Tag: fantasy

It is the most magical time of the year, so time to watch the new shitty fantasy series.

The show alternates between two almost totally separate shows; this season is based on prequel short stories, so apparently nobody will meet anyone until the end and the videogame starts.

Moody almost monochrome Witcher scenes where Geralt[sic, Polish can't spell "Gerald"?] broods and delivers Batman lines, refuses to do anything for anyone, but is clearly so desperate for coin he'll fight monsters on spec ("Kikimora" here being a weird swampy spider-ogre thing, rather than the Slavic mythological one which is a pair of good and evil house fairies). He meets a sexy witch in a bar who keeps the locals from murdering him and buys him beer, but he runs off with a little girl who kills rats to get a job with a magician. Who has a fairy fountain full of naked dryads, and wants him to kill the sexy witch from the bar.

Much brighter but still washed-out medieval political shit, battlefields run nothing like a real medieval battlefield (no honor guard for the queen, who leads from the front, lot of Lord of the Rings kind of cgi crowd shit). Tiny tomboy princess is about to be heir to a dead kingdom. The "Nilfgardians" are apparently black-armored psychopaths who don't take prisoners, torture victims.

I played a bit of the first Witcher game, but it doesn't explain much of the background. It's some generic pseudo-Europe called "The Continent" (or whatever that is in Polish). The Nilfgardians there are a more normal Holy Roman Empire pastiche, even leaving subject kings in place.

Why is Geralt[sic] a "mutant"? Allegedly 80 girls born in an eclipse are all mutants and evil, which is either medieval nonsense or factual description of magic world, and I can't tell which. But what's his excuse? Magic seems to be rare and super powerful, but nobody really minds its use, which seems at odds with the "he's different KILL HIM" attitude to Geralt[sic], the girls, monsters, and Elves.

We finally get a real fight scene with the Witcher, and it's pretty good; fight choreography and editing portrays a thing far faster and tougher than Human like a high-level videogame character just murderizing all the normal thugs, and fighting evenly against another mutant.

"They created me just as they created you! We're not so different!"

E2

Now there's another storyline: Hunchback Pig-Girl can teleport to magic fairy-land, and gets bought by a witch for half the price of a pig. No worries, tho, someday she'll become Yennefer[sic] the Witch and make herself pretty, because only poor & non-magic people are ugly in the Witcher. But first she has to go to Shitty Hogwarts, which is a series of caves and stone classrooms with a loading screen showing two towers and a bridge for context; there's no scenes set where you would see the matte painting/loading screen behind anyone. Total set budget: $50 for plaster, scrap wood, and a veritable mountain of plastic skulls & bones.

We finally get back to Geralt[sic], remember the main plot? Hunting "devils" who steal grain for a leather sack of coins, which is suspiciously exactly how much he negotiated for. Zero effort was made to make anything plausible, it's just like the videogame. Ah, I love a good kill/fetch quest. We get a lot of sitting around hearing about Elves and how Humans have massacred them. Which never makes sense to me: If Elves are a superior, magical, immortal race, how are mere trash monkeys able to kill them?

The princess runs away from the Evil Dark Army, and is taken in by stupid refugees who don't realize she's clean and pretty and therefore royalty; they are of course dirty and ugly because they're Working-Class with Ambitions, and therefore doomed. Their Dwarf slave doesn't like the situation, but nobody likes him either. Well, I like him more after [SPOILER]. The princess has zero personality (or the actress simply couldn't even read lines), she's a plot coupon that moves thru scenes on rails.

I'm perplexed by the period this is supposed to be in. The Witcher game is sort of medieval 12th C Poland? But there's post-Renaissance bards with 18th C or so lutes, singing about potions for abortions. I'm shocked I haven't seen more anachronistic technology with the casual disinterest the show takes in period drama.

The currency situation is bugging me, too. In two episodes we've had marks, ducats, orins, and florins? Marks are German and only in Shitty Hogwarts land, but the other three are within a day's ride of the starting forest and are Italian. Why aren't there any zloty, if this is so Polish? Why is any of this historical Europe if it's a completely different fantasy world?!

Well, so far this is about on par with Uwe Boll's Bloodrayne, but lacks the star power (Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley, Meat Loaf, and a dozen Romanian whores!). All this has is Henry Cavill (the doughy, vapid, murderous Zack Snyder Superman) who does fine standing around growling, and he can fight well, but he's barely even present for "acting", he just hits his marks and says his lines. Lars Mikkelsen (Mads' wuss brother, who we last saw in the original Danish The Killing 13 years ago) is sort of amusing and cuddly as the magician Slartibartfast or whatever; but I think they wanted menacing and mystical, which he is not.

★★☆☆☆ script, production, and acting quality, ★★★½☆ for fight scenes and entertaining stupidity. Totally going to keep watching, this is a nice fun trainwreck show.

So, I love the original movie; I loved Jim Henson's work, maybe Labyrinth more than Dark Crystal but they're both amazing. The Mystic/Skeksis split, dying races of Gelflings and Podlings, weird monsters, nothing is stationary or normal, Froud's fairy paintings brought to fuzzy life, it's all lovely. I've read a little of the fanfic/expanded universe stuff but not much.

This story is mediocre prequel fanfic with good production values, but not up to the level of the movie.

In this, there's only blatantly evil Skeksis rulers, guarded by Gelflings and served by Podlings, both so stupid they don't see the gloating, scheming, whinging, and stealing of their masters. The Skeksis are as nasty as in the movie, but somehow made a cult where they're all-powerful, all-giving, but that's so transparently false it's just nonsense. This show would've made far more sense if they were still the Ur-race at the start, and the events of this, the corruption of the Crystal to drain life, is what makes them split.

The Gelflings are all ruled by queens and princesses, but still seem to put males in charge of everything else. They can use telepathy/"dreamfast" which is mostly shitty CGI blur effects, much like Avatar, except when the plot requires they be too obstinate or stupid to verify facts with each other. Females in this can actually fly; Kira in the movie just glided. There are seven clans, but only 5 are relevant to the plot so far: rich bossy Vapra, swamp rednecks Drenchin, warrior Stonewood, gypsy trader Sifa (very racist Roma caricature), underground Grottan.

The Podlings are either grovelling servants, or really stupid sub-Humans (somewhere between filthy hobbits and how Eastern Europeans are portrayed in fantasy).

A Fizzgig creature is immediately met when the underground heroine reaches ground. It has legs and a weird gaping non-muppety mouth. We see a bunch of these during the series, they're semi-tamed?

The Spitter is not quite a Garthim. And mostly it's really shitty CGI.

Aughra knows too much and is too stable to be the weirdo of the movie. She didn't make her own orrery in this, it's a "gift" from the Skeksis. And then implausibly she goes for a walk, crosses way too much of the world in an episode, and spends a lot of time doing nothing. The Mystic we finally meet is useless, and does not talk like a Mystic.

The land seen in CGI scenes is very Earth-like, if a bit more spiky mountains. There's a lot of shitty CGI lens flares, glowy things, and purple crystal screen filters, like the Abrams Trek movie but with more realistic characters than his muppet Kirk.

The puppets look good, but many are emotionally blank most of the time. The females especially can't flex their faces much at all, so they seem to be dead-eyed staring into the void for long stretches. The walking scenes are very badly done, like everyone from the Muppet Show and Jim Henson are long gone.

The fight scenes with Gelflings look awful because they can't actually hold blades, and can't be shown being struck. Even Hup, the stupid Podling wannabe-Paladin with his wooden spoon, is more menacing than the Gelflings.

There's at least 4 parties and it takes until E04 before any of them meet up, and they immediately split again, slowing the plot down. Rian is a lame protagonist, veering from braggart to coward as the scene demands, never being worth your time. Deet and Hup are pretty good, I like them even if they're incompetent. The princess is just annoying and gets everything handed to her. The hunter party have no characterization, they're just felt bodies.

★★★½☆ — And this is being generous. I really want this to be better than it is. It's very pretty when the lens flares aren't in the way. But the basic competence isn't there.

What a charming film. Basque, with maybe the worst dubbing I've ever heard, so put it on English subtitles and Basque language. Lovely real-looking run-down sets, especially the forge, dark cinematography but not cyan/orange.

Set in early 19th C after the Basque lost their independence. Follows a blacksmith with a temper, a bizarrely fortified forge, and a deal with the Devil. The scarred, orphaned girl, Usue, is adorable, mean, and hilarious. The government fop isn't just there to rob the smith. The priest is a mean, conservative old bastard, the innkeeper and his grasping cronies deserve the bad ends they're all coming to, the town children other than Usue are brats. The demon Sartael is excellent, both makeup and mythical behaviors.

Cast, writing, and design are all perfect. The ending is very old-school D&D problem-solving.

Reminds me a lot of The Witch, or City of Lost Children, in this half-real, half-dreaming style and the grotesque people.

★★★★★