The Art of the Illusion

I 100% agree with what another person wrote about writers wanting to make the series their own thing. I've never read the books (so don't "accuse" me for wanting the series to stay true, because I simply have no clue what the books say), but I do know a good story when I see it (because it's part of my job in real life!).

And this story is NOT good. The only reason I find for the production to create such an absurdity with no pace, character development or cohesive storytelling despite having in their hands an already well-loved source material, is when they believe they can be better.

Guess what. Time and again, this is a recipe for failure. When there is no respect for the source material you end up creating this monstrosity. Maybe the greatest monster Geralt had to fight was the production's ego. Glad he walked away.

3rd season vol 1 is over.

The good: Henry Cavil is still here unlike the rumors and the impersonation of Siri by another girl came as a shock element , the only place where the viewer might be surprised The bad : few of the sequences do feel repititive ,specially the action scenes and the travels where yeneffer and siri. It feels like "wait a minute I have seen this already!" The ugly: The art of illusion has not worked ,from a mile away you know the person they are aiming is actually not the one who they should aim for. Specially because at the end of the season 2 it has been made clear .

Finally eagerly waiting for the volume 2, hoping it will be better than average.

Season 3 so far has been....fine. Not great, but not bad either. The production is amazing - with the sets, location and visuals being almost flawless. You can tell they filmed on location, as some of those landscape shots were glorious. However, it doesn't get any better than that. Aside from Geralt, Yen and Ciri, all the other characters are just, meh. Henry as Geralt as we all know, is just brilliant and the series doesn't deserve him, but he does give his all in this last season. Anya as Yen is also really good. I wasn't sold on her in season 1, but in this third season she has improved greatly. The story of season 3 is all over the place. We follow our trio as they try to keep Ciri safe, but the season never really does anything with it. There never feels like any real threat. Then there is the stuff with Jaskier. Jesus. Jaskier was a good character in the first 2 season, but here, he is irritating. The rumours were correct - they have made him Bi. For those who know the books, or the games, you know that he is not interesting in men at all. He is very flamboyant, and that doesn't mean he needs to like men. They clearly have no respect for the characters and world they are trying to replicate. Season 3 also suffers from dreadful editing. Now I don't know if Netflix just had a problem when I was streaming, but there were several scenes with dialogue and you would be in full site of the actor delivering said dialogue, but their mouth wouldn't move. It was distracting. And it wasn't one or two scenes, it was several.

Overall the first half of season 3 has been average.

This episode looked like a middle upper class fantasy of how the world should work. In real life sadly it's just not radical enough in showing the antagonisms and the moments of comming together despite differences. For this the writers and directors should have taken a page out of The Whale movie which showed how much emotion can be made with a good story while the shooting is almost not going out of a one small appartment. In this episode sadly there was non of that.

The writers wanted everyone to show how masterfull they are at displaying politics when in reality it reminded more of a kindergarden level diolog.

The main people responsible for the witcher has the life understanding and meaning of a tea spoon!

This review is for the season 3 vol 1 as a whole.

I really tried with this one. Really tried to agree with the internet. From IGN to the certain bearded youtubers, everyone on the internet seemingly wants us to hate this show.

Unfortunately, despite my earnest effort to summon hate, I am just enjoying it too much. The story is intriguing that has kept me hooked, characters are complex, the dialogue is very genre appropriate, the monsters are gruesome, the combat is stunning, and the cast and acting which has improved every season.

It is not without actual problems (as opposed to made-up ones). The writing throws too many characters, terms, locations at you which can be confusing even to people who are familiar with the universe. Some of the scenes are rather silly, some subplots superfluous, some narrative tricks (such as the one in this episode) completely unnecessary. And some new characters are once again cast with actors that look very different from how they are described in the original or portrayed popularly in earlier adaptations, as was in previous seasons.

Regardless, I have enjoyed it enough to eagerly look forward to volume 2, and season 4 after that even without Mr. Cavill. My sincere apologies to you, internet. I will try to do better next time. Please be gentle when using the thumb-down button.