The Witcher: Blood Origin

So we have the long awaited 6 part series - oh wait it was so bad Netflix already had to cut 2 episodes worth from it, so let's try that again, - the long awaited 4 part The Witcher "spin off / Prequel". Let's start by saying if they cut bad writing / acting / storytelling away to the tune of 2 episodes, and we are left with these 4 barely watchable episodes that in my opinion should have been cut down to 1 single !short! Movie (i am not sure i found 90 minutes worth of good enough scenes in the whole 4 episodes, so a cut down to somewhere around 65 mins would have been probably somewhat reasonable), So lets take a look at what we have besides bad acting, writing that would be cringe worthy in a high school production, and obviously in todays adaption is only "inspired" by the source material. The Casting choices were questionable in many cases and the miscasting might be what lead me to state that the acting was bad before , but to be honest i think it is a mix of both. If you loved the Witcher lore in the games and / or in the books, you will undoubtedly be disheartened by this sad attempt and if this is a sign of what's to come, it does not bode well for the main show once Cavill is gone.

Okay, so I believe Netflix believes that the programme will be successful merely by having a diverse cast and including mystical elements. Right? WRONG! Please, please, please, can we return to good story telling as the MAIN priority, regardless of where the cast is from.

What makes this the "Witcher"? Let the Witcher be the Witcher, which is, incidentally, doing fantastic on its own as it has been for many years now. I really don't understand. Why then alter it? Why not use a different name for this? So many questions. The casting is appalling. The dialogue is the same. Netflix doesn't realise that pairing these hot trash fast food shows with games like The Witcher just serves to hurt the franchise and achieves nothing for everyone involved, especially the performers. Michelle was great in the movie Everything, Everywhere, but how does she go from that to this?

The reason there have been so many remakes of popular shows in recent years-many of which, like this one, are incredibly underwhelming and perplexing for all the fans of the original series-is because this is not the golden age of television; rather, it is the age of television in which "we have the rights to do whatever we like".

As a lover of the Witcher I wasn't able to finish a simple episode of whatever this is, but then again, there's only four episodes anyway... literally what is the point? I'm guessing it was some sort of test or something, well you have your answer: we DO NOT want to see more of this. Thank you very much.

The 1 stars are slightly exaggerating and the 10s are clearly trying to manipulate the rating. When the dust settles this show will be a 4/10. No I'm not some upset Witcher fan, I watched the two seasons. Never read the books or played the game. This is purely from a TV watchers perspective.

It clearly had potential but it was just bad. At no point was I connected to any characters, the plot development is way too fast at every step and everything that happens is just the justification of the plot, almost nothing seems logical or natural.

The writing as far as dialogue goes is amateur/hobbyist level. Super corny and melodramatic. Every cliche known to man is crammed into these four episodes and honestly the finale is an egregious offense.

I didn't even mention the effects of the music lol. That's all that needs to be said about it.

I liked the dwarf character and Michelle yeoh. I'd watch a spinoff of their adventures as long as no one else associated with this disaster was attached.

My wife and I are ardent fans of The Witcher series. Sadly this prequel was not of the same caliber as the main series.

Firstly I should note that the actress who plays the dwarf character (Francesca Mills) was great. When she's in a scene everything works. The other actors felt mostly miscast -- in part since everyone looked different and has different accents. Nothing felt natural.

As for the story, I expect that I missed a lot since the writing was absent of the cleverness that I had come to expect; some ensembles just work, this one didn't.

We watched the 4 episodes in one sitting. At the end we were pleased that it was kept to only 4. At the end I was left with a mild headache and no interest in more. Easily forgetable. And as one reviewer noted, this series is very reminescent of the "Wheel of Time" series, similar feel and characters that felt miscast, yet even that series was better than this.

I actually surprisingly felt like all of the casting had some great acting potential, but there is basically zero character development in this show -- it's almost as if a 40 episode series were condensed into a very long YouTube summary/recap video, and all of the development is narrated out to you... like Netflix didn't really want to spend the time/money on a complete show, but someone in the studio thought it'd be really cool to squeeze this prequel in before the next season of the Witcher, to give the audience some background: all while producing something with room for literally every single woke trope under the sun! Kind of hilarious if you think about it.

The show actually might have been better done as an animated series, and honestly, a lot of the tone of the show struck similar to some recent shows like Vox Machina and Dragon Age. And a pretty decent Witcher animated movie does already exist anyway.

Overall though, I've seen worse unfortunately; probably isn't so bad if you maybe wanted to put it on in the corner of your screen while getting some other work done. Basically could serve as a podcast with some decent action scenes worth tuning in to scattered throughout 🤷‍♂️