The Witcher is literally a Superman

[oudeis]

Henry Cavill will play Geralt in the upcoming Netflix series. I haven't devoted a lot of thought to who I would want to play the role, but I don't think he would have made any list I would have come up with. I haven't seen enough of his work to comment on his acting, but is he a good choice for the character?

[Keltest]

My only criteria will be if he can do a scary and offensive smile. Geralt was called out on his intimidating smirk many times. If he can do that, everything else will fall into place.

[Olinser]

Henry Cavill will play Geralt in the upcoming Netflix series. I haven't devoted a lot of thought to who I would want to play the role, but I don't think he would have made any list I would have come up with. I haven't seen enough of his work to comment on his acting, but is he a good choice for the character?

He's not a BAD actor, but nothing I've ever seen him in really made me think he had that much depth as an actor.

He'll probably do an acceptable, but not fantastic job. And honestly with live action video game adaptations that's enough to put it in the top 10% already.

[Mechalich]

Cavill's apparently tried to do, as much as possible, his own stunts in Mission Impossible: Fallout. He's had training as an action star and is willing to put in the time and effort necessary to function as one. In an action heavy TV series that's important. The more the lead actors themselves can do, the better the fight scenes will look. Also, less time and takes are spent chopping them together that way, which saves money, meaning that portion of the budget can go to something else, which always helps. The fact that Cavill also apparently likes the Witcher series suggests he'll commit fully, including to the rather extensive makeup regime likely to be involved in this role.

So those are positives.

[Excession]

Cavill's apparently tried to do, as much as possible, his own stunts in Mission Impossible: Fallout. He's had training as an action star and is willing to put in the time and effort necessary to function as one. In an action heavy TV series that's important. The more the lead actors themselves can do, the better the fight scenes will look. Also, less time and takes are spent chopping them together that way, which saves money, meaning that portion of the budget can go to something else, which always helps. The fact that Cavill also apparently likes the Witcher series suggests he'll commit fully, including to the rather extensive makeup regime likely to be involved in this role.

So those are positives.

Geralt wouldn't be Geralt without the epic beard, and Cavill has also proved willing and able to grow one for other roles. I wonder if they'll have his beard grow longer over the season.

[Olinser]

Geralt wouldn't be Geralt without the epic beard, and Cavill has also proved willing and able to grow one for other roles. I wonder if they'll have his beard grow longer over the season.

I'd argue the chest hair is more important than the beard, and I don't think Cavill can pull that off

[Eldan]

Maybe that's just the games talking, but shouldn't Geralt look at least a bit old and grizzled? I can't say I really know what Caville looks like with a beard, but my imagine of him is much too young and smooth.

[Cen]

He'll probably do an acceptable, but not fantastic job. And honestly with live action video game adaptations that's enough to put it in the top 10% already.

THAT"S NOT A VIDEO GAME ADAPTATION!!

sorry for caps, but people thinking that Withcer is mainly a video game annoys me as hell. It's an epic book series, go read it and stop this blasphemy.

[GloatingSwine]

Maybe that's just the games talking, but shouldn't Geralt look at least a bit old and grizzled? I can't say I really know what Caville looks like with a beard, but my imagine of him is much too young and smooth.

It's quite hard to determine how old magic or mutated people are in The Witcher.

I mean you would't think Yennefer is 95 to look at her....

Geralt has white hair, but that's a mutation not because of age. (even though Witchers live a long time, Vesemir is several hundred years old)

Cavill will probably be pretty good, though they need to make him look even more like a hobo than he did in Man of Steel (Geralt in the books basically is a hobo, he's barely ever got any money because the sort of people who have monster problems and need a witcher can rarely pay much and mostly travels out in the sticks because that's where the work is. At least the work that doesn't end up happening in sewers, which is why he avoids cities.)

[Yora]

I've never seen him in anything but someone said he was good in Man from Uncle and when I looked it up on youtube I can kind of see why someone would think it's a good casting choice.

However, we agreed that the real performance that could make or break the show would actually be Dandelion. He's Geralt's main sidekick early on and walks an extremely narrow edge between funny and silly. Making him too cartoony could easily wreck the whole tone. Though I think that's also just as much up to the writers as to the actor.

[Keltest]

It's quite hard to determine how old magic or mutated people are in The Witcher.

I mean you would't think Yennefer is 95 to look at her....

Geralt has white hair, but that's a mutation not because of age. (even though Witchers live a long time, Vesemir is several hundred years old)

Cavill will probably be pretty good, though they need to make him look even more like a hobo than he did in Man of Steel (Geralt in the books basically is a hobo, he's barely ever got any money because the sort of people who have monster problems and need a witcher can rarely pay much and mostly travels out in the sticks because that's where the work is. At least the work that doesn't end up happening in sewers, which is why he avoids cities.)

I believe geralt is something in the neighborhood of 100 years old, but I cant remember where that was said, specifically.

[Morty]

Vesemir says so in the third game. But the timeline of the books is vague at best, so that may or may not be true. And some years pass between the last book and the first game anyway.

[thorgrim29]

I am.... cautiously optimistic let's say. I don't think I've ever seen a full movie he was in but he seems like a good actor and a big enough name to generate buzz. And now there's another dumb casting thing around Ciri... And I'm not sure I can adequately express how much this subject recurring every few months bores me at this point.

[Rynjin]

The casting around Ciri has unfortunate implications. If Ciri is black, that logically follows that her dad is black, which implies black people are a dominant/prominent enough race in Nilfgaard for the emperor to rise to power.

This has issues when the largely milk-white populace start calling the hated empire "The Black Ones" with all the disgust they can muster.

If they go with a Hispanic actress instead, its not as big of a deal (Nilfgaard always seemed like a weird amalgam France/Spain anyway to me).

[Ramza00]

I'd argue the chest hair is more important than the beard, and I don't think Cavill can pull that off

Wonderful troll, you caused me to be emotionally rilled up for a few seconds

[JadedDM]

Cavill is supposedly a huge fan of the books and games, and he's really excited about the project. So if nothing else, he's passionate about the role and that will probably help a great deal, as opposed to someone who's just looking for a paycheck or to increase his portfolio.

[Jayngfet]

Geralt is about 80 in the first book, which is when Ciri's parents meet and she is conceived. The later books happen much farther along hence why Ciri is a character instead of a baby or toddler. The games happen even farther along hence why Ciri is an adult and Geralt is on a first name basis with a bunch of other old people. Half of them were teenagers when first introduced and Geralt was already old then and complaining that he was no longer in his prime.

I'm also against Ciri having a different race. I can kinda get being creative with a series that's had many movies or shows like Spider-Man but The Witcher has only had one series like 20 years ago done with no budget that was only available in eastern Europe outside of one DVD nobody actually got. I believe that by default an adaptation should be as accurate as possible within constraints.

[Cikomyr]

The Witcher is also effectively a Ubermentch; a man who defines his own morality and refuses to let society's failings compromise him.

Little wonder that the company who made the Witcher are also making another Ubermentch-friendly setting in Cyberpunk 2077

[Giggling Ghast]

Ubermensch, not mentch.

[Cikomyr]

Ubermensch, not mentch.

Thats what I said, Ubhermensch

[Corvus]

I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why they would go against the established canon so thoroughly when they had already stated that they wouldn't do anything like that and they had to know just what the response would be.

It isn't as if Ciri is some minor character - she is one of the most important characters in the setting and changing her has major repercussions to the setting given who she is related to (and not just her father either.)

[Jayngfet]

I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why they would go against the established canon so thoroughly when they had already stated that they wouldn't do anything like that and they had to know just what the response would be.

It isn't as if Ciri is some minor character - she is one of the most important characters in the setting and changing her has major repercussions to the setting given who she is related to (and not just her father either.)

Yeah. Ciri is related to monarchy on both sides of her family tree. She has a blood relation to several other established characters. If you wanted to extend it even further you could say you'd need to cast a large number of people around Ciri for making a change like this, and you can't just say "eh, anything except white". You need a solid plan unless you're going to spend months holding off on casting other important characters.

This isn't Wheel of Time where cultures are mishmashed together and anything goes.

[Keltest]

Yeah. Ciri is related to monarchy on both sides of her family tree. She has a blood relation to several other established characters. If you wanted to extend it even further you could say you'd need to cast a large number of people around Ciri for making a change like this, and you can't just say "eh, anything except white". You need a solid plan unless you're going to spend months holding off on casting other important characters.

This isn't Wheel of Time where cultures are mishmashed together and anything goes.

Nilfgaard at least is significantly more culturally diverse than the Northern Kingdoms are, since it is made up of many smaller conquered or otherwise assimilated nations. Its not impossible that Ciri and her father are black or Hispanic even if theyre still a minority in Nilfgaard. Asian seems... unlikely to me, since the Witcher series lacks an analogue anywhere near the main region of the books.

I do think its a bit of a pitfall if they were to have the Black Ones led by an evil black person though.

[Eldan]

Cavill is supposedly a huge fan of the books and games, and he's really excited about the project. So if nothing else, he's passionate about the role and that will probably help a great deal, as opposed to someone who's just looking for a paycheck or to increase his portfolio.

Don't they always say that with a project like this, though?

[Clertar]

What's this obsession with the beard? (a) Geralt never had a beard if he could help it. (b) Even in the fanfiction storyline in the videogames he only sports it in III. That's not only way past the end of the books, if we considered the videogames partof the storyline that would be adapted (it's not), it's also three videogames in!

In the Netflix series we'll see the youngest Geralt we've ever seen in fiction (barring Season of Storms), he cannot look like an old and grizzled Geralt yet, that would be if anything at the end when he reunites with Ciri. Here we'll start with his pre-Ciri storyline, which means probably a mix of the good stuff in The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny. Probably heavily adapted to the retcon that Sapkowsky did in the novel pentalogy.

Personally I want to see the sarcastic, chatty and witty hardboiled witcher from the novels, not the version we got in the videogames (which story-wise comes much later than any of the books, with a lot of tragedy and turmoil on his shoulders---and from a real world perspective has a very muted personality because he's a videogame character that needs to match the different choices that players make).

[Jayngfet]

To reiterate Geralt is already old at that point. Even in the first novel you get conversations about how he can live longer but he's still slowing down. We've very rarely even seen a Geralt in his actual prime.

[Clertar]

Geralt is indeed old by human standards, but that doesn't mean he looks like an old man---his white hair is because of the witcher mutation. Most wizards are older than Geralt anyways. Where do we see that he's "past his prime"? He's a very experienced, peak form witcher who can go toe-to-toe with younger witchers and most monsters he comes across. He's also temperamental and hot-headed, especially in his younger years that we see (Season of Storms, Last Wish, Sword of Truth).

As for the series, if we started with an older actor in the earlier seasons he'd be a true old person later on, which is not a correct depiction.

[Keltest]

Geralt is indeed old by human standards, but that doesn't mean he looks like an old man---his white hair is because of the witcher mutation. Most wizards are older than Geralt anyways. Where do we see that he's "past his prime"? He's a very experienced, peak form witcher who can go toe-to-toe with younger witchers and most monsters he comes across. He's also temperamental and hot-headed, especially in his younger years that we see (Season of Storms, Last Wish, Sword of Truth).

As for the series, if we started with an older actor in the earlier seasons he'd be a true old person later on, which is not a correct depiction.

The very first book (well, series of short stories) The Last Wish has his healer friend comment on how he let his guard down when he fought the striga. Its never really made clear if Geralt is actually slowing down or if a concerned friend is just telling him he should stop throwing himself at monsters.

[Chen]

Nilfgaard at least is significantly more culturally diverse than the Northern Kingdoms are, since it is made up of many smaller conquered or otherwise assimilated nations. Its not impossible that Ciri and her father are black or Hispanic even if theyre still a minority in Nilfgaard. Asian seems... unlikely to me, since the Witcher series lacks an analogue anywhere near the main region of the books.

I do think its a bit of a pitfall if they were to have the Black Ones led by an evil black person though.

Having the Emperor of Nilfgaard be from some assimilated nation seems...unlikely. I think they'd need to change the race of all Nilfgaardians for this to work. Which can be doable, aside, as you mention, the whole "Black Ones" thing. Which really is only an issue if Ciri ends up being black and not some other minority race. Nilfgaard COULD be all asians and it wouldn't really have any relevant impact on the story as long as it was just asian actors and there was no asian culture involved, since Nilfgaardian culture is well enough defined. What exactly they look like isn't terribly relevant.

[thorgrim29]

Why would they be from the assimilated nation? The royal family and a big chunk of the nobility could be of whatever racial background because that's what the original Nilfgaardians were before they started the empire business. There's ample precedent for that in our history. Hell, the ''emperor with ties to a conquered nation'' thing also has precedent, at least 1 roman emperor was at least half north african, and Alexander the Great married 3 women from the middle-east and central asia, so if any of his sons had succeeded him they would also have been darker than macedonians.

Anyway, the best argument I've seen is that Witcher is based on slavic history and myths and therefore it's disrespectful to that culture to cast black people, but I find that argument disingenuous because the same people aren't protesting an extremely british man playing Geralt and race and culture aren't the same thing, something slavic people usually tend to bring up in that kind of discussion. Therefore the controversy continues to bore me.