Still, the Witchers are decent people, right? What's the worst that could happen? The peasant man invites the Witcher to more or less go screw himself with an extra-large baguette, but is rudely cut-off by a fade to black because THERE IS NO TIME TO ARGUE! The Witcher being a dark, fairy-tale inspired world, that's almost inevitably going to turn out to be a child rather than an Avon catalogue or a Werther's Original behind the sofa. The way it works is that if you owe a debt to someone, they make you promise to give them "what you find at home yet don't expect". It turns out that seven years ago, the man effectively sold his son by means of the Right of Surprise, a custom backed by all sorts of nasty curses that's effectively a big celestial gamble. The peasant tries to bluff him into going away, but this-like peasants-doesn't wash. "I've come for your son," the Witcher tells him. He is of course a Witcher, and I'm going to use that term for the rest of this page because 'Hexer' sounds even sillier.Ī peasant emerges from a hut, clearly neither happy nor surprised to see him. Before everyone can be sacked though, along with the people who sacked them, the black fades out to show a scary man on a horse, riding through a field-scarred, and with a sword over his back. You can probably get Swedish subtitles if you want to complete the effect, but one language removed from English is quite enough for me. The credits slamming onto the screen with drums and drama and menace, but without the Swedish subtitles.
The movie opens on the title credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Scene by scene, it's largely incoherent-characters appearing with no introduction and vanishing just as quickly, years passing between segments without comment, and the whole thing strung together by the earnest belief that you already know what's going on. Its problems range from that low budget to dreadful fight choreography and generally weak acting, although by far the biggest is the chaotic editing. Wiedźmin (and yes, I am totally copy and pasting that) at least tries to have its own feel, and it's not hurt by the grubby video quality, miserable weather framing the shots, and a rustic look that's as much down to the budget as actual set and costume design.
Any fantasy movie that found its way onto Mystery Science Theater 3000 or lurks in the free streaming section of your favourite online video store. The aforementioned Dungeons & Dragons is about a million times more obnoxious, just for starters. For other translations of stories contained in Wiedźmin, see: The Last Wish.Despite its unpopularity though, there are definitely worse fantasy films. The same set of stories was published in 1993 in Czech as Stříbrný meč ( The Silver Sword).
Wiedźmin (English: The Witcher) is Andrzej Sapkowski's first book to be published in Poland (published by Reporter in 1990) but is now out of print.