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The Witcher: Evil is Evil


AncalagonTheBlack

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4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

The visuals look much improved.

Apparently they got a new costume designer, added some major VFX houses (ILM is apparently now in the mix), and seem to have rethought some of their cinematography approach from the first season. Seems they learned some lessons from that season and are applying them to this one.

The Nilfgaardian armor is just infinitely superior to what they had last season.

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Odd choice of song for a trailer set in a medieval-style world.

I tried reading the books and couldn't get into them so I've no idea what's coming story-wise. I got far enough to know who Kristofer Hivju is playing though.

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The short snippet of Geralt in a small scale fight we get looks to have much more of the feel of the Blaviken fight which is also very promising to me. Makes sense, but still encouraging.

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6 hours ago, karaddin said:

The short snippet of Geralt in a small scale fight we get looks to have much more of the feel of the Blaviken fight which is also very promising to me. Makes sense, but still encouraging.

The Blaviken fight was choreographed by Wolfgang Stegemann (who apparently did the pilot as a favor to Cavill), but most other fights in the rest of the series were by Vladimir Furdík (aka The Night King from Game of Thrones) He did not return for S2, and instead one of Stegemann's assistants, who took part in the filming of the Blaviken fight, is the new fight choreographer.

There's also a new stunt coordinator.

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39 minutes ago, Ran said:

The Blaviken fight was choreographed by Wolfgang Stegemann (who apparently did the pilot as a favor to Cavill), but most other fights in the rest of the series were by Vladimir Furdík (aka The Night King from Game of Thrones) He did not return for S2, and instead one of Stegemann's assistants, who took part in the filming of the Blaviken fight, is the new fight choreographer.

There's also a new stunt coordinator.

Ah I thought Stegemann was choreographer for S2 which is why I didn't think it was surprising that it looked similar. An assistant still makes sense though. I didn't know the names, just that episode 1 was a reshoot with a different choreographer

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Finished my re-watch of season 1. I have to say that I improved my opinion of the whole different timelines approach. Yeah, it can be very confusing for anyone who hasn't read the books. I was only familiar with the Butcher of Blaviken and the striga stories. The show wanted to adapt all these stories that chronologically take place over such an expansive period of time, and found a way. Anyone paying to attention to the dialogue can find the connecting dots.

That being said, I still find the end confusing. What the hell happened to Geralt? Was that really his mother who found him? She is a mage, so technically she shouldn't be able to bear children unless the show messed up there, or it turns out that there is a way and that makes Geralt special. Or maybe he's a child surprise, too. There was all that talk about people linked by destiny always finding each other. Someone healed Geralt of his wound and the merchant guy seemed mostly oblivious. Then there is that sequence with Geralt yelling Yennifer's name at the same time with Tessaia and Ciri somehow heard that. :dunno:

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On 12/11/2021 at 3:52 AM, Corvinus85 said:

Was that really his mother who found him? 

Visenna was his mother in the books indeed. In Sapkowski's world, most sorceresses couldn't have children, but not all of them and Visenna was one of the exceptions, simple as that.

And yet the final episode was the one I had the biggest objections to, as it barely made any sense. It was so vastly more emotionally powerful in Sword of Destiny. First, Geralt met Ciri few years before in Brokilon, they knew each other and the girl already felt attachment to him. That is also where Geralt realised they were really bonded by destiny, when she drank Brokilon water and should have become a driad, forgetting being a human, but didn't, because of him. He still refused to acknowledge that then. Second, Geralt demanded a law of surprise from Yurga, but haven't really expected to take away his kid. Yurga, on the other hand, knew there couldn't be a surprise child waiting for him home, as his wife was barren, but he was willing to hand Geralt one of his sons he already had. When they approached Yurga's home, his wife told him she took in a girl, hoping he wouldn't be mad about it. And that was the moment Ciri and Geralt saw each other, not some strange encounter in the woods.

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59 minutes ago, 3CityApache said:

And yet the final episode was the one I had the biggest objections to, as it barely made any sense. It was so vastly more emotionally powerful in Sword of Destiny. First, Geralt met Ciri few years before in Brokilon, they knew each other and the girl already felt attachment to him. That is also where Geralt realised they were really bonded by destiny, when she drank Brokilon water and should have become a driad, forgetting being a human, but didn't, because of him. He still refused to acknowledge that then. Second, Geralt demanded a law of surprise from Yurga, but haven't really expected to take away his kid. Yurga, on the other hand, knew there couldn't be a surprise child waiting for him home, as his wife was barren, but he was willing to hand Geralt one of his sons he already had. When they approached Yurga's home, his wife told him she took in a girl, hoping he wouldn't be mad about it. And that was the moment Ciri and Geralt saw each other, not some strange encounter in the woods.

Yes. The show has many, many problems, but I found the reunion of Ciri and Geralt to be the most egregious. The impact of their relationship was hugely deflated in the show.

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13 minutes ago, IFR said:

Yes. The show has many, many problems, but I found the reunion of Ciri and Geralt to be the most egregious. The impact of their relationship was hugely deflated in the show.

Yup, I agree. That reunion made me cry when I read the second novel. Not quite so much on the tv show, in which I already knew Ciri was alive.

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It's not just that Geralt suddenly had this feeling to walk into that forest, and Ciri suddenly decided to double-back, and they met, and Ciri somehow knew exactly who Geralt was, but at what point did Ciri hear Geralt call out Yennifer's name? That entire sequence was extremely confusing.

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9 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

It's not just that Geralt suddenly had this feeling to walk into that forest, and Ciri suddenly decided to double-back, and they met, and Ciri somehow knew exactly who Geralt was, but at what point did Ciri hear Geralt call out Yennifer's name? That entire sequence was extremely confusing.

I’d say it’s just that the concept is vague, the idea that people are bonded by destiny is supposed to express their instant attachment to each other and even covers instinctively knowing the name of the other person in the destiny triangle. Or else she had some kind of destiny vision of Gerald saying Yennefer.

I also got the impression in the show that there was a number of different “chaos” reactions to becoming a wizard. Like, Yennefer (and presumably others) are infertile but you also might get just a withered hand or something.

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I've recently finished rewatching season one and I have to say I needed to quickly read the final story from Sword of Destiny, just to wash away the bad taste from my mouth. It is actually substantially worse on the second viewing. Or perhaps I just really wanted it to be good the first time. I can't wrap my head around the fact they left out two of the four best short stories from the books, and the ones they used the pretty much massacred. The show is clearly best when it is most faithful to the source material (The Last Wish), but when they try to start drawing their own stories (Brokilon forrest, Mousesack doppelganger and especially Sodden hill being the most jarring examples), they lose it completely. Cheap and artificial cgi doesn't help either of course. I know I am biased, as they treat the stories I know and love pretty badly, but on the other hand there are examples of adaptations in which changes from the books are actually for the better (The Expanse comes to mind immediately), not for such excruciatingly worse. I understand they had to make changes, as the short stories are written solely from Geralt's point of view, so I don't mind they needed to expand Ciri's and Yenefer's stories. It's the execution that appals me. Afraid after rewatching this, my hopes for second season, which were moderately high, diminished greatly.

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Does anyone know whether or not the world of the Witcher is grounded in, or inspired by, national history/memory of that terrible era for eastern and middle Europe in the 16th - 17th centuries?  All that happened during long the Habsburg-Ottoman wars eras, it seems, was get worse, with the the miseries of the Wars of Religion inserted into the conflicts, concluding the with the miseries of the Napoleonic era's wars and campaigns and territorial divisions among the victors.

The long Habsburg-Ottoman war of the 16th-18th centuries played absolute hell to the region, in which Austria was at times supported by the Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Hungary, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Habsburg Spain. The wars were dominated by land campaigns in Hungary, including Transylvania (today in Romania) and Vojvodina (today in Serbia), Croatia and central Serbia. So many 'towns' were permanent garrisons, with every person expected to fight at a moment's notice.  Each town and city had an arsenal of its own.

Short run-down -- 

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"Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary were all loosely associated at the close of the 15th century under rulers of the Jagiellon dynasty. In 1569, three years before the death of the last Jagiellon king of Lithuania-Poland, these two countries merged their separate institutions by the Union of Lublin. Thereafter the Polish nobility and the Roman Catholic faith dominated the Orthodox lands of Lithuania and held the frontiers against Muscovy, the Cossacks, and the Tatars. Bohemia and the vestiges of independent Hungary were regained by the Habsburgs as a result of dynastic marriages, which the emperor Maximilian I planned as successfully in the east as he did in the west. When Louis II of Hungary died fighting the Ottomans at Mohács in 1526, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria obtained both crowns and endeavoured to affirm the hereditary authority of his dynasty against aristocratic insistence on the principle of election. In 1619, Habsburg claims in Bohemia became the ostensible cause of the Thirty Years’ War, when the Diet of Prague momentarily succeeded in deposing Ferdinand II.

In the 16th century, eastern Europe displayed the opposite tendency to the advance of princely absolutism in the West. West of the Carpathians and in the lands drained by the Vistula and the Dnestr, the landowning class achieved a political independence that weakened the power of monarchy. The towns entered a period of decline, and the propertied class, though divided by rivalry between the magnates and the lesser gentry, everywhere reduced their peasantry to servitude. In Poland and Bohemia the peasants were reduced to serfdom in 1493 and 1497, respectively, and in free Hungary the last peasant rights were suppressed after the rising of 1514. The gentry, or szlachta, controlled Polish policy in the Sejm (parliament), and, when the first Vasa king, Sigismund III, tried to reassert the authority of the crown after his election in 1587, the opportunity had passed. Yet, despite the anarchic quality of Polish politics, the aristocracy maintained and even extended the boundaries of the state. In 1525 they compelled the submission of the secularized Teutonic Order in East Prussia, resisted the pressure of Muscovy, and pressed to the southeast, where communications with the Black Sea had been closed by the Ottomans and their tributaries.

Even the mercenaries hired to defend towns and the localities contributed largely to the miseries of these regions in these times. Grenzers were hired by Austris to defend state borders from the Ottomans in Croatia and Slavonia and in Hungary, including Transylvania. In the territory of Croatia and Slavonia mercenaries were Vlachs, Uskoks, Martolos while in Hungary there were Rascians, Vlachs, Martolos and Hajduks. The Vlachs in Croatia and the Hajduks in Hungary had not only personal but also territorial privileges."

 


 

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