Same, the first season was pretty faithful and really good. The second went off the rails.
I understood the novels needed to be changed, if you stick to the novels, you would get 4 out of 5 seasons where Geralt/yen/Ciri aren’t even in the same room or ever meet up. It’s a constant chase that never has a resolution and they never find her.
But they changed not just the format of the story but the characters. Yen betraying Ciri was insane and goes against her character and how she feels about Ciri
First season was mostly fine, but those penis armored nilfgardians…
Second season completely undermined established characters’ morals. Yen acting like a 60s “irrational female character” archetype because “I want a baby”, Vesemir just being OK with the prospect of creating more witchers, the way they made Eskel out to be an asshole and then just killed him…
There were even bigger structural issues than that. A good production team could make the “I want a baby” motivation work. A good production team could make changes to characters work. The show did not have a good production team.
I can’t remember which season, but there was one scene where Jen takes Ciri to a bank (I think). They wanted to have the man they met with deliver a few lines of exposition explaining how he had run into Jen in the past, she had helped him, and now he was in her debt. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s perfectly functional storytelling.
The problem was that they had Ciri being moody and bored, walking around the set and poking at props. Meanwhile Jen was sitting across the desk from the guy delivering the lines. That meant that this dude was sitting there telling Jen her own backstory.
That means that either the writers were idiots who fucked up their own blocking and nobody on set questioned the script, or somebody on set insisted on the blocking despite it making no sense. My wife is a fan of the books and games, but I’m not. Even with no knowledge of the story being adapted I could tell something was deeply wrong with how that show was being made.
I gave up on the show after the second season. Which is weird because I loved the first one. It’s Altered Carbon all over again. May it rest in piss.
I damn loved the first season of Altered Carbon
Same, the first season was pretty faithful and really good. The second went off the rails.
I understood the novels needed to be changed, if you stick to the novels, you would get 4 out of 5 seasons where Geralt/yen/Ciri aren’t even in the same room or ever meet up. It’s a constant chase that never has a resolution and they never find her. But they changed not just the format of the story but the characters. Yen betraying Ciri was insane and goes against her character and how she feels about Ciri
First season was mostly fine, but those penis armored nilfgardians…
Second season completely undermined established characters’ morals. Yen acting like a 60s “irrational female character” archetype because “I want a baby”, Vesemir just being OK with the prospect of creating more witchers, the way they made Eskel out to be an asshole and then just killed him…
Yen wanting a child was a plot point with the djinn in the book, so at least that was accurate
Not at the cost of betraying Ciri though.
There were even bigger structural issues than that. A good production team could make the “I want a baby” motivation work. A good production team could make changes to characters work. The show did not have a good production team.
I can’t remember which season, but there was one scene where Jen takes Ciri to a bank (I think). They wanted to have the man they met with deliver a few lines of exposition explaining how he had run into Jen in the past, she had helped him, and now he was in her debt. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s perfectly functional storytelling.
The problem was that they had Ciri being moody and bored, walking around the set and poking at props. Meanwhile Jen was sitting across the desk from the guy delivering the lines. That meant that this dude was sitting there telling Jen her own backstory.
That means that either the writers were idiots who fucked up their own blocking and nobody on set questioned the script, or somebody on set insisted on the blocking despite it making no sense. My wife is a fan of the books and games, but I’m not. Even with no knowledge of the story being adapted I could tell something was deeply wrong with how that show was being made.