Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/16/the-final-trailer-for-netflix.html
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Speaking as someone with literally zero knowledge of the videogame or the books, this looks like it’s as fun as a lead balloon. Does it look better to folks who actually know about the story it will tell?
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I don’t believe I saw a single monster in that trailer. Having played all three games, isn’t that kind of The Witcher’s whole job, to kill monsters?
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Somewhat, yes. I guess it serves mainly as a showcase of which key characters we can expect to see.
It’s been a few years since I read them, but I think the monster killing was mostly in the earlier short stories, not so much the later novels that this appears to be based on.
Like Seamus, I’ve only read the books, and not played the games (yet!).
I also have no knowledge of the source material, so I choose to imagine a “Witcher” is some kind of magical sausage popularized by witches, just as a “Frankfurter” is a sausage popularized by the people of Frankfurt.
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Yep. From early indications, they were making it a little “monster of the week”, which kept with the first collection of stories that start out the series. This trailer seems to deal at least partially with the through-plot that starts in the first collection of short stories, then carries through into the novels.
After the novels get going, there’s actually very little monster hunting, with an exception towards the end of the series. Ironically, in some of the books there’s even very little Witcher, as the story follows his adopted daughter more and more.
It’s a slightly controversial translation form the original Polish “wiedźmin”. Some people translate it instead as “hexer”. The name is supposed to imply that he can do magic, and is also distrusted because of that (think similar connotations to ‘old crone’).
That carries over into the stories. Witchers are somewhat valued for their monster killing abilities, but only grudgingly accepted even then. The rest of the time they’re shunned or persecuted as ‘inhuman freaks’.
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