Witcher (Netflix)

[RangerWickett]

Don't remind me of what travesty Altered Carbon season 2 was...

They took literally everything that was awesome about S1 and just dragged it through the shitter.

The first lesson they failed was to realize that Broken Angels is not only a much duller book, it also has diddly squat to do with Altered Carbon. Richard Morgan the author quite clearly experimented with changing genres for each book.

So instead of going with the strengths of their property, they doggedly and stupidly went with adapting a completely different story in a completely different genre, and still labeled it "Altered Carbon". (And then of course the changes to the story the slashed budget and so on sealed the deal, but lesson one remains "don't throw your strengths in the trash")

A true Altered Carbon S2 could have been nearly as awesome as S1. Stay in Bay City, and invent new wonderfully seedy cyberpunk stories and reasons to keep Ortega and Poe involved. Ditch the Quellchrist jesus nonsense entirely.

Well, they merged books two and three in a weird way, and they completely flipped the Quellists to be anti-immortality, instead of being revolutionaries with patience, and they added a love story angle that wasn't terribly well written.

Honestly the premise for season 2 was fine: humanity is using alien tech to back up consciousness, so having an alien mind in a human body is kinda interesting. Going back to Kovacs homeworld and bringing in the earlier instance of his personality was also a good idea, if they landed it well. Make the climax be them coming to terms with the alien mind, figuring out the Angelfire teleportation network, and using it to take out some bad guys to finally launch an in interstellar class revolution.

But the delivery was flawed.

 

[Blue]

Animated content isn't for me. Especially "mature" fare. Tried many times. Just don't see any point in cartoon blood and nudity, I guess. It's just pixels. No stakes, no engagement.

I am sorry that they put out exactly what you were looking for, but in a format you don't enjoy. That's sincere -- it kind of sucks that they only provide what you are looking for in a way that isn't palatable to you.

 

[Argyle King]

Since you see my point I don't want to be snide, but still - alpha wolves leave the relationship drama to others.

For instance, it would haven been awesome to see Yen, Triss and a grown-up Ciri struggling to handle a true alpha Witcher.

I could see that.

I could even see enjoying that. But I think it leads to a different story, and possibly one in which the story becomes about the people around Geralt trying to save him from himself (from going down the same self-destructive path shown in other characters) rather than him being the "hero" of the story.

 

[MarkB]

I could see that.

I could even see enjoying that. But I think it leads to a different story, and possibly one in which the story becomes about the people around Geralt trying to save him from himself (from going down the same self-destructive path shown in other characters) rather than him being the "hero" of the story.

Yeah, that Geralt might be a fun character to play as, but he doesn't sound like someone I'd sympathise with in a show.