The Witcher – season 1, was released on Netflix platform on 20’th December 2019, and won hearts and minds of the public (most of them anyways). The release of the show had a huge impact on book and game sales. Andrzej Sapkowski became top Amazon writer, and more people play Witcher III: Wild Hunt now, than on the day of release.
To me however, Witcher is not a ‘Netflix hit’, or ‘worldwide success’ but a series about my favorite books when I was a kid. That is why, despite the fact that the show achieved success, despite the fact that it promoted Polish literature and games I will be harsh. Because the books were written so perfectly that they set up the highest bar possible, and showrunners did not deliver.
Why was it not made into adaptation?
This is actually a serious question we need to ask the producers. Why did they not decide to adapt the books? Why did they have to make so many changes? This has been a complete riddle to me. The source material is great, you couldn’t wish for better dialogues, better characters, beter situations than the ones already delivered by the books.
Instead we’ve got a story loosely based on the books – it takes ideas from the books, changes them and serves you something ‘minor’. Not the worst content, and not the best content. And definitely not as good a content as it should be. Was it a writer’s pride? Was it the confidence that screenwriters would create something better than the already written Witcher saga?
Or maybe was it political correctness? The absolute, overwhelming need to put every fucking race into every fucking movie. Regardless if it fits or not, the hollywood gods would course the creators if they would make a movie with all white characters. I mean at this point it’s just repulsive. It’s like every fucking movie is trying to sell you the wonders of diversity and feminism. It’s almost like a commercial within the movie. So maybe this was the reason why it was not made into an adaptation?
Was it fear of failure? But again the producers and the screenwriters seemed confident that it would be great? Or maybe they feared that the source material was too inclusive to understand – to European? But surely they took into account the great succes of the games right? And the fact that the Witcher world was loved by millions of people in its pure unmuddled form.
Anyways what they did was awful, and it made me sad. So in spite of everyone “loving” the show I’m sincerely gonna trash everything that hurt the Witcher-verse and book fans. I’ll be publishing a series of short articles touching different aspects of the show. First one: “The Characters”, will be coming at the end of this week.
