**** StarWars
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Even Cats is getting savage by reviewers harder then Star Wars.
At least Star Wars case, there are way more defenders in that 50+. Cats is... yeah.
@Gamerno6666: Which episodes? I thought the first was pretty solid. Not too heavy on exposition, and the latter half had some solid action. Definitely in the 7/8 area.
They watched the first 2 episodes then jump straight to episode 5 and then wrote the review.
Netflix's The Witcher is nakedly terrible: Review
Henry Cavill slashes and smooches through the boring fantasy adaptation.
By Darren Franich and Kristen Baldwin
December 20, 2019 at 03:01 AM EST
Darren Franich was planning to review the new Netflix series The Witcher by himself. Then he watched half an hour of the premiere and begged his critical colleague Kristen Baldwin to join his quest. The results were not pretty.
KRISTEN: I don’t know, should we start with the wig? The two most important things Hollywood learned from the Lord of the Ringsfilms are as follows: 1) It is possible to make an entire movie franchise about people walking, and 2) If you cast a hunk as a gentle-hearted fantasy-realm hero, make sure to put him in a white-blonde wig that looks like it was snatched straight from the head of Jennifer Elise Cox in The Brady Bunch Movie. And so poor, beefy Henry Cavill — who stars as Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher — finds himself saddled with a flowing, distracting mane of flaxen locks.
His hair is definitely the brightest thing about The Witcher’s first episode, which takes place in the dreary, muddy, soot-colored town of Blaviken. It’s a place where people don’t cotton to Witchers, at least if the grimy, bearded man Geralt encounters in the pub is to be believed. “We don’t want your kind around here, Witcher,” he growls. Rude. Anyhow, the pilot also features two rough-and-tumble princesses (Freya Allan, Emma Appleton), a wizard (Lars Mikkelsen), and totally gratuitous full-frontal female nudity. There are seven naked women in the first episode alone, Darren. Seven! I… think I’ve seen enough?
DARREN: Kristen, I have a confession. I am a member of the Henry Cavill Appreciation Society. The big Super-Brit was a deadpan delight in the goofball spyfest The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and a brilliantly looming tower in the most recent Mission: Impossible. Why, oh why, oh why he opted to star in a series that buries him under a bad wig and worse color contacts is a mystery to me.
Or maybe it’s a failure of franchise-chasing. The Witcher comes from novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, which also inspired an acclaimed video game series. I haven’t played the games, but the pilot has certain tropes from that medium exported without imagination to television. There’s the constant download of fantasy verbiage, including much talk about a “kikimora” and a town I swear is called “Blevicum.” Mikkelsen’s character has a big line about how Geralt “made a choice,” which feels like a hat-tip to the open-world nature of the games. The intention here is dark pulp fantasy, so this is the kind of show where a character like Appleton’s Renfri is a Princess and a mutant who has sex with Geralt the night before they battle to the death.
I’m definitely not averse to the wild extremes of this genre — shout-out to the visceral blood terrors of Adult Swim’s Primal — but the first episode felt like cheese gone moldy. That nude bordello really edged the whole vibe in a fratty direction, and the long running time required a lot of take-forever talk about prophecies and destiny. Did you watch further into the season?
KRISTEN: In the interest of professional obligation, Darren, I did sit through the second episode, which was notable for a few reasons. (Spoiler: None of those reasons include, “Because it was good.”) Henry Cavill gets far less screen time in the second hour — and he has to share his few scenes with a very, very annoying traveling bard (I would name the actor who plays him, but I’m fairly certain the writers didn’t even bother to name the character?). Anyhow, this very annoying traveling singer makes up tunes about abortion and says things like, “There I go again, just delivering exposition.”
Most of the second episode is devoted to the travails of a deformed young woman named Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), whose jerk of a father sells her off to a haughty witch named Tissaia de Vries (MyAnna Buring). It turns out Yennefer has some untapped magical abilities, and she finds herself enrolled in Tissaia’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, or whatever she calls it. So now this show is The Magicians featuring special guest star Henry Cavill, I guess?
The Witcher is also packed with confusing conflicts and long-held rivalries that require a lot of explanation but still manage to make no sense. The premiere sets up a princess-wizard showdown that is related to a curse (I think), while episode 2 introduces a budding war between Elves and humans. Apparently the Elves taught the humans how to turn something called “chaos” into magic, and then the humans unleashed a genocide on them. “I was once Filavandrel of the Silver Towers,” notes a majestic Elf (Tom Canton). “Now I’m Filavandrel of the edge of the world.” So yeah, this is some high-school level Dungeons & Dragons role play with a multi-million-dollar budget. Netflix canceled the far cheaper, far more entertaining The Good Copfor this?
DARREN: Because life’s too short for Netflix drama running times, I skipped ahead to the fifth episode, which brings the Yennefer and Geralt plotlines together. Episode 5 also features Magic Viagra and a masked orgy set to some truly ridiculous retro-softcore music. I do think there’s room for a mature-content fantasy romp in our post-Game of Thronesuniverse, but eternal exposition runs alongside a tin ear for dialogue.
This is the first TV show I’ve ever seen that would actually be better with commercial breaks. The goofy syndicated fantasy of yesteryear had to have a brisk pace, building every 12 minutes to an act-breaking cliffhanger. The Witcher fully embraces the endless-movie layout of the worst Blank Check streaming TV. At the end of the series premiere, someone tells Allen’s Princess Ciri that Geralt is her destiny. In episode 5, people are still telling her that Geralt is her destiny. I assume they will meet in the season finale. Alas, my destiny is to never watch this borefest ever again. Grade: F
Think might like this design more than Julia Voth's.
Not sure about John Rambo, looks kinda generic.
Reinstalled Metro Exodus to use as an RTX benchmark, and I forgot how bad it was. It has the worst opening to a game ever. It takes contrivancy to a whole new level. I don't think I've ever gonna make it past the Volga chapter.
How many of y'all use a screen protector on your switch?
don't even put them shits on my phone.
Same, I hate screen protectors.
Reinstalled Metro Exodus to use as an RTX benchmark, and I forgot how bad it was. It has the worst opening to a game ever. It takes contrivancy to a whole new level. I don't think I've ever gonna make it past the Volga chapter.
It get better after that.
come on pinky, Metro Exodus is definitely best game of 2019 imo. i though you like Metro 2033 and last light back in old GT days.
The future is now.
thats why i hate VR. invincible hands floating on airs.
no matter how valve will promote. it wont touch traditional real games.
It is something of a revolutionary experience having to manually open the butt of a sawn-off shogun, reach to your side to manually pull out two slugs, insert them and then flick your wrist up to snap it back in. The game even accounts your velocity and gravity, if you do it at a wrong angle or forcefully the slugs just fly out the chambers.
Haven't touched MP yet, if it's anything like Counterstrike it will be full of pricks with a god-complex, but that was a mighty impressive display.
@ghosts4ever:
Motion sickness is definitely VRs biggest flaw, but I'm slowing growing my "VR legs". I had to take hours rest after 30 minutes of smooth locomotion (jumped straight into Alien Isolation, have never used teleportation outside of Steam VR Home), but now I can play entire chapters of Boneworks before motion sickness kicks in. Kinda hoping they delay Half Life Alyx another year to give me time to build complete immunity to motion sickness.
It's kinda cruel how such an awesome piece of tech such as VR has a flaw that can render it literally unusable for some people. It's like a monkey paw scenario.
On a different subject, I hope next gen is finally the gen we start to see games designed around FemFX / Physx style physics. I'll be disappointed if all we get is slightly better lighting, reflections and a res bump.
@locopatho: ...of the opinion it's very much like the wii motion controls where every gamer talked shit about it but then games like Super Mario Galaxy would come along and show them done properly. Boneworks, Pavlov and a few other very specific titles do that and Alyx, by virtue of coming from Halflife will draw otherwise ignored attention from both the consumer and the media.
Less a hardware problem outside of price and more a software problem. A lot of games simply are just 20 minute to 2 hour tech demos. And it didn't help at all, the almost immediately they started segmenting all the software off to be hardware specific.
You can use exploits to get around it, but for a burgeoning platform it's just stupid. Resident Evil 7 for example on the PC still hasn't been patched to use VR.
I gave Metro Exodus another chance, but I've came to the conclusion it's one of the worst games I've ever played. The NPCs are so fucking annoying
I gave Metro Exodus another chance, but I've came to the conclusion it's one of the worst games I've ever played. The NPCs are so fucking annoying
Great game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/356400/Thumper/
Looks like typical rhythm game but feels more like something like Space Harrier. Simple but hard as shit.
Seriously, this song doesn't just fit the MSM, it fits a lot of the YouTube vlogger style news (TheQuartering, YongYea, CleanPrinceGaming):
"Where Silence Has Lease" is a creepy ass episode. It's sort of like "what does god want with a StarShip" but not a shit Santa Claus. The whole build up during the opening 1/2 of the episode is just fantastic.
Also gave us this classic.
Entertainment Weekly gave The Witcher a 0 rating...... By only watching 2 episodes. Sigh.
henry calvin potrayal of geralt is actually better than actual one.
the actual geralt is too robotic and has personality of cardboard.
The BBC has made an adaptation of A Christmas Carol where Scrooge is child abused, then blackmails and rapes a woman in order to save her disabled child.
Ho Ho Holy, fucking Christ.
@lundy86_4: We get to pay tax for unfunny comedians promoting themselves on interchangeable panel shows and crappy talent show (with 3 guests including the mean one) are crappy talent show, where it all ultimately boils down to self-promotion.
To be honest this isn't bad though, we've had so many takes on a Christmas Carol that having a spin on it as an adult drama is at the very least, interesting. Helps as well it has Guy Pearce, Andy Serkis and Stephen Graham.
Kayvan Novak pops up in it as well, dudes amazing.
I sometimes watch Family Guy clips on Youtube.
So, Eddie Murphy was on SNL. I know that he used to work at SNL when he was younger. Didn't know there so many people that worked at SNL that became famous.
Sometimes. I like to watch Patriot Act on Youtube. Its very informational with comedy thrown in. The intro is just amazing.
LSU will cream Oklahoma, Clemson will beat Ohio State. LSU will defeat Clemson for the National title in January.
Merily Christmas.
7:00am. kids creeping round me bedroom holding stockings like absolute bafoons. don’t fuckin think so. pulled satsuma out stocking and launched it at eldest. told them to **** off till at at least 10. not puttin up with this shit. rough as **** and back at work in 12 days. cunts.
— Leslie Davidson (@BigLez67) December 25, 2019
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