Heard it somewhere: Blood Origin's plot is basically every newbie GM's first attempt at running a homebrew campaign. 7 adventurers of different classes going on an epic quest to stop an evil wizard from opening a portal to another dimension, running into side quests and wacky shenanigans along the way. You can't tell a more generic fantasy story if you tried.
You might not find something more generic, but it says a LOT that am amateur GM can probably tell the story better than this literal shit-show maybe 7 out of 10 times.
Avalach and Eredin are pretty big names in the world of the witcher franchise. The former is one of the most powerful magic users in the entire franchise. A wise sage with questionable morality and a desperate need to protect the Elder Blood at all costs as it's not only sacred, but those that carry it are also decendant of his lover that he lost. The latter the the imposing king of the wild hunt. An elite cavalcade of riders that travel travel to the world of the witcher to take slaves to their world. With his world threaten, Eredin was desperate to use the Elder Blood to open a portal into the world of the witcher and conquer it. Netflix butchered both characters.
THIS THANK YOU!! they made avallac’h some sniveling little coward with barely and control over magic, and while i personally felt that eredin’s storyline with the merchant dude added some humanity to a character that really needed it, bottom line they failed to make him the imposing conquerer he is. not to mention EVERYTHING ELSE WRONG WITH IT ALL! hissrich and her team deserve to lose their jobs.
I haven't read the books that feature Eredin or Avallac'h yet, but in the game they are tall, imposing, intimidating characters. I really have nothing against the actors portraying them but they are painfully miscast.
It was the endless narration that amazed me. It was intrusive and basically an ongoing admission of defeat. They couldn’t tell the story any other way.
Something that's often mentioned in writing seminars and boot camps: if the plot you want to tell is "simple," you have to make up for it in execution. Even a character buying tomatoes at the market stall can become an interesting scene with good dialogue and setup.
Farscape literally did this - while getting (crackers) on a trade planet, they attract Peacekeeper attention and have to run - with a pallet of crackers and no other food, causing conflict over the relative lack of food.
My theory is that there are very few people in the Hollywood hierarchy who grew up appreciating fantasy books and media, and the culture around it. The whole genre is foreign to them. Studio executives were the cool kids who focused on shallow popular culture, who didn't read books, who could never immerse themselves in a fantasy world. They mocked and bullied the people who cared about fantasy stories. They still do.
Because they want to force you to say "she" to the man with a penis. Because women are "strong" and "independent". And a lot of other lies that are just that - lies and have no scientific backup.
That is simple to answer, really. The reason is forced representation. And please do note I added the term FORCED for a reason. There's nothing wrong in theory with representing ethnic groups, cultures, etc... IN. THEORY. But in practice, it is really easy to screw up, specially with fantasy. Modern writers of the kind hired by Hollywood, Netflix or Amazon have an obsession to, in their own words: "REFLECT OUR MODERN REALITY." Forced Diversity is just one symptom of this mentality, where they simply MUST make every people in every place in every age have about the same ethnic composition as the bay area in california today. And you can say "race doesn't mean skill" or anything to that effect to justify the inclusion of actors of certain ethnicitied. But I'm sorry, no, that's bollocks. You wouldn't have a morbidly obese white man play a kunoichi in a period piece about the sengoku jidai even if he was the best damned actor you could possibly imagine. He just won't fit! Skill isn't enough. As racist as it may sound, ethnicity matters too. For example lets see the rings of power, and for this example lets take out the baggage of being LoTR, lets act as if Tolkien had nothing to do with it and RoP was purely its own thing with no books. And lets say we wanted to maximize diversity. Well, then Numenor would be our prime candidate, it is a very large very rich coastal city of a primarily mercantile seafaring culture, you would expect people from literally all over the place in there. Look at late medieval Cadiz for instance, it was a veritable melting pot for its age. Meanwhile, say, the Harfoots would probably all have the same ethnicity, because they are a completely isolationist rural landlocked culture. They don't breed with outsiders and are extremely unlikely to even interact with them, so they'll probably look extremely similar to each other. The elves would also likely be somewhat homogeneous, given how rare it is for them to marry with other peoples, while the humans in the southerlands are literally the result of a massive refugee wave from a continent spanning war, so they actually should look like USA or mexico in terms of diversity. And yet in the series it is the humans that are all british, and Numenor is relatively homogeneous, while elves and harfoots are both somehow multiethnic. That simply makes no sense. Hence why I say FORCED Representation. Inclusion can work, I'd love to see a good inclusive piece, but you need to be really good to make it work. And my point is way broader than skintone, that's just the most obvious visual indicator. Lets for a second talk politics... I swear I won't get political myself. See, I hope everyone has noticed, but... Most writers working for these circles are left wingers. And there's nothing wrong with being left wing. I am a left winger myself! BUT. If you're obsessed with "representing modern realities" you don't unmarry your writing from your politics. And a lesser known fact is: FANTASY IS AN INHERENTLY RIGHT WING LEANING GENRE. It is! I'm serious! Fantasy requires you accept certain tropes. Like feudalism, given its almost always set in the middle ages. Like racism, given the biological differences between elves, orks, dwarves, etc. are way more pronounced than those between any two given humans no matter how remote or isolated their culture. Etc, etc, etc. Fantasy depicts a world with at least some inherent right wing traits attached, and there's really nothing you can do about it. And if you, like me, can separate real world politics from fantasy worlds with bleeping dragons, then that's not gonna be an issue for you. But if you're like your average hollywood writer... That's gonna trigger you, deeply. And the fact most successful fantasy franchises have cis white straight old men as their authors just adds fuel to that in their eyes. It's literally everything they have sworn to take down, subvert, defeat, and dunk on rolled into a single genre. And so we see the other cardinal sin of these writers. Lack of respect. Note how even the press noted that writers were mocking the books and ranting about them even while adapting them during Blood Origin. I know we all have the mental image of the poor exploited writer being puppeted by megacorps, but that has long since stopped being reality. Oh don't get me wrong they're still paid scraps. But nepotism has long since taken hold, they don't just hire anyone, there's ingroups and actual discrimination at play here. That's why they are so heavily skewed in many demographic ways. Amongst other things as many pointed out they've by now actually come out and admited they consider liking the source material a red flag and pushes for sticking to the book are met with open derision and ostracism. And the issue with that kinda people is even when they're the literal bottom of the food chain, their ego is the size of jupiter. They don't think blood origin is bad, they think YOU are bad for not liking it. They'll never admit fantasy can be good despite being somewhat right wing, it either fits their view of the world, or is evil, period. And they sure as shit won't ever admit they screwed up. And when you have someone with no respect for the source material, open hatred for the genre, no self awareness and someone who on top of that discriminates against the target audience... Well that's gonna be a shit product innit. So why do they all suck? It's all the same people, with the same practices, in the same environment, and their view is antithetical to the genre. That's why.
20% isn't that much better than 13%... honestly I think it got that low score because what happened in the Witcher is becoming a pattern, and people are getting sick of show writers ignoring and deleting history and lore and existing culture in pre-existing material to insert their own modern day narrative and still calling it that pre-existing material, when it's not... if they would have called the show anything but a pre-existing franchise, it might have gotten 20% instead of 13%
I agree as well. I would love to know if you think my story has potential. th-cam.com/video/61Kl9492BBM/w-d-xo.html Please let me know what you think of The Tales Of Masculus!
@@ninebrains4769 Yeah true , with the boys is a another story , but then again the original comics were just about someone's pure hatred (who made em) of superheroes-
I fucking wish we could have discussions about stuff like Blood Origin and Rings of Power as part of the fantasy genre and not as "TV series". It's so goddamn annoying to have these remnants of "ANTI SJW" bs still poisoning discussions. I fucking hated this thing (and stopped watching, fuck Netflix) and won't give a view to RoP 2e for the experience itself/writing and the role the play in the business model of these companies, I don't give a damn if some WASP dude is angry about it for his own political discourse.
Yeah the show was just badly written. There’s plenty of “woke” shows out there that are amazing. Good Omens for example. Honestly the part of the show that i enjoyed the most was with the dwarf avenging her girlfriend. It was actually interesting and i wanted to figure out what was going on with her. Just a shame that she had nothing to do with the actual story lol. As soon as she joined up with the rest of them with no character justification it became boring and predictable again. I hate when people blame a show’s downfall on “woke” stuff when it’s just lazy writers shoving in boring characters to meet diversity quotas required by corporate executives
@@flynnlea so true. So many amazing stories were considered ‘woke’ in their day, and having diversity isn’t bad. But it IS bad when they shoehorn it in, change characters to gain some inclusion tokens, and make it their only traits and ignore storytelling. It’s annoying that Hollywood seems to only make ‘woke’ stories by taking an existing, beloved classic and completely butchering it. Can’t they just make some original, ‘diverse’ characters and genuine stories and not offend literally everyone along the way? Probably not, cuz of all the out-of-touch, ‘well-intentioned’, holier-than-thou people in Hollywood.
This. As soon as I watch a review that throws in the word "woke" 100 times in just the first few minutes, I check out. A lot of youtubers parrot the same tiring agenda for 30 minutes while not even talking about the show itself. Yeah the show is "woke" but what exactly is wrong with it? Is it badly written? Are the actors garbage? Is the dialogue trash? What about the timeline? If you want to film a 25 minute rant, call it a rant and not an actual review
This show is all over the place and I legit feel sorry for the actors and many other people who worked on this show. So many lines, moments miss the mark and instead of being dramatic or poignant they come off as forced, cringey or funny. One of the most unintentionally funny moments was when the Empress dies and asks her people to remember her. This, I assume was supposed to be a "she did bad things for the right reasons, she was misguided but had good intentions and as she is dying she hopes that people will see the good in her" moment, bittersweet and earned. But because of the pacing of the show it comes off really silly, because she was Empress for like a week before she died. She might have been Empress for 5 years, but since we can't really tell how much time has passed,it is just confusing. The elves whom she has been talking to probably don't even know who she is supposed to be.
I actually viewed it in a totally different way. I saw it as her attempting at being brave and noble, but I felt that at least for her arc the show had outlined it decently well enough to show how even though her dreams were based in something that she felt was real and tangible, she was still a spoiled princess whose 'history' was uninformed and unrealistic. I felt like her death was actually kind of cathartic because it took the oomph out of the way that colonial powers are often portrayed in pieces like this. Her story deserved an end so devoid of power and triumph, and though I agree with many of the other criticisms, it felt good to see her be shown as such a true withering coward at the very end.
@@gabriellebeauchemin9953 It is one way of looking at it. It is open to interpretation but most story archs in this show are all over the place. Some moments come out of nowhere or are logically flawed. Like how the two mages are confident that merging Fjall with the monster heart will work as if they do this every day, though their conversation also implies that the only time they tried something similar it did not work. And Fjall, the proto-witcher defeats the monster in the end by throwing a big blade at it a tad harder, even though when it first attacked it was shown that the monster was impervious to arrows and most people who tried to use their swords were evaporated in a second. I feel sorry for the actors because they are trying and they deserved a better story.
They could have waited with blood origin until Regis was introduced in the Witcher show, making Regis tell the story instead. Because of the obvious reason that he and his kind came through the conjunction.. They could have also told the love story about ciris ancestors - also told a bit in first episode in Witcher 2 Two fantastic ideas here already served on silver platter But what do I know, I’m just a toxic Witcher fan
The show was doomed as soon as some corpo decided the premise. In the books Conjunction of Spheres just happened. It's not exactly one throwaway line, but close. Same with creation of Witchers - because of CoS there were alot monsters, that means a niche formed, and creation of witchers filled it. Sapkowski invested no effort whatsoever fleshing those out. If people involved had even shred of competence, they would have chosen another story to be a prequel. The fall of Kaer Moren had potential close to GoT's best, or if they wanted less action and more talk, the story of Lara Doren and how exactly she ended up eloping and dying in a ditch (~). If they wanted something epic and expensive, they could go with first invasion and have Vilgerfortz and Lodge as MCs, or show first contact between elves and humans, the friendship that led to betrayal and war. It's like they thought GoT S8 was the best thing ever and decided to emulate it.
@@varthaner4617 if they’d chosen to cover Lara Dorren’s story they would have been able to introduce Avallach as well, which achieves the same goal. They could even have introduced Eredin at the same time if they moved a couple of minor things around, explain why he wants the elder blood (which connects back to the main series really well bc they teased the wild hunt at the end of season 2). They could even have used the conjunction of the spheres as a starting off point instead of a finale, which would introduce it as an important event for people watching the show that don’t know the books or games but without fucking the lore up entirely with monoliths and shit. They could have set up the existence of the Aen Elle and Aen Seidhe by saying that the conjunction was the reason they were split apart (i know that’s not book accurate, but i think that simplifying it for the show would probably work well). Then after that they could jump forwards in time to Lara, Avallach and Lod. They would even still get to introduce Ithlinne and the prophecy.
They added Eredin and Avallac'h just so they can loosely tie it into the main show. Which is not only lazy, but doesn't make sense in the context of the source material at all. Literally why is Avallac'h a little wimp?
I'm a fan of Tarantino who actually understands how to use swearing in the context of character, situation and/or setting and makes it sound natural. This, however, comes off as a seven year old who's learned a new swear word and is trying to impress their friends.
I tried watching the first episode and I was left dumbfounded at how this script made it to production. You had a stellar cast who was left putting this together the best that they could. This just solidifies my thought that Cavill was exactly right to separate himself from this.
Ill tell you how... The writer and producer are very woke and tick a bunch of boxes. Their level of competence, talent, and vision don't matter. Netflix and Amazon both have this issue of not actually looking for quality showrunners and in return 95% of the stuff they put out suck. It's why I cancelled Netflix lol.
@@brennangum6236 Don’t let them off easy by blaming their political beliefs. They suck as writers. If you suck at storytelling then you suck at storytelling.
Honestly this feels like right way to do criticism. Yes you couldn't give it high praise but you went about it in a reasonable rational way of explaining how it failed in the mechanics rather than the angry rants I see too often where people seem to be pushing an agenda rather providing a fair review.
Thank you. Tbh, I thought people were overreacting because people always do that because they think it’s like some political agenda. But then I saw the show and it sucked but some of peoples reason why it sucked were silly to me.
it's the show that's pushes agenda. People get angry when something they like (Witcher, it's world and lore) is butchered by arrogant showrunners and talentless, lazy writers. Anger isn't conductive for methodical disection of this abomination, true, and yet it is completly justified. Author of this flick is calm and criticises the show on techincal merit only, not adressing the assasination of original characters and desecration of original world, because, as he admits he is very Normie, a guy whose whole knowlage of the Witcher comprises of two seasons of the Netflix show, in itself a travesty of source material and woke agenda driven crap. He is simply not invested in the Witcher universe so he sees no sin, and feels no anger. Good for him, but that doesn't make Netflix's treatment of Witcher any better. If you still don't get it imagine a show that takes something you love, some sort of book or previously well told story that you really like and twists it to the point that what's left doesn't bear any resamblance to the source. You know the original and all you can see is a brutaly disfigured caricature of it still bearing falsely the proud name of the character, or strory you liked but it is not it. Would you be pleased?
@@jaceksudol8301 source material is nice. I've got boxes and boxes of comic books to say yea I can get into source material as much as any fan. But ultimately change is good if it's done well. TMNT 2012 changes things up but those changes give a chance to tell some interesting new stories instead of retread the good old stuff. Left, right, I just want to be entertained when it comes down to it. I could care less who the producer voted last election as long as the end production is a great bit of entertainment.
@@channelsofash what do you mean by pushing an agenda? These angry ranters are saying that pushing an agenda by Netflix is one of the reasons they butchered the show, it's not an agenda. If it is then you are just pushing an agenda that the angry ranters are just pushing an agenda that Netflix is just pushing its agenda. Don't misuse this word. Although I agree that just angrily attacking this shitshow (even if it's fully justified) isn't interesting to watch at all. As a person with solid books knowledge I expect the youtuber to have it too and actively refer to the source material instead of just laughing.
My issue is that 1,200 years separate the two series'. Even set in a fictional land, its hard to argue that society/civilization has not changed much in terms of technology/life.
Not at all. Technological advancement is not inevitable, it's perfectly plausible that a society would stay stagnant for extended periods of time, even thousands of years, if nothing stimulated it to innovate. There have been much longer periods on Earth since the birth of civilization that saw little to no change in the way people lived. It's only a very recent development that people look to the future with expectations of progress and significant change.
They directly asked for all that hate when they put ‘Witcher’ in the title. If they called it ‘Stupid generic fantasy’ no one would’ve hated it, as no one would’ve watched it.
Netflix will only order a 2nd season if it gets squid games huge and that’s such a big problem they have as a network. They’ll cancel every actual good show that only has one season to replace it over and over until they find their new diamond jewel. They ruin almost everything they touch and I can’t wait until they’re forced to choose consumers over their share holders.
The Witcher Blood Origins lore is like a house. The creators went to the foundation of the house, said "This is no good, we have to tear this all out!" They then proceed to tear out the foundation of the house while expecting the house to stay where it is.
the fact that merwin (or whatever her name was lmao) is always clothed in iris van herpen rlly irked me too, it kinda ruins the suspension of reality by linking the characters to modern brands and putting them in modern clothing
Yeah, as much as I love Iris and all of her designs, it really takes ya right out of the story any time she comes on screen. That being said, if they had actually committed and made ALL of the elves/people of the capitol wear similar avant-garde clothing, with interesting textures/structure/and fabric choice, then she wouldn't have felt out of place at all and would have helped make the elves feel like they had their own unique cultural style. As it stands now, they all look like humans because they all dress like humans.
Honestly after watching the series and listening to what people had to say about Netflix and the Witcher franchise in general I feel like they treated this as some kind of "Hail Mary" type of situation. Where they hoped the "extra lore" would add to the franchise, without realizing they were digging an even deeper grave for themselves. There is absolutely no saving for something you do not respect, and it looked like they had no respect for Blood Origins, The Witcher, and their source material.
Needed to be a comedy action show, like Xena. What made Willow more watchable that either Witcher:Blood Origin or Rings of Power was that it didn't take itself too seriously, at least in it's second half.
Thank you for your measured review! I agree that this show was NOT good, but it was far from the worst thing I’ve seen on Netflix. I have also seen many reviewers shit on the show for being “woke” which, in my opinion, had nothing to do with its failure as a show.
The non-dragon, but very dragon like monster had lazers ::rolling eyes:: that turned people into "mist" I'm going to guess for production cost reasons. If you can't afford to do the special effect, then just don't the make the production.
Great job critiquing this show without sounding like everyone else who hated it. If that's what you were going for (and your closing comments seem to imply that) - resounding success here.
netflix cancels practically every good show they have put out lately but had no problem throwing money at this mess. this is why i never watch netflix anymore. it’s also a mystery how they managed to nab amazing talent like michelle yeoh and minnie driver and do them so dirty.
What I'm hearing is. Netflix realized, for once, something was popular and wanted to gain from that but since they have thrown money at so much only to cancel it one season in they decided you know we said 6 episodes but we can do it in 4 🤦🏻♀️
Yeah but in this case it really does suck that we have a showrunner who doesn't even like the source material making witcher shows. These are characters we love and are intrigued by. Why does a talentless hack who doesn't love these characters get to make the tv shows which tell their stories? It just sucks. Be better if there was no show at all. At least then theres still the possibility of getting a good show rather than the certainty we are going to get crap.
Hey, just wanted to say I really appreciate your style of honest reviews. Found your channel through the Rings of Power video and it felt really refreshing to hear such a comprehensive review, highlighting both the good and the bad sides of the show. Keep it up!
I had low expectations for Blood Origin.... and those low hopes were scuttled far out to sea, and that was a big bummer... That said, thank you for giving credit to the actors, despite the show lacking, the performances show that everyone on set was putting in the effort. The little mannerisms that each person brought to their character was wonderful even if I don't remember a single character's name.
Yes! Viva la Dirt League! Anyway, found the Michael Cera comparison to NETFLIX Avallac'h hilarious but that's an example where your unfamiliarity with the material shines through. The deep fans LOATHE that casting. We loathe Avallac'h's inclusion here at all. This whole series was a big, steaming dump on the lore. I'm ignoring all things Netflix where the Witcher is concerned.
The Viva La Dirt League clips while you were saying about how the show feels like a parody was **chef's kiss.** Yeah, I noped out as soon as I saw the horrible, fourth-wall-breaking 'framing device' set up between Jaskier and Minnie Driver's character. I HATE what they've done to Jaskier in general, both in The Witcher and this show - they've turned him into a cross between the Donkey to Geralt's Shrek and some Random Modern-Day Dude who's accidentally been dropped into a medieval fantasy world and is still trying to adjust.
It‘s nice to hear a constructive review from a non-witcher-superfan. I understand their frustrations but their reasoning is sometimes just as bad as the storytelling in Blood origin. ps. That smiling Geralt in the end really awakes feelings of madness inside my stomach. dont do that again haha
Thank you for being one of the very few reviewers on here that actually had criticisms on the writing and storytelling without resorting to misogyny, racism, and queer-antagonism. Like, I KNOW there’s more to why this season was hot garbage than just “woman bad” or “non-white ppl bad”. The writing itself is the problem, and this video stopped me from having to sit through 4 hrs of pure suffering in order to find out for myself.
It kinda depends on who's watching it 😅 a friend of mine watched it and loved it! But she was looking for a cliche fantasy movie/mini-series and this is exactly that. I (who played the games a lot and loves learning about the lore) was very much disappointed. I just hoped the series to feel more like a Witcher story, instead of a random fantasy story. If you told me this was a game of thrones spin-off, I'd believe you 🤣 (no hate on GoT aside from season 8!).
And I watched it while doing 100 pages of reading for my upper div course and I loved it. I mean, I was only JUST paying enough attention and had no concept of the pacing because of that, but I liked it!
@@carlosnunez6217 ooh yeah! It's perfect for background noise! Even if you missed a bit here and there, you can still follow the story 🤭 good luck on your course/study!
I watched 1 and half episodes and came here. You basically made points for everything I was thinking so far. It really felt like they were doing too much and nothing at all at the same time. They gave me absolutely no reason to be invested in the story or the characters. I also think they were like "oh everyone loved Henry Cavill's f bomb so let's capitalize on that" and completely missing the reasons why people loved that moment in the original series. Similarly, It felt like they were trying to make a game of thrones type of cast, but failed to understand why the GOT characters are so beloved and why big moments in GOT really had an impact on the audience. I'm only 3 books into the witcher series, but I love them and this just didn't give me the same feelings the books or the original show did.
this video is refreshing. i have no prior history with the witcher ip, just the first 2 seasons which i've reasonably enjoyed, but i stopped after 2 episodes because i felt it was just sloppy and inefficient in its storytelling. i was disappointed, because i really wanted to like it, or at least be entertained by it for a few hours. i appreciate this analysis for its focus on the technical aspects of what went wrong, such as the writing and pacing, *not* on any nonsense like "wokeness" or whatever people like to whine about instead of thinking critically. the show is bad because the writers weren't good at writing, not because there are black people in it.
I watched the whole thing 😖 hoping it was actually leading somewhere. But at every turn, I was asking “why did they do that”…none of the “plot” turns made sense. At the end, I still had no idea what it was actually about…I think, though can’t be sure, it was trying to be an explanation as to how Cyri came to have Elder Blood….?
It astonishes me that shows like this get green lit for a second season and great shows like inside job get canceled with so much hype for the next season. I will never understand how out of touch these people are
yeah, it really is a pity :/ If I had to guess, they are actually not aiming for the most bingeworthy shows. If customers binge the show, then Netflix needs to deliver more. If one or two hours a day are consumed, Netflix can keep its customers with way lower need of show resupply. Maybe they have some stupid algorithm that is designed to delete shows that are too good. Like the opposite of HBO
Although Netflix absolutely butchered the Witcher with its ridiculous " lore" and hated core material, its got nothing on HBO's devastating ass-to-mouth raping it unleashed on Scooby-Doo's VELMA
Imagine people actually just adapting the story that fandom was hyped for in the first place. Like those books give enough to make multiple episodes series of just good quality plot. And then you can go full artistic freedom on actual fighting, casting, scenes, scenography, clothes and monsters.
I can understand the princess coupe (sort of) 'cause the beginning kinda hint how much said princess disliked being like a bargaining chip for peace. So it was like ohh okay, she disliked it so allied with the evil faction to avoid it. It was flat but like ohh okay, moving on... at least we were shown how it went to pt B from pt A. But one thing that really got me ehhh was about that elf who first deciphered the monoliths. One second we were showed him in prison, next he was with his sister healer. And that's it. We were just told he escaped, which frankly was just bad. At first, I was really like huh? And also took me a sec to realise it was that same elf. And if anyone noticed, yeah, I just described them rather than use their names. 'cause I really don't remember (their names) and can't be bothered. It was that forgettable for me, which was a downer considering S1 of Witcher was good. Even the ending felt flat [Edit] ohh okay, I wrote the earlier statements while still watching your intro. Didn't know you'd also be covering it but yes!! Exactly. It also got me confused if whether or not I accidentally skipped a scene. I even contemplated for a sec checking the prev episode before settling to whatever and abolishing the plan. Glad it wasn't just me 💀
This is par for the course for Netflix originals. Sink a ton of money into random things, then have each episode half-ass written by a different person they found on Fiverr. The scripts aren't just bad, they seem like they were purposefully written poorly by writers who are angry with the producer/director.
I agree. I am shocked at how bad this writing is. This feels like our culture rotting to me. I remember when every netflix original was great. Now, they are actually difficult to watch. Why are they doing this?
10:27 it’s amazing to me how in a single clip you where able to show how bad the narration was in the story. in the clip the narrator talked about the protagonists ending up being hunted but saying this was completely unnecessary since you saw the guy holding up a wanted poster of himself. you could’ve cut out the narration completely and you would’ve still gotten the same amount of information by just watching attentively. it’s so stupid
The Michael Cera elf actor also gave an AMAZING weird-ass performance in this one episode in season 3 of Atlanta. I hope he starts to get some bigger roles!
I liked the casting quite a lot in this show. This could've been amazing, had these people had something proper to work with. I do sincerely hope they find better work after this. I hate it when I see very promising actors whose career sort of ends because of a role they gave their all for in a poorly written show or movie. 😔
Sometimes you just have to do a Batwoman and can everything. Anyone at Netflix with taste should have known this was gonna be a dumpster fire with no redeemable features. A modern tale of bad writing is the only purpose this show serves now.
Before my sampling of Blood Origin (I had to stop it was so bad) I had faith that although The Witcher was diverging from how the books handled character and plot developments it would get to showing onscreen the main points in particular how the books brought the story revolving around Ciri / Geralt / Yennefer to the conclusion. However, after watching this and other reviews and sampling the BO I no longer trust the show runners to do the right thing i.e. respect the source material.
It's funny how the writers thought original Witcher series sucks and thought they could make it better by rewriting the story as they like to but failed miserably. It's always so satisfying to watch an incompetent megalomaniac failing what he believes he's good at.
I enjoyed it but with all Netflix shows I have now lowered my expectation to expect rubbish so it's just mindless entertainment now and also like a bingo card where you can guarantee there will be certain things in it that will be ticked off
Thank you for such a fair approach to this. I am very sad by the way Netflix has handled The Witcher IP. But have needed a sensible, story based place for my grievances. It's very nice to see your approach as I concur. And to add my humble opinions: Netflix have broken too many elements of the foundational lore and characters for my taste. I sincerely wish they would have made an entirely different fantasy show instead of trying to bend the Witcher into unrecognisable shapes. The lack of accountability in the continued response from the Witcher writers and particularly the showrunner, is frustrating as it feels like the motivations for the lore changes and the heavy-handed (embarrassing) narration in Blood Origin feels quite petty and unprofessional as if it is only the last step away from the writers casting themselves to tell the audience they are in charge and will to whatever they like (out of spite). My impression is that it was a move to flex control but instead was merely a doubling down on refusing to take accountability. I've just never understood how they thought so little of the Witcher fanbase as shown in their actions in response to the missteps with their handling of the franchise prior to Blood Origin. They have known how unhappy fans were because of large deviations. And in reality, who exactly is meant to be the audience for Blood Origin? It certainly isn't fans of the Witcher IP. And the production and story are so incredibly poor, it can't be to gain new fans of the series as it feels nothing like The Witcher IP or even S1 and S2 that Netflix created. They really shouldn't have made Blood Origin. If NETFLIX had done what HBO did w GOT and made a pilot first, then workshopped the things that worked or not with test audiences to see the reception, they'd have seen that nothing worked and scrapped the whole thing bc reality, they'd have saved themselves a LOT of humiliation, time and money. I cannot accept BO as Witcher lore and I really wish it didn't exist.
I think the saddest part is that it seems like the show runner do not care about the show or the audience... It could have been so good but they are running it to the ground...
Nice review. I freaking looooved the Michael Cera elf segment Lmao 😂 Glad I never had to watch this crap. After Amazon’s “Rings of Power”, I have very little patience for poorly written, non-traditional, anti-canon, politic-injected, […] over-processed American cheese-esque fantasy shows. Every now and then, I’ll go for a little American cheese, but I’d never make it the sole element of dietary nutrition, if you get what I’m saying. I actually enjoyed “Suicide Squad” for what it was- a little over-processed and superficial, but overall entertaining. In hindsight though, your critique about it makes a lot of sense. I’ll subscribe. Keep making videos!
Like any other bombs, the F-bombs have to be deployed strategically for maximum effect. Example: - Smart, quality F-drops: Dead Space 2, The Grand Budapest Hotel. - Juvenile, 3 points for effort: Cyberpunk 2077. - Missed: Blood Origin.
It wasn’t great but I felt like the actors were all in. The writing was the weakest part. Story was pretty cookie cutter. Costumes and cast were good. Was not the worst Netflix show ever. It wasn’t worse than the movie Bright.
You don't know anything about the lore? That's fine, neither do the writers. They quite literally pulled Blood Origin out of there ass. It's funny really, because everyone realized the departure from the source material was causing the initial series to suck, and then they decided to gamble everything on going even further by developing an entire plot which had no source material at all. Ballsy move.
"Lark" was so annoying I was actively rooting for anyone else but her, almost no characters were well written, there was some "class warfare" ideas allegedly but we never actually saw anything concrete, the dialogue was poor, no chemistry between characters, it just goes on.
I appreciate all of this well-thought-out criticism of what was a really bad show. I'm a Witcher fan who thought this show was absolute trash, and when I came to TH-cam to see some reviews, I was saddened to see a lot of people spending a whole lot of energy complaining about the diversity of the cast and the "wokeness" of the whole project, rather than talking about the poor storytelling, bad visuals, and editing hack job that made this such a miserable watch. Some other ridiculousness: 1) Their super smart plan to sneak into Capital City disguised as guards...while the most famous (apparently) freedom fighter in the land has her iconic hair clearly visible, and they've got a dwarf somehow in elf armor in a world where they have established that elves are racist against dwarves? How the hell did they think that was going to work? 2) Main Character Guy and Main Character Girl are both driven by a need for revenge because the Empress killed their clans, but then we're shown that their clans were absolutely awful and made them commit war crimes and then they have horrible PTSD? Why are they so hell-bent on exacting revenge for their abusers, again? 3) I laughed out loud so hard when this new empire, which can't even feed its own people and is coming apart at the seams, wants to conquer the multiverse and sends a massive invasion force of six entire dudes to a whole other dimension to conquer it in the name of elfkind? What was their plan exactly? Did they think the entire other dimension would only have five dudes defending it? I also love how they just kind of wandered away while Balor murdered his assistant nonchalantly in a scene where we're supposed to be sad that this non-character died I guess.
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Heard it somewhere: Blood Origin's plot is basically every newbie GM's first attempt at running a homebrew campaign. 7 adventurers of different classes going on an epic quest to stop an evil wizard from opening a portal to another dimension, running into side quests and wacky shenanigans along the way. You can't tell a more generic fantasy story if you tried.
And 3 on 4 of this GM has do better.
You might not find something more generic, but it says a LOT that am amateur GM can probably tell the story better than this literal shit-show maybe 7 out of 10 times.
The GM that cannot do better than this will be the GM rethinking whether the role is meant for them even if it is their first time.
Well... have you watched the Willow shiw on Disney+ ?
@@justinhammer3196 OHMYGOD! Please don't bring that dumpster fire up, we're losing faith in human creativity and storytelling as it is.
Avalach and Eredin are pretty big names in the world of the witcher franchise.
The former is one of the most powerful magic users in the entire franchise. A wise sage with questionable morality and a desperate need to protect the Elder Blood at all costs as it's not only sacred, but those that carry it are also decendant of his lover that he lost.
The latter the the imposing king of the wild hunt. An elite cavalcade of riders that travel travel to the world of the witcher to take slaves to their world. With his world threaten, Eredin was desperate to use the Elder Blood to open a portal into the world of the witcher and conquer it.
Netflix butchered both characters.
THIS THANK YOU!!
they made avallac’h some sniveling little coward with barely and control over magic, and while i personally felt that eredin’s storyline with the merchant dude added some humanity to a character that really needed it, bottom line they failed to make him the imposing conquerer he is.
not to mention EVERYTHING ELSE WRONG WITH IT ALL!
hissrich and her team deserve to lose their jobs.
@@shibbycakes1 they also made them gay lovers
I can see why Henry bailed
According to Henry Cavill the shows writers resents the source material and openly mocks it.
@@Olebull93 Well I guess at least they give us something to resent and openly mock.
I haven't read the books that feature Eredin or Avallac'h yet, but in the game they are tall, imposing, intimidating characters. I really have nothing against the actors portraying them but they are painfully miscast.
What’s insane to me is that it’s not even the Witcher. It’s just some dudes DND campaign.
It was the endless narration that amazed me. It was intrusive and basically an ongoing admission of defeat. They couldn’t tell the story any other way.
Well you cut as many episodes as they had to and this is what you get.
Even the narration was often just explaining obvious things.
“And two became three.”
@@into_play3226Man, the narrator from Peppa Pig really branched out these days
Tell, don't show.
Too much narration = could as well read a book with illustrations.
Something that's often mentioned in writing seminars and boot camps: if the plot you want to tell is "simple," you have to make up for it in execution. Even a character buying tomatoes at the market stall can become an interesting scene with good dialogue and setup.
Farscape literally did this - while getting (crackers) on a trade planet, they attract Peacekeeper attention and have to run - with a pallet of crackers and no other food, causing conflict over the relative lack of food.
Unironically the "Potion seller" meme is a great example of this.
Why are studios having such issues with fantasy stories these days? Amazon and Netflix keep shitting the bed!
My theory is that there are very few people in the Hollywood hierarchy who grew up appreciating fantasy books and media, and the culture around it. The whole genre is foreign to them. Studio executives were the cool kids who focused on shallow popular culture, who didn't read books, who could never immerse themselves in a fantasy world. They mocked and bullied the people who cared about fantasy stories. They still do.
Because they want to force you to say "she" to the man with a penis.
Because women are "strong" and "independent".
And a lot of other lies that are just that - lies and have no scientific backup.
Only HOTD succeeded.
hollywood actually sees people that like the material as a red flag.
they hired people that don't like the witcher on purpose.
That is simple to answer, really. The reason is forced representation. And please do note I added the term FORCED for a reason. There's nothing wrong in theory with representing ethnic groups, cultures, etc... IN. THEORY. But in practice, it is really easy to screw up, specially with fantasy.
Modern writers of the kind hired by Hollywood, Netflix or Amazon have an obsession to, in their own words: "REFLECT OUR MODERN REALITY." Forced Diversity is just one symptom of this mentality, where they simply MUST make every people in every place in every age have about the same ethnic composition as the bay area in california today.
And you can say "race doesn't mean skill" or anything to that effect to justify the inclusion of actors of certain ethnicitied. But I'm sorry, no, that's bollocks. You wouldn't have a morbidly obese white man play a kunoichi in a period piece about the sengoku jidai even if he was the best damned actor you could possibly imagine. He just won't fit! Skill isn't enough. As racist as it may sound, ethnicity matters too.
For example lets see the rings of power, and for this example lets take out the baggage of being LoTR, lets act as if Tolkien had nothing to do with it and RoP was purely its own thing with no books. And lets say we wanted to maximize diversity. Well, then Numenor would be our prime candidate, it is a very large very rich coastal city of a primarily mercantile seafaring culture, you would expect people from literally all over the place in there. Look at late medieval Cadiz for instance, it was a veritable melting pot for its age. Meanwhile, say, the Harfoots would probably all have the same ethnicity, because they are a completely isolationist rural landlocked culture. They don't breed with outsiders and are extremely unlikely to even interact with them, so they'll probably look extremely similar to each other. The elves would also likely be somewhat homogeneous, given how rare it is for them to marry with other peoples, while the humans in the southerlands are literally the result of a massive refugee wave from a continent spanning war, so they actually should look like USA or mexico in terms of diversity. And yet in the series it is the humans that are all british, and Numenor is relatively homogeneous, while elves and harfoots are both somehow multiethnic. That simply makes no sense. Hence why I say FORCED Representation. Inclusion can work, I'd love to see a good inclusive piece, but you need to be really good to make it work.
And my point is way broader than skintone, that's just the most obvious visual indicator. Lets for a second talk politics... I swear I won't get political myself. See, I hope everyone has noticed, but... Most writers working for these circles are left wingers. And there's nothing wrong with being left wing. I am a left winger myself! BUT. If you're obsessed with "representing modern realities" you don't unmarry your writing from your politics. And a lesser known fact is: FANTASY IS AN INHERENTLY RIGHT WING LEANING GENRE.
It is! I'm serious! Fantasy requires you accept certain tropes. Like feudalism, given its almost always set in the middle ages. Like racism, given the biological differences between elves, orks, dwarves, etc. are way more pronounced than those between any two given humans no matter how remote or isolated their culture. Etc, etc, etc. Fantasy depicts a world with at least some inherent right wing traits attached, and there's really nothing you can do about it. And if you, like me, can separate real world politics from fantasy worlds with bleeping dragons, then that's not gonna be an issue for you. But if you're like your average hollywood writer... That's gonna trigger you, deeply. And the fact most successful fantasy franchises have cis white straight old men as their authors just adds fuel to that in their eyes. It's literally everything they have sworn to take down, subvert, defeat, and dunk on rolled into a single genre.
And so we see the other cardinal sin of these writers. Lack of respect. Note how even the press noted that writers were mocking the books and ranting about them even while adapting them during Blood Origin. I know we all have the mental image of the poor exploited writer being puppeted by megacorps, but that has long since stopped being reality. Oh don't get me wrong they're still paid scraps. But nepotism has long since taken hold, they don't just hire anyone, there's ingroups and actual discrimination at play here. That's why they are so heavily skewed in many demographic ways. Amongst other things as many pointed out they've by now actually come out and admited they consider liking the source material a red flag and pushes for sticking to the book are met with open derision and ostracism.
And the issue with that kinda people is even when they're the literal bottom of the food chain, their ego is the size of jupiter. They don't think blood origin is bad, they think YOU are bad for not liking it. They'll never admit fantasy can be good despite being somewhat right wing, it either fits their view of the world, or is evil, period. And they sure as shit won't ever admit they screwed up.
And when you have someone with no respect for the source material, open hatred for the genre, no self awareness and someone who on top of that discriminates against the target audience... Well that's gonna be a shit product innit.
So why do they all suck? It's all the same people, with the same practices, in the same environment, and their view is antithetical to the genre. That's why.
- How did he escape?
- By being off screen...of course.
20% isn't that much better than 13%... honestly I think it got that low score because what happened in the Witcher is becoming a pattern, and people are getting sick of show writers ignoring and deleting history and lore and existing culture in pre-existing material to insert their own modern day narrative and still calling it that pre-existing material, when it's not... if they would have called the show anything but a pre-existing franchise, it might have gotten 20% instead of 13%
Spot on.
Seriously couldn’t have said it better
I agree as well. I would love to know if you think my story has potential. th-cam.com/video/61Kl9492BBM/w-d-xo.html Please let me know what you think of The Tales Of Masculus!
No, I’m very glad the writers of the Boys did it.
@@ninebrains4769 Yeah true , with the boys is a another story , but then again the original comics were just about someone's pure hatred (who made em) of superheroes-
Just want to mention that I truly appreciate finding a review for this series that does not throw the word "woke" left and right every five minutes 😅
100%.
I fucking wish we could have discussions about stuff like Blood Origin and Rings of Power as part of the fantasy genre and not as "TV series".
It's so goddamn annoying to have these remnants of "ANTI SJW" bs still poisoning discussions.
I fucking hated this thing (and stopped watching, fuck Netflix) and won't give a view to RoP 2e for the experience itself/writing and the role the play in the business model of these companies, I don't give a damn if some WASP dude is angry about it for his own political discourse.
Yeah the show was just badly written. There’s plenty of “woke” shows out there that are amazing. Good Omens for example. Honestly the part of the show that i enjoyed the most was with the dwarf avenging her girlfriend. It was actually interesting and i wanted to figure out what was going on with her. Just a shame that she had nothing to do with the actual story lol. As soon as she joined up with the rest of them with no character justification it became boring and predictable again. I hate when people blame a show’s downfall on “woke” stuff when it’s just lazy writers shoving in boring characters to meet diversity quotas required by corporate executives
@@flynnlea so true. So many amazing stories were considered ‘woke’ in their day, and having diversity isn’t bad. But it IS bad when they shoehorn it in, change characters to gain some inclusion tokens, and make it their only traits and ignore storytelling. It’s annoying that Hollywood seems to only make ‘woke’ stories by taking an existing, beloved classic and completely butchering it. Can’t they just make some original, ‘diverse’ characters and genuine stories and not offend literally everyone along the way? Probably not, cuz of all the out-of-touch, ‘well-intentioned’, holier-than-thou people in Hollywood.
This. As soon as I watch a review that throws in the word "woke" 100 times in just the first few minutes, I check out. A lot of youtubers parrot the same tiring agenda for 30 minutes while not even talking about the show itself. Yeah the show is "woke" but what exactly is wrong with it? Is it badly written? Are the actors garbage? Is the dialogue trash? What about the timeline?
If you want to film a 25 minute rant, call it a rant and not an actual review
It's so suprsing and so refreshing to see someone who isn't extremely negative sensational rant about media. Already gained my sub
This show is all over the place and I legit feel sorry for the actors and many other people who worked on this show. So many lines, moments miss the mark and instead of being dramatic or poignant they come off as forced, cringey or funny. One of the most unintentionally funny moments was when the Empress dies and asks her people to remember her. This, I assume was supposed to be a "she did bad things for the right reasons, she was misguided but had good intentions and as she is dying she hopes that people will see the good in her" moment, bittersweet and earned. But because of the pacing of the show it comes off really silly, because she was Empress for like a week before she died. She might have been Empress for 5 years, but since we can't really tell how much time has passed,it is just confusing. The elves whom she has been talking to probably don't even know who she is supposed to be.
I actually viewed it in a totally different way. I saw it as her attempting at being brave and noble, but I felt that at least for her arc the show had outlined it decently well enough to show how even though her dreams were based in something that she felt was real and tangible, she was still a spoiled princess whose 'history' was uninformed and unrealistic. I felt like her death was actually kind of cathartic because it took the oomph out of the way that colonial powers are often portrayed in pieces like this. Her story deserved an end so devoid of power and triumph, and though I agree with many of the other criticisms, it felt good to see her be shown as such a true withering coward at the very end.
@@gabriellebeauchemin9953 It is one way of looking at it. It is open to interpretation but most story archs in this show are all over the place. Some moments come out of nowhere or are logically flawed. Like how the two mages are confident that merging Fjall with the monster heart will work as if they do this every day, though their conversation also implies that the only time they tried something similar it did not work. And Fjall, the proto-witcher defeats the monster in the end by throwing a big blade at it a tad harder, even though when it first attacked it was shown that the monster was impervious to arrows and most people who tried to use their swords were evaporated in a second.
I feel sorry for the actors because they are trying and they deserved a better story.
The elves were basically humans with pointy ears, how terrible can you be in world building when you have a great source material to draw from/adapt?
They could have waited with blood origin until Regis was introduced in the Witcher show, making Regis tell the story instead. Because of the obvious reason that he and his kind came through the conjunction..
They could have also told the love story about ciris ancestors - also told a bit in first episode in Witcher 2
Two fantastic ideas here already served on silver platter
But what do I know, I’m just a toxic Witcher fan
The show was doomed as soon as some corpo decided the premise. In the books Conjunction of Spheres just happened. It's not exactly one throwaway line, but close. Same with creation of Witchers - because of CoS there were alot monsters, that means a niche formed, and creation of witchers filled it. Sapkowski invested no effort whatsoever fleshing those out.
If people involved had even shred of competence, they would have chosen another story to be a prequel. The fall of Kaer Moren had potential close to GoT's best, or if they wanted less action and more talk, the story of Lara Doren and how exactly she ended up eloping and dying in a ditch (~). If they wanted something epic and expensive, they could go with first invasion and have Vilgerfortz and Lodge as MCs, or show first contact between elves and humans, the friendship that led to betrayal and war.
It's like they thought GoT S8 was the best thing ever and decided to emulate it.
That would’ve been great😢
@@varthaner4617 so many great options and lost opportunities.. it’s saddening
@@varthaner4617 if they’d chosen to cover Lara Dorren’s story they would have been able to introduce Avallach as well, which achieves the same goal. They could even have introduced Eredin at the same time if they moved a couple of minor things around, explain why he wants the elder blood (which connects back to the main series really well bc they teased the wild hunt at the end of season 2). They could even have used the conjunction of the spheres as a starting off point instead of a finale, which would introduce it as an important event for people watching the show that don’t know the books or games but without fucking the lore up entirely with monoliths and shit. They could have set up the existence of the Aen Elle and Aen Seidhe by saying that the conjunction was the reason they were split apart (i know that’s not book accurate, but i think that simplifying it for the show would probably work well). Then after that they could jump forwards in time to Lara, Avallach and Lod. They would even still get to introduce Ithlinne and the prophecy.
I don't want the Netflix version to even get to Regis. I DONT WANT TO SEE HOW THEY BUTCHER MY BOY
They added Eredin and Avallac'h just so they can loosely tie it into the main show. Which is not only lazy, but doesn't make sense in the context of the source material at all. Literally why is Avallac'h a little wimp?
Because they hate men and are LGBT people that write the scripts
Because the story is happening hundreds of years in the past. Avallac'h is basically a child in this series.
@@zesky6654 no its because they hate men and make men look weak and insecure
@@zesky6654 hes not even from the same race of elves as the rest of the cast and shouldn’t be there, and neither should eredin
I really feel bad for Liam, he is gonna get shit for this, no matter how good he might be at it. Poor choice to take this role...
Money.
That swearing thing has become so jarring when it’s done purely for the sake of being edgy
It was so desperate and weird in BO. It genuinely feels more like a parody.
I'm a fan of Tarantino who actually understands how to use swearing in the context of character, situation and/or setting and makes it sound natural. This, however, comes off as a seven year old who's learned a new swear word and is trying to impress their friends.
even more for everyone non-american as swearing on television is very common.
I tried watching the first episode and I was left dumbfounded at how this script made it to production.
You had a stellar cast who was left putting this together the best that they could.
This just solidifies my thought that Cavill was exactly right to separate himself from this.
I did like the cast. I think they did the best they could do... but that's about all you can give it.
you can't tell me these scripts weren't written by ChatGPT or something like that
@@evobe It shows that it was.
Ill tell you how... The writer and producer are very woke and tick a bunch of boxes. Their level of competence, talent, and vision don't matter. Netflix and Amazon both have this issue of not actually looking for quality showrunners and in return 95% of the stuff they put out suck. It's why I cancelled Netflix lol.
@@brennangum6236 Don’t let them off easy by blaming their political beliefs. They suck as writers. If you suck at storytelling then you suck at storytelling.
Honestly this feels like right way to do criticism. Yes you couldn't give it high praise but you went about it in a reasonable rational way of explaining how it failed in the mechanics rather than the angry rants I see too often where people seem to be pushing an agenda rather providing a fair review.
You are absolutely correct...
Thank you. Tbh, I thought people were overreacting because people always do that because they think it’s like some political agenda. But then I saw the show and it sucked but some of peoples reason why it sucked were silly to me.
it's the show that's pushes agenda. People get angry when something they like (Witcher, it's world and lore) is butchered by arrogant showrunners and talentless, lazy writers. Anger isn't conductive for methodical disection of this abomination, true, and yet it is completly justified. Author of this flick is calm and criticises the show on techincal merit only, not adressing the assasination of original characters and desecration of original world, because, as he admits he is very Normie, a guy whose whole knowlage of the Witcher comprises of two seasons of the Netflix show, in itself a travesty of source material and woke agenda driven crap. He is simply not invested in the Witcher universe so he sees no sin, and feels no anger. Good for him, but that doesn't make Netflix's treatment of Witcher any better.
If you still don't get it imagine a show that takes something you love, some sort of book or previously well told story that you really like and twists it to the point that what's left doesn't bear any resamblance to the source. You know the original and all you can see is a brutaly disfigured caricature of it still bearing falsely the proud name of the character, or strory you liked but it is not it. Would you be pleased?
@@jaceksudol8301 source material is nice. I've got boxes and boxes of comic books to say yea I can get into source material as much as any fan.
But ultimately change is good if it's done well. TMNT 2012 changes things up but those changes give a chance to tell some interesting new stories instead of retread the good old stuff.
Left, right, I just want to be entertained when it comes down to it. I could care less who the producer voted last election as long as the end production is a great bit of entertainment.
@@channelsofash what do you mean by pushing an agenda? These angry ranters are saying that pushing an agenda by Netflix is one of the reasons they butchered the show, it's not an agenda. If it is then you are just pushing an agenda that the angry ranters are just pushing an agenda that Netflix is just pushing its agenda. Don't misuse this word. Although I agree that just angrily attacking this shitshow (even if it's fully justified) isn't interesting to watch at all. As a person with solid books knowledge I expect the youtuber to have it too and actively refer to the source material instead of just laughing.
My issue is that 1,200 years separate the two series'. Even set in a fictional land, its hard to argue that society/civilization has not changed much in terms of technology/life.
Not at all. Technological advancement is not inevitable, it's perfectly plausible that a society would stay stagnant for extended periods of time, even thousands of years, if nothing stimulated it to innovate. There have been much longer periods on Earth since the birth of civilization that saw little to no change in the way people lived. It's only a very recent development that people look to the future with expectations of progress and significant change.
The princess turned empress had a bedroom that looked like it was missing a flat screen TV.
They directly asked for all that hate when they put ‘Witcher’ in the title. If they called it ‘Stupid generic fantasy’ no one would’ve hated it, as no one would’ve watched it.
Netflix will only order a 2nd season if it gets squid games huge and that’s such a big problem they have as a network. They’ll cancel every actual good show that only has one season to replace it over and over until they find their new diamond jewel. They ruin almost everything they touch and I can’t wait until they’re forced to choose consumers over their share holders.
Hahahaha Love that you included Viva La Dirt League's "Witcher Logic" footage in this.
I was gonna comment the same!! No one would tell the difference anyway 🤣🤣🤣
Came to the comments looking for this XD
I feel so bad for all of the actors in both Shows. Genuine talent. Horrid casting and hard to work with scripts.
If Netflix keeps doing this, HBO will be in no need to spend any more money on advertising
Honestly this is one of the most seemingly unbiased review about the witcher blood origin I have seen.
The Witcher Blood Origins lore is like a house.
The creators went to the foundation of the house, said "This is no good, we have to tear this all out!" They then proceed to tear out the foundation of the house while expecting the house to stay where it is.
Avalach is such an interesting character in the books and even in the 3rd game. The writers ruined him to be honest.
the fact that merwin (or whatever her name was lmao) is always clothed in iris van herpen rlly irked me too, it kinda ruins the suspension of reality by linking the characters to modern brands and putting them in modern clothing
Thank you!!!!! I thought the very same thing when watching!
I enjoyed it, but thats just because I'm a mega fan of iris van herpen. But you are definitely right about it breaking immersion.
Yeah, as much as I love Iris and all of her designs, it really takes ya right out of the story any time she comes on screen. That being said, if they had actually committed and made ALL of the elves/people of the capitol wear similar avant-garde clothing, with interesting textures/structure/and fabric choice, then she wouldn't have felt out of place at all and would have helped make the elves feel like they had their own unique cultural style. As it stands now, they all look like humans because they all dress like humans.
Rings of Power: I'm the most butchered adaptation ever
Blood origins: Hold my beer..
Blood Origin was entertaining if only because of the excellent cast who did their best. The actress playing the dwarf really stood out.
Honestly after watching the series and listening to what people had to say about Netflix and the Witcher franchise in general I feel like they treated this as some kind of "Hail Mary" type of situation. Where they hoped the "extra lore" would add to the franchise, without realizing they were digging an even deeper grave for themselves.
There is absolutely no saving for something you do not respect, and it looked like they had no respect for Blood Origins, The Witcher, and their source material.
Needed to be a comedy action show, like Xena. What made Willow more watchable that either Witcher:Blood Origin or Rings of Power was that it didn't take itself too seriously, at least in it's second half.
WILLOW is not good though, barely watchable. the acting is pretty bad
@@mariosblago94 At least better than Blood Origin, which isn't saying much.
imagine Netflix's The Witcher and Amazon's RoP were as good as Game of Thrones S1~4 and HOTD. Oh man....😔
Thank you for your measured review! I agree that this show was NOT good, but it was far from the worst thing I’ve seen on Netflix. I have also seen many reviewers shit on the show for being “woke” which, in my opinion, had nothing to do with its failure as a show.
The non-dragon, but very dragon like monster had lazers ::rolling eyes:: that turned people into "mist" I'm going to guess for production cost reasons. If you can't afford to do the special effect, then just don't the make the production.
Great job critiquing this show without sounding like everyone else who hated it. If that's what you were going for (and your closing comments seem to imply that) - resounding success here.
netflix cancels practically every good show they have put out lately but had no problem throwing money at this mess. this is why i never watch netflix anymore.
it’s also a mystery how they managed to nab amazing talent like michelle yeoh and minnie driver and do them so dirty.
" I am done being a coward, but the Coward is not done with me " , Dear Netflix, hire me. This philosophy writing is easy.
Clearly they hired the Sphinx from Mystery Men
What I'm hearing is. Netflix realized, for once, something was popular and wanted to gain from that but since they have thrown money at so much only to cancel it one season in they decided you know we said 6 episodes but we can do it in 4 🤦🏻♀️
I appreciate your comment at the end.
I got whiplash from how quickly the Witcher shows all fell apart.
It’s so good to watch a review that doesn’t act like the showrunner personally unalived the reviewer’s family and actually analyzes the show
Yeah but in this case it really does suck that we have a showrunner who doesn't even like the source material making witcher shows. These are characters we love and are intrigued by. Why does a talentless hack who doesn't love these characters get to make the tv shows which tell their stories? It just sucks. Be better if there was no show at all. At least then theres still the possibility of getting a good show rather than the certainty we are going to get crap.
The Book of Amun-Ra line broke me 🤣
Basically, a bad DM in D&D who is not good with story creation, then decides to go from homebrew to created story, back to homebrew.
If the writers don’t like the source material why are they the ones writing it? Shouldn’t that be part of the interview?!?
Hey, just wanted to say I really appreciate your style of honest reviews.
Found your channel through the Rings of Power video and it felt really refreshing to hear such a comprehensive review, highlighting both the good and the bad sides of the show. Keep it up!
imagine if they had just reintroduced Gandalf after he was captured and he escaped sauruman and their just like “yeah hes here now no biggie”
I had low expectations for Blood Origin.... and those low hopes were scuttled far out to sea, and that was a big bummer...
That said, thank you for giving credit to the actors, despite the show lacking, the performances show that everyone on set was putting in the effort. The little mannerisms that each person brought to their character was wonderful even if I don't remember a single character's name.
Yes! Viva la Dirt League! Anyway, found the Michael Cera comparison to NETFLIX Avallac'h hilarious but that's an example where your unfamiliarity with the material shines through. The deep fans LOATHE that casting. We loathe Avallac'h's inclusion here at all. This whole series was a big, steaming dump on the lore. I'm ignoring all things Netflix where the Witcher is concerned.
"My uninformed enjoyment " is one of my new phrases
The Viva La Dirt League clips while you were saying about how the show feels like a parody was **chef's kiss.**
Yeah, I noped out as soon as I saw the horrible, fourth-wall-breaking 'framing device' set up between Jaskier and Minnie Driver's character. I HATE what they've done to Jaskier in general, both in The Witcher and this show - they've turned him into a cross between the Donkey to Geralt's Shrek and some Random Modern-Day Dude who's accidentally been dropped into a medieval fantasy world and is still trying to adjust.
It‘s nice to hear a constructive review from a non-witcher-superfan. I understand their frustrations but their reasoning is sometimes just as bad as the storytelling in Blood origin.
ps. That smiling Geralt in the end really awakes feelings of madness inside my stomach. dont do that again haha
Thank you for being one of the very few reviewers on here that actually had criticisms on the writing and storytelling without resorting to misogyny, racism, and queer-antagonism. Like, I KNOW there’s more to why this season was hot garbage than just “woman bad” or “non-white ppl bad”. The writing itself is the problem, and this video stopped me from having to sit through 4 hrs of pure suffering in order to find out for myself.
I agree... Sometimes it's really difficult to judge if the show is actually bad... Or people are just racist...
It kinda depends on who's watching it 😅 a friend of mine watched it and loved it! But she was looking for a cliche fantasy movie/mini-series and this is exactly that. I (who played the games a lot and loves learning about the lore) was very much disappointed. I just hoped the series to feel more like a Witcher story, instead of a random fantasy story. If you told me this was a game of thrones spin-off, I'd believe you 🤣 (no hate on GoT aside from season 8!).
And I watched it while doing 100 pages of reading for my upper div course and I loved it. I mean, I was only JUST paying enough attention and had no concept of the pacing because of that, but I liked it!
@@carlosnunez6217 ooh yeah! It's perfect for background noise! Even if you missed a bit here and there, you can still follow the story 🤭 good luck on your course/study!
I just assumed that I missed the inciting incident because I was doing homework at the same time :O this is all making a lot more sense now
"How Bad Is it?" -Yes.
I watched 1 and half episodes and came here. You basically made points for everything I was thinking so far. It really felt like they were doing too much and nothing at all at the same time. They gave me absolutely no reason to be invested in the story or the characters. I also think they were like "oh everyone loved Henry Cavill's f bomb so let's capitalize on that" and completely missing the reasons why people loved that moment in the original series. Similarly, It felt like they were trying to make a game of thrones type of cast, but failed to understand why the GOT characters are so beloved and why big moments in GOT really had an impact on the audience. I'm only 3 books into the witcher series, but I love them and this just didn't give me the same feelings the books or the original show did.
this video is refreshing. i have no prior history with the witcher ip, just the first 2 seasons which i've reasonably enjoyed, but i stopped after 2 episodes because i felt it was just sloppy and inefficient in its storytelling. i was disappointed, because i really wanted to like it, or at least be entertained by it for a few hours. i appreciate this analysis for its focus on the technical aspects of what went wrong, such as the writing and pacing, *not* on any nonsense like "wokeness" or whatever people like to whine about instead of thinking critically. the show is bad because the writers weren't good at writing, not because there are black people in it.
I watched the whole thing 😖 hoping it was actually leading somewhere. But at every turn, I was asking “why did they do that”…none of the “plot” turns made sense. At the end, I still had no idea what it was actually about…I think, though can’t be sure, it was trying to be an explanation as to how Cyri came to have Elder Blood….?
It astonishes me that shows like this get green lit for a second season and great shows like inside job get canceled with so much hype for the next season. I will never understand how out of touch these people are
I’m bitter over 1899.
yeah, it really is a pity :/
If I had to guess, they are actually not aiming for the most bingeworthy shows. If customers binge the show, then Netflix needs to deliver more. If one or two hours a day are consumed, Netflix can keep its customers with way lower need of show resupply. Maybe they have some stupid algorithm that is designed to delete shows that are too good. Like the opposite of HBO
Wait, inside job got canceled? Its second season was just released right?
Although Netflix absolutely butchered the Witcher with its ridiculous " lore" and hated core material, its got nothing on HBO's devastating ass-to-mouth raping it unleashed on Scooby-Doo's VELMA
I enjoyed the show but you definitely brought up a lot of good points and reminded me of a couple things that had bother me watching it.
Imagine people actually just adapting the story that fandom was hyped for in the first place. Like those books give enough to make multiple episodes series of just good quality plot. And then you can go full artistic freedom on actual fighting, casting, scenes, scenography, clothes and monsters.
I can understand the princess coupe (sort of) 'cause the beginning kinda hint how much said princess disliked being like a bargaining chip for peace. So it was like ohh okay, she disliked it so allied with the evil faction to avoid it. It was flat but like ohh okay, moving on... at least we were shown how it went to pt B from pt A. But one thing that really got me ehhh was about that elf who first deciphered the monoliths. One second we were showed him in prison, next he was with his sister healer. And that's it. We were just told he escaped, which frankly was just bad. At first, I was really like huh? And also took me a sec to realise it was that same elf.
And if anyone noticed, yeah, I just described them rather than use their names. 'cause I really don't remember (their names) and can't be bothered. It was that forgettable for me, which was a downer considering S1 of Witcher was good. Even the ending felt flat
[Edit] ohh okay, I wrote the earlier statements while still watching your intro. Didn't know you'd also be covering it but yes!! Exactly. It also got me confused if whether or not I accidentally skipped a scene. I even contemplated for a sec checking the prev episode before settling to whatever and abolishing the plan. Glad it wasn't just me 💀
I hope Netflix pulls the plug on the witcher soon.. So the witch can't ruin it anymore than she already have.
I feel sorry for Michelle Yeoh, she is so good actress and deserves a real global hit.
She doesn't speak English well enough.
This is par for the course for Netflix originals. Sink a ton of money into random things, then have each episode half-ass written by a different person they found on Fiverr. The scripts aren't just bad, they seem like they were purposefully written poorly by writers who are angry with the producer/director.
I agree. I am shocked at how bad this writing is. This feels like our culture rotting to me. I remember when every netflix original was great. Now, they are actually difficult to watch. Why are they doing this?
Honestly I wanted the empress to win! All 7 heroes bored me and had no personality, plus win after win wasn’t something believable
10:27 it’s amazing to me how in a single clip you where able to show how bad the narration was in the story. in the clip the narrator talked about the protagonists ending up being hunted but saying this was completely unnecessary since you saw the guy holding up a wanted poster of himself. you could’ve cut out the narration completely and you would’ve still gotten the same amount of information by just watching attentively. it’s so stupid
The Michael Cera elf actor also gave an AMAZING weird-ass performance in this one episode in season 3 of Atlanta. I hope he starts to get some bigger roles!
I liked the casting quite a lot in this show. This could've been amazing, had these people had something proper to work with. I do sincerely hope they find better work after this. I hate it when I see very promising actors whose career sort of ends because of a role they gave their all for in a poorly written show or movie. 😔
Sometimes you just have to do a Batwoman and can everything. Anyone at Netflix with taste should have known this was gonna be a dumpster fire with no redeemable features. A modern tale of bad writing is the only purpose this show serves now.
I am now encouraged to watch all the NPC Man by Viva La Dirt League parodies of the Witcher.
Before my sampling of Blood Origin (I had to stop it was so bad) I had faith that although The Witcher was diverging from how the books handled character and plot developments it would get to showing onscreen the main points in particular how the books brought the story revolving around Ciri / Geralt / Yennefer to the conclusion. However, after watching this and other reviews and sampling the BO I no longer trust the show runners to do the right thing i.e. respect the source material.
When you mentioned parody and showed Epic NPC Man… I lolled like crazy. Those guys are. EPIC! 😂
It's funny how the writers thought original Witcher series sucks and thought they could make it better by rewriting the story as they like to but failed miserably. It's always so satisfying to watch an incompetent megalomaniac failing what he believes he's good at.
9:12 That has to be one of the... funniest fights I've seen in a while. Like, hahah talk about suspension of disbelief going going and it's gone.
Tbh I thought Witcher season 1 was pretty bad so this show just feels slightly worse. I loved the games though.
I enjoyed it but with all Netflix shows I have now lowered my expectation to expect rubbish so it's just mindless entertainment now and also like a bingo card where you can guarantee there will be certain things in it that will be ticked off
1:02 I wasn't ready for that drag 😭 😫 😆😆
Thank you for such a fair approach to this. I am very sad by the way Netflix has handled The Witcher IP. But have needed a sensible, story based place for my grievances. It's very nice to see your approach as I concur. And to add my humble opinions: Netflix have broken too many elements of the foundational lore and characters for my taste. I sincerely wish they would have made an entirely different fantasy show instead of trying to bend the Witcher into unrecognisable shapes. The lack of accountability in the continued response from the Witcher writers and particularly the showrunner, is frustrating as it feels like the motivations for the lore changes and the heavy-handed (embarrassing) narration in Blood Origin feels quite petty and unprofessional as if it is only the last step away from the writers casting themselves to tell the audience they are in charge and will to whatever they like (out of spite). My impression is that it was a move to flex control but instead was merely a doubling down on refusing to take accountability. I've just never understood how they thought so little of the Witcher fanbase as shown in their actions in response to the missteps with their handling of the franchise prior to Blood Origin. They have known how unhappy fans were because of large deviations. And in reality, who exactly is meant to be the audience for Blood Origin? It certainly isn't fans of the Witcher IP. And the production and story are so incredibly poor, it can't be to gain new fans of the series as it feels nothing like The Witcher IP or even S1 and S2 that Netflix created. They really shouldn't have made Blood Origin. If NETFLIX had done what HBO did w GOT and made a pilot first, then workshopped the things that worked or not with test audiences to see the reception, they'd have seen that nothing worked and scrapped the whole thing bc reality, they'd have saved themselves a LOT of humiliation, time and money. I cannot accept BO as Witcher lore and I really wish it didn't exist.
Thanks for your last words in the video. Got you my subscription. Those guys feel like fox news to me
the director for the blood origin series must be feeling very sad now.
I think the saddest part is that it seems like the show runner do not care about the show or the audience... It could have been so good but they are running it to the ground...
Referencing Arrested Development always wins my heart over
That makeup and some costumes looks like parody itself 😂
Nice review. I freaking looooved the Michael Cera elf segment Lmao 😂 Glad I never had to watch this crap. After Amazon’s “Rings of Power”, I have very little patience for poorly written, non-traditional, anti-canon, politic-injected, […] over-processed American cheese-esque fantasy shows. Every now and then, I’ll go for a little American cheese, but I’d never make it the sole element of dietary nutrition, if you get what I’m saying. I actually enjoyed “Suicide Squad” for what it was- a little over-processed and superficial, but overall entertaining. In hindsight though, your critique about it makes a lot of sense. I’ll subscribe. Keep making videos!
Like any other bombs, the F-bombs have to be deployed strategically for maximum effect. Example:
- Smart, quality F-drops: Dead Space 2, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
- Juvenile, 3 points for effort: Cyberpunk 2077.
- Missed: Blood Origin.
They could have saved money by just showing Mini Driver tell the story in it's entirety, and film nothing more.
When rating something, there no difference between last place, and next to last place.
It could be any generic fantasy show that was made in 2022.
Not really a Witcher story.
It wasn’t great but I felt like the actors were all in. The writing was the weakest part. Story was pretty cookie cutter. Costumes and cast were good.
Was not the worst Netflix show ever. It wasn’t worse than the movie Bright.
To be fair, the use of the f word is minimal compared to a fan when watching the episode.
You don't know anything about the lore? That's fine, neither do the writers. They quite literally pulled Blood Origin out of there ass. It's funny really, because everyone realized the departure from the source material was causing the initial series to suck, and then they decided to gamble everything on going even further by developing an entire plot which had no source material at all. Ballsy move.
"Lark" was so annoying I was actively rooting for anyone else but her, almost no characters were well written, there was some "class warfare" ideas allegedly but we never actually saw anything concrete, the dialogue was poor, no chemistry between characters, it just goes on.
The main issue I have with it is, it didn't need to be made it doesn't add anything to anything..
I appreciate the all time low reference
I appreciate all of this well-thought-out criticism of what was a really bad show. I'm a Witcher fan who thought this show was absolute trash, and when I came to TH-cam to see some reviews, I was saddened to see a lot of people spending a whole lot of energy complaining about the diversity of the cast and the "wokeness" of the whole project, rather than talking about the poor storytelling, bad visuals, and editing hack job that made this such a miserable watch.
Some other ridiculousness:
1) Their super smart plan to sneak into Capital City disguised as guards...while the most famous (apparently) freedom fighter in the land has her iconic hair clearly visible, and they've got a dwarf somehow in elf armor in a world where they have established that elves are racist against dwarves? How the hell did they think that was going to work?
2) Main Character Guy and Main Character Girl are both driven by a need for revenge because the Empress killed their clans, but then we're shown that their clans were absolutely awful and made them commit war crimes and then they have horrible PTSD? Why are they so hell-bent on exacting revenge for their abusers, again?
3) I laughed out loud so hard when this new empire, which can't even feed its own people and is coming apart at the seams, wants to conquer the multiverse and sends a massive invasion force of six entire dudes to a whole other dimension to conquer it in the name of elfkind? What was their plan exactly? Did they think the entire other dimension would only have five dudes defending it? I also love how they just kind of wandered away while Balor murdered his assistant nonchalantly in a scene where we're supposed to be sad that this non-character died I guess.
This looks like someone filmed a larp session