Sunday, July 10, 2022

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf (2021)

Rather than Geralt of Rivia, this tells the tale of Vesemir.  When Vesemir was a boy, Delgan the Witcher came to the estate to purge a demon.  Delgan was well-paid for the purging.  Vesemir, who is just a servant boy, now had dreams of being a witcher.  His desire for wealth and adventure outweighed his growing affection for Illyana, a servant girl on the estate.  Years later, Vesemir is the most successful of the witchers and also an admitted hustler.  Asked to assist an old acquaintance, Filavandrel the elf, to find missing elf girls, Vesemir declines unless he is paid.  Meanwhile, in the halls of King Dagread, the sorceress Tetra Gilcrest accuses the witchers of spawning the very monsters that they then extort money to slay.  Only Lady Zerbst argues against her, winning the king's indifference on the subject.  Further events move the king toward Tetra's view but still not to the point of attacking the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen.  Instead, Tetra and Vesemir are sent as a team to purge the forest of monsters.  There, they discover a mutated elf girl with a new breed of basilisk at her side.

Here is the story of how Kaer Morhen came to be the ruins that appear in the Netflix series, how Vesemir became the oldest remaining witcher, and why the ability to create new witchers was lost.  As this is animated, the magic is impressive and the monsters are immense and plentiful.  The special effects budget has no limit, and it shows.  However, the story likes to jump about on the timeline, which can be confusing.  There are scenes of young Vesemir as a recruit and then adult Vesemir as something of an obnoxious lout.  This gets most confusing when shifting between the current pool of young would-be witchers and Vesemir's cohort of youths.  When are we?  The story takes place over a 50 to 60 year period but there is no apparent difference in these times.  

At the end of the movie, Vesemir collects the surviving witcher candidates and takes up their training.  Among them is Geralt of Rivia, who is bald so as not to reveal him too easily.

Generally okay.  It provides some history for the world and gives some very good reasons why people would distrust witchers.  Why that distrust isn't equally applied to the sorcerers who made them is not explained.

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