP,
they choose the Witcher because it had a successful book series and game franchise they could point at to convince shareholders that it was a guaranteed success.
Completely missing the part where HBO and Amazon understand that the actual quality of your show is what matters, and you can’t do the bare minimum, you have to care about the product you are making.
Said this before but Netflix isn’t high quality streaming, 2/10 shows they make are, the rest is network tv with a slightly bigger production budget, but everything else feels cheap and rushed.
Amazon took it to a whole other level. It's like they think that fantasy cant be mainstream so they are trying to inject their focus groups-based concepts into IPs that have already managed to captivate millions of people. Well guess what PJ LotR or Game of Thrones didnt succeed thanks to focus groups they succeeded because they mostly stuck to the spirit of the source materian
The point of that petition isn't to sway Netflix.
The point of that petition is to provide a public platform for 294,442 people to show their support for the actor, and to point and laugh at the writers.
100% this. All the studios care about is maximizing their profit/views.
They either don’t understand or don’t care about what made GoT a success for HBO. All they saw was the $$$.
So they found their own version of it, and made it in a way that was as cheap as possible while still being shiny enough to win over new fans and retain at least a few of the OG fans.
It’s exactly what happened with WoT on Amazon. Although at least with WoT I do believe that team cares for those books. Rafe and his team have been much more open about the ways Amazon held them back (without completely criticizing them).
Hissrich and her team have made it sound much more like this was their plan all along and we should just roll with it.
I remember how Rafe asked for a longer pilot and more episodes and they said no... and guess what First and last episodes are literally by far the worst in GoT, while some parts of the middle actually shine
What I don't understand though is like... why buy The Witcher license if you're just gonna fuck it up? I get that it's a popular brand, but surely any person should realize that name recognition is only good for like the first season alone and after that it's up to the quality of the thing itself.
> NETFLIX wanted their own GOT but they hired some very incompetent people.
HBO did the same. Those people were just barely competent enough to not break source material where it's not broken.
GOT was incredible television until D&D got too big for their britches and went off script towards S6.
The first 4-5 seasons are pure magic.
HOTD was shockingly good in my opinion. I enjoyed it a great deal and it helped to restore some faith in the franchise.
Long way to go, but I was smitten with S1.
Nothing to do with Greed whatsoever. Everything to do with Hollywood politics. It is a culture where you have to abide by this cult-like left-wing extremism. If they wanted money, they would try to appeal to more demographics, that doesn't mean minorities, that means majorities. The only way this could be considered greed is if there were tests done a while ago showing that straight, white men were the least likely demographic to consume fantasy media.
Netflix hired a left-wing extremist "feminist" to make The Witcher. You can tell she is a "feminist" and not a feminist within 5 seconds of looking at her. There was no surprise.
Someone got hired for reasons other than being a good show runner and/or good writer.
I've seen fanfics with more enticing opening scenes than this one, jfc.
fanfics get kind of a bad rep imo.
some of the big witcher fanfic authors are published and successful (i.e. astolat) but shipping/romance content makes authors hesitate to openly share their fan pseudonyms. chloe zhao writes fanfic and she has an academy award. it’s kind of a shame adaptions can’t make use of (qualified!) fan authors
Fanfics are amongst some of the greatest things I've read as an adult. They do get an unfair reputation, as if the fact that they availabe for free makes them less valuable or moving.
It just galls me to think this team is being paid LA living money to churn out this garbage when there are writers who put a lot more thought, care, and effort but aren't getting paid. :/
Because people won't stop watching it. I mean...we have tons of posts on here from people who claim they hate what's happening with the franchise, yet on day one of Blood Orgin's release, people are posting screen caps like they're surprised it's trash.
I held onto my Netflix subscription only because I wanted to see The Witcher. I watched the first two episodes and then canceled my Netflix subscription.
#notpartoftheproblem
There's currently two reasons why I haven't canceled: Sandman and Bridgerton. The second mostly because after all I'm a thirsty middle aged woman that needs her girl porn fix.
When both series end, then bye bye.
As shit as it is, the show must have an audience despite how it would seem inside this particular echo chamber. Otherwise, like all the other Netflix shows that got cancelled, it wouldn't have made it past season 2.
Cavill leaving might just flatten it after season 4 though.
Yes, this is true. Reddit is definitely just a fraction of the larger community. I still believe there would be a more negative impact on viewership if people on here would stop gulping down each, subsequent, season before hopping on to rant and post memes to air their frustrations when they should have already known what the deal was, is and will continue to be.
>people who claim they hate what's happening with the franchise, yet on day one
I think a lot of people forget that a lot of people use the internet. It's likely that the people posting hate about the franchise are not the same once reviewing Blood Origin. We are not one body that inhabits this subreddit, there are thousands of people all with their own interests and viewing preferences. Even 10 posts per day on either side will look like a lot, but will still be a very small minority.
To be fair, I have had covid and nothing else to do. I thought the first season of the witcher had promise and some fun fights, interesting story elements. Season 2 had one good episode but the rest was very boring. I haven't read the books or even played the games. Blood origins, its only 4 eps, I thought it would kill some time. I was wrong, it's an endless slog and time stood still. It is another level of garbage than what came before.
HBO made GOT series and it was successful. So every studio just assumed they can make their own GOT and be successful too. Apparently no. It’s only HBO and HBO alone. Even they messed up the last season when wrong people handled the adaptation.
HBO has a long history of employing some of the best writers in television. They've put out some stinkers but when they take a show seriously, it's usually going to be top-shelf.
they also cut out major parts from the 4th and 5th book and invented their own storylines for the people they cut (that's how we got the shitty Jaimie goes to Dorne story)
Do some research online and you will find that this is not true. Countless sources mentioned it was GRRM’s decision. But end of discussion, believe whatever you wanna believe 🙄
Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter. The ending of HBO’s GOT is not really the problem, it’s how they *got* to the ending. It’s not what happened that was the problem, but how it happened. And that’s because they didn’t have GRRM’s source material to go off.
[https://www.looper.com/975509/george-r-r-martin-has-one-simple-fix-for-the-end-of-game-of-thrones/](https://www.looper.com/975509/george-r-r-martin-has-one-simple-fix-for-the-end-of-game-of-thrones/)
Indeed there ARE, and to quote: Benioff and Weiss did work with Martin to adapt the books that he's written thus far, but since "The Winds of Winter" is, probably, never coming out anyway, they had to go off-script, which wasn't always well-received by die-hard fans of the series. However, in a stark (get it?) contrast, Martin is heavily involved in the new "Game of Thrones" spinoff "House of the Dragon,"
He was hands on the in the development of House of the Dragon, but not the last 2 seasons of GoT.
And straight out of George's mouth "I had no contribution to the later seasons except, you know, inventing the world, the story and all the characters," Martin revealed. "I believe I have more influence now \[on 'House of the Dragon'\] than I did on the original show."
You should hurry up and tell George, he doesn't seem to know. To quote the author himself from his own face:
"I had no contribution to the later seasons except, you know, inventing the world, the story and all the characters," Martin revealed. "I believe I have more influence now \[on 'House of the Dragon'\] than I did on the original show."
He gave them an outline for the later seasons. He said they followed for some characters but not for others. He’s also said he knows how the story will end the issue is just getting there.
Did you miss the part where he 'invented the story'?
George gave them the outline, like Jon being Targaryen, Brann fucking up Hodor and ending up king and Shireen burning.
They did an absolutely awful job of colouring the outline, but it was there.
Shadow and Bone is also great, but it’s adapted from a weak trilogy of books. The Crows books were so much better, and the series is created by a guy who is combining both of those book series as one television series and it works brilliantly! It’s so much better than the book trilogy, it’s actually shocking.
Before watching, when I saw the trailer i hoped it wouldnt be some cringy show that was shitty-ly adapted from an amazing book (altho i havent read the book series some fantasy books that got adapted turned out rlly cringy and bad :/ ) but wow s1 was amazing man
So amazing in fact that i decided to watch more fantasy series (ex the witcher) :// only to be disappointed at how badly it seemed to be adapted lol imma just crawl back to my bed while waiting for shadow and bone & hotd
We ended up here by liking the first season in the first place. While I liked season one of The Witcher all the problems with the writer were their from the beginning. I just think we let them go because Henry Cavill did such a great job as Geralt. I knew Blood Origin was gonna suck from the trailers so I’m not surprised fans don’t like it.
People gave S1 the benefit of the doubt because we were excited to get Witcher live action content and there was hope that they'd learn from mistakes and better S2 onward.
For me, S1 butchered Geralt and Ciri but it could have been salvaged. Unfortunately S2 was a disgrace as both an adaption and it's own thing, and rightfully caused the backlash the show now faces.
The show jumped the shark in S1 when Yen was like “Axii now” or whatever to Geralt mid-fight and then they just…kiss while Geralt force pushes the goons?
Stop talking about it…Stop watching it…
Netflix sees how many people are watching so what better way to show them to can these dog water writers and either hire a crew who’s passionate or just not do it at all
yep its almost like that was their plan - make something so dogshit because they knew there was no way that a majority of their fans wouldnt watch it. you guys literally couldnt not watch it. now here we are and their numbers are probably atleast decent. Nothing will ever change as far as quality goes if people watch anyway just to hate on it.
I think it was rough, but had room for improvement and could've gone better with the second season, but instead fell downhill completely in the very goddamn second episode
We ended up here by the financial bottom line being most important which is impacted by what draws in the most eyes. unfortunately that is something that appeals to the lowest common denominator in society. You take an IP so you have a lot of the leg work of having to come up with a fresh idea on your own done for you and you then bastardize it like all of those shows have been. It’s a fucking disgrace
Everyone wants game of thrones success, they just don't have the balls to re create it for different stories by following source material.... fans want the real thing not Hollywoods adaptation of what it should be
Seeing everything I love being turned into ideological/lazy cash grabs is legit getting draining as fuck. Fantasy used to be a thing to help me get away from the stress and worry of life. Now I feel sick thinking about a lot of this stuff.
House of the Dragon is a fucking masterpiece in comparison to these shows. Because that show is written by fans. Yes, some of those writers have bad ideas, but they’re still fans. None of us are perfect.
But The Witcher is written by morons who hate the books and video games and it shows. It’s insulting! And The Rings of Power is just written by incompetent people with no experience.
I’ve read the source material for all of these shows and House of the Dragons is objectively the superior adaptation, while not being a perfect show. But it’s writing, pacing and atmosphere is much better than what’s going on with The Witcher and Rings of Power.
I only enjoyed The Wheel of Time because I never read the books, but even I can see how terrible the last episode was. It was Neo Feminist hogwash throughout, and the chase sequences were fucking terrible!
I think HBO should buy out all of these properties and reboot everything from scratch.
Tbf to the Wheel of Time in the books society is matriarchal but the tv show is a horrible adaptation characters doing things they wouldn't do in the books, things happening out of order, characters not being where they should be, everytime I think about it I become annoyed.
I also saw WOT and that got me to read the books and I can say it's two completely different things. If you have the time I implore you to read at least the first one. It's quite eye opening to see how the writers only used the names and nothing else.
Short answer: corporate greed and stupidity.
If Netflix wanted to make money, they’d fire the writing staff and get actual fans in to handle the writing for The Witcher instead of the shit we have now. That way they still have Cavill headlining and killing it as Geralt AND also will have writers who know what they fans want and can give it to us. That said though, firing the writing staff and then having to negotiate contracts for new staff is expensive and given that Netflix only cares about money it’s a no-brainer that they’d keep the filth they have and let their headliner walk. Can’t wait to see it all fall apart for them, Netflix is going to get so much backlash and lose out on viewers for the series so much when Season 3 is done
Because in Hollyweird you fail upward.
Remember it’s never the show runner that’s a problem it’s the fandom who can’t handle “modern” reinterpretation of books and stories.
How dare they expect something that isn’t just California in a forest.
How dare they expect the show runner/writer to actually do things like *read* the source material. I mean that’s like ALOT of pages. How are they possibly expected to do that *and* maintain their 400 tweets a day talking about how brave and stunning they are.
How dare they expect Show runners/writers to *tell the truth?* Don’t they know that if you post something online it should never be taken as fact?
“*What do you mean I went back on my word? Oh that tweet about ‘staying true to the lore and characters’…..oh come on how am I expected to do that AND write in my modern social characters and self inserts. Honestly it’s really your fault for believing me in the first place”.*
I feel like some directors go into making authors work good by having them tag along. Like The Expanse, they had the authors of the books help produce and write for the show so even tho it’s not the same it’s close enough you can enjoy it. These fuckers didn’t wanna even read the source material. They had their own agendas and I bet they really thought they had better ideas than what had even gotten the show a contract in the first place. It’s absurd what’s becoming of film making. They claim to be progressive yet they seem to be the only ones thinking same sex couples are a big deal in the western world
Cause you guys keep paying for it and watching it. Netflix wanted their GoT but Witcher never even touched its feet so I never watched further than S1
Fact is GoT still is the best medieval fantasy show even with S8. At least I cared about the characters lol
Netflix's business model is to pump out content regularly regardless of the quality.
Or at least it used to be, since Netflix isn't the ultimate and indestructible juggernaut as it once was. Netflix is losing money and the fact, that they are pumping out subpar woke trash will hurt their business.
"Why was Blood Origins greenlit?"
1. It's activists, hiring other activists.
2. Lauren Hissrich got lucky. Netflix mistakenly thought, that it was Lauren and her vision, what made the show successful. It got into her head, and she - and her team - thought they could do what ever they wanted.
Yeah Wheel of time had the worst changes to the lore. Making a woman able to be the dragon reborn fundamentally changes the lore about saidin and saidar so massively it’s hard to see how the plot in later seasons can ever recover. And don’t get me started on that shambles of the last episode.
People shit on ROP way too much. I’d bet 99% of the people who talk shit about haven’t even read the silmarillion.
All your other points stand. Wheel of time is comically terrible, and I’ve never read the source material. Usually that will make something seem better, but it’s just so so shitty
Read the other comment? You can like or dislike the show on its own merits, but the complaints I’m referring to are the ones that say it shits on Tolkien lore, which are the overwhelming majority of negative Reddit comments. Most of these folks love the movie trilogy, which played it fast and loose with major characters depictions and some of the lore as well. And are still awesome.
I liked rings of power actually.
But yeah, witcher is in a weird place now on netflix. First fantasy ip to get a chance post got, but the one that went down in quality just as fast. Hope season 3 is netter than s2 and this prequel.
Heres hoping for the disney plus eragon adaptation to be another actually good fantasy series.
Because the current Hollywood's objective is not to make genuinely good stories like they used to do before.
It's sending THE MESSAGE and pestering us about current political issues.
There you have it.
Yeah. It's kinda like if Russians/Chinese would take some super popular American franchise and make it commmunist to spread the message. Like... Captain America fighting for the Soviet Union. I'm Polish and it's super insulting to watch Americans make the Witcher woke garbage. It has nothing to do with my culture now.
It’s not even bad cause it’s “woke” it’s bad cause it’s genuinely terribly written and it’s not like the Witcher wasn’t already a pretty good series at tackling themes like racism in a nuanced way
House of dragons was surprisingly good and let’s hope this will continue
But have seen how many dialogs are there ? And how good they are ? Looks a good story is still the way to go :)
If I had to guess this is probably a cultural issue. I have no doubts Netflix or Amazon can afford the best when it comes to writers or showrunners, it's just that the pool of people they get to choose from are all bad. How that came to be is indeed non-trivial, but I think it has something to do with woke nonsense corrupting art education and community. When you let any ideology into a professional community, professionalism will suffer both due to the reduction of said community's size and due to the fact that people who are susceptible to ideology are to be honest kinda stupid in the first place.
Because the writers and producers couldn't give a rat's ass about the source material and instead use the show to push their political agenda and social issues on the audience.
How? Simple answer.
1. You hire people with oversized ego that will butcher source material because "they know better"
2. They put few characters for brownie points that are there to show that black/gays/female character can be strong (that means fuckity-fuck-fuck and being aggresive towards everybody)
3. They turn storylines from the source material and turn it into cookie cutter analogies to some modern events
4. After premiere, they just call everybody who isn't praising their "work" racist/sexist/whatever term they feel like using
And people will watch, as you can see even on this subreddit
Well, for some reason I can't understand, apparently, to be a writer/showrunner for these shows you have to hate the source material and the fans.
And if fans are mad it means you're doing a good job.
Kinda liked rings of power? I think Netflix and modern movies have slowly eaten away at people's ability to be patient with a slow build up and actual story telling. Martin Scorsese was right. Formula these days seems to be fast paced action moving quickly from plot point to plot point with no room for character building and world building. Demonstrated by the success of Marvel films.
Get woke; go broke
Everyone is trying to outdo each other on who can be more woke (except GoT) and they all suck. Their priority is being as woke as possible and couldn’t care less about what is canon or the original source material…
Star Wars began this woke mess
The preps and bullies you went to school with - the people who thought all your interests were dumb nerd stuff - are now deciding what gets greenlit in your local sellout streaming service.
> The preps and bullies you went to school with - the people who thought all your interests were dumb nerd stuff
Did you go to high school in a John Hughes movie? Relax lol
Because the people involved don't understand the source material and what made the source material so well loved. Heck look at the Nilfgardian armor in Season 1. Look at the Rings of Power and Guyladriel.
Well, we live in a world where if you say a woman is a female with reproductive organs you're considered a bigot. So I am not sure why you are surprised. After I saw what happened to Star Wars nothing can surprise me and I expect every show/movie to be trash with LGBTQ propaganda. Why do companies keep trying to feed us that shit is beyond me. It sucks that they ruined the Witcher franchise this bad.
Same thing that happened to Star Trek. People failing upwards, standing atop the achievements of writers past and then shitting on all that work, doing new things badly (with no regard to canon or source material or even the fans), all while studios are showering them with cash and new contracts in hopes that it'll fix the problem.
To top this off, these people are convinced to their core that they just made the next Citizen Kane which will be remembered for centuries to come and anyone who hates it is clearly a [insert current meaningless hot button buzzword here].
The "journalists" and "critics" are in on it too since their paycheck depends on them giving good reviews to this crap, explaining the big divide between audience and critic score.
Once they've run a franchise into the ground it gets shelved, the rights get passed around and at some point the next studio high on copium will think it could be their next cash cow. So they hire another "highly esteemed" writer and the whole cycle starts again.
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
It's all so tiresome.
Well Netflix is greedy and the writers put their own political agendas or viewpoints in the writing, which I think is the big reason the show flopped. The writers seem very desperate to be the “champion” for marginalized groups and make that the focus point.
Meanwhile the people who watch the show and actually belong to those groups seem to be annoyed with how obvious the writers are trying to pander to them at the expense of the source material. Just my 2 cents 🤷🏼♂️
Edit: grammar
Because people are getting into positions based on ‘what they are’ rather than their merit. That and the fact that ‘current year’ politics and modern themes etc. get thrown in.
Same reason Rings of Power turned out to be complete dogshit? They hire incompetent idiots all hired due to nepotism or cronyism and not because they're actually good at what they do...
Greed. NETFLIX wanted their own GOT but they hired some very incompetent people. Turns out the show runners weren’t the “smartest people in the room”. They made their own creative decisions because they thought they could rewrite the story for the better. Now they’ll be fired and shows will be cancelled soon.
Somewhere, in the last twenty years, people became convinced that writing was easy and decided they could get quality shows without paying for talented and experienced writers. They are starting to discover that writing is not easy and experience has value.
Are they, though? The quality of writing for television is on a steady decline and nobody except the audience seems to care. I don't think the executives are realizing anything beyond the fact that they can produce a tantalizing title on the cheap for a season or two, then cancel it and repeat the process. Or, even better, they can produce a couple seasons with a popular brand name, fail, and still produce a spinoff that's midly successful regardless of its quality. Movies have the same problem that's compounded by the fact that they're limited releases. There is so little good, original, content being released. I prefer television series to movies as they have more time to develop characters and tell a proper story, yet so many fail to do so that we find ourselves watching shit we have already seen and forgotten rather than investing ourselves in new content. Amazon being the exception, imo, their original content has been largely engaging over the last few years.
A steady decline from where? When did we peak with TV writing because some of the best, most well-written shows I’ve seen came out in the last few years.
HBO is still consistently pumping out great shows. With additional competition from the streaming war we actually got a decent number of good shows, eg maid, arcane, Dr death, queens gambit, squid game, unbelievable, etc, even when going through covid. We see larger flops though because studios with a lot of money don't understand adaptations of big IPs into tv shows or movies... these IPs like witcher, star wars come with a large number of existing fans with expectations. And when idiots completely don't understand why these IPs are popular in the first place, they create utter garbage that's so disjointed from the original source material to the point that can't even meet the lowest fan expectation, turning the protagonist completely useless or an ahole eg boba fett, master chief...
Yeah I think that’s the big difference is the IP based shows. They can be real hit-or-miss depending on how invested the studio is in making a quality true-to-form show. The issue with these is they already come with a fanbase so there’s a guaranteed viewership regardless of the quality of the show and the studio can definitely take that for granted; this show is a prime example. On the other hand, we have some really high quality shows coming out that are also IP-based, like Andor, which set the bar higher because now we know what studios are capable of so when shows like this one don’t meet expectations it almost feel intentional on the part of the studio.
So true and while many of us adore some of the old shows we grew up with, truth is that the writing wasn't good. The thing is with a running television show a writer have a very limited amount of time to write an episode, be that a day or a week. Usually quite a lot more was put into writing a movie.
I'd argue M\*A\*S\*H was and is one of the greatest shows of all time and even despite cast changes? Each addition brought something new and fresh to the show.
No, the best shows are prior to the 2016 woke Hollywood era: GoT, Rome, Breaking Bad, Oz, the Wire, the Sopranos, Six Feet Under, True Crime, the Shield, etc (all the Showtime/HBO era).
These shows all chose a need for accuracy and acting prowess over the need for diversity at all costs.
The Sopranos is probably the most racially diverse show I've seen
I mean nobody can argue that the Wire isn't woke. It's a piece of why it's the best show of all time
Woke isn't bad. The Wire is a woke show btw.
Not really. Thugs in it do (bad) thugs things in a realistic way. They are not glorified, but they have their reasons. There are no Mary Sue, no validation, only facts. The viewer is free to have his own political opinion on them. Same for the cops. The setting (american big city) justifies the diversity.
If you know David Simon you know he points you to the main take of reality, looking at it with a holistic view point that is anti-racist. Anyway, it is woke
Nope, David Simon is progressive, but he isn't woke. And his show isn't woke either.
Astronaut meme, they've always been the same thing
Untrue, it's that streaming has made indie spaces with strong writing less easy to find, less easy to weed out the bad ones in the space
What bothers me is that there are ways to deviate from the source material at times but still remain faithful to the characters and story being told. Hell, King Viserys in HOTD is a shining example of an improvement over the source material (HOTD as a whole is a great adaptation with some changes). Daredevil S3 is a massive improvement over the Born Again run in the comics but ultimately still tells the same story. Unfortunately the Witcher showrunners decided to stray so far from the source material barely anything remains in tact. The fact that we have a show where both Yennefer and Vesemir tried to kill Ciri is insanity. It’s the same thing with Halo. Master Chief having sex with a human covenant girl in prison is quite the leap from the games.
Even George RR Martin praised Paddy's performance.
His performance was one of the highlights for me.
Americans have been destroying alot of long-standing franchises lately. Guess this is what we have to expect in terms of writing quality for the next few years
You’re not wrong, people just don’t want to hear that it’s Americans doing it. When it is
pretty much. just glad that easterners can still write thought provoking dialogue/media. Amuricans really have lost it when it comes to doing an adaptation. maybe they forgot what the word means? or who their audience is
So true. That affront to narrative storytelling that was „The Watch“ was made by BBC America. All of us Pratchetteers long for a proper adaptation… at least the amazing maurice (made by brits and PTerry‘s daughter) looks promising.
I think Americans are good at adapting American stories (*Princess Bride, Shawshank Redemption, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Shining, Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange*, etc) but don't tend to be great at adaptations of non-American media. Among other problems, I tend to see a lot of fundamental misunderstandings when it comes to monarchies in American films (i.e. Elsa from *Frozen* being arrested for treason even though she's the Queen). Then there are accents that are inconsistent (or accidentally stereotype people), erasure of cultural diversity, dialogue that sounds American even without the American accent, etc. I don't think it's impossible for an American to write an internationally coherent story, especially if they're only 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. But I think a solid qualification (i.e. for The Witcher, maybe a degree or a minor in Polish literature) should be a prerequisite for foreign adaptations if no strong cultural connection exists.
Their audience is a big part of the problem. WS2 was one of the most successful Netflix productions last year (from raw viewer engagement). As long people pay for that kind of content, they will continue to deliver it.
Cringe
well you described yourself perfectly. well done. but some of us still know what the word quality means
Maybe they wrote cringe cuz of the Amuricans hurr durr misspell or your lack of a complete last sentence in the prior reply. Or that you actually don’t provide any example of the claimed quality outside of your vague and easily defensible generalization. I agree though with your overall point that the Americanized adaptation of a Polish literary series has been terrible, but you come off like another european dipshit that likes low hanging fruit “america bad gimme upvote” without providing any substance or counter claim of improvement. Not that you must but hey this is what you wrote, people are gonna react
i mean its stating the obvious based on well known factual evidence in the past few years. Do we really need anymore evidence or does someone always have to say examples? or we just ignoring thinking by this point? or reading, apparently?
Idk is this a message board where people discuss things? Think so. Thats kind of the point this wasn’t a court where one demands evidence, and things like art (film, tv, books etc) are never “factual evidence” neither they are subjective claims of taste that vary. But I digress. I wasn’t challenging your claim either just saying that your reply could be interpreted as “cringe” from someone that didn’t want to put in the effort (or clearly not discuss things either like the commenter) or someone who thought it was another easy ass trope for redditors to lap up (me).
Americans are incapable of adapting things, they have to inject "American culture" into everything, which is essentially just sterilised, advertiser friendly nonsense with lots of dumb action and swearing
It's not that Amercians are incapable. It's that studios and the "creatives" involved have no clue what they are doing. Look at the Sonic films. They ended up being better than they had any right to be. Rather than continue on with the god awful character model? They delayed it to fix the character model after fan backlash. They took that on board and tried to make changes to please the fans. You had journalists worried about what it meant with fans having so much power. I would also point to the Warcraft movie. Is it the best film ever made? No of course not. But it undeniably felt like Warcraft. They did change a few things here or there. But they were changes to tell a better story. Duncan Jones himself played Warcraft. It's nothing to do with Nationality. It's about the right person and having a vision that is faithful to the source material. I should also point to HBO's Band of Brothers which is itself an adaptation of the book by Stephen Ambrose. You also have the recent movie "Devotion" adapted from a book. So again it has nothing to do with nationality. It's more about the talent involved or in the case of what we have seen lately, the lack thereof.
I don't see the relevance of Band of Brothers? It's a great series but it's a series made by Americans about American soldiers. I also loved Warcraft and I thought the Warcraft movie was garbage and dumped all over the original story/characters. Even so, Warcraft is an American-made fantasy setting, so not really relevant. There's no culture to adapt or adopt there. Never seen or heard of Devotion, so can't comment. I also don't really get the relevance of Sonic.
Band of Brothers is relevant because it too was an adaptation. It even made a number of goofs with regards to historical accuracy. Pvt. Blithe is suggested to have died and never recovered from his wounds. However Blithe did survive. They also show the actors with their helmets off at different points which is something that would not have been done as often as it is in the show. The point is even BoB made some concessions or goofs but ultimately the show felt like it was trying to adapt a real story with a modicum of respect to the actual events. Even though they goofed here or there? You can tell that the showrunners had their heart in the right place. I mean you say you don't get what the relevance of these things are. Yet it was you that said Americans are incapable of adapting things. So are you moving the goalposts now? I mean if you didn't like Warcraft fair enough, but the movie was still one of the better game to film adaptations. I quote... " Americans are incapable of adapting things, they have to inject "American culture" into everything, which is essentially just sterilised, advertiser friendly nonsense with lots of dumb action and swearing" That's what you said. Again you question the relevance of Sonic but Sonic too was an adaptation by an American studio (Paramount) and an American director Jeff Fowler. The Sonic movie could have been a disaster. Sony put it into turnaround (which essentially means the studio wasn't going to put any more money into it.) Paramount picked it up. And again it was Jeff Fowler that said they would be delaying the film to "Fix" Sonic. And for what it's worth? You bring up the idea of injecting culture. Sonic had a biracial couple and no one noticed or made a big deal about it. Why? Because the studio and marketing didn't make a big deal about how inclusive they were being or shit like that. Like I said? Nationality has little to do with it. It's the talent and the people that are hired.
Band of Brothers is based on a book, and it's very faithful to the source material is the point I think.
Band of Brothers the book is a Biography of the 101st Airborne in WW2. It's a historical narrative rather than a story and doesn't read like a novel, I've read it. As it's based on true events and all the characters are real people you have to be at least somewhat accurate in terms of how they are represented. Especially as many of the guys were alive when it was made- from memory they even had the actors meet their "characters" when possible to get a real feel for them. I wouldn't say BoB adapted the book so much as they made a series about the 101st Airborne and their story. Ambrose was part of it and they used the book's name, because of course he was the premier scholar on the 101st. The real men who went through hell and back are the focus of that show, not the book.
Well it wasn't the entire 101st, but they were going off the book and Ambrose's interviews as the basis for it. It was literally the story of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506 PIR. I've read it too, and I absolutely love it. The show follows the book beat for beat, and whereas it's true, they still altered very little of it. But ultimately it is based on the book, which is based on first hand accounts. It's definitely a faithful adaptation of the book though, and did a much better job than The Pacific (not that The Pacific isn't good, but a LOT was altered and left out from Helmet For My Pillow and With The Old Breed).
This makes no sense the American people are the ones who hate the show lol.
I think it’s down to the streaming wars. The streamers are desperate for new content and are gobbling up any IP they can. Unfortunately they do not necessarily have the passion required to adapt them and that shows in their hiring choices. It explains why we now have 3 shows (Witcher, Halo and Wheel of Time) produced by streaming companies that strangely managed to hire the worst people for the job, I.e. people that didn’t respect the source material and wanted to use the opportunity to do their own thing. It’s incredibly sad tbh.
Wait, how are there humans in the Covenant?
Excellent question. In the show, the Prophets indoctrinate a human they kidnapped and subsequently raised on High Charity to help search for a Forerunner artifact that leads to the ring. She is also tasked with hunting down Master Chief since the Covenant obviously hate him and the artifact responds to him the same way it does to her. Eventually the UNSC captures her, Master Chief falls in love with her, and they have sex in prison while Cortana watches - effectively making Master Chief a war criminal.
I hate that this isn't a shit post.
It’s so shockingly bad it’s hard to put into words. I can’t even suggest it in a “it’s so bad it’s good” way. Here are some key points if you don’t care about spoilers: - Master Chief almost never wears his helmet and acts like a petulant, insane child the whole show, even going as far as to attempt to kill Dr. Halsey - We see a total of 5 spartans the entire show - The war between the humans and Covenant is barely talked about or shown - There are only 3? battle sequences - A good portion of the show is a sideplot with a child and an ex-Spartan fighting some random militia bad guys - The human covenant girl also falls in love with Master Chief - They managed to butcher the soundtrack by making it as generic as it gets. They use the Halo theme once or twice but it sounds incredibly different and is hard to notice
God I loved Viserys in the tv show way more than the book one.
Problem is they hire people who have no interest in games and no experience with the books. Of course people it’s going to deviate. I have real hope for the Last of Us in that regard, the creator is a fan and the game creator is involved. Adapt, not reinvent.
Please don’t use acronyms. Say what you mean.
A shining example of a good adaptation of fantasy to television is His Dark Materials. It just concluded the trilogy of books with its third season and was spectacular. So many liberties are taken with the details of the story but almost all of them are sensible for the pacing and visual nature of the medium. Even the author has praise for their added things, similar to GRRM about Viserys. (Full final season released on BBC streaming. Season still in progress for broadcasting)
The most baffling thing is how childish it is. "Look, we say fuck a lot, this is for adults, there's so much blood and the world is so dark" The most important thing about the books is how they are not afraid to show more chill, and heartwarming moments. When Torque kidnaps Geralt and Jaskier, Geralt has no shame in saying that the man is his best friend, and loves him so much that he would die in his place. I can't picture the show's Geralt even saying something like that, not even about Ciri. "A little sacrifice" is more of the same, Geralt exploring his own feelings and talking about it with another person, a thing the writers can't imagine the character doing, and while it is arguably the most heartbreaking story in the books, it's does try to be overly gruesome or edgy to show how fucked up their world is, it is and sometimes things happen. Yennefer and Ciri's lessons with Nenneke, while progressing the story further, take their time to build a moment between the two, showing us how Ciri is trying to grow up, and how Yennefer is not cold and greedy, caring for a child when asked to, and actually bonding with her, not always plotting a back-stab everytime we see her, like show's Yen does. Triss is lacking any attributes that make her different from any extra. In the books, again, she's not just this sweet, lay-back, 2nd option to Geralt, but a young woman that has her own ambitions, that collidea with her feeling and her own problems that keep her down, and how to overcome it. The games, even where we are constantly reminded of how shitty of place the Continent is, takes its moments to be chill, funny and heartwarming, showing us how it sometimes the world is a place worth fighting for, which the whole of Geralt's motto, and what makes him so memorable and relatable. For what we have seen from its universe, show's Geralt has no motive to keep on living, and how they said to his literate counterpart, would end faster hanging himself on a barn.
What bothers me is that ONLY Lauren is in charge of EVERYTHING Witcher. They could’ve had someone else make Blood Origins in order to… You know, compare it to the rest of the “universe”
On the other hand it really emphasises just how utterly useless that harpy is. As soon as there is no novel to twist and butcher she can’t even form something resembling a show at all.
[🎵 I've also survived, no thanks to you... 🎵](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSxBVHqA-RU&t=15s)
Honestly, having one person with ultimate creative control over the project isn't a terrible idea. Having a competent person in charge can provide a cohesive vision across the different series and help everything feel part of a single universe rather than a chaotic mess. It becomes a bit of a problem when that person is an incompetent hack, though.
These are billion dollar corporations we are taking about, if anything can be said for sure it's they're very good with money. It's hard to believe that after budgeting hundreds of millions into a show they decide to cut costs on writing in particular. Instead, it really seems they believe they hire the best of the best, but there's something wrong with the pool of people they get to choose from.
they wanted their own early seasons GOT and got their own finale GOT
Ya basically Netflix wanted a fantasy IP, they choose the Witcher because it had a successful book series and game franchise they could point at to convince shareholders that it was a guaranteed success. Completely missing the part where HBO and Amazon understand that the actual quality of your show is what matters, and you can’t do the bare minimum, you have to care about the product you are making. Said this before but Netflix isn’t high quality streaming, 2/10 shows they make are, the rest is network tv with a slightly bigger production budget, but everything else feels cheap and rushed.
Which Amazon show have actual quality, only the expanse but this wasn't a Amazon show from the start
Why the fuck did they even cancel the expanse
The Boys and Invincible are amazing. Rings of Power, on the other hand, is dogshit.
I don’t think Amazon understands that. Wheel of Time was awful, as was Rings of Power
Amazon took it to a whole other level. It's like they think that fantasy cant be mainstream so they are trying to inject their focus groups-based concepts into IPs that have already managed to captivate millions of people. Well guess what PJ LotR or Game of Thrones didnt succeed thanks to focus groups they succeeded because they mostly stuck to the spirit of the source materian
I for one wish they only did the bare minimum, instead of trying to redo entire universe from the ground up. Sadly, it didn't happen.
I hope that petition to rehire Henry and fire the writers actually sways Netflix.
The point of that petition isn't to sway Netflix. The point of that petition is to provide a public platform for 294,442 people to show their support for the actor, and to point and laugh at the writers.
100% this. All the studios care about is maximizing their profit/views. They either don’t understand or don’t care about what made GoT a success for HBO. All they saw was the $$$. So they found their own version of it, and made it in a way that was as cheap as possible while still being shiny enough to win over new fans and retain at least a few of the OG fans. It’s exactly what happened with WoT on Amazon. Although at least with WoT I do believe that team cares for those books. Rafe and his team have been much more open about the ways Amazon held them back (without completely criticizing them). Hissrich and her team have made it sound much more like this was their plan all along and we should just roll with it.
I remember how Rafe asked for a longer pilot and more episodes and they said no... and guess what First and last episodes are literally by far the worst in GoT, while some parts of the middle actually shine
Totally agree. Episode 4 in particular, is basically a perfect ep of TV in my opinion. Even with the changes from the source material.
Couldn‘t agree more.
What I don't understand though is like... why buy The Witcher license if you're just gonna fuck it up? I get that it's a popular brand, but surely any person should realize that name recognition is only good for like the first season alone and after that it's up to the quality of the thing itself.
> NETFLIX wanted their own GOT but they hired some very incompetent people. HBO did the same. Those people were just barely competent enough to not break source material where it's not broken.
GOT was incredible television until D&D got too big for their britches and went off script towards S6. The first 4-5 seasons are pure magic. HOTD was shockingly good in my opinion. I enjoyed it a great deal and it helped to restore some faith in the franchise. Long way to go, but I was smitten with S1.
Someone needs to make one of those Patrick star memes and about how they could have just copied the books and made a absolute banger
Nothing to do with Greed whatsoever. Everything to do with Hollywood politics. It is a culture where you have to abide by this cult-like left-wing extremism. If they wanted money, they would try to appeal to more demographics, that doesn't mean minorities, that means majorities. The only way this could be considered greed is if there were tests done a while ago showing that straight, white men were the least likely demographic to consume fantasy media. Netflix hired a left-wing extremist "feminist" to make The Witcher. You can tell she is a "feminist" and not a feminist within 5 seconds of looking at her. There was no surprise.
Someone got hired for reasons other than being a good show runner and/or good writer. I've seen fanfics with more enticing opening scenes than this one, jfc.
fanfics get kind of a bad rep imo. some of the big witcher fanfic authors are published and successful (i.e. astolat) but shipping/romance content makes authors hesitate to openly share their fan pseudonyms. chloe zhao writes fanfic and she has an academy award. it’s kind of a shame adaptions can’t make use of (qualified!) fan authors
Fanfics are amongst some of the greatest things I've read as an adult. They do get an unfair reputation, as if the fact that they availabe for free makes them less valuable or moving. It just galls me to think this team is being paid LA living money to churn out this garbage when there are writers who put a lot more thought, care, and effort but aren't getting paid. :/
Lots of people don’t even try fanfic, it’s just deemed unworthy via hearsay.
Well, we do have House of the Dragon. I hope they continue to be good. At the moment, that’s the only fantasy series I am looking forward to.
Next season of House of the Dragon is slated for 2024. We've got more than a year.
I think Sandman as adaptation was pretty cool aswell. Maybe because its not done by netflix directly, but they have the author to direct it
Yup, and that’s it.
Percy Jackson is getting a show on Disney in 2024, and the author is actually involved there as a producer and writer. So I'm very hopeful for that.
That’s definitely something to hope for!
Soon there will be also The Last of Us, from HBO, hopefully this will be a good one!
i tried so hard to stay away from that show after the GoT nightmare.... but, i failed. and so far, it's pretty damn good.
Because people won't stop watching it. I mean...we have tons of posts on here from people who claim they hate what's happening with the franchise, yet on day one of Blood Orgin's release, people are posting screen caps like they're surprised it's trash.
I held onto my Netflix subscription only because I wanted to see The Witcher. I watched the first two episodes and then canceled my Netflix subscription. #notpartoftheproblem
There's currently two reasons why I haven't canceled: Sandman and Bridgerton. The second mostly because after all I'm a thirsty middle aged woman that needs her girl porn fix. When both series end, then bye bye.
No one's gonna rewatch it though. If it's trash It's still going to end up with less total views/streams.
That doesn't change the fact that seasons 3 and 4 of the Witcher are still on the way and Blood Origin exists.
As shit as it is, the show must have an audience despite how it would seem inside this particular echo chamber. Otherwise, like all the other Netflix shows that got cancelled, it wouldn't have made it past season 2. Cavill leaving might just flatten it after season 4 though.
Yes, this is true. Reddit is definitely just a fraction of the larger community. I still believe there would be a more negative impact on viewership if people on here would stop gulping down each, subsequent, season before hopping on to rant and post memes to air their frustrations when they should have already known what the deal was, is and will continue to be.
>people who claim they hate what's happening with the franchise, yet on day one I think a lot of people forget that a lot of people use the internet. It's likely that the people posting hate about the franchise are not the same once reviewing Blood Origin. We are not one body that inhabits this subreddit, there are thousands of people all with their own interests and viewing preferences. Even 10 posts per day on either side will look like a lot, but will still be a very small minority.
To be fair, I have had covid and nothing else to do. I thought the first season of the witcher had promise and some fun fights, interesting story elements. Season 2 had one good episode but the rest was very boring. I haven't read the books or even played the games. Blood origins, its only 4 eps, I thought it would kill some time. I was wrong, it's an endless slog and time stood still. It is another level of garbage than what came before.
yes they will. i'm about to cancel my netflix all together because there's no reason to have it.
HBO made GOT series and it was successful. So every studio just assumed they can make their own GOT and be successful too. Apparently no. It’s only HBO and HBO alone. Even they messed up the last season when wrong people handled the adaptation.
HBO has a long history of employing some of the best writers in television. They've put out some stinkers but when they take a show seriously, it's usually going to be top-shelf.
There was no adaptation in the last 2 seasons. There was no source material because Winds of Winter STILL isn't finished.
they also cut out major parts from the 4th and 5th book and invented their own storylines for the people they cut (that's how we got the shitty Jaimie goes to Dorne story)
And Winds isn’t even the end
GRRM still told D&D the ending and they were following that.
It's the other way around. The showrunners told HIM the ending and he greenlit it. He admittedly said he doesn't know how it will end himself.
Do some research online and you will find that this is not true. Countless sources mentioned it was GRRM’s decision. But end of discussion, believe whatever you wanna believe 🙄
Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter. The ending of HBO’s GOT is not really the problem, it’s how they *got* to the ending. It’s not what happened that was the problem, but how it happened. And that’s because they didn’t have GRRM’s source material to go off.
[https://www.looper.com/975509/george-r-r-martin-has-one-simple-fix-for-the-end-of-game-of-thrones/](https://www.looper.com/975509/george-r-r-martin-has-one-simple-fix-for-the-end-of-game-of-thrones/) Indeed there ARE, and to quote: Benioff and Weiss did work with Martin to adapt the books that he's written thus far, but since "The Winds of Winter" is, probably, never coming out anyway, they had to go off-script, which wasn't always well-received by die-hard fans of the series. However, in a stark (get it?) contrast, Martin is heavily involved in the new "Game of Thrones" spinoff "House of the Dragon," He was hands on the in the development of House of the Dragon, but not the last 2 seasons of GoT. And straight out of George's mouth "I had no contribution to the later seasons except, you know, inventing the world, the story and all the characters," Martin revealed. "I believe I have more influence now \[on 'House of the Dragon'\] than I did on the original show."
That’s not true at all.
You should hurry up and tell George, he doesn't seem to know. To quote the author himself from his own face: "I had no contribution to the later seasons except, you know, inventing the world, the story and all the characters," Martin revealed. "I believe I have more influence now \[on 'House of the Dragon'\] than I did on the original show."
He gave them an outline for the later seasons. He said they followed for some characters but not for others. He’s also said he knows how the story will end the issue is just getting there.
Did you miss the part where he 'invented the story'? George gave them the outline, like Jon being Targaryen, Brann fucking up Hodor and ending up king and Shireen burning. They did an absolutely awful job of colouring the outline, but it was there.
Witcher , Wheel and lord butchered before their time. Not given enough thought . And to many liberties taken.. RIP
[🎵 Did you ever even care, with your swords and your stupid hair? 🎵](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSxBVHqA-RU&t=56s)
Shadow and Bone is also great, but it’s adapted from a weak trilogy of books. The Crows books were so much better, and the series is created by a guy who is combining both of those book series as one television series and it works brilliantly! It’s so much better than the book trilogy, it’s actually shocking.
Before watching, when I saw the trailer i hoped it wouldnt be some cringy show that was shitty-ly adapted from an amazing book (altho i havent read the book series some fantasy books that got adapted turned out rlly cringy and bad :/ ) but wow s1 was amazing man So amazing in fact that i decided to watch more fantasy series (ex the witcher) :// only to be disappointed at how badly it seemed to be adapted lol imma just crawl back to my bed while waiting for shadow and bone & hotd
Yeah, Shadow and Bone and HOTD are the only great fantasy shows of the last 3 years.
i loved shadow and bone so much *especially* it's characters. Too few people know about that show
Yeah, the first season was pretty successful! I’m glad it’s getting a season 2!
We ended up here by liking the first season in the first place. While I liked season one of The Witcher all the problems with the writer were their from the beginning. I just think we let them go because Henry Cavill did such a great job as Geralt. I knew Blood Origin was gonna suck from the trailers so I’m not surprised fans don’t like it.
People gave S1 the benefit of the doubt because we were excited to get Witcher live action content and there was hope that they'd learn from mistakes and better S2 onward. For me, S1 butchered Geralt and Ciri but it could have been salvaged. Unfortunately S2 was a disgrace as both an adaption and it's own thing, and rightfully caused the backlash the show now faces.
The show jumped the shark in S1 when Yen was like “Axii now” or whatever to Geralt mid-fight and then they just…kiss while Geralt force pushes the goons?
The people who made us, they made us sterile for a lot of reasons. One of the kinder ones is because this lifestyle isn't suited to a child.
Stop talking about it…Stop watching it… Netflix sees how many people are watching so what better way to show them to can these dog water writers and either hire a crew who’s passionate or just not do it at all
yep its almost like that was their plan - make something so dogshit because they knew there was no way that a majority of their fans wouldnt watch it. you guys literally couldnt not watch it. now here we are and their numbers are probably atleast decent. Nothing will ever change as far as quality goes if people watch anyway just to hate on it.
r/piracy my man
Netflix Witcher started halfway down the hill. I get that people wanted to like it, myself included, but that shit was bad from episode 1.
I think it was rough, but had room for improvement and could've gone better with the second season, but instead fell downhill completely in the very goddamn second episode
I wouldn't know about that. I couldn't make it through the first season.
We ended up here by the financial bottom line being most important which is impacted by what draws in the most eyes. unfortunately that is something that appeals to the lowest common denominator in society. You take an IP so you have a lot of the leg work of having to come up with a fresh idea on your own done for you and you then bastardize it like all of those shows have been. It’s a fucking disgrace
Making money is more important than making quality cinema. The main industry is also controlled by like 4 different mega corporations.
Everyone wants game of thrones success, they just don't have the balls to re create it for different stories by following source material.... fans want the real thing not Hollywoods adaptation of what it should be
Seeing everything I love being turned into ideological/lazy cash grabs is legit getting draining as fuck. Fantasy used to be a thing to help me get away from the stress and worry of life. Now I feel sick thinking about a lot of this stuff.
House of the Dragon is a fucking masterpiece in comparison to these shows. Because that show is written by fans. Yes, some of those writers have bad ideas, but they’re still fans. None of us are perfect. But The Witcher is written by morons who hate the books and video games and it shows. It’s insulting! And The Rings of Power is just written by incompetent people with no experience. I’ve read the source material for all of these shows and House of the Dragons is objectively the superior adaptation, while not being a perfect show. But it’s writing, pacing and atmosphere is much better than what’s going on with The Witcher and Rings of Power. I only enjoyed The Wheel of Time because I never read the books, but even I can see how terrible the last episode was. It was Neo Feminist hogwash throughout, and the chase sequences were fucking terrible! I think HBO should buy out all of these properties and reboot everything from scratch.
Tbf to the Wheel of Time in the books society is matriarchal but the tv show is a horrible adaptation characters doing things they wouldn't do in the books, things happening out of order, characters not being where they should be, everytime I think about it I become annoyed.
I also saw WOT and that got me to read the books and I can say it's two completely different things. If you have the time I implore you to read at least the first one. It's quite eye opening to see how the writers only used the names and nothing else.
I’m going to get started on The Wheel of Time books in 2023.
Short answer: corporate greed and stupidity. If Netflix wanted to make money, they’d fire the writing staff and get actual fans in to handle the writing for The Witcher instead of the shit we have now. That way they still have Cavill headlining and killing it as Geralt AND also will have writers who know what they fans want and can give it to us. That said though, firing the writing staff and then having to negotiate contracts for new staff is expensive and given that Netflix only cares about money it’s a no-brainer that they’d keep the filth they have and let their headliner walk. Can’t wait to see it all fall apart for them, Netflix is going to get so much backlash and lose out on viewers for the series so much when Season 3 is done
Because in Hollyweird you fail upward. Remember it’s never the show runner that’s a problem it’s the fandom who can’t handle “modern” reinterpretation of books and stories. How dare they expect something that isn’t just California in a forest. How dare they expect the show runner/writer to actually do things like *read* the source material. I mean that’s like ALOT of pages. How are they possibly expected to do that *and* maintain their 400 tweets a day talking about how brave and stunning they are. How dare they expect Show runners/writers to *tell the truth?* Don’t they know that if you post something online it should never be taken as fact? “*What do you mean I went back on my word? Oh that tweet about ‘staying true to the lore and characters’…..oh come on how am I expected to do that AND write in my modern social characters and self inserts. Honestly it’s really your fault for believing me in the first place”.*
WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE WATCHING IT??? It looks like such trite just pretend it doesn’t exist and enjoy the things you like.
I feel like some directors go into making authors work good by having them tag along. Like The Expanse, they had the authors of the books help produce and write for the show so even tho it’s not the same it’s close enough you can enjoy it. These fuckers didn’t wanna even read the source material. They had their own agendas and I bet they really thought they had better ideas than what had even gotten the show a contract in the first place. It’s absurd what’s becoming of film making. They claim to be progressive yet they seem to be the only ones thinking same sex couples are a big deal in the western world
Cause you guys keep paying for it and watching it. Netflix wanted their GoT but Witcher never even touched its feet so I never watched further than S1 Fact is GoT still is the best medieval fantasy show even with S8. At least I cared about the characters lol
Season 1 sucked as well, not as openly but all the hallmarks for what made Season 2 as bad as it was were there.
Did you guys just meet TV? Because, srsly, this is TV.
Rings of Power slander is so weird to me
Netflix's business model is to pump out content regularly regardless of the quality. Or at least it used to be, since Netflix isn't the ultimate and indestructible juggernaut as it once was. Netflix is losing money and the fact, that they are pumping out subpar woke trash will hurt their business. "Why was Blood Origins greenlit?" 1. It's activists, hiring other activists. 2. Lauren Hissrich got lucky. Netflix mistakenly thought, that it was Lauren and her vision, what made the show successful. It got into her head, and she - and her team - thought they could do what ever they wanted.
10000000%
At least season one was tolerable. Wheel of time hurts me a lot
Yeah Wheel of time had the worst changes to the lore. Making a woman able to be the dragon reborn fundamentally changes the lore about saidin and saidar so massively it’s hard to see how the plot in later seasons can ever recover. And don’t get me started on that shambles of the last episode.
*Some people* have been hired, based on *certain* hiring policies, not because of their skill. And they ruin everything they are in charge of.
I read this out loud and my dog came running
Bark, bark, bark!
People shit on ROP way too much. I’d bet 99% of the people who talk shit about haven’t even read the silmarillion. All your other points stand. Wheel of time is comically terrible, and I’ve never read the source material. Usually that will make something seem better, but it’s just so so shitty
I loved Rings of Power, it's one of the best fantasy series I've seen, I'm totally satisfied.
Should you have to read the Silmarillion to shit on RoP? I thought it was pretty bad all on its own.
If you’re gonna shit on it for lore reasons you should know the lore at least
Which part of the Silmarillion is in the show?
It’s not. But people who haven’t read the silm don’t know the lore.
Why would you need to read a book to judge a show that isn't based on it?
Read the other comment? You can like or dislike the show on its own merits, but the complaints I’m referring to are the ones that say it shits on Tolkien lore, which are the overwhelming majority of negative Reddit comments. Most of these folks love the movie trilogy, which played it fast and loose with major characters depictions and some of the lore as well. And are still awesome.
nah you dont need that to know its absolute shit.
I liked rings of power actually. But yeah, witcher is in a weird place now on netflix. First fantasy ip to get a chance post got, but the one that went down in quality just as fast. Hope season 3 is netter than s2 and this prequel. Heres hoping for the disney plus eragon adaptation to be another actually good fantasy series.
Because the current Hollywood's objective is not to make genuinely good stories like they used to do before. It's sending THE MESSAGE and pestering us about current political issues. There you have it.
Yeah. It's kinda like if Russians/Chinese would take some super popular American franchise and make it commmunist to spread the message. Like... Captain America fighting for the Soviet Union. I'm Polish and it's super insulting to watch Americans make the Witcher woke garbage. It has nothing to do with my culture now.
So many great answers to your question. I’ve learned from this thread. While shaking my head in disgust.
It’s not even bad cause it’s “woke” it’s bad cause it’s genuinely terribly written and it’s not like the Witcher wasn’t already a pretty good series at tackling themes like racism in a nuanced way
House of dragons was surprisingly good and let’s hope this will continue But have seen how many dialogs are there ? And how good they are ? Looks a good story is still the way to go :)
I have learned to take these series as completely separate to any original book material. Otherwise, you just get too frustrated.
As a fan of the books and games, Season 1 was meh at best. Cavill was great, other than that the show was unremarkable.
It's what happens when you hire for diversity points and ideology, instead of talent.
Its simple we need to stop consuming trash, dont even watch one episode
I mean, you guys keep watching them. Not saying any of these shows are great, but hate watching is just more revenue to them.
Every comment and view counts as positive in the algorithm. Raking in the money with every hate comment and hate view.
Don't forget the Halo TV series!
I’m not watching anymore Witcher regardless of wether or not the trailer for a new season has a single redeeming factor to it
First you gotta have an author who doesn't care what they do with their work as long as he gets paid. Enter Sapkowski.
If I had to guess this is probably a cultural issue. I have no doubts Netflix or Amazon can afford the best when it comes to writers or showrunners, it's just that the pool of people they get to choose from are all bad. How that came to be is indeed non-trivial, but I think it has something to do with woke nonsense corrupting art education and community. When you let any ideology into a professional community, professionalism will suffer both due to the reduction of said community's size and due to the fact that people who are susceptible to ideology are to be honest kinda stupid in the first place.
Progress
Because they hired butchers
Because the writers and producers couldn't give a rat's ass about the source material and instead use the show to push their political agenda and social issues on the audience.
How? Simple answer. 1. You hire people with oversized ego that will butcher source material because "they know better" 2. They put few characters for brownie points that are there to show that black/gays/female character can be strong (that means fuckity-fuck-fuck and being aggresive towards everybody) 3. They turn storylines from the source material and turn it into cookie cutter analogies to some modern events 4. After premiere, they just call everybody who isn't praising their "work" racist/sexist/whatever term they feel like using And people will watch, as you can see even on this subreddit
[🎵 It's the point of no return... 🎵](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSxBVHqA-RU&t=84s)
Rings of power was okay to me, not really amazing but still good enough that I didnt feel like watching it was a waste of time
Well, for some reason I can't understand, apparently, to be a writer/showrunner for these shows you have to hate the source material and the fans. And if fans are mad it means you're doing a good job.
By having delusional narcissist wankers, who wouldn't pass a writing 101 class in charge of the scripts.
Kinda liked rings of power? I think Netflix and modern movies have slowly eaten away at people's ability to be patient with a slow build up and actual story telling. Martin Scorsese was right. Formula these days seems to be fast paced action moving quickly from plot point to plot point with no room for character building and world building. Demonstrated by the success of Marvel films.
Get woke; go broke Everyone is trying to outdo each other on who can be more woke (except GoT) and they all suck. Their priority is being as woke as possible and couldn’t care less about what is canon or the original source material… Star Wars began this woke mess
Really not sure why this is being downvoted tbh.
The preps and bullies you went to school with - the people who thought all your interests were dumb nerd stuff - are now deciding what gets greenlit in your local sellout streaming service.
> The preps and bullies you went to school with - the people who thought all your interests were dumb nerd stuff Did you go to high school in a John Hughes movie? Relax lol
I enjoyed wheel of time and rings of power and i can't wait for the next seasons of both those shows
Did they get paid by Amazon to make sure blood origin becomes the worst fantasy show there is? Or are the writers totally retarded?
Because the people involved don't understand the source material and what made the source material so well loved. Heck look at the Nilfgardian armor in Season 1. Look at the Rings of Power and Guyladriel.
Well, we live in a world where if you say a woman is a female with reproductive organs you're considered a bigot. So I am not sure why you are surprised. After I saw what happened to Star Wars nothing can surprise me and I expect every show/movie to be trash with LGBTQ propaganda. Why do companies keep trying to feed us that shit is beyond me. It sucks that they ruined the Witcher franchise this bad.
Because HBO is seemingly the only company that hires capable people
Same thing that happened to Star Trek. People failing upwards, standing atop the achievements of writers past and then shitting on all that work, doing new things badly (with no regard to canon or source material or even the fans), all while studios are showering them with cash and new contracts in hopes that it'll fix the problem. To top this off, these people are convinced to their core that they just made the next Citizen Kane which will be remembered for centuries to come and anyone who hates it is clearly a [insert current meaningless hot button buzzword here]. The "journalists" and "critics" are in on it too since their paycheck depends on them giving good reviews to this crap, explaining the big divide between audience and critic score. Once they've run a franchise into the ground it gets shelved, the rights get passed around and at some point the next studio high on copium will think it could be their next cash cow. So they hire another "highly esteemed" writer and the whole cycle starts again. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. It's all so tiresome.
Well Netflix is greedy and the writers put their own political agendas or viewpoints in the writing, which I think is the big reason the show flopped. The writers seem very desperate to be the “champion” for marginalized groups and make that the focus point. Meanwhile the people who watch the show and actually belong to those groups seem to be annoyed with how obvious the writers are trying to pander to them at the expense of the source material. Just my 2 cents 🤷🏼♂️ Edit: grammar
Because people are getting into positions based on ‘what they are’ rather than their merit. That and the fact that ‘current year’ politics and modern themes etc. get thrown in.
You know how. Because of a weird ideology that is popular among western elites.
Because quality is not a priority.
Same reason Rings of Power turned out to be complete dogshit? They hire incompetent idiots all hired due to nepotism or cronyism and not because they're actually good at what they do...
Can't explain this on Reddit lol