Cor Smuts

The main selling point is the random order episodes, which ends up being moot, since the story does not have anywhere near the complexity to justify the 8 episode runtime or a re-watch. By the time you get to the white episode, everything but a few details have been given away already, so the episode is a big anti climax. Not to mention that you already know the fate of all the characters. All the characters and their motivations are lazy and generic. Ridiculous technology and work-arounds further detract form what little enjoyment you may get from watching this. Unless this is the last item on your to watch list and you have nothing else to do, scroll past this series.

The visuals are good and Durin is a likeable character. Everything else is bad. Though the musical score is good, it serves as an obvious crutch for bland and uninteresting scenes. The elves in the story are hundreds of years old, but instead of showing any of the wisdom that would come with living that long, they are consistently portrayed as simpletons that were born yesterday. I initially though Celebrimbor was miscast, but the casting is ideally suited to the bumbling hack the showrunners made him. This series has all the bad habits that have been dragging Hollywood shows and movies down for decades: Dialogue that is meant to sound profound, but is mostly a stream of drivel with badly disguised propaganda. A storyline that ignores logic, common sense and canon. Arrogant, entitled and one dimensional characters who get what they want not because they worked for it or even deserve it, but because that is what the story requires. Leaders that are blindly contrary simply to add drama and runtime. A musical score that tells you what you should feel and when you should feel it, since the scenes are unable to do that on their own. Characters that are inexplicably aware of not only exactly where they need to go, but also when they need to be there.

Though not a very high bar, this is better than Ragnarok. Natalie Portman and Christian Bale really shine in their roles, in stark contrast to the rest of the cast who look like they are only there for the free lunch. It is a breath of fresh air that that Mighty Thor is portrayed as human instead of an unstoppable force that does everything right, as the MCU tended to do thus far with female superheroes. Christian Bale steals the show with his performance, which begs the question why he was given only about 30 minutes of screen time in a movie that is almost two hours long. The movie chooses to treat his origin like a chore to be gotten out of the way as soon as possible, as well as not bothering to explain two central plot points at all, except in passing. Instead, it chooses to spend over an hour in a tedious, meandering, slap-stick parody of itself that tries so hard to be funny that it is only sad. Once you get through this, however, the movie takes a sudden turn, almost as if a new creative team took over. The action becomes tense, there are real stakes and the jokes are limited to occasional one-liners that are actually funny. Unfortunately, it is too little, too late. The ending is fumbled, and what could have been a very poignant and dramatic ending, is only so-so. At the end. there is a line 'When did we become a joke?'. The answer is: when this director became part of the MCU.

If I could give this 0 stars, I would. Everything about this show is bad, and unfortunately, it looks like it did well enough for a second season. Children growing up in a pre-technology, pre-mass-trade era would not be as emotionally immature, entitled, whiny and sheltered as the five main characters in this series. There are two battles, if you can call them battles, in the entire series; the rest is just seven episodes of generic and boring dialogue, constantly reminding you what the plot is in case you have forgotten and telling you over and over how much the characters mean to each other in an attempt to make you to care when they are in peril. Movie and series creators these days appear to think that having diverse characters and sexualities is enough, even if the characters are lazily written, boring stereotypes.

This is what every show, even live action shows, should strive to be. It does have some faults and some simplistic character motivations, but compared to the vast majority of series these days, it is a perfect work of art. I did not play the game, but that was not a problem, since the show does not try to stand on the shoulders of the game and does not leave out information it assumes you already have. The writing, dialogue and pacing is very good and there are no filler episodes or useless and irritating 'comic relief' character. This show also proves that you do not need forced humor every five minutes to make it entertaining. The characters are very well written and you find yourself caring what happens to them organically, not in the forced way that has become the norm in movies and series.

The second season is even worse than the first. All the characters are pathetic shadows of their digital and written counterparts, blundering around blindly and eventually ending up where they need to be to progress the story. In the books, Yennefer and Triss are confident and competent adults who don't constantly need approval or advice and Yennefer actually is as powerful as Geralt claims her to be in the series. Even the singer is much less useless and irritating in the books.