How To Fail At Adaptation - The Witcher

this video is sponsored by audible Netflix is the which completely stumps me in my usual video essays I look at a film will show done well and explain why it's done well or a look at something terrible and say why it's done terribly and then explain how it could have been done better but today I don't think it's possible for me to take either approach with this video because while the title of this video is how to fail at adaptation while most of the things in The Witcher that we're talking about today are done awfully they couldn't have not been done awfully these horrific issues would have been just as horrific in a million alternate scenarios with a million different directors or writers at the helm because of just how inevitable they were because today we're talking about one of the most impossibly difficult tasks any writer or director can ever undertake that is the struggle of taking a book and faithfully adapting it into the visual form or in other words when a creator is forced to get their hands filthy and delve into the necessary evils of adaptation so whenever a writer is given the task of adapting a book there are many obstacles liable to cause some really painful headaches what are the major ones is the device of internal thought in a novel the author might spend a whole chapter following a character as they do nothing but think as all of those ideas and philosophies play out in their head in the prose that can make very perfectly enjoyable reads but how do you convert those pages of nothing but thought into the visual form the short answer is well you can't it would just be watching your character's stare out of a window for 10 minutes straight it would be horrific ly dull but in The Witcher books there are no scenes that rely on internal thoughts so that's a headache that the showrunners were spared instead it turns out that the real obstacle these traitors faced er the the one that threw the biggest spanner in the works and caused the most issues was something far more simple it was the issue of time so the first season of The Witcher has 8 episodes with the one exception of a seventh or eighth stick to the rigid runtime of one hour and by itself that's perfectly fine the book this season is mostly based off is called the last wish by and race of Kowski it's a collection of in entirely unconnected short stories all following Geralt of Rivia as he does various Witcher contracts but that's simple enough adapting those six short stories into eight one-hour episodes would probably be a pretty easy task for any writer but as it turns out that tusk was anything but easy because this first season of The Witcher is setting the foundation for more seasons to come for a far grander story involving more characters than just Geralt so on top of adapting the last wish with garel that he also had an entirely separate plot following yennefer and also an entirely separate third plot following ciri both of which are main characters of the novels that they're going to adapt next but here's the problem because all of a sudden those eight hours of runtime are getting really quite cramped and this this is why the video is named what it is and it's why I really don't envy the showrunners because they had to take a mammoth and find their way of fishing it into a lunch box simply but there was nowhere near enough run time to faithfully adapt the last wish as it is in the book so they had no choice but to start cutting because each hour-long episode is split between three plots that means that on average they have about 20 minutes to adapt the stories that if they were faithfully adapted would take about 50 minutes or even more than the whole hour to do so so they had to ask what should be cut for the sake of time it is an impossible question and the reason why it's impossible is because if there are totally unnecessary chunks of the story that can be cut and nothing is lost by their removal then that story was written poorly in the first place because it had wholly redundant segments which meant that it had a lousy story structure however the last wish wasn't written badly as every story is structured pretty well and every moment does a great job at complementing all of the other moments from the same story just like any well told story shoulds so here's the dilemma they face every part of the story is necessary to tell that story to its fullest entertainment value for every element they take out the story will be worse for it so how can they take out around 50% of these elements in essence which 50% of each short story every last bit of which is vital to telling the story right is the most redundant and if you ask me the shermanus did a pretty good job at translating one of these stories but a pretty mediocre job at doing all of the others the one story that's pretty much immaculately told we're barely any content from the original is cut is the namesake of the novel the story the last wish which is the one involving the Djinn that grants the three wishes I think it's not a coincidence that this is the one story from the book where yennefer makes an appearance because as Geralt plot line in yen of his collide here that allows the showrunners to merge their run times and it gives them the vast majority of the episode to give the last wish it's full justice it's the others however the stories with Garrett that don't involve Siri or yennefer that's what the quality of the adaptation really starts to suffer because of the massive chunks of content that they cut out and in the show the way this cutting out of content manifests is often a woeful lack of context and a downright confusing plot I mean I'm willing to bet that if you haven't read the last wish and you watch this past season of The Witcher that there were parts of this story that just completely confused you where you had no idea what was going on and why the characters were doing what they were doing it it's a really common complaint I've heard from most people who've seen the show and the reason why is because the key chunks of these stories that give context as well as the core beats of the original plots they're all totally cut out and as a result the storytelling is borderline nonsensical at times and the story the lesser evil is a great example of this so a brief summary for those of you who haven't seen the first episode Geralt has been summoned by Strega board the wizard to his magic tower strike a ball ruined the life of someone called rent free and now rent free is out for revenge she's in the town outside the tower and is plotting to kill him and in the book Strega Ball when trying to persuade Geralt to kill her says this I Spit on the Lord the aldermen and his help exploded Strega poor I don't need defense I need you to kill her nobody's going to get into this Tower I'm completely safe here but what's that to me I don't tend to spend the rest of my days in here and rent free is not going to give up while I'm alive and like to sit here in this tower and wait for death this tells us that the Wizards Tower is impenetrable and only Strega ball can control who enters and leaves this is exposition that a show totally fails to deliver and that really is an issue because that is required information in order to understand what happens in the rest of the story because in the book the reader now knows that no matter how long the gang waits in the town or seizures the tower they'll never get in unless draggable wills is and this presents the main mystery of this story how does this gang plan to kill Strega Bor how did they plan to work around the fact that his tower is unreachable in the book their plan is gradually hinted at and revealed layer by layer in the show by the way everything I'm mentioning here was all cut for time so when Geralt first meets rent free she says this take it easy boys said rent free he wants to talk to me that's no crime you carry on having a good time and no trouble tomorrow's market day surely you don't want your pranks to disrupt the market such an important event in the life of this Pleasant town a quiet nasty giggle reverberates in the silence which fell several still sprawled out carelessly in the bench was laughing come on Ren free chuckled several important event shut up several immediately several stopped laughing immediately now this is clearly an inside joke among Ren fries gang that Geralt doesn't get but but it does a great job at foreshadowing or we can tell that whatever it is it's happening in the market tomorrow and they clearly want to keep it a secret and also later on in that chapter really tries to convince Geralt to killed the wizard for her and she says this Strega boar dies tomorrow she said quietly brushing the unevenly cut hair of her forehead it would be the lesser evil if he died alone if he did yes but in fact before Strega board dies several other people will die too I don't see any other possibility several Witcher is putting it mildly so again Ren free gives some pretty clear hints that tomorrow something rific will happen and it's going to kill a lot of people and again this all adds to the mystery of their plan that the reader slowly pieces together with clue after clue there then in another scene in the book she says she's gonna present trigger ball with the Tri dam ultimatum garol asks what that is and she says it's a secret then as the last piece of this puzzle fits in place garol is talking through the aldermen on the next day at the aldermen by the way is a character the show entirely cut out and the Oldman mentions that one of her gang was rumoured to be involved at the massacre of tri de Geralt remembers Ren fries threat and then probes an explanation now of him and the old one tells the story where three years ago a baron had a bunch of bandits in prison so the remainder of this bandit group hijacked a ferry and killed the passengers one by one pressuring the Baron to let the prisoners go free else Lee and the hostages would die the alderman says that many people criticized the Barons when he caved into the demands and let the prisoners go saying that by doing so he disturbed a precedent then Geralt has a light bulb moment and realizes that Ren free is going to do exactly that she's going to kill the townspeople one by one in an attempt to try and guilt the wizard into coming down from his tower in order to stop the deaths and with that with all of that foreshadowing and concise explanation as to exactly what Ren three plans to do Geralt chooses the lesser evil and goes to the market who fight the gang to save the townspeople but in the show everything that I just mentioned is cut there are no vague threats from Ren free that hint she's going to take the town hostage there is no alderman who tells the story of the tridem ultimatum as the mystery of her plans slowly unravel instead in the show all of what I just explained is condensed into this remark that's it Garrett wakes up in the woods and with no explanation whatsoever he says the market then runs to the markets who fight the gang when I was watching this episode with my dad I had to pause the show in order to give him the exposition because he was literally scratching his head in confusion as to why Garrett was charging towards the market sword in hand for no apparent reason and if your viewers need to have read the source material in order to comprehend what's happening on the screen something's gone horrific ly wrong somewhere along in the pipeline and while yes convincing all of that well delivered mystery foreshadowing an explanation from the book into nothing more than two words there's a brilliant job at shooing down the runtime it also does an equally brilliant job at leaving the view without the vital context they need in order to fully enjoy the story I mean the show does actually explain what Varenne freeze plan is they just do it after girls already gone to the market and has already killed her gang what's the fights long over we have this passing line of dialogue oh he'll kill her I will kill everyone here into struck up all comes down the problem is that's just not good enough they deliver the exposition of her plan and thus Carol's motivation after he's already made the decision and has already done the deeds and because the viewer is clueless when he made the decision that makes the impact of Daryl's decision to pick the lesser evil considerably less impactful dare I say bereft of any impact whatsoever because the viewer just can't understand the weight behind it while it happens but you want to know what's really sold in the wound at this point in the short story after he's killed her men rent-free does speak to garel just like in the show however instead of reiterating what her plan is in the book rent-free just came back from speaking to Strega ball and she says this you've made your choice rent-free said are you sure it's the right one this won't be another try damn Geralt said with an effort it wouldn't have been strike a ball laughed in my face he said I could butcher bladvic into the neighboring villages and he would never leave his tower and he won't let anyone in not even you and then they fight and garel kills her at this additional dialogue means that it was all pointless meaning that girl's decision to choose what he believed was the lesser evil ended up with several people dead when if he had just walked away and abstained from the choice nobody would have died that day because rn3 realized that her plan would never works it means Garrett's killing those men truly achieved nothing except for making the Undertaker's schedule a great deal more busy that week and it creates the poignant message that choosing between two evils should never be done the best path to take is to just walk away and abstain then the story ends with Geralt being stoned and in the book Geralt stoning has way more of a weight to it than in the show because in the book after that gut punch of a revelation that Darrell just killed all those people for no reason that stoning is a follow-up hit in the gut that leaves a bitter taste in the arena's mouth as we know that Geralt has made the wrong choice and the people hate him for it and then the story ends the problem is it isn't just about the story being less entertaining for all of this cut content it's also the message of this story this short story is all about the idea of the lesser versus praetor evil and when or even if you should choose between them and in the books of Kowski ends the story by saying that choosing at all between them is always a bad idea but where is that message in the ending of this episode it's just not there because again it was cut for time and that not just the moral of the story but the namesake of the story like the reason why it's called the lesser evil it's totally forgotten about in the adaptation what's the point of adapting the work and remembering to include the fights and the characters and get the overall structure right when you fail to convey what the story was all about in the first place surely that's the most important thing to remember like the thing that should be preserved at all costs and not be the first thing thrown in the bin in the name of shaving down the run time and as a result not only is the show less and telling them the same story in the book because the viewer is clueless as to what's going on but Geralt character is way more interesting in the book because that moral dilemma that plays out in his head what I'd argue is the core of that story it's not even touched on in the show and the thing is the original Witcher novels really are like very good like I know love you watching have either played the games or seen the show or maybe both but if you found either of their stories as entertaining as I did but you've never read the novels like you are really missing out like I played The Witcher 3 about five times now and I've loved it but while I went through the novels it felt like I'd stepped into this whole other aspect of this world as not only were they telling wholly new stories in the Canon that were quite entertaining but there were so many monsters and just interesting bits of world-building that the games and show completely skip over that we're great to see so if you like The Witcher games or the Netflix show I've got a strong feeling you'll love the novels just as much as I have and that leads us to a great opportunity for you to get stuck into those stories because today's video is sponsored by audible the world's largest and in my opinion best provider of audiobooks like I've got no doubt that all of you know exactly what audible is by now but a lot of you watching haven't tried out their service yet and as someone who spends about 20 hours a week listening to their audiobooks I can say that that's a crying shame because audibles vast selection of stories is not only usually really well produced but listening to the story instead of reading is a great way to make those mundane moments of your life like cooking dinner or driving a car far more interesting as you escape into a great story and today I've got a great offer for you because if you click that link in the description that's audible.com forward slash closer look or text closer look - 500 500 you get a free audiobook and a free 30-day trial and two audible originals for free and that free audiobook is any audiobook you like that's on their platform but if you ask me you should start with the last wish by andrew Sapkowski it's the first book in the which a canon and it's the best place to start if you want to sink your teeth into the witcher world not only are there huge amounts of great content from these stories that the show cuts out but there is this whole other short story about Garrett having dinner with a man cursed to look like a repulsive monster and it's a really fun one that the show didn't bother to adapt so again if listening to that witch audiobook for free sounds good to you then do click my link in the description that's audible.com forward slash closer look or text closer look - 500 500 and you can listen to the last wish right now by getting your free audio book a 30-day trial and don't forget the two audible originals which again are totally for free so anyway back to it the lesser evil I think is one of the more faithfully adapted stories in the Netflix show another episode that while not a bad one per se totally fails to live up to the source material is episode form a question of price this episode's problems are again cause because the traitors were so pressed for time they cut out most of the content that made the story so good in the first place so a brief summary a question of price is set in the Queen's Hall as she has a grand party and is looking for suitors to marry her granddaughter the main conflict of this story is caused when a knight who nobody knows and nobody invited comes to the event and demands the princess's hand in marriage so in the book it plays out like this Geralt stalking with the Queen when all of a sudden this knight comes in and the tensions in the room rise he refuses to remove his helmet saying he'll only do it after midnight collapses all the Queen's anger builds as her patience rapidly grows thin he then reveals at the Queen's husband the dead King was saved many years ago by him and at the time the knight called the law of surprise there's an explanation over this world's lore of surprise is basically it's where if a debt is owed the law of surprise can be cooled and it's where the debtor will give whatever they find unexpectedly when they come home sometimes it's a puppy sometimes it's a rake or sometimes it's a child and in the Kings case it was the princess so by the law of surprise the princess is rightfully his and then the tensions rise like an elastic band stretching to snap you will know my a burrs not disinterested said the knight you know too that I have come to click the promised reward for saving the King's life oh yes calamity smiled but green sparks lit ever eyes so you found a man at the bottom of a ravine defenseless wounded at the mercy of vipers and monsters and only when he promised you a reward did you help and if he didn't want to or couldn't promise you something you'd have left him there and to this day I wouldn't know where his bones lay how noble no doubt your actions were guided by a particularly chivalrous about time a murmur around the hall grew louder whenever at the book like I got really strong Quentin Tarantino Vives from this story where the Queen's fury and the feeling that something horrific will happen slowly builds over the course of this lengthy scene the Queen scoffs at the lure of surprise saying it's a load of rubbish and then all of the people in the hall have an interesting very passionate debate about the lure of surprise and the role it plays in the world then Geralt stands interrupts the shouting match and then tells a story about how his father's life was once saved by a Witcher and as a result his father was indebted and the lure of surprise was called on him then his father came home to find Geralt smother pregnant and from there Geralt was destined to be a Witcher he as someone who is subject to the law of surprise says it should always be respected however the child has to confirm it the princess has to agree to the law in order for it to be sealed then everyone looks to the princess and this all adds not just to the fascinating exploration of this in world cultural law but it also provides a really interesting nugget of backstory about gerelds past but then in the book just before they can ask the princess if she wants to confirm it the clock strikes 12:00 and in keeping with the Knights promise about his helmet he takes it off and everyone sees his Hedgehog of her face and gasps in shock now with all of these elements set up with all of this well executed rising action as the rubberband of tension is moments away from snapping the princess has to decide if she wants to marry him but in the show all of what I've just summarized all of that just lovely well-written conflict filled dialogue and that nice just just just lovely rising action is the fury of the Queen has simmered to boiling point not to mention the interesting exploration of the world building and us learning about Geralt interesting past it's all condensed into this I apologize your majesty a nights off prevents me from revealing my face until the sounding of the 12th bow follows to that in my opinion this is a perversion of the source material and while yes it does a brilliant job at decreasing the show's runtime all of that great storytelling that would have been really entertaining to watch if it were depicted was cut for time and the episode is all the less entertaining for it and continuing on in the book we see how horrific the night looks but then the Queen smiles smugly and then turns to the princess and asks if she agrees to be his wife under the law of surprise confident as all hell she'll say no to this beast but then after a long long wait the princess says yes and confirms the law of surprise and the whole room just falls silent nobody speaks everyone is speechless but then the worst happens the knight oversteps himself he becomes smug with victory he proclaims to have bested the Queen's lies and denial of destiny and then he has the nerve to demand that the Queen walk over to him and deliver the daughter that very second and then that guttural dread slowly marinates as the Queen pauses looks at Garrels and then orders her guards to kill the knight in the book this whole altercation is so well-structured so well paced as every beat of this little story is milked for all it's worth and it's incredibly easy for the reader to both enjoy and understand what's going on but in the show within less than a minute of the night first entering the hall his helmet is already off and then once his helmets off this immediately happens [Music] now does this decrease the runtime of course it does but at what cost I mean I would argue that that slow length the rising tension and that just beautiful conflict filled dialogue exchange is the most entertaining part of this whole short story I mean of course that's just my subjective opinion but in order to decrease the size of this pie the creators have taken out the majority of the filling they took out the majority of what made the story so good to read in the first place to condense it all into that ridiculously short runtime but then in the show once the fight starts the night looks the Queen and says this that I can't reclaim what is rightfully mine pavetta by the law of surprise however here's the problem this is exactly like Wren fries plan in the lesser evil because the audience has no idea what the lore of surprise actually is at this point and because the context was cut this line is meaningless and then later on in the fight this guy says this now that's cool and everything it tells us that whatever the lowest price is it's such a sacred tradition that this guy is willing to die over it but again because the Chiron has cut out the explanation of what the lore of surprise is this light and all of its cultural connotations go over the viewers head and this line packs way less of a punch than it would have if they didn't cut that dialogue but in the show once the big fight is over they do take a moment to explain what the law of surprise is which is obviously appreciated and it is interesting it's way too short if you ask me it doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of tension or in-depth exploration as the book does but just like the lesser evil they explain everyone's motivations for the fight long after the fight is over in the book the reader fully understands what's going on at every moment throughout the stories and in the show the viewer is clueless for most of the time because so much of the context the plot was cut for time but anyway do let me know you think in the comments sir do you think I'm right or seemingly after always do you think I'm wrong thanks for watching don't forget to Like and subscribe and I'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 702,207

Rating: 4.4332619 out of 5

Keywords: the witcher, witcher, the last wish, last wish, the last, andrzej sapkowski, netflix, the closer look, the closer, closer look, video, essay, video essay, how to, translation, adaptation, adapt, review, season 2, henry cavill, geralt, geralt of rivia, the witcher 3, witcher 3, ciri, yennefer, blood of elves, the wild hunt

Id: q6I4d09o4Ao

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Hansi_Olbrich]

His argument hinges on the fact there is never enough time on TV to faithfully adapt books. He fails to mention that the 40 minutes of screen time for Ciri and Yennefer did not exist in any meaningful way in the book being adapted. He seems to be somewhat in apologetics-mode for the writers, lamenting there is no way they could do a good job because there's too much of a good job to do. This is a false assertion. If you're going to film a rabbit race, and your writers for the film slip in a few foxes, you don't say the rabbit race is now impossible to film, you simply cut the fucking foxes that have nothing to do with the race out of the scene.

[u/Legios64]

Replacing the source material with badly written fanfiction is a good way to do it.

[u/dire-sin]

He makes a lot of good points and it's a fair critique in all ways but one: he's either avoiding or missing the elephant in the room. The problem the show's writers faced with too much material to adapt is fully self-inflicted.

No one was forcing Hissrich into the three equal protagonists approach, with 3 separate narratives and 3 separate timelines. The reason she ended up with too much of a story to cover is that 2/3 of show featured badly written fanfiction she felt the need to introduce.

[u/Bernacusmax]

Lots of valid points. I had to pause it at The Lesser Evil to explain to others why Geralt just sat up and heads to the market with his sword. It was a really confusing cut they made. 8 episodes is not enough. Or they should have just focused on Geralt this season and then expanded to the others in season 2. Give us the Last Wish in 8 episodes or go old school and give us a ton of episodes with enough information to avoid a confusing, off putting cluster fuck.

[u/mmo1805]

I have no idea why so many people discussing The Kitscher act like adapting the books is some novel concept and uncharted waters. Screenwriters with actual talent and love for the source material have been doing it for decades with far greater success.
Good video, lots of good points, but he's not doing a splendid job at identifying core of the problem.

[u/whiteasch]

You know it's bad when an elf looks like low quality CGI Smeagol. I just forgot about it when the video flashed it in the beginning, hahahh. Sorry, I have nothing else to add, I think I've said everything I had about the show.

[u/Jalakee]

I've said it before and after starting a second watch-thru I'm even more convinced: The problems with the show all stem from Hissrich and her bad, amateurish approach to writing.

It really does play out like fan fiction; whereby a lot of big, 'sexy' events are happening, but the writer simply lacks the foundation and planning skills orchestrate a compelling narrative. It's more than intense scenes, big events, and boobs. You need timing, tension, the proper amount of exposition, and the space between the events to give them some meaning. We had almost no explanation nor any reason to care about so many things that happened in this show, which is so bloody obvious I just cant fathom how this got through post-production. It's almost like the sunk-cost fallacy.

[u/znaroznika]

He didn't mention "Sword of Destiny", so it seems that he thinks that the show adapted only "Last Wish", so he doesn't know how they butchered "Something more" or SoD.

By they way Renfri mentions something about market in the dialogue with Geralt, but briefly and Geralt apparently goes into the market influenced by her prophecy. But, still he is right, no mention of Tridam Ultimatum kills this story.

I'm surprised that he didn't mention how badly show version "Edge of the World" was or that he claimed that "Last Wish" was adapted faithfully. It was closer than most of the episodes but changes were significant and I would agree that they were equal to what was done to "Question of Price" (no priest, the way Yennefer and Geralt met, the way he found Djinn, his first wish).

Edit: One more thing, the stories in "Last Wish" aren't "totally disconnected"

[u/Marziinast]

His arguments are wrong, no one forced hissrich to implement that yennefer's fanfic