Netflix Witcher: Blood Origins-From meh to BLEH
After Christmas I found myself with a little extra time to watch some new shows while working on art. Being a fan of the Witcher games and of Henry Cavill as the Witcher, I was curious to see what the prequel series would add to the world and so I sat down to watch Witcher: Blood Origins.
The Witcher franchise has always had my attention because of the parallels with my own comic series, Mythica.
They both feature long-haired badasses with swords who say “fuck” a lot. They are both mature rated and violent with monsters and dark magic. I absorb all kinds of storytelling in an attempt to better my craft. I pay particular attention to those that have several things in common. I really liked the way Henry Cavill played Geralt but the original 2 seasons were a bit all over the place. This new show seems to have learned fuck all from those lessons.
At the start of the first episode I thought they were being clever and bold introducing a story by telling us what it is all about ahead of time even though Minnie Driver looked great as an elven, shapeshifting, time-traveling storyteller. As stated, the premise was similar enough to mine that I was intrigued so I carried on like a wayward son.
By the end of the first episode I thought it was moving a bit fast but was still curious to where it was going. At the start of the third episode all seven characters are together in some of the most convenient series of events possible. I’ll admit this is a place I have struggled with when writing Mythica. Getting all of your questing group together means that each character has their own reason for going that makes sense to them. They each have their own reasons that have to be established to the audience in a way that makes us care if they succeed or fail. The Witcher: Blood Origin doesn’t give us much to care about. In the span of 2 episodes two characters meet for the first time in jail with strong tension and dislike, fight each other, then fight together, then take a blood pact, then one sacrifices himself to save the other because apparently they are deeply in love.
The Witcher: Blood Origin is only four episodes long. It feels like one of those movies that you say to yourself, “self, this movie should have been a Netflix series to give it more time.” Some examples like the Dark Tower, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Solo come to mind. Yet, it IS a Netflix show. It needed to be like, eight episodes I think.
Pawn of Prophecy shows how to introduce an ensemble cast.
The Belgariad by by David Eddings features an ensemble cast of characters on a quest to recover a stolen artifact. I choose this example because it is another story I am currently absorbing but it also follows a very cliché and formulaic fantasy premise yet it is still great. Slowly, throughout the course of the entire first book you learn more and more about the characters. They have pasts and emotions tied up in those pasts. This makes them feel real and allows us to empathize with them. There is a reason we weren’t given The Avengers first. It would have been too much to take in for one film.
Some might argue that the novels of the Belgariad had much more time so let’s use a much shorter comparison with the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Most people outside of hardcore comic fans had not heard of the characters in Guardians before the movie yet most people can name most or all of the main characters. Why? Because each character was given time and had their own arcs and goals, when the characters realize they aren’t that different they come together to achieve the goal together. This Witcher show feels like the first two characters magnetize those they come in contact with in to joining them without really needing them.
Below I will go in to more detail about what to learn from the mistakes this show makes. This is for the storytellers. If that doesn’t interest you then feel free to stop here knowing that although there is some beautiful camera work there isn’t much this show has going for it which I’m apparently not alone in thinking. This is the current audience rating of the show.
There is a Difference between a Premise, plot and a story
A premise:
Something that can be shared without really spoiling anything which is what you use to pitch it or promote it. “seven outcasts in the elf world unite in a quest against an unstoppable power.” This is literally the description on the Witcher: Blood Origin page. In comparison let’s also look at the premise for the The Guardians of the Galaxy, “A group of intergalactic criminals must pull together to stop a fanatical warrior.” See not that different so far.
A Plot: (Spoilers For Witcher: Blood Origin)
Ads specific conflicts that must be dealt with, goals, as well as what is at stake if they do not proceed.
“After Peter Quill steals a mysterious orb in the far reaches of space he and his allies discover it has the ability to destroy whole planets and the villain wants to use it to purge the universe. So they set aside their differences and head out on a quest to stop him.”
Now let’s look at the shit plot of Blood Origins. “After sleeping with a princess who is scheduled to be married to another clan leader in an effort to unite the empire, a warrior elf is exiled. He meets an elf bard (who used to be one of the most powerful warriors in the world) in jail and they both discover that their clans are going to be attacked and head off to warn them only to discover they have already been annihilated by a beast summoned by a mage who is trying to unlock chaos magic to become a god and he is working with the princess who is now Empress because she staged a secret coup that wipes out all of the royal families leaving her in charge. (Not sure why she needed to kill all the royal families to bring peace when that was the point of the marriage) So the two elves head off to stop the Empress and her mage and avenge the deaths of their clans along with help of others.”
Already this plot is getting a bit more complex.
In Gaurdians, Peter Quill starts off wanting to make money and the villain becomes an obstacle to his goal in selling it. Gamora is another obstacle in that she is also after the orb, Rocket and Groot are after the bounty on Peter Quill. All the characters come together naturally and end up arrested and sent to a max security prison where they work together on their way to becoming allies and friends.
In contrast, Blood Origins brings together the cast in one unlikely encounter after another which after seven gets rather ridiculous. Dumb warrior guy with no past or personality meets secretly badass bard girl in jail by coincidence. Both of them get visited by separate messengers wanting them to come home even though they are in a tiny village in the ass end of nowhere. Both of them lose their entire clans to a powerful mage. So even though they don’t know each other at all and were literally fighting moments earlier they now make a pact in blood to…get revenge? I guess. They don’t make it abundantly clear what their goal is actually. Then they convince the bard’s mentor to join the fight who immediately says they need MORE help and low and behold they run in to the exact people they need at the exact right time and many of these people have no reason to go up against an empress and a powerful mage. They use magic to make a super soldier serum and defeat the bad guys. The end. Did anyone change, grow, learn? Who knows.
A STORY
It is the journey of the characters and the core conflict driving them. The theme and the emotional connection to the readers. Stories show the motivation and why someone is doing all this.
Going back to Guardians, Quill wanted money for an artifact that he knew nothing about, Gamora wanted the artifact to keep her father from getting it and destroying a planet. First she fights for it then when that doesn’t work she appeals to his wallet and tells him of another buyer for the artifact that will pay more. Since Rocket and Groot are also in it for the money they all agree to work together to escape the prison and split the earnings. Drax is introduced in the prison and reveals his hatred for and plan to personally kill Ronin so Peter gets him to come along.
They face a heroic moment of truth when they discover from the new buyer that this artifact has more power to detroy than they possibly imagined and have to decide if they can live with billions of deaths on their conscious.
Drax’s revenge is personal so he takes the first opportunity to achieve his own goals in letting Ronin know where they are so he will be able to kill him. The result ends with Ronin ragaining the orb and nearly killing everyone and Quill sacrificing himself to save Gamora. Not because they are madly in love although it is a step in that direction, but because it was just established that Quill is a good guy and he isn’t going to let Gamora just die.
So now they have lost everything, been beaten down, yet rise up and defeat Ronin. That’s good stuff and it leaves out many little moments of connection between characters. These moments are the story. There is little to none of that in Witcher: Blood Origin
When Michelle Yo serves her own goals to get the sword of her clan back from the Emperess and strikes a deal to deliver the group to her she arrives back to the group with 50 soldiers from the emperess. This could be the end for the heroes but nah, she actually double crosses the soldiers and the group doesn’t have to lift a finger to stop them because she had time to stop and recruit even more men to their side with bows and arrows. So instead of a conflict or growth point it just happens that they now have an army that is dressed in the clothes of the enemy, a super soldier, and a way in to the Queen. Good thing there isn’t any skill required for this adventure.
Then there was the final episode. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. The villain gets the power he wanted and uses it to do absolutely fuck all before two of the questing group use his power against him and defeat him while super soldier elf defeats the giant beast without much difficulty. The badass bard calms down the hulking elf with her songs of love and his long time of a couple days allows him to recognize her voice. Really?
This show is so cliché and unoriginal. I just keep wondering what the point was.
ONE LAST THING
Creating A Visual Narrative:
One of the challenges with large scale world building is helping the audience have a clear sense of which part of this fantasy world they are in. What separates one faction from another? In Guardians each race has a distinguishing look or accent. In Blood Origin, pretty much everyone is an elf except for one dwarf who seems to be the only dwarf in the whole world. The three major clans of elves have been at war for over a thousand years yet there is no way to distinguish one clan of elf from another. Every clan has a full range of mixed ethnicities and they all have the same pointy ears.
But it’s a fantasy you say. Characters can be any race in a fantasy right? Well yes but it should make sense and even more importantly it should have some consistency so the audience can tell them apart and know where they are at . Even though there have been thousands of years of evolution on our planet you can still see notable physical and cultural differences from one culture to another. The average Hawaiian citizen or their decorative surroundings don’t look anything like those of the average Scotsman. In Guardians each character came from their own race and often even their own planet. You have all the diversity you could want without confusion. Making every elf be of any color, race or cultural make up doesn’t work except that it made it really convenient for them to sneak in to the castle. Imagine being a US soldier trying to sneak in to enemy territory disquised as Vietnamese soldiers. It wouldn’t go over so well. It could have been a point of conflict but nah, fuck it.
I’m tired of writing about this shit show.
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