Netflix's The Witcher Set For 2020 Release
- Thread starter Reveen
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Oh god this is going to become one of the things the internet treats as "fact" despite their being zero evidence for it isn't it.
Stop writing a narrative that fits your fanboi outrage out of thin air.
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- Cardassia Prime
Are you being serious? They changed so much of the source material to support a completly alternate view of the story, don't pretend they didn't. Just look at Cahir and Eskel and say they've been loyal to the books.
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I would like you to read my post and see where I said anything about that.
Just like, don't jump to wild conclusions that your dislike of the show is why Henry Cavil left when there is already an explanation dude.
But there's no evidence of connection to this and Cavill leaving. It's just wild speculation people are gonna latch on to
Arthur Frayn
Fake God by Occupation, Magician by Inclination
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Seriously, the leap people are making to conspiracies is absurd. Standard streaming contracts usually run about three seasons, and there's a reason why Netflix et. al. suddenly get very trigger happy when it comes time for season 4. Cavill probably asked for a pay bump (not surprising), Netflix balked, and given the Rock's astroturfing campaigns for a Superman/Black Adam crossover (and the change in leadership at DC) Cavill most likely wants to go back to film anyway and just used this as an out.
This is bog standard Hollywood inside baseball shit, it doesn't need to be the umpteenth conspiracy theory about a creative team secretly hating their own work/somehow creating like an intentionally bad product to fuck with the fans and getting shown up by the people's champion.
*EDIT* Seriously, not to get on my "I actually work in the entertainment industry and know what I'm talking about" soapbox for a second, but do y'all know how fucking hard it is to get into a writers room? There are like, max, 150 to 200 spots a season, and those slots are 99.999999....% of the time given to people who've busted their asses to even get to the point where they're considered for a writing gig.
When you're staffing a show, you're not just looking for talented writers (and anyone who's in consideration is someone who knows how to construct a functional story), but people who also are deeply passionate about the material and bring some kind of "X factor" perspective to it that no one else can - the idea that someone would put themselves through the fucking wringer that is staffing season for a show they hate based on books they despise is sheer lunacy.
This is bog standard Hollywood inside baseball shit, it doesn't need to be the umpteenth conspiracy theory about a creative team secretly hating their own work/somehow creating like an intentionally bad product to fuck with the fans and getting shown up by the people's champion.
*EDIT* Seriously, not to get on my "I actually work in the entertainment industry and know what I'm talking about" soapbox for a second, but do y'all know how fucking hard it is to get into a writers room? There are like, max, 150 to 200 spots a season, and those slots are 99.999999....% of the time given to people who've busted their asses to even get to the point where they're considered for a writing gig.
When you're staffing a show, you're not just looking for talented writers (and anyone who's in consideration is someone who knows how to construct a functional story), but people who also are deeply passionate about the material and bring some kind of "X factor" perspective to it that no one else can - the idea that someone would put themselves through the fucking wringer that is staffing season for a show they hate based on books they despise is sheer lunacy.
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This comes from an ex-writer talking about the writer's room though. And the show having been Cavil's passion project. Also the fact that it's harder than ever to get into a constant writer's room job I think changes the calculus here a lot?
Anyways I'm not really one to speculate, it's a shame Cavil is leaving and hopefully the younger Hemsworth is up to the task.
Anyways I'm not really one to speculate, it's a shame Cavil is leaving and hopefully the younger Hemsworth is up to the task.
Arthur Frayn
Fake God by Occupation, Magician by Inclination
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Lol what, "it's hard to get into a writers room nowadays so there probably are people who hate the show they're working on" is nonsensical. And I can't possibly imagine why an ex-writer would want to perhaps astroturf a campaign amongst hardcore fans to boost his own profile, no one's ever done that to chase some short term clout.
Like come on, this is pure JAQ'ing off that still tacitly rests on the idea of the creative team somehow having contempt for their own show, truly one of the stupidest and most ignorant things you can say about Hollywood. Even the rumormongering about them supposedly hating the source material, if it's true at all, is far more likely to be angry turbofans misinterpreting a desire to have the TV show stand apart from its predecessors than the creative team having active contempt for them.
Again, which is more likely - that Henry Cavill bravely tried to save his show from the Evil Writers, who were deliberately doing a bad job because they hate the fans, or that an actor whose career is on the rebound tried to negotiate a larger salary/more creative control, and a notoriously tight fisted streamer (that has a long history of axing shows at the three season mark) decided to recast the part for a more pliable, cheaper actor?
Old Spice Guy
The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
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I thought Cavill was going due to new DC commitments so he isn't renewing?
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Trying to question the writers on their Witcher cred is bullshit. The show is a ball of yarn, but it's full of details and moments that call back to or references the rest of the canon.
The fact is that the show is an Americanized fantasy-action take on the Witcher, not unlike Legend of the Seeker or older shows like Xena. Just like any other adaptation of the Witcher warps the source material around the chosen medium.
Also for this kind of show the main pull is charismatic leads and side characters. The show has some good hitters with Yennefer and Jaskier but Cavill has a certain large thing about him that might be hard to replace. You can't just yeet the circus elephant and replace it with a water buffalo or something.
The fact is that the writers are entirely beholden to producers and executives who work for a profit starving company with thin margins. They probably tried to fuck Cavill on his health insurance or something. Its never about some perceived lore drama between the creative staff, it's always some financial fuckery or contract dispute.
EDIT: Also yes the show is more feminist-ish. But the source material has its own share of feminist cred mixed with the misogyny cred. So that's also perfectly valid, don't @ me.
The fact is that the show is an Americanized fantasy-action take on the Witcher, not unlike Legend of the Seeker or older shows like Xena. Just like any other adaptation of the Witcher warps the source material around the chosen medium.
Also for this kind of show the main pull is charismatic leads and side characters. The show has some good hitters with Yennefer and Jaskier but Cavill has a certain large thing about him that might be hard to replace. You can't just yeet the circus elephant and replace it with a water buffalo or something.
The fact is that the writers are entirely beholden to producers and executives who work for a profit starving company with thin margins. They probably tried to fuck Cavill on his health insurance or something. Its never about some perceived lore drama between the creative staff, it's always some financial fuckery or contract dispute.
EDIT: Also yes the show is more feminist-ish. But the source material has its own share of feminist cred mixed with the misogyny cred. So that's also perfectly valid, don't @ me.
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The actual answer is likely "Cavil got offered a lot of money to have his schedule open for Superman" but I don't get why you're acting so upset over the idea that different parts of the show might not be gelling. Sometimes talent has conflicts, it's not the end of the world.
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this is completely circular logic that flies in complete defiance to the demonstrable reality that people (writers are people) get their shit really fucking wrong all the fucking time
people who work in Hollywood are just as likely to be shit at their job as the rest of the population, just as likely to not be fully enjoying it, just as likely to be phoning it in, just as likely to be using it to further a career in an adjacent space
the mythologising of the writer as some kind of like magical wizard who has to definitely care super deeply about the thing they're doing is asinine. it's straight up just a job that people do because either they have an aptitude for it or they think they have an aptitude for it or they fell into it accidentally.
Arthur Frayn
Fake God by Occupation, Magician by Inclination
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Lmao what? When did I ever say that writers are magical wizards who are infallible and cannot be bad at their job? Of course they can do a bad job, they're (as you say) ordinary people and screw up all the time, I never said otherwise. There's nothing circular to that logic, not sure why you think it's some kind of gotcha. But like, you're full stop wrong when you say writers treat it as just a job, and check out/do a bad job because they don't care/don't fully enjoy it/etc.
Do you know how hard it is to be a writer in today's entertainment industry? It's long hours for shit pay, you have to deal with all kinds of bullshit from the studio and execs, and just to get your foot in the door you need to spend literal years busting your ass writing spec scripts, hustling jobs on set or at a production company, taking shit jobs for no money because it's close to the action, work unpaid internships on the hope an exec likes you to hire you as an assistant, and even then, once you've gotten a meeting (let alone a job) you need to have the force of personality and conviction to convince someone to hire you instead of the five thousand other schmucks just like you. It's not "just a job", it's literally a life's pursuit people pour themselves into for the sheer love of the game.
This is literally my every day life, so don't call it mythologizing because sometimes you don't like a TV show.
Like, imagine saying that most professional baseball players thinks being an athlete is "just a job" that they don't really care about, frequently just go through the motions, and oftentimes are just using as a means to further their career. Take it a step further, and imagine someone arguing that ACKSHUALLY players love to lose games all the time, because they secretly hate the fans and/or baseball and just wish they were doing something else. Would anyone treat that as a serious argument? Because that's just as stupid as the one you're making.
Again, I'm not saying that writers are perfect creative wizards who can do no wrong, miss me with that shit man. To take it back to sports, I think we'd all agree that professional baseball players have some baseline level of athleticism, talent, and skill far beyond that of an average person, and yet the Mets still manage to fuck up every other season. You can be passionate, driven, talented, and still fuck up and lose.
What I'm gonna push back on, and continue to push back on, is the (again fucking childish, foolish, and ignorant) idea that artists (because again, that's what these people are) are somehow lazy, disinterested, or only doing something as truly soul crushing as writing on a TV show because ACKSHUALLY they think it's just some job they can clock in/clock out of for the check.
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Why are you pushing back on the idea thats the case? That sounds like something that would just happen when working a souless corporate job. Does being an artist somehow make one immune to all that?
Arthur Frayn
Fake God by Occupation, Magician by Inclination
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Uh what? I'm not saying that people don't get burnt out (it happens all the time, a friend of mine just bailed on the industry because he had an awful time as an assistant and decided it wasn't worth it), or that artists are immune, I literally spelled out my point right here:
If a creative gets burned out, they just leave the industry and go do something else, they don't stick around and endure all the bullshit to collect a check, or stay on and intentionally half-ass it/do slipshod work because "lol fans".
Arthur Frayn
Fake God by Occupation, Magician by Inclination
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Am I? I was riffing on the point @IfIhadaHammer and @stratigo were making, that the idea that Cavill left the show because he was upset with the writers (with the attendant rumor mongering that the writers were actively contemptuous of the source material) is fucking silly and obviously manufactured fanboi outrage.
It wasn't until later that that was somehow spun into me saying "writers are mythological wizards who can do no wrong", or that ackshually being a TV writer is just a normal job and sometimes people hate their jobs, so it makes perfect sense that writers would hate their job and do a bad job on purpose.
And like, generally I'm just very tired of this attitude I've seen (across SV and in the wider nerd space) where people are quick to assume malice on the creative teams part, combined with a really deep and abiding ignorance of how the industry actually works.
That's not really what he's saying? "I wouldn't be surprised if he left because he wants the show to hew to the books and the writers want to do something different" is wildly, wildly different from what you've been arguing. If you want to fight with the wider nerd space go do it there. There's shows that throw out the source material and are far better for it (The Magicians for instance) so I don't think it's spite on the part of the writers to go in another way. I also think that this change is probably almost wholly if not entirely WBD money talking.
Macros
omnisciently vague councilman
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I think you're conflating "sometimes, writers don't care about the source material they're adapting" into "writers don't care about writing". The second is, as you vehemently stated, ridiculous. But the first point, while the exception, can sometimes be true. At the very least, writers can certainly think they can improve upon the source material, and the nature of an adaptation also involve leaving stuff out. And while not as deeply accointed in the industry as you are, I know from experience that yes, sometimes when adapting a book into a show, the writers aren't actually that interested in the original book.
Now, I have no idea if that's the case for the Witcher. Only saw the first season, liked it well enough, didn't quite find the time to watch the second one, and since I heard less good things about it, I didn't bother. And I do agree with your main point - that it's extremely unlikely that Cavill left due to creative difference. But I think some of your ire might have been a little misaimed here.
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I mean the fundamental flaw of this argument is that it's a very prescriptivist 'this doesn't happen' statement that is just like very trivially easy to disprove?
the head writers of the biggest television show on the planet - Game of Thrones - lost complete interest in what they were doing, got lazy, phoned it in, and produced four or so increasingly worse seasons of television out of hubris that only they deserved to helm it. At any point they could have stepped back to go do other stuff they wanted to do but they didn't. instead they just put increasingly less and less effort into the writing
even the sports analogy is easily disproven. nba history for example is full of players that are just kind of there because they were genetically gifted athletes. kyrie irving was happy to sit out basically a full season because he valued his insane anti-vax stance more than the game. he is as we speak shredding his already mangled reputation to atoms by preaching full mask off anti-semitism and has constantly threatened to retire early to focus on social justice causes. his current teammate ben simmons took a similar season off for extremely nebulous reasons. and those two are stars, there are people in the nba whose name i don't even know who are absolutely just there to collect a paycheck.
the strawman here is that nobody said 'most' people are like this. just that some people are and writers are people. its just always gonna be true in every career that some people care a lot and are good at it, some people care a lot and are bad at it and some people don't care about it too much but it became their career accidentally or via nepotism or they had one really good story in them that has since been told or whatever. like it's just a venn diagram thing
this argument has weird undertones of like 'you can't be good at your job unless it's your favourite thing in life' to it as well which i think is strange but whatever
the head writers of the biggest television show on the planet - Game of Thrones - lost complete interest in what they were doing, got lazy, phoned it in, and produced four or so increasingly worse seasons of television out of hubris that only they deserved to helm it. At any point they could have stepped back to go do other stuff they wanted to do but they didn't. instead they just put increasingly less and less effort into the writing
even the sports analogy is easily disproven. nba history for example is full of players that are just kind of there because they were genetically gifted athletes. kyrie irving was happy to sit out basically a full season because he valued his insane anti-vax stance more than the game. he is as we speak shredding his already mangled reputation to atoms by preaching full mask off anti-semitism and has constantly threatened to retire early to focus on social justice causes. his current teammate ben simmons took a similar season off for extremely nebulous reasons. and those two are stars, there are people in the nba whose name i don't even know who are absolutely just there to collect a paycheck.
the strawman here is that nobody said 'most' people are like this. just that some people are and writers are people. its just always gonna be true in every career that some people care a lot and are good at it, some people care a lot and are bad at it and some people don't care about it too much but it became their career accidentally or via nepotism or they had one really good story in them that has since been told or whatever. like it's just a venn diagram thing
this argument has weird undertones of like 'you can't be good at your job unless it's your favourite thing in life' to it as well which i think is strange but whatever
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
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I read all books. And you know what? They're not that good. My favorites are the beginning, when it's still the monster-of-the-week short stories. I welcome changes to The Grand Destiny later plots.
Triggerhappy
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For what it's worth, I think a sincere 'we did't know how to adapt this and made a bit of a pigs ear of it' is far more likely than a 'we chose to adapt this badly out of contempt' is a far more believable take.
One of the only times I can remember a writer going on record voicing total contempt for the source material was Paul Verhoeven with Starship Troopers. And that's only true in the sense that the 'source material' was a book the studio directed him to use the name and retrofit in some superficial features to a movie he was already working on.
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Four episodes. A thousand years ago, delving into the origins of the order... Wait, is this the Witcher prequel or the Dune prequel? 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry6HYg3AsHA
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry6HYg3AsHA
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Ah, damage control. I really get the feeling this is a massive tempest in a teapot on the part of internet fandom, though. Although...responding after 2 months of quiet, really?!
www.eurogamer.net
Netflix's The Witcher showrunner disputes claims the show's writers "mocked the books"
The Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich has responded to The Witcher fans and insisted she has "never mocked the books" …
www.eurogamer.net
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- Cardassia Prime
The fact she had made massive character-assassination level changes to the source material makes that an obvious lie, nevermind GoT has shown that being close to the author doesn't prevent fucking up regardless.
Also her only making these comments now when the expensive Witcher spin-off prequel that features ZERO witchers is about to be released makes the reason why rather obvious.
Also her only making these comments now when the expensive Witcher spin-off prequel that features ZERO witchers is about to be released makes the reason why rather obvious.