The Witcher (Season 3)
“Kudos how screenwriters f*ed up my career” – Geralt (well, he didn’t say it, but probably thought it)**
Uh, this review should have been published much earlier, but since in a few days the fourth season comes out, maybe just to remind you… why these wheels called “The Witcher” went downhill.
But before that, briefly about the plot… uh… I’ll try to simplify this somehow…
Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri skulk through various wildernesses to avoid various bounty hunters who’d like to get hold of Ciri… alive, though for some it’s ok if she’s dead. Scoia’tael (“Squirrels”) elves believe Ciri is their messiah, idiotic King Vizimir (under manipulations of spy Dijkstra and sorceress Philippa Eilhart) would like to take her as wife for political reasons (Cintra)… and on top of all this, there’s also mysterious wizard/bounty hunter/assassin Rience who, under patronage of some powerful (magical) person, tries to kill Ciri.
Relationship between Geralt and Yennefer is quite strained at season’s beginning, because of her actions from last season (not even the most hardened feminists could be her wooden advocates), but slowly normalizes. As solution for Ciri they see separation – Geralt to set out searching for Rience, and Yennefer to hide Ciri in Aretuza, in magic school under leadership of powerful Tissaia de Vries.
But, this crew will reunite again, after various adventures, at famous conclave of wizards in Aretuza, which will end very tragically in every respect…
Here I’ll stop with plot for simple reason it’s one of biggest flaws of this season.
You know how, first season made modifications of Andrzej Sapkowski’s parts (i.e., story collections “The Last Wish” and “Sword of Destiny”), but audience decided to overlook this, considering it’s not simple to adapt “Witcher” world and that compromises and bit of creative freedom for screenwriters are necessary… and in addition actor choice was great, visual and musical element, atmosphere and action.
Second season regarding plot started deviating even more from literary source (“A Grain of Truth” story and “Blood of Elves” novel), however now everyone started raising eyebrows more seriously. Never mind people who weren’t previously familiar with “The Witcher” world had challenge catching threads, now even fans of books nor video games weren’t sure which direction all this should go. I tried to be naive optimist (as you can see from my second season review), hoping by this they’re opening path for inserting element from excellent “The Witcher” video game trilogy, maybe consulting Sapkowski to insert some of his ideas or even to innovate and expand “The Witcher” world… and on top of all that it was still great regarding actor choice (especially Cavill who added new “gamer” dimension to Geralt and evolution of young actress Freya Allan through Ciri), visual and musical element, atmosphere and action.
But third season’s scenario [“The Witcher (Season 3)”]… if they’d given Geralt’s horse Roach (Roach) coca-cola, speed, ecstasy and ayahuasca, even that drugged horse would more consistently develop plot and characters of s(t)eason three. Plot should have followed book “Time of Contempt” and at first glance screenwriters took quite a few elements from book… and then started changing key things (which have impact on events in later published books in series) and shuffling order of things so it became hard to understand not only for lovers of “The Witcher” books, but also general audience… and maybe even screenwriters themselves who wrote the scenario… On top of all this, third season as if “stupified” all characters… no, I really don’t have some other expression to use. Dialogues become senseless, characters in series no longer develop, but literally suddenly say sentences without sense and logic, their behaviors have changed… in translation, you can no longer catch plot by head nor by tail of Roach.
On top of that, Geralt (better said, actor Henry Cavill) is reduced to secondary role in this season. You know, Geralt, the witcher… the one after whom both series and books bear the title “The Witcher”? But more about this a bit later…
Visually, quality dropped. Ok, costumes and all that are still at level of previous seasons, but CGI seems done in first versions of AI tools for making videos.
Music is relatively decent and unobtrusive (which doesn’t really go with this type of series)… and it’s a shame there’s no recognizable number like previous seasons had (legendary “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” from first season and excellent “Burn, Witcher, Burn” from second season).
There’s lots of action and it’s solid, but it alone can’t pull out this season.
You probably noticed, somewhat unexpectedly for this site, this review is quite negative (since on this site books and films are reviewed that are, in author’s opinion, mostly top-notch or excellent, and in worst case solid). Well, this is an example to show how series falls in quality when writers and screenwriters work on literary source they, obviously, don’t understand, and it seems they saw “The Witcher” because of “CD PROJEKT RED” company (which made impressively successful and profitable video game trilogy) as ideal cash-cow or golden goose to extract money. Sorry, but something has literary source (and very extensive and moreover very popular one), then you don’t behave by principle “what does this Sapkowski know, now I’ll show them how this should be” and then write something of your own. Then nicely take and create completely new story and new characters and just note it’s set in “The Witcher” universe and please. “CD PROJEKT RED” with “The Witcher” games did adaptations of books, and then inserted lots of new elements, but for players this was bringing books to life through video game (and not to mention these are RPG titles – in translation, player through Geralt makes choices in game that affect further plot course), and to shorten, there’s whole host of reasons why they were successful in that.
And on top of all this comes element called Henry Cavill. Erotic-gentlemanly fantasy of every woman, and blood brother/best man nerd of male population who enjoys fantasy books, video games, “Warhammer” figurines… and on top of all that (confirmed) hardcore fan of “The Witcher” books and video games, who really wanted to be Geralt in series and who was ready to commit to seven seasons as long as they follow Sapkowski’s books. Suddenly, news is published he’s leaving series. Later stories slip through how he badly treated women on set and how he’s real “mysognistic gamer,” and allegedly “Netflix” secretly supported this approach toward Cavill…, but very construction of such insult (mysognistic gamer) to experienced eye/ear will attract attention that something here doesn’t add up, and not necessarily on Cavill’s side.
And why so? Interestingly the “bad treatment” (we put in quotes because it was never officially confirmed) of women by Cavill referred to women who are writers and screenwriters of series… and then you hear statements from actress-colleagues (not only from “The Witcher” set, but also from other films where he acted) how they talk about him in superlatives as actor and person generally, and then you see their looks when he speaks during some interview, and body language varying from “ah, why didn’t I have such wonderful brother-protector while growing up” (rarely) to “I’d have absolutely no problem having sex with him in front of cameras while interview lasts now right now this moment” (I assume, most common scenario). And on top of that, book fans strongly criticized (in fact, there was real backlash toward writers and screenwriters) drastic deviation from literary source and how dialogues are done, to resemble amateur fan-fiction (but without that “fan” in title), from those sites where people themselves write their own stories from some existing fictional (for example, “The Witcher”) world. And also, moreover, stories circulate writers and screenwriters themselves looked with derision at Sapkowski’s books. So, question arises: did Cavill really have problem with writers and screenwriters of series because they’re women… or are people on set who bear titles writers and screenwriters… simply did terrible job and didn’t understand at all books of Polish author.
I was first to give more than enough credit to series writers and screenwriters because of deviation from books and games, because I wanted to believe they’re, in fact, preparing to spread wings with creativity for future seasons of series, but… what the hell, male, female, LGBT whatever… this is simply very poorly written.
Of course, how to expect acting to turn out good? Henry Cavill tries to do his job somewhat professionally, but it’s no longer that Geralt from books nor games, nor some original Geralt… Anya Chalotra as Yennefer and Freya Allan as Ciri are more or less standardly good. In fact, actors who breathed life into Tissaia, Triss or Vilgefortz weren’t bad either, but everything somehow falls flat. And poor Dandelion I, well, completely forgot about…
Episode that especially ruined mood for me is where Ciri in desert – unnecessarily artificially drawn out and boring.
And only thing I liked is conclave of wizards Geralt attends because of “quasi-Rashomon effect” of describing events and somehow dramaticness of that evening.
What to expect after this from last season of witcher adventures? “Netflix” chose Liam Hemsworth as new witcher, to whom really hot potato was served (though, surely not for small money), pumped most money into production so far compared to previous seasons, but I think this is more “Netflix’s” hail Mary move that will end with hammering last nails into coffin in which this series is being buried. People aren’t at all thrilled with Liam Hemsworth’s voice and physique as Geralt (with due respect to him as actor, but I couldn’t connect him either with literary version or one from video game) and already call him “Geralt from Temu”… so, except if he pulls out acting talent of De Niro, Pacino, Washington and Bale (simultaneously), he risks hammering stake into heart of his relatively decent career. Also, from trailer no one has any idea anymore what to expect with plot, and it seems everyone suddenly knows how to use swords (or as Neo from “Matrix” would say – “I know kung-fu now”). I dare say only likable element in series will be appearance of Laurence Fishburne as vampire Regis… I mean, I don’t know what he needed this for… but legendary Morpheus has great films under his belt in his career, is well into sixth decade, and has some change in reserve for retirement (some 30 million $), so why not mess around a bit more with filming various films and series and take some cash in addition.
By the way, people rush to YouTube daily, but it seems not so much because of trailer for fourth season as because of hilarious comments from visitors making fun at expense of their expectations from this last season.
What lesson can we all learn from “The Witcher (Season 3)”? Probably that not everyone working in film industry and writing scripts can think of themselves as Mario Puzo (read anecdote about him when he wanted to learn how to write film scripts).
And you, dear reader, do you plan (at all) to watch last season of “The Witcher” 😅
Trailer
Imdb | Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic
Release date: 2023
Format: Series
Number of episodes: 8 (third season)
Average episode runtime: 60 minutes
