Hacker Cinema
The Witcher
2019 · TV series · 4 seasons
Created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
Science FictionFantasyActionAdventure
Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster-hunter for hire, journeys toward his destiny in a turbulent world where people often prove more wicked than beasts.
16 positive30 negative5 mixed34 neutralfrom 85 commenters
Where to watch
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89 comments on Hacker News
> I struggle to remember hardly anything memorable from Netflix, especially their movies
For me there have been a few movies, off the top of my head:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold_the_Dark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraction_(2020_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Thinking_of_Ending_Things
In addition the first seasons of The Witcher and Altered Carbon, and the show Dark.
I canceled my subscription around 2020 though, got so fed up by the UX, so haven't watched much since.
I am still trying to recover from whatever Witcher season 3 broke in my brain by its audaciously low quality.
I was kicked out of the suspension of disbelief so hard I can't unsee things about the production process now, like makeup, continuity, costuming, sound design.
It was like the whole crew from script to editor just gave up, totally bizarre for headliner content.
> If they wrote a book 20 years ago and it didn't sell much it's not going to sell now either, no?
That's not a universal rule. Andrzej Sapkowski wrote a little short story called "The Witcher" in the 80's, that he expanded on into a novel series through the 90's. Then a game development studio made a series of wildly successfully videogames based on his work, which definitely made way more money than his books, to the point that Netflix made a tv series based on his books. I struggle to imagine how it could be just that the videogames and tv show, based on his work, owe him nothing.
I just hope they won't destroy sagas like they did to the Witcher. In other words, I don't think this is good for future content as there is a risk movies/series will follow the same scripts, underlying story plots, cultural norms, same cinematography, etc. Quality going down.
Moreover, this also means more time for ads to pay for this merger.
Variable/exempt VAT on certain goods often leads to funny exploitation. In Poland we got a ton of media (games, movies, pr0n) sold as magazines/books to get 8% instead of 22% VAT.
Here an example from CD Project (Witcher and Cyberpunk guys) https://gamerweb.pl/gry-z-serii-gamebook-w-sieci-sklepow-biedronka/ Gamebook, a book bundled with "free" game :)
These days, it's nearly impossible to find a good game that can't be criticized for something. The Witcher, Doom, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Cyberpunk, GTA, Counter-Strike, etc. — all these games can be accused of anything from excessive violence to sexism, not to mention that many of them contain "adult elements".
If we allow uneducated hypocrites to decide what is allowed and what isn't, there will be nothing left that is allowed.
For heaven's sake, even in the politically correct mainstream pop game Baldur's Gate 3 there is a whole "god of masochism" mentioned, and the player can go through a mmm… ritual with one of his followers. Not to mention The Bear.
The essence of many games, especially RPGs, is not only in entertainment but also in raising complex and sensitive questions; in safely exploring our culture, ethics, and morality. The same applies to literature, cinema, and all other forms of art.
If we let hypocrites and hypocritical corporations dictate what is allowed and what isn't, the world will quickly descend into dystopia — one of the kinds about which our favorite RPGs are. Only in RPGs we play as all-powerful protagonists who save the world, whereas in real life, we'll be crushed one by one, just like people are in many less fortunate countries today.
*We must unite and resist.*
I just want to pile in that the old netflix layout was top tier. I LOVED it and because of it, stumbled onto tons of awesome movies I never heard of at the time and were actually interesting. Their algorithm back then was the best. I never had a problem finding movies to ACTUALLY WATCH. The whole reason I quit my subscription a few years ago was for the fact I end up burning up time "looking" for something to watch. Then don't. I stopped paying for the "movie browsing simulator" a little after The Witcher 1st season. A few months ago, I got another month because I thought it might be better. Ha. No.
In this case, it's less "faster horse" and more "quit with the stupid fucking song and dance, and give me the damn thing I paid for without all this extra stupid bullshit that makes the experience worse."
I cant help but roll the eyes over "incoming college students are less likely to identify works of literature as favorite books, instead referencing young adult books".
My favorite books were Terry Pratchett books and "The Witcher" when I was young. I would probably respond with some literature if professor asked, to look smarter. That the few remaining people who actually read respond more openly to that question is a good thing.
That being said, contemporary adults read less books then adults used to too. There is no such thing as a discussion of books in the workplace, there is no expectation that anyone reads books. However, you do find discussions about series and movies.
You can only pull it off if the game is real nice, though. Or if it's real good at milking you.
Some movies can also sell you some merchandise and a poster and perhaps a second go to cinema. More important, they can also sell IP rights to make a game out of it.
And people seem to forget that The Witcher is, first and foremost, a great book series.
I think you should give way more thought to why you don't like current entertainment. Why are you so convinced it's the racial composition of the cast that makes the content bad?
There are plenty of reasons TV and movies are bad these days. With the glut of new shows, writing and directing in particular seems to be suffering.
The Witcher (for instance) fell off a cliff after its first season, and its shittiness had nothing to do with "DEI" and everything to do with Netflix's belief that cheaper creative doesn't hurt the bottom line.
What if more than one trend is happening at once?
Crazy to see The Witcher Season 2 (renewed), Sandman (renewed) and 1899 (cancelled) so closely grouped.
Sure they are. Plenty of film and streaming projects are based on older work. Sapkowski's Witcher series comes to mind. If his rights to the IP had expired after 20 years then not only would Netflix been able to rip his work off for free, but he wouldn't have benefitted at all from the resurgence in popularity that his novels garnered. It would've just been gravy for some publishing company -- how would that be fair?
I do think that the current copyright regime is too long. I guess I'd like to see something like ~25 years from publication for human authors, but easily/cheaply renewable to lifetime copyright; and 25 years from creation for copyright held by companies, or for works for which the copyright has been assigned to someone else other than the original author, with no renewal.
Yea. Maybe not "destroy" but "bring down to the lowest common denominator." To be sure, there's a market for media everyone can enjoy... I just hate how they seemingly have to find existing franchises to do it with.
But now that I'm thinking about it... seems to be every single company these days. Soooo disappointed with the Witcher. Huge fan of the books and games. The first episode I knew it was gonna be bad. The color grading and general vibe was that of _any_ generic fantasy show on netflix. It wasn't gritty and I didn't get a "eastern european culture/lore" feel more like a "how can we make this appeal to the most people possible by turning all the dials to average." Aggressively middle of the road fantasy from such great source material, ugh.
Either you are living under a rock, are being purposely obtuse, or support the politics being pushed so you either do not see it or just willfully ignore it.
>There was no campaign speech to elect Biden in the latest Captain America
This is just a stupid statement
>I don't recall anything overtly political in most modern movies.
Snow White, Indian Jones 5, Just about Every Marvel Movie Past infinity War, 2 of the 3 Star Wars Films in the new Trilogy, The Little Mermaid... Shall I go on?
It is more pronounced in TV Shows however, She Hulk, Season 2 and 3 of Witcher, Rings of Power, etc etc etc
>So what exact "narratives" is everyone complaining about?
For starters [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPE7-PRL0M8
This that just just the tip of the ice berg...
I liked the movie a lot. It felt like a fresh, original entry in the genre of comedy fantasy, next to beloved entries like The Princess Bride, Ladyhawk, A Knight's Tale, and Shrek. It was well-written and directed, even if some of the action sequences (e.g. the dragon cave) were a bit tropey.
They should have called it something else. There's clearly a market for fantasy, as has been seen with the popularity of Netflix's Witcher series (which treads very similar ground), but the Dungeons and Dragons brand has been thoroughly devalued over the years, and doesn't have the same kind of mass-market appeal.
Often the problem is bait and switch. For example, I went into the Witcher series expecting a show focused on Geralt, like in the games and books. Over the seasons it progressively devoted more screen time to Yennefer and Ciri, effectively making Geralt a side character in his own story. Now season 3 is sitting at a 19% audience score according to Rotten Tomatoes, viewership has cratered, the actor for Geralt (Henry Cavill) has left, and people are betting that it will be cancelled.
>No one said anything about original TV shows
I did. That's what I meant by targeting existing markets over taking risks, or why I mentioned non-franchise fantasy writing opportunities, and what I assumed the person I was replying to was talking about when criticizing using The Witcher as a backdrop for their disconnected stories.
And even if we brought that number down to 95% of screenwriters, that would still provide a place for everyone to stick their own ideas in.
bollocks, there are multiple unions that have (and currently are) fighting aggressively for writers and actors.
and in the case of the witcher the talent and the writers had pedigrees, not like henry cavil wasn't in movies before, or since.
That is factually incorrect. Cavill wanted them to be more faithful to the books, so they changed from the monster of the week setup of the 1st season to the silly political drama of the books.
The thing about The Witcher is that the books aren't very good. People like the Witcher despite the horrible writing (the same way people liked Twilight despite the horrible writing). If Season 1 had been faithful to the books it would never have taken off.
Most people seem to be basing their ideas for what the show should be like based on what the games were like, but the games are quite liberal in their adaptation of the underlying material.
OTOH, the best season of the Witcher was Season One, which Cavill had little to no control over substantively or stylistically.
Season 3 is the season in which he has exercised the most creative control...this is the Witcher as he envisions it...and it's making GOT Season 7 look good.
Henry Cavill is vocal (but kind and respecting) and an "ideologically pure" geek, in the sense that he seems to try and change scripts of series and movies he plays in, where they overlap with his nerdiness, ie [0], but there are more references. Of course, this is true in so far as geekiness can be seen as an ideology, if so, Cavill is pretty pure and vocal, but also just a great guy it seems. Now he’s going for a Warhammer 40k series and people are looking forward to it, because he knows his s*.
[0] https://redanianintelligence.com/2021/12/09/henry-cavill-added-a-scene-in-the-witcher-without-permission-and-it-worked/
The arrs are sweet. Plex serves media. Prowlarr maintains a list of torrent sites to use. Radarr for movies, sonarr for tv, and lidarr for music monitor things and auto download, move, rename, etc., and are tied into prowlarr for where to get them. Some examples, every new Minions movie or every new episode of The Witcher or every new album from IVE you can have auto download once available and get moved to the correct Plex library folder with the correct filename, and you can set up metadata requirements like size, bitrate, etc. for those the downloads. Overseerr has a slick ui for discovering media and requesting downloads; you can have it set up to use plex accounts where you or other users logged in with their plex account can request something, and it reaches out to the correct arr for that to do its thing according to the *arr settings for that media.
What's everything is set up, imagine a Netflix where you can also request something not available and get that added in the time it takes to download in the exact resolution, language, subs, etc., that you want with no more than a search and a click.
> It really ought to be illegal to rewrite a book and portray it as the original authors work.
They're already doing it with TV shows. Look at the Witcher TV series for instance - which has strayed quite far from the source material.
Even the author (Andrzej Sapkowski) has denounced his relationship to it, yet they're claiming it somehow to still have his blessing, and still be be 'The Witcher'.
I'm still a fan of The Witcher, although I think the most tightly plotted episodes are actually the prequel that recently came out (that lacks Henry in it).
The 1899 cancellation is when I realized that Netflix has no competent strategy to rolling out shows. It was #1 and #2 on their charts for weeks, only dethroned by Wednesday, yet they cancelled it. I fear that Netflix is eventually going to just make "Fast and the Furious" quality of original content, or they will go with franchises with known names that are licensed. They created the Witcher, are pushing out another season of it (despite the lead leaving, bad reviews and backlash on direction) and have a spin off that is universally panned.
Cinema is suffering from the same thing, which is why superhero films and franchises rule the silver screen. It's not a good direction for the artform or any semblance of quality. So many great franchises were rough (or had poor TV ratings) in their first seasons that are now considered classics. From Seinfeld to Parks and Rec to X-Files to Star Trek TNG, there are countless examples.
This is disney+hulu+espn combined!
When hotstar was bundled with Hulu - hulu suddenly got huge infusion of Indian movies and shows. Nothing Netflix has even comes close.
I wonder also, if they are counting hotstar, which is pretty big in India.
Having said that - I personally find content on disney+ boring and stale. Some Marvel and Star War spin offs are okay, but most are meh. I don't know how to put it, but disney+ is trying too hard to en-cash popularity of existing franchise and I believe lacks depth.
Netflix while has uneven programming has/had shows which are pretty good and break new ground(IMO). Queen's Gambit, Dragon Prince, Arcana etc are pretty good. They have also wasted money on the whole witcher show and their "original" movies are by and large meh.
I'm the same as far as Netflix, they have enough "good enough" shows for me to keep them around. I figure if I average ~2-3 hours a week it is still worth it.
Yes some of their new shows are... not to my liking (hey, maybe somebody out there really loves Warrior Nun but I stopped after a few episodes) but several are (Shadow and Bone, Witcher, Umbrella Academy, Ozarks, Cobra Kai, Lupin) I'm looking forward to future seasons, or finishing the series (in the case of Ozarks).
HBO Max might fall into the season-subscription category for me, where I take it 3-6 months a year. And maybe Disney+ too except I've got a large backlog there.
Anyway, the behavior change for me is to watch a show sooner rather than later. I was working my way through Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Hulu and reached season 6, taking a break for a few weeks, to return and discover the remained of the episodes are tied to a live TV subscription. Not sure if some license deal expired in time I took a break after season 5, or if it was always like that (however, I don't think so).
>Clunky got prequels
House of the Dragon has surprisingly been great, sure you have the random teleporting character or out of character military tactic but it also shows HBO learned from their mistake and you can feel they brought back the politics and meetings and focus on characters instead of fan service and whatever made the last 4 got seasons the garbage they turned into.
But again you have to have read GRRM's work and not be a contrarian just for the sake of it to enjoy it.
Rings of power had a budget of a billion $, either there is some money laundering scheme at work that I'm unaware of, or people have just forgotten how to hire good writers and other people to make a decent movie/series.
If you gave me a billion $ today I'd just hire Peter Jackson, pay him a shit ton of money so he accepts, and give him FULL creative power over the project so it doesn't turn out like The Hobbit trilogy or That Raimi directed Dr Strange in the multiverse of madness. And if he refuses to do it then find another good director and I'm sure there are a lot of big names who would gladly accept the challenge of topping Jackson's work.
A billion $ is A LOT of money in cinema, despite you having to pay the movie theaters, marketing, etc. Amazon owns imdb so can market it themselves on 2 of the most visited websites in the world: Amazon and imdb (for movie/series watchers), and if that's not enough, they own the streaming service where they plan to put it.
People aren't saying it sucks (at least I'm not) but that it had no reason to not be great. Galadriel felt inhuman in Jackson's movies, she's supposed to be one of the fairest and mightiest elves in middle earth, I doubt she felt like that to anyone in rop.
Now after all this rant: I didn't watch rings of power, and I don't plan to, why soil a good memory and good mental mythos I have of that world? I made that mistake with the witcher, I had built up the characters in my head from the books and later the videogames, then Netflix took a huge dump on this mental model, and now whenever I think about some character (outside of Cavill and a few others who did great work) I also get the image of the new one in my head: I hope this weird rambling makes sense.
The problem is the low effort part not the "not being true" part. If you take a result of decades of loving work of some author and give it to a committee to remake it in 6 months (and people in the committee were chosen by some random criteria like genitals or pigmentation) - you get low quality product with big budget.
Then you blame people who understand what was lost for complaining and call them racist.
Few people have problems with changes for the better. But the changes are usually for worse. In the Witcher season 1 most changes were well received (introducing Yennefer backstory for example). But removing the Ciri & Geralt scene which was the pinnacle of the 2 short stories collecting just so that they can put 30 minutes of Ciri walking with that black elf that has no influence on anything else in the story was just dumb. Pacing was awful, and they had to cut the good stuff.
The story got objectively worse, but people who didn't read the books won't complain cause they don't know what they missed.
Interesting that one of the main collaborators on the movie, Janusz Kamiński, was Polish.
Polish sci-fi from the Cold War period was full of tech dystopia with a dollop of absurdity: Stanislaw Lem is well known in the Western world, Janusz Zajdel less so, but he was no less talented. Even Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the Witcher, dabbled in SF dystopia in some of his less known stories.
It is likely that Janusz Kamiński was influenced by them at least a bit. In Slavic dystopias, you cannot laugh at the tyrant, but you can at least grin at his minions, who are usually as stupid as they are mean.
It is nice to notice from here in Central Europe, a tiny thread of a shared Cold War experience in a world class movie that is ostensibly about a very different world.
No need for you to bashing netflix if you don't like their content.
Its $10 per month, 2 coffees.
I also do watch a lot of tv shows and movies for the last 15/20 years (also stuff besides mainstream) and there are pretty good tv shows on netflix. Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, Better Call Saul, Russian Doll, Love Death and Robots (the last season was weirder than usual though), Space force (super quirky, love it!), The Witcher, Arcane, Superstore, Squid Game
"this seems like a corporate driven project rather than a creator driven project"
This. It is made for profit, not for content. Disney ruined Star Wars, Netflix ruined The Witcher, now Amazon goes for LOTR... Dark ages of cinema.
People don't want to watch movies with ugly people in them if possible. This is why a series like the Witcher has a at least a 50/50 general balance in the enjoy.ent if the TV show even though the player base of the games is a sausage fest...
There is definitely something to this. Basically any man who takes their shirt off in a film is generally ridiculously muscular. As in, a body shape that's only achievable with hours of intense training a day, probably with an expensive personal trainer, diet plan etc. I remember an interview with Henry Cavill (The Witcher) describing the process of dehydrating himself on days before shirtless scenes to enhance muscle definition.
I know it affects me. Looking at media 20-30 years ago I don't this was as prevalent.
I don't know that I necessarily agree with this, some of the more mature shows are also simultaneously their most popular offerings. (Squid game, black mirror, the Witcher, etc.)
And I for one am glad when a show is rated TV-MA because it means that they can be more authentic and unfettered in terms of the vision for the show instead of watering it down to appeal to a broader demographic. "Television is for families" is purely your subjective anecdotal experience. There is a reason the expression is "Netflix and chill", not "Disney and chill".
Conversely, if you're not interested in yet another marvel show or movie, Star Wars or old animated movies, Disney+ is a desert.
I can agree the elden ring isn’t narrative driven but I do think it has lots of story and lore that you have the option to dig into. One player could play it and see no story at all while another reads everything and knows the history of the land.
I suppose I did forget about arcane, although I feel like that’s an exception and an outlier.
I disagree that the movies are arguably better and have a more fleshed out story. In the case of resident evil, the story of the games is leagues ahead of the movie franchise story. I think so much so that’s it’s not actually enjoyable for fans of the video game.
The Witcher is another good example. Amazing game, fantastic story that has rich lore. The show is decent, and does do a fairly good job. It just guts the story though, and I lost interest in season 2 as it got more off track.
The author would say that the Witcher TV series is better than the games, story wise, but anyone who’s played the games always says the same thing, the shows not nearly as good.
I honestly think they are two mediums you can’t really compare. One is a passive media consumption, whilst the other is a engaging media consumption. A game puts you in the drivers seat and makes you feel like you’re in control. You may have limited control, but you can still feel like you have an outcome on the story. I think that’s a powerful tool that can’t translate to movies or tv shows. When I watch the Witcher, I’m watching Gerald fight monsters and roughly follow the same lines as the books. When I play the Witcher I am Geralt and I have control in how my Geralt comes across. You just can’t replicate that in tradition media.
> Netflix just streams videos?
Netflix funds content. Netflix licenses content and has a say on how future content from that IP is produced. They are not just a streaming platform. When you look at every new show as of late you see themes commonly associated with wokeness. Replacing characters with "BIPOC" (I hate this term) when adapting from source material when it clearly seems out of place. Mixing in subtle commentary about immigration, healthcare, "hate" speech, etc. Women are always the strong saviors, men are always the aggressive out of control beasts or they're docile homemakers.
You can see it in pretty much every show. Witcher Season 1/2 (immigration, replacing characters, men/women tropes), House of Cards Season 6 (all of the above), Altered Carbon, etc.
Same here. There is literally nothing I want to see on Netflix since The Witcher season 2 ended. Same with Disney+. Oddly enough Amazon has the most compelling content, and I'd pay for Prime even if they didn't offer streaming, so it's essentially free for me.
Considering cancelling. Been burned too many times by big splashy first seasons followed by slashed budget followups and then cancellations.
Not sure WTF happened with The Witcher, but the writing, cinematography, and etc are not on par with season 1. Hasn't kept me engaged past 2 episodes.
I find it hard to invest time on their content these days when it's a crap shoot if they cripple or cancel it.
Finding WAY better value in HBO and Disney these days TBH.
You fail to recognize one important factor. Those that did cancel dont show up to these comment threads anymore.
Me being one of them for I think I'm about to hit the 2 year mark soon on being sans-Netflix.
Any show I like and publicly does well, cancelled on season 3. Shows that have been popping up are utter trash. I was thinking of doing a month when Cowboy Bebop dropped... yea... I'm glad i didnt. I'm waiting for Witcher season 3 to drop, then I'll get it for a month and cancel it.
Their business practices are staying from, "deliver awesome content in an awesome way" to "squeeze blood from a rock".
Back in the day, Marco Polo was their shit tier show and it was awesome. The netflix exclusives that were coming out 2 years ago were trash and I could see the writing on the wall that it wasn't going to get better. What I hear about lately, it's all a fucking joke. They're hitting the theres a quality in quantity mindset and the numbers are showing that it's not working.
Maybe if they placed more focus on good movies and shows instead of the business models LITERALLY EVERYONE RAN AWAY FROM TO GET NETFLIX IN THE FIRST PLACE... they might be complaining that there aren't enough good writers and filmmakers out there because they already bought up everyone. That's a better and much more respectable problem to have instead of being a silicon valley bro who worries about "scale" during every conversation.
In all of the examples, the smaller competitors banded together. Who are the "smaller competitors" here? Disney certainly isn't smaller than Netflix by any reasonable measure, and Amazon has a built-in customer base because of bundling with the free shipping.
Perhaps all of the "also-ran" services Paramount, Hulu, Peacock will band together, but I wonder how successful that will be vs. just leasing their material to Amazon or Netflix.
Streaming is also interesting because of the less-fungible nature of flagship content. The Witcher is not precisely a substitute for Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time is certainly not a substitute for either. The main reason to not switch from "Bank of my local village" to a Bank of America is friction, and "Bank of your local village" doesn't directly compete with "Bank of my local village" but both compete with B of A, so there is a natural alliance there.
[edit]
Also, VCRs; Betamax was more expensive and had a shorter runtime, while quality of self-recorded material was less important to consumers. VHS won by being cheaper and better matching customer use-cases; maybe that was because it was open, but it was not directly because it was open.
[edit2]
> [Netflix] has pursued the wrong strategy, and doubled down at every opportunity. The company has spent billions of dollars on proprietary films and TV shows in order to create a position of market dominance with a totally closed system. But that was only phase one. We are already in phase two, with Disney, Paramount, and others removing their offerings from the Netflix platform, and trying to create their own powerful fiefdoms.
Netflix would be out of the streaming business today if it hadn't pursued this strategy; the writing was already on the wall for content-owners doing their own streaming before Netflix produced original content. Streaming platforms are being commodified, but streaming content is not.
[edit3]
> Do you think Netflix can match that with its proprietary approach? The company will be forced to open up its own system, or face inevitable decline, perhaps even obsolescence
Again, Netflix isn't pursuing a "proprietary approach" by choice; if you want to sell Netflix any license for your content (exclusive or otherwise), they are more than happy to do so if the price is right. Look at everything available that isn't "Netflix Original" (and note that even some of that is not exclusive to Netflix, as they may have only partial ownership).
[edit4]
> Here’s the bottom line: Netflix might be one of the largest companies in the world, but it’s far more vulnerable than it looks at first glance. And it doesn’t have the brand franchises it can milk like Disney—which can churn out Marvel and Stars Wars movies with reasonable assurances of market success.
This is the only paragraph related to Netflix in the entire article that I agree with. I don't know how the author can hold this truth in their head while blasting them for spending money like water trying to generate such a franchise through massive spends on content. If the author's thesis is that Netflix is doomed to fail, then Netflix should just shut down streaming operations right now.
[edit5]
Isn't Roku already a bit of what the author wants? You can search across multiple streaming services and have them all in one place. Sure you have to actually pay for those services, but most of them can be signed up for in the Roku app, and nobody's giving their content away for free...
Maybe I'm just in some kind of weird minority (I also like modern art and brutalist architecture) but many of the TV shows I've most enjoyed watching over the last year have been Netflix originals. Arcane and Castlevania are both up there with the best western animation ever, The Witcher and Cobra Kai are great pulpy fun while still having compelling characters, and Kate is my favorite action movie.
> Netflix is on the very fast downward slope
I don't think the data is proving this out at all. Streaming will probably be a winner-take-most market and Netflix is on track to remain the leader.
We'll see what total 2021 subscriber growth was on Thursday, but estimates for Q4 are still around a net addition of 8 million subscribers. Compare this with Disney Plus growth in the same period of 2 million subscribers and I think the results are quite favorable.
If you pay attention to the details, such as in earnings calls, executives have reported that average subscriber watch time has only been increasing over the past few quarters. (Also see refs such as: https://backlinko.com/netflix-users#time-spent-with-netflix)
Keeping in mind that Covid has slowed production of content, in 2021 Netflix still managed to create the two most watched movies _ever_ on the platform (Red Notice, Don't Look Up). There are follow-up seasons launching for at least three of their strongest series, including Witcher (released tail end of 2021), Bridgerton, and Stranger Things. Plus the regular spikes of culturally relevant content such as Squid Games, Cheer, etc. which now happen fairly often.
> is destroying the business model that made them so appealing in the first place
I'm not sure how you are inferring that the business model has been destroyed here. It's certainly evolving over time but the promise has always been 'pay us a monthly subscription and we'll give you lots of things to watch'. I don't see how that has changed meaningfully or negatively.
Netflix has had naysayers at every stage of its growth. The landscape is always changing but I believe the critical idea is that Netflix leads in streaming and this has only strengthened over time. Total subscribers, revenue per user, and watch hours per account are all drifting up, and I fail to see how that represents a downward slope.
I really hope Netflix proves everyone wrong. HBO and Disney+ may have a huge advantage but neither seems interested in the tech side. Disney+ may be OK now (it's been a while since I checked) but HBO Max seems to be extremely inconsistent when it comes to streaming quality. Even new, popular shows like Euphoria on HBO Max are only 1080p with a bitrate so low that the frequent, dimly lit scenes are a blocky mess. At the same time, AAA movies like Dune stream in nearly Bluray quality. Meanwhile even dumb reality shows on Netflix still stream with suburb quality.
IMO assuming Netflix doubles down on original content which seems to be the assumed direction, they have two strategies. Strategy one is to produce/distribute content that is developed outside the US where production is much cheaper and existing production companies have less of an advantage. Partnering with local, smaller production outfits is probably a good strategy.
Strategy two is to use their tech advantage to lower the cost of content production. I'm quite surprised that we haven't seen Netflix create a Holodeck-esque production method. The Mandalorian (Disney+/Holodeck) and The Witcher Season 1(Netflix) have somewhat similar production costs per episode at ~$15M and ~$10M respectively but The Mandalorian had significantly more and better CG then The Witcher so clearly the Holodeck method has a lot of benefits and cost savings.
That said Squid Game only had a total budget of ~$21M, although a lot lighter on CG, strategy one offers a more cost savings.
Well, perhaps the question is: better for who? I can't watch most mainstream TV shows with my little kids. Witcher, GoT, etc. Perhaps mainstream TV of the 70s was forced to be better for a broader audience.
The shows are better for me, more entertaining, more exciting, etc, but not better for everyone in the house. The sharding of entertainment into different age groups leads to people not sitting together and watching a show together, and instead we're all in different rooms with headphones. imo that's worse.
With all of the deadly important issues in the US and the world today these folks have locked their compass on "the legalization of sharing movies, music and other art online"? Is this not satire? Perhaps these "pirates" should watch some illegally downloaded copies of "Don't Look Up." And their wisdom should be so plain to see that we trust them to come up with good decisions later for small details like the world outside of file sharing? "Aye, matey! I'll have me platforme on global warmin' just after I finishe a-pirate-watchin' this last season of 'ye Witcher!' and several other crucial arts, perhaps a-playin' some cracked games in which I'll learn about what's called the economies."
I'm not trying to deny that intellectual property issues can be important, even extremely so. It's argued that Germany's rise was related to a lack of copyright[1], and we can think of patents on medicine and many other areas where copyright is crucial, even foundational. But please...
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html
When I review the list of original series that came out in 2021[0], the only thing I was interested in watching, watched to completion, and thoroughly enjoyed in 2021 (excluding children's programming) was Arcane and Black Summer (I know the latter is controversial but I enjoy its arthouse take on the genre even when the writing/plotting has its holes). Seinfeld and Cowboy Bebop (the animé) have been nice for nostalgia but I don't pay for re-runs. I finished The Witcher but the writing took a step back from season one.
Meanwhile, HBO had multiple quality series release this season both new and old. Highly recommend Station Eleven.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Netflix_original_programming
>Do you really think that authors are paid in percentage of the publisher's profits?
For books authors generally get a percentage of revenue (with some caveats) which is even better.
> They bought the rights for a relatively unknown story paying peanuts, made it big and profited.
I assume the the author still made a lot of money from increased book sales.
> Do you really believe that the Witcher could become a HIT on its own merits?
If it was written in English then perhaps.
> I imagine a system where if the publisher makes a lot more money (with a lot to be defined) than the original author made before the creation went public domain, then __they could be forced to compensate the original author__
Sorry I think I missed this bit. However again this would only benefit the publisher and not the author until the threshold is reached. After it's reached I assume authors would get something similar to what they get under the current system?
I'm not completely against having some compensation mechanism similar to books royalties for derived works like games or movies under which would be entitled to receive some % of revenue as opposed to whatever they have negotiated with the studio in advance. However I'm afraid this would disincentivize studios from making on movies based on less successful/well-known books altogether.
> Shortening the life of copyright would make this hoarding practices useless, because everybody could make a Witcher after 20 years, now nobody can, because whoever bought the rights will keep renewing them for a century.
Is that a necessarily positive outcome? Even if you don't believe that authors should have the right to excise creative control over their work why is it any better for the society if anyone can freely make movies, games or sequels based on the Witcher universe?
Even if is, wouldn't it better to ban or limit the exclusivity clause in contracts rather ban copyright all together? (e.g. Authors could have the right to sell their rights to multiple companies or any contract would legally be limited to fixed numbers of years after which the author would be able to resell them someone else)
>No it's because Mickey mouse is a trademark and they will sue everyone who tries to create whatever fictional mouse.
Unless you're suggesting that trademarks should be abolished as well Disney will still be able to do that.
>Life long copyright is the root of all evil in the publishing/entertainment business.
I disagree, I think overall it's one of the main reasons the current publishing/entertainment industry even exists and the world would have been a much bleaker place without it. I mean yes corporations often abuse the current system and it's flawed in many ways but throwing it out of the window and introducing an arbitrary 20 year (or any other fixed limit) would just further disadvantage individual authors without solving any actual problems.
That won't change. The movie studios are currently not capable of good writing.
Even when they follows some book, the moment the movie abandons books quality of writing takes nosedive. (See Game of Thrones, Witcher for prominent examples).
The studios just don't know how to write.
> What if you buy a house and sell it the day before its price skyrocket > What if you buy stocks and the day after you sell them they go up 10x?
I don't see how are these in any way equivalent unless I made an explicit choice to renounce (e.g. by selling it) the ownership of my work unless I was actually legally forced to sell my house 20 years after I bought regardless if I want to or not.
> Publishing something that becomes a hit it's always worth it, even if your economic rights on it have expired.
But the the author would likely not be the one profiting the most or at all in this case compared to large publishers and other corporations.
Talking about the rarity of such situation the Witcher series is a pretty good example. The books were modestly successful in Poland and other Centre or East European countries and only became internationally popular after the video games released. While it did not took exactly 20 years (between 18 and 23 years for individual books) for the series to be translated to English let's assume for the sake of argument the copyright would had expired by then. So the publishing companies that published these books in English would have been able to keep 100% of the profits and wouldn't be required to compensate the author in any way. How is that fair? And how does that benefit anyone besides the international corporations which own these publishing companies? Especially considering that it inherently disadvantages authors writing in languages other English (or any other language with a huge market). Publishers could just wait 20 years before copyright expires before translating anything and avoid paying royalties to the author.
Basically how I see it, you're proposing that companies or individuals that are better capable at monetizing someone else's work should have the right to not compensate the author and keep all the profits for themselves. Which is both unfair and disincentivizes creating new content in the first place. Why create something new when you can take something someone else wrote/created in the past improve it and/or invest more into marketing or distribution mechanisms than the original author was able and sell it for a profit. I mean Disney is successful not because they own the copyright of some old movies featuring Mickey Mouse but because they have the capital, the brand and know-how required to create successful new movies and these factor would make large corporations even more dominant if they could just legally make movies/other content based on books or script for free as long they waited for 20/X years (instead of having to wait until the Author dies + X years).
The issue is their content is actually a very poor point in differentiation. I watch a larger amount of TV than I'd care to admit, and honestly Netflix is awful for content.
- Disney has Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and a long tail of childhood classic films. - HBO has Warner Brothers, DC, Cartoon Network (including a nostalgia back catalog), the best TV shows made in the 00s, and a long tail of adult films. - Netflix's largest successes in the last two years are Tiger King, Squid Game, The Witcher, and a long tail of shows cancelled after Season 1 and short-run miniseries.
At this point, Netflix is a last-resort source of entertainment for me, even after (ad-riddled) YouTube. I mostly only use it to watch their weird reality shows (Blown Away, Sugar Rush) and check out shows friends recommend. I suspect even Paramount+ has a larger selection of TV shows I'd like to watch compared to Netflix.
Okay, so if Jason Momoa was the one who auditioned best for T'Challah you would say that's a good casting? Because I would say having the supposed leader of a kingdom of black people look completely different from all the people in that kingdom is really poor casting.
> Why are you assuming her blackness means she must have been shoehorned into the role?
Perhaps because every other Nilfgaardian is white. If Nilfgaardians were a mixture then it would be a good casting. Just like if all Nilfgaardians were black then casting a white person as Fringilla would also be garbage casting.
You are free to assume in your fantasy world that outside appearance has no impact on story telling in a TV show but I and many others in the Witcher fanbase have opinions to the contrary.
Yep, they’re a “content producer” but maybe 1 in 20 shows or movies they put our OS actually compelling. They have certain titles they do well with (The Witcher comes to mind) but for everything else they have the well-established Netflix-Curse of cancelling shows instead of finishing them, so that they can crow about having a new show.
I'm surprised Netflix hasn't been buying IP owners or aggressively expanding into other entertainment channels. Imagine if they straight up acquired Nintendo (or a large part of it), the amount of movies + series they could produce (zelda series like the witcher, donkey kong animated series for kids, metroid prime series for adults, star fox, etc)
Netflix is already on the way down. They infused all of their new shows with wokeness. Every new show feels like woke concepts are shoehorned in without regard for their impact on the story that's told.
Look at the Witcher for an example. Or if you want to see this kind of shift happening over the course of a show, look at Madam Secretary. Season 1 didn't feature any of this crap and showed a strong woman main character that wasn't shoehorned in, by the last season everything was about "hurr durr let's ban guns and white men suck".
I'm not even white and I can notice the excellent storylines being ruined. It's like the writers don't know how to write a story with woke concepts that's actually strong so instead they shove it into every successful show until the show isn't successful anymore. HBO and Disney are going to eat their lunch at this rate with more compelling content.
Oh sorry, English is not my native language and I had to rephrase a few times, totally missed that.
>You'll see webrips all the time with 1080p because someone can just record their screen and call it a day.
I've checked my tracker and practically all TV shows from Netflix that are in 4K can be downloaded in 4K. And I am 99% sure they are not screen caps, for example the entire second season of The Witcher was released 17 December at 09:01, and my tracker had it ready to download at 12:26 at 4K with 3 audio tracks and 2 subtitle tracks. The runtime of this season on imdb is about 8 hours, so it would be impossible to screencap, which means they had a bypass for the DRM ready ahead of time.
Of course these are just examples that I made up and I would never enter or use such filthy and illegal websites.
And for the mobile and smart TV experience there is Plex. It even has features which aren't possible with the legitimate services, such as "Watch Together" which allows you to watch stuff with friends over the internet.
casting tumblr users of 2021 as zealots is hilariously out of touch
it's a plenty vibrant platform - all of the other social media websites are way worse, content-wise. Create a tumblr account & follow tags/accounts related to your interests. You'll get a lot of quality content!
For example, there's a reason the witcher season 2's media campaign included an AMA on tumblr with one of the stars. That's where the fandom thrives.
it just isn't an especially monetizable bunch of communities. Fandom in general is hard to monetize (look at the donation-driven AO3 for another community-hub more vibrant than the ones twitter and facebook can manage.)
Haven't seen it but other movies or shows like the witcher, I liked a lot but apparently a bunch of internet people are about to start a revolution over how horrible they say it was. Same with the recent Star wars movies, they were all great for me except the one about Solo. I've learned to remind myself that my experience and taste can and will be different than the crowd. I watched seasons of shows in great enjoyment and then apparently I was not supposed to! Don't let others' reviews and opinions set your expectations, people tend to see what they're looking for.
I almost had this happen on my M1 MacBook Air yesterday. I used the included charger on my M1 MacBook Air a few days ago. I was watching The Witcher Season 2 HEVC 4K HDR (so the highest quality) on it and had Cura (3D printing software) on in the background. I had the notification “MacBook is not charging”, since it was using power too fast apparently.
Not sure if it was draining but the battery wasn’t charging either. I closed Cura and it resolved the issue though, I went from 90% battery to 10% in about 2 hours though before plugging the laptop in.
Hollywood and some streaming companies lately started creating a lot of politically correct or politically activist movies that have no other value than having the "right theme" with the right actor race, gender or sexual orientation. This decreases the quality of the movies a lot, republicans kind of boycott these movies, the pandemic makes the earnings a lot lower than usual so there are less money on the table for more movies. As an European I switched to watching more European movies in the past decade. It is harder to access (there is no European movie market), but I saw nice Norwegian movies, Italian or Russian on top of my favorite - French. Unfortunately UK got into the same direction as USA, so it is out of the list. Strange, I saw no German movies for a long time, I have no explanation for that.
And there is also some international selection of Brazilian or (south) Korean, even Chinese. I would like to have access to good Japanese movies, but I don't. Unfortunately Bollywood movies are a dime a dozen, good Aussie movies are rare and the movies from the rest of the world are inaccessible to me.
In regards to the big screen versus TV, I found TV was less affected by the woke movement and SciFi, while rare these days, is still available (The Expanse). There are movies hit really bad (The Witcher), but still there are a few options left.
Meh. This isn't a guide on how to work hard, tbh, unless "wake up at 13 with the will to work hard" is a guide. "Be like Bill Gates" is no guide.
Give me a guide by someone who grew up a slacker, fucked off deep into adulthood and then learnt or taught themselves the hard lessons on working hard. What to do when you want to sleep in, when you want to stay out late, when you have such aching, gnawing anxiety about going to class that even looking at the textbook is ... hey look, Witcher Season 2 is on. A person who had been through that shit can talk about "how to work hard"
you think that's high? I usually binge at least 2-3 seasons of a new-to-me show a month on netflix, prime, hulu, if I'm really busy -- my wife makes up for the time I miss watching new-to-her shows, or the kids watch new-to-them shows or disney launches a new movie... I mean.. Wandavision, Falcon+Winter Soldier, Mandalorian, New Mighty Ducks are top notch and that's just disney...
Netflix has the Witcher which I still need to watch, just finished two different ones on figure skating Zero Chill (Hockey+Figure skating) and Spinning out. Both really good shows that weren't on my radar. Recently finished Queen's gambit too--also great and not on radar...
Lots of back-burner shows too (waiting for the next season).
7-11pm is usually dinner, tv with family put kids to bed, watch 1-2 shows with wife, then go to bed. Sometimes I watch old movies that are new to me just cause I heard they're good but haven't seen them yet. Grew up in 80's and just recently finished Fast Times at Ridgemont High for example.
120 hours of screen time's easy... weekends are probably a lot more.. maybe 8 hour sessions, definitely enough to watch 1 whole new-to-us series... esp. with lockdowns and covid.
are they paying for more than basic cable?
I know with my family we aren't My parent may for netflix My sister pays for HBO My wife and I pay for Disney/Hulu (also espn came in the bundle but none of us watch sports but there wasn't a option to not get it) we all share accounts and each have our profile. We each have our own amazon prime account but that's more for shipping, with the streaming as a nice bonus.
I will get a free trail to other services and cancel them after i finish what ever show i wanted i couldn't get on the other pay services. which reminds me i need to sign up for a free paramount+ trial for the next batch of star trek seasons.
then there are all of the free streaming services that are ad supported (pluto IMDBtv etc...)
Honestly though other than a few prestige shows (Witcher, Mandalorian, Wandvision, Picard) and reruns of 90 and 00 sitcoms (scrubs frazer freinds) when i cant sleep, or star trek binge when my wife pulls a weekend evening shift at work I don't watch that much tv.
Mostly I just listen to audible or watch youtube
I’m dating a non-native English speaker. This morning I was explaining clickbait to her. First I had to explain bait. Next I explained the title of “The Witcher Season 2 Netflix release date” [1] Finally I shared with her the content “Those looking for news of a final release date for The Witcher Season 2 on Netflix will be disappointed to learn that no date has been set just yet.”
[1] https://www.shacknews.com/article/123143/the-witcher-season-2-netflix-release-date
https://next-season-of.com/the-witcher/ There is no season 2 yet so there is something wrong with the source your extracting from.
A few? Off the top of my head:
- The Queen's Gambit
- Narcos
- House of Cards
- Russian Doll
- Ozark
- Stranger Things
- Tiger King
- Dear White People
- The Witcher
- The Umbrella Academy
- The Crown
- Space Force
And that's just TV shows. There are a lot of films they've put out that are very good as well.
I mean, if you binge The Witcher TV series you’ll probably trigger your apple voice products a lot. It’s the unfortunate consequence of choosing real names for virtual assistants. Only google home is really immune to this.
There isn't a single TV show that can't tell a compelling story in 26 hr-long episodes (~2 seasons) Sure, some shows truly shine with time, but if your show is likely to get cancelled, then you should start tying off plot threads for the current arc.
A great example is the Boys. Each season ends with them tying off the main arc, and an expose that sets up for the next season. Season 2's conclusion felt satisfactory, while still keeping me excited for what's to come. The 1st season of Witcher does this really well too.
Netflix's problem is the same one as network TV. It is just far more evident with Netflix because the binge format is central to it. When the entire show is enjoyed in a very small time span, the ending affects your perception of the show more strongly than if the show was enjoyed over years on broadcast TV. A similar phenomenon is visible with movies too, where a bad ending can often come to define the entire movie.
I'm surprised that TV contracts haven't become more sophisticated and diverse with time. How about sign a 3 season contract with no extensions or mandate arc conclusions for shows whose fate is up in the air? Maybe create a final season as a low-budget short, allowing show runners to provide a conclusion when axed.
I'm no expert on the matter, but the complete lack of new ideas in the domain is surprising, given the degree to which Netflix has revolutionized the rest of the distribution business.
Netflix is sowing its own demise through shitty content and the worst fucking content discovery system ever.
First Netflix UI is anti-consumer and regularly hides things or makes them difficult/impossible to find. Worst algorithm driven interface after Amazon. It’s truly awful for discovery as you can’t ever be sure what you’re seeing is all that’s available. I fucking hate it.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t grade shows success on their initial views... but they do. So things are hard to discover so I don’t watch them immediately or can’t find them again if I wait a week or two.
I have stopped watching any and all Netflix originals because they will be judiciously cancelled save animated titles because it seems cheap enough for them to produce or something like the Witcher where they hopefully can’t fuck it up so badly it gets canceled before a decent run.
Then again I wait and save the last few episodes shows I really like instead of binging them but that only hurts them more and hastens their cancellations. So then I don’t watch them, this too hastens their cancellations.
So when watching Netflix shows you have two options:
1.) Is the show epically well funded AND staring big name actors from cinema? Okay, maybe won’t be canceled. E.g. the Witcher.
2.) Is the show so cheap to make they’ll do it just because they need to add content? E.g. Castlevania
IMHO, Netflix is willfully creating the rope from which it will hang itself.
Netflix has done similar stuff with Ascension, The Witcher, Altered Carbon and others.
I do prefer quality over quantity, and more episodes per season isn't IMO a good thing. Having tight focus, telling a complete story from beginning to end, is more important than adding a lot of unnecessary filler.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Altered Carbon, but thought Ascension was exemplary. While it finished with an ending that could have set it up for a second series, the story it told was complete, and leaving some mystery is no bad thing. I'm currently reading the Witcher books, and the series was a reasonable adaption of the content of the first two books of short stories. There's plenty more material for the future, but what was done in eight episodes was decent and self-contained. Way better value than a movie ticket.
What I like about these short series is that they are free to take risks and make niche stuff that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator. There's plenty of stuff on Netflix that doesn't appeal to me, and that's OK. There's also stuff that would appeal were it not poorly-written and produced dross. I would really prefer their "data driven" decision making to bear in mind the lasting appeal of these productions within their niche interest, rather than only using the initial response as an indicator of long-term success. Some of the best productions took years to develop a good following, and yet were successful beyond expectations.
I'm the target demographic for Dark Crystal as I read a ton of fantasy, but I watched one episode and had no real desire to continue on. It was just kinda boring. I subscribe to r/fantasy and this is a fairly common opinion there as well.
In comparison, I can't say for sure that The Witcher series is super high quality, but it managed to be pretty exciting and I enjoyed it for that.
I watched the TV series first, and Witcher 3 has a much better and coherent story than the TV show even though the game picks up after the events of Witcher 1/2. I finished the game mostly for the stories.
I’m probably on the few folks who was searching for a copy of “The Witcher Season 1” on Blu-ray until I realized Netflix wouldn’t want to compete against its own platform.
Would be a major point of contention for content producers seeking to become Netflix originals. Traditional studios still produce lossless versions which then see re-releases in whatever format would be best decades after the original run has ended e.g. Sopranos getting a BR release, etc
>This could very well be false: without sci-hub, people might instead use arxiv and the like; perhaps sci-hub brings journals thousands of downloads they would not have if sci-hub didn't exist.
There was that study in EU that said piracy actually helped the game industry.
There is also what the author was commenting, sci-hub is easier to use than the legal alternative. We go tour researchers stuck in bureaucracies, to access papers funded by taxpayers! As Gabe Newel said, to fight piracy, you provide a better service (Steam was the biggest hit to game piracy, and so was Netflix for series and movies), instead of that, what we see is more control/bureaucracy being added.
edit: https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact/ it's an old study (2013), but I doubt the situation got worse. In videogame land the greatest example is The Witcher 3, easiest game to pirate, has it was distributed without DRM, you could just copy your friends installer. It was still on the top of steam most played single player game(which requires the key to be unique), won a lot of awards, and got so much exposure that netflix has released a TV show...
6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution:
3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian, The Witcher...).
In summary: The top 7.2% of Wikipedia pages earn 87% of all the monthly views.
Yesterday I posted a deeper analysis on how these pages get their daily views:
- https://towardsdatascience.com/interactive-the-top-2019-wikipedia-pages-d3b96335b6ae
Apparently the most popular pages are all related to movies (Avengers, Joker, ...), series (Ted Bundy, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones), and deaths.
What I find surprising is that despite their shallow catalog of content (my opinion), they fail to promote their shows to me that I’m actually interested in. When Stranger Things Season 3 was released and when The Witcher was recently released, it was no where on my home menus. Despite these shows being the exact genre I typically watch, I had to search for these shows. ?????!
Does that really work on people? (Rhetorical questions, they wouldn't have been doing it this long otherwise) How?
I feel like Netflix is trying its hardest to stop me from watching.
Usually at the top is some show I have no interest in. That takes up most of the screen preventing me from seeing things I might be interested in.
Then I see My List: 1 show with new episodes. Great. It just happens to be the show they wasted over 50% of their website telling me about. Onward: A bunch of shows that I finished watching and that are either canceled, finished or have no new episodes. Why would I want this information?
Next line, "Continue Watching": 2 shows that I found so bad I stopped watching them (The Witcher and Criminal: Germany here)
Next line, "European Mind Game TV Shows". Sounds good. One show I might eventually watch. 3 shows I already watched… on Netflix. 2 shows that I think I checked and disliked but can't say for sure because Netflix keeps changing their covers. I'd rather spend the time ranting about their dumb UI than being annoyed by re-checking the synopsis for a show I decided against.
Trending Now: 5 shows I didn't like (where is that "Never annoy me with this cheap shit again"-button?), one that might be interesting.
So, Netflix used up 2 pages on a Full HD Monitor and with careful checking I realized one show I like has new episodes, and one new show could be interesting. But I don't usually expend this much effort into finding something to watch. So instead I usually find a new show elsewhere and only use the search or a meta stream search to find out if something is on Netflix and don't bother otherwise.
The only site I know with a worse UX than Netflix is Amazon Prime Video. Yet I keep reading that their design improves engagement, do people not care what they watch and instead just rewatch everything all the time? I really don't get it.
I agree, especially with people who aren’t familiar with the source material.
Compare the very first ep of GoT with Witcher. The first does a wonderful job gradually introducing you to its world, the characters and the background of the story. The latter just immediately dives you into a bunch of unfamiliar names, places and jargon. Confuses the novice at the very first episode.
>> There haven't been any good video game-to-motion picture ever.
LOL, it isn't based on video game at all. There is a series of actual fantasy books written by Andrzej Sapkowski that serves as a basis for the show. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher
However, they made a rookie mistake and started filming Sapkowski's source material in the order it was written, i.e. starting with short stories, which is why the show does not make sense: each episode is a separate story, not connected to previous episodes. They should have started with the 5-book saga, and maybe throw some of the short stories as flashbacks.
Show also lacks the proper introduction of characters and the world's mythology. I am a fan of the books, so it all made sense to me, but wider audience might have a trouble making sense of all Wither abilities, Law of Suprise, etc.
I've watched an actually pretty good number of Netflix shows and movies and I think they are getting there!
Think house of cards, mind hunter, kingdom, death love and robots, the witcher.
I recently watched the witcher and really liked it but, my God, were there some serious production issues for how high the budget is rumored to be.
There were issues with the audio, writing, pacing, costumes and at times bad cgi. Really hope they get things together for season 2.
There haven't been any good video game-to-motion picture ever. What people love in games is really hard to put on screen (Witcher has the original source material books but they were never as famous or good as the games).
Honestly it's really hard to do it, to appeal to both the gamers and the wider audience who never touched the game (inc the critics)
I'm playing games since the late 80s and seen so many movies and TV shows failing.
This list is perfect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games
Witcher has to have been one of the worst-written TV shows I’ve seen. A shame because the source material isn’t bad at all.
There's certainly a lot of boring, formulaic content out there. I recently watched Easy Rider and season 4 of Rick and Morty and in both cases my phone was left on a shelf and forgotten for hours. Yesterday I tried to watch the first episode of Witcher and it just wasn't my thing, I was fiddling with my phone after 10 minutes. (YMMV obviously)
> It’s the tomato sauce choice fallacy
I strongly disagree with this.
Netflix previously had much more diverse content. It's currently (as of the last few years) banking on that their own content will substitute the licensed content disappearing on their platform. That The Witcher will satiate your Game of Thrones itch, that "superhero show #1" will be good enough over whatever Disney/Marvel puts on Disney+.
This might work for a few people, but I believe/hope it won't work for most. Chatting about the latest episode of Twin Peaks or the new Nolan movie by the water cooler doesn't work with a pale substitute.
The entire premise of the linked article is based on that cable packages survived and thrived as more players entered the market, and so should streaming services. What it ignores is that "alternative sources"/piracy didn't exist at the time, and does now. People will pay for as many services as they're comfortable with and with as much hassle as they can handle switching apps, and no more.
They should take a hint from music streaming platforms, and let the services compete, and spread the content over all of them, otherwise they will face the reality that people will pirate their service while paying for others.
Sorry for the long rant
Signed
/ Multiple service subscriber
The article viewpoints are probably right, Netflix and Amazon need a few more hits that people trust.
The Office was a big fallback show and Netflix needs a few of those of their own. Stranger Things probably fits that.
The Witcher might change things for quality on Netflix.
Netflix shows have high production quality in terms of cinematography, lighting, sound, color, sets, on location etc. Writing and big draw actors aren't there just yet, though they have a bunch of that going and started that way with House of Cards. Stranger Things was new actors except a couple like Winona Ryder, the writing was better and it was successful. Maniac and Sabrina are also pretty good in this area. Bojack Horseman has a cult following. Dark is amazing. Black Mirror was a great acquisition. I Am Mother was pretty good and premiering Annihilation was a steal. Russian Doll was excellent. Animation like Death, Love & Robots, Voltron, Castlevania and more are solid. Those are all the model to go for. What is missing in most shows is writing and casting/actors draw to make a staple series that becomes a fallback like the article mentions.
> Consumers turn to a trusted source when they don’t know what to watch on their streaming service
> Subscriptions like Netflix and Amazon Prime offer plenty of critically-acclaimed, award-winning content. But the thing is, viewers have to pick which movies and series they’ll watch, and observers say many are getting burned out from all that decision-making.
Now with The Witcher the writing is based on a really solid book series, they have a big name actor Henry Cavill that has read the series and it looks great. It could be their Game of Thrones.
Amazon is also trying this with Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time.
These shows if they are done right, will get rewatched for a long time and draws in the mega fans that are influencers.
Netflix is doing pretty good with stand up comedy, maybe even the leader now. They paid Dave Chappelle and will forever be thanked for that by comedy content consumers.
Netflix and Amazon need some big hits like the coming epics, and they need some good staple shows like the Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99 (Netflix should have bought this), Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Friends, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more. When they have that they equal the content competition that has that trusted good quality. They need a few more of these always watchable fallbacks.
They are both still chasing HBO, HBO is still the top in consistently good content and shows.
Personally I love the competition, some real funding and creator freedom is being unleashed, some are big hits, some are average and some not so good, but I like the amount of content and like the vibe of where Netflix is headed. Their new intro splash where the N goes into color bands is even great, matches their really colorful catalog.
Minor correction: Syfy doesn't produce The Expanse.
The Expanse was entirely conceived, financed and produced by Alcon, an independent film production company. Outside the US, Netflix has the exclusive distribution rights, and in the US, the show is also carried by Amazon. Alcon also produced Blade Runner 2049 and Villeneuve's earlier film Prisoners.
No doubt Alcon needs someone else to pay for the distribution rights now, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up on Netflix or Amazon, both of which are pushing sci-fi pretty hard. Amazon would be a good fit: The Expanse was co-produced with the Sean Daniel Company, who are also working on the new adaptation of The Witcher, and whose new production startup Mythos recently signed with Amazon Studios.
In my country you can download any pirated game, movie, tv show, ebook or music legally and store it for 48 hours but you can't share it/upload it. And i am doing it with one exception. There is a company CD Project RED that made Witcher series and even that their games are without DRM (that is their choice - "we can't force you to buy our game but we can convince you") i am buying their games and i will buy them in future also. I could just download and do not pay for it but their product is so good, their policies, customer care is just great. I can see they have put their heart and souls into this games, they don't force you to buy with DRM that's why they get my money. They sold 10 mil copies of Witcher 3 without having any DRM. If you make good product you don't need to worry about piracy.
I read so many books as a child it is impossible to recommend any. I did read a book recently titled 'Absolute Zero Gravity' (Betsy Devine & Joel Cohen) Science Jokes, Quotes and Anecdotes. It is informative, historical, educational, and truly fascinating to read. For a child this can really awaken their cognitive imagination. Fiction-wise I would leave to the child to decide as that list is truly endless. The Witcher series by Sapkowski I couldn't hardly put down (the movie is a complete FAIL). One other I rather liked is titled 'The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe' by Defoe, Lovecrart, & Clines.