1x02 Four Marks

After my wordy thoughts regarding how Netflix chose to do the first episode, I feel conflicted about this one... :confused:
On one hand my inner fanboy wants a closer representation of what happened in the books, especially as they decided to cut out practically everything from the original short story "The Edge of the World". I so wanted to hear the witty back and forth between the "devil" Torque and Geralt. I didn't even expect Lille, but at least more of the fun wheat field-scenes....
But then again I can see why they decided to go this route: They had to fit three stories and two and a half meaningful introductions into 60 minutes. And the focus was clearly on Yennefer with 34 minutes, compared to 14 minutes for Geralt and 11 for Ciri. You can't possibly fit a 60-odd page short story into 14 minutes. It just doesn't work. So they didn't even try and just left the parts in that would have been relevant for a "Previously on The Witcher..."-reminder somewhere down the line. I personally would have prefered if they would have decided to use a different story for the introduction of Jaskier, so they could use more of the short story later on.

But did it work as an episode, if you wouldn't try to compare it to the books? Phew... That's a tough one...
Let's start with the easy one: Ciri. Ciri's part worked quite well, fleshing out her character and showing us how she clearly isn't the naive little princess. But she clearly needs some guidance. Without the help of our hooded teenager ex machina she would have died within the first minutes of her screentime. And they cleverly used him and the scenes with the noble familiy's servant to show us that she obviously is far less simple minded and xenophobic than her surroundings. She's going to have a tough time in The Witcher's world.
Geralt: I've already spent 187 words on his 14 minutes, therefore I'll keep this one short: Our Butcher of Blaviken had only little room to develop and or showcase his character, but he used them wisely. Netflix made a wise decision in sticking to his philosophical side and I hope he gets more chances to show it off. This was like the abstract on a multi page paper about the possible future relationship between humans and elves. I hope Netflix lets Geralt read from the main parts of his papers every now and then.
Jaskier: He's very promising and I can't wait to hear more from this witty, whiny and surprisingly musical fellow. I always knew he was supposed to be a great bard, but somehow I thougt he wouldn't be that catchy. We really need his songs out there to buy and or stream!
Yen: This was a Yen-episode and practically everything was original. In the books we only learn very little about her past, so there's a lot of room to go all out for the writers. And I think they will, creating not only an origin story for her, but adding in new, fleshed out characters, new conflicts, and adding lore to the sorcerers and how magic works in The Witcher. I hope they don't try to create a hard magic system for the show, but keep it as soft as it is in the books. I'm interested in how she develops and turns into a multi faceted sorceress.

I'll give this one a 8 out of 10. Why, after I've spent lamenting about the differences to the books for around a third of my comment? Because I stand by my word and will try to see this as a stand alone re-telling of my favorite stories. And it's a promising second episode to what will hopefully turn out to be a very successful and longer running show.

The issue with this episode is that we’re expanding a bit too quickly. What was a detriment to The Mandalorian in the first season would be a great asset here. To fans of the source material, the way the lore is being incorporated is dull because it’s a little too on the nose. Everything is simply explained to us rather than simply referenced, likely because the writers would be worried we wouldn’t understand if things were referenced casually without explanation. But something so exposition heavy has the weight of making the world building ring false. It’s hard to feel as though this is an organic world when large concepts are being explained at length that everyone in-world would likely know.

Additionally, it’s disappointing how origin heavy this is. Perhaps this is due to me not having read the books and only played the games, but what I found so alluring is how the focus being on Geralt means that we really only ever follow a side character to a larger narrative. He’s our protagonist, but he’s not really some prophesied hero. I love that this frees us from origins, instead allowing us to effectively skip a conventional introduction and get to the meat. I know Yennifer and Ciri are major players in this narrative, but the extent to which we’re following them means the spotlight is shifted clearly off of the eponymous character of the show in the second episode. I barely have enough reason to care about Geralt, so please don’t try to get me to care about others this early too. Ciri and Geralt felt like enough.

I hope this is rectified soon. This episode was a slog. Henry Cavill’s contacts looked worse in this episode. It's running the CW-esque problem where all your actors look too manicured for the show itself to ring as authentic. You can slop dirt around on these actors faces all you want, but something about it just looks incorrect.

After watching this episode I feel more hopeful for the series than after ep 1. Apart from anything else I was impressed by the sword fighting scenes with The Witcher. I'm not an expert in sword fighting by any means but I usually feel that sword fights feel too choreographed and it seems like the combatitants are waiting for the others to move into position and even moving to intercept blows before they are instigated. I expect that the main fight was with experienced swordsmen playing the combatitants along with Cavile who must have done a lot of training. The film making is also hiding a lot and flowing with the action well so that you can't see them cheating it or it just moves to quickly. Another fight with 2 actors (ie. not a dedicated expert) was less convincing yet still passable.

Apart from the fights, which are not usually a positive focus for me, the story and characters are becoming more interesting. I'm yet to get used to the fact that the Witcher speaks as if he is in a different show to the rest of them. Many scenes see him talking to someone who has a normal voice while he continues to speak like he's auditioning to be the next Batman. I keep waiting for the other characters to say "hey, what's that? Speak up!". I'm assuming it's a deliberate choice on the part of the film makers and a way to make him stand apart from the human characters, yet it still seems comical at times.