The Witcher producer blames Americans and social media for Netflix series' simplified plot
eurogamer.net
The executive producer on Netflix's The Witcher has blamed American audiences and social media sites such as TikTok for…
The executive producer on Netflix's The Witcher has blamed American audiences and social media sites such as TikTok for…
"The algorithm is the algorithm."
I know everyone thinks I'm a brittle American, but I'm kind of sick of everyone blaming Americans for choices that are made by people who think poorly of Americans.
As a general rule, the people making decisions to simplify things because they think Americans can't handle a complex source ARE Americans.
@Windex007 Yeah, but they see themselves as smarter than the rest of the Americans when they are in fact, the bottom percentile.
I understand that.
My point is your original comment said you were sick of people blaming Americans for something that is literally being done by Americans.
The bland media algorithm designed to maximize profits, the "MCU formula", comes straight from the top. People who see media simply in terms of investment vehicles for thier quarterly shareholders reports are the ones who lay down this law, and those "people" are overwhelmingly American business interests.
I know what you meant. There is such a thing as self-hatred, or thinking you're the only exceptional member of a group. And there's also such a thing as don't trash the majority with the actions of a small minority, particularly a small minority that thinks they are better than the majority.
My point is that the reason this was dumbed down is that movie execs THINK Americans need that, not that Americans need that. Movie execs just think the average American is dumber than a movie exec.
I'm pretty sick of Americans feeling picked on.
You have an illiteracy rate of like 20%. Make a real public school system and then we'll talk.
@masterspace All right, so I was interested in the statistic so I looked it up and 20% of Americans are at Level 1 literacy or below according to Wikipedia... which means that actually a lower number than that is functionally illiterate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy\_in\_the\_United\_States
And out of curiosity I looked up Canada. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/literacy 22% Level 1 or below.
Allowing for margin of error, your public school system sucks just as much as ours. So go milk a moose in French.
Being creepy by stalking my past conversations instead of arguing the point at hand, and ironically furthering my point by mistakenly using a study on Canada from 1989.
Our current (2013) sub-level 1 literacy rate is around 4%: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-555-x/2013001/t/tbl1.1-eng.htm
No, our public education systems are not equivalent even if that makes you feel bad.
Stalking your past convos? No. I saw you were from lemmy.ca and therefore Canadian. Then I did a search for the 20 percent statistic and of course Wikipedia came up.
I don't feel bad. I know our school system sucks because of a lot of systemic problems. I do think your education is not as great as you think it is if you simplify the 20% statistic to full illiteracy and if you think a random person on kbin needs to set up a new public school system before she can have an opinion.
That's before we unpack the idea that literacy=intelligence, which is not always the case.
I do feel a bit bad about the stalking accusation. I didn't realize the ability to see your server in the automatic kbin reply setup combined with the esoteric knowledge of how to use Duck Duck Go would frighten you, Mr Better Educated Than Me. We can stop if this is too much for your heart. This weather can be tough on the body and I know you guys aren't well-versed in heat safety.
You're allowed to have an opinion, if your opinion is that you feel like America is picked on for being too dumb in this context then I would suggest that you need some strong evidence to persuade people that literacy is not a proxy for education, or more specifically, the ability to hold more complicated medieval fantasy plots together.
And I am well aware of our flaws, our literacy rate is 1.25x the OECD average which is shameful. I'm just not false equivalencing that with America's 6.33x. In fact if you remove America as the outlier dragging the OECD stats down we look even worse.
@masterspace So we're helping you. I bet you feel bad about making fun of us now.
Punching down never feels good
@masterspace And there we get to why I'm such a brittle American. See, the immense privilege of the powerful in our country, our military prowess, and the export of the my of American exceptionalism have CONVINCED a lot of people across the world that if they bash Americans it is punching up.
It's not. See, we do HAVE a bad public school system and the richest in our country have spent 40 years sabotaging it in some scheme to fund private schooling. Not only that, school funding is partly by federal and state funding--which is sabotaged by those bastards--but MOSTLY by local taxes so the people in the rich areas get the good schooling with arts, extracurricular activities, foreign language studies and a pool while the people in the poor areas get a whiteboard, an untrained Army veteran as a teacher, and the requirement to buy their own school supplies.
As Americans we have to fight constantly against this sabotage, WHILE working full-time jobs with greater hours and fewer benefits than any other Western country just so we can afford to go to a doctor--as we are called by not just the privileged in our country but the entire WORLD lazy, stupid, complacent and undeserving.
So when you make fun of the average American and call them stupid because their public school system which they need to fix before they complain about people making fun of them? You're punching down.
Meanwhile, you accuse me of punching down but I have spent this thread mocking you for living in a country with a vast abundance of natural resources and wildlife, and living in a country where it's common to ACTUALLY learn a second language rather than learn some grammar rules and tick off boxes, which as I say above, is a privilege in the US afforded to the better schooling that you get by virtue of living in a rich area.
Now, if you'd say Americans are stupid because we invaded the wrong country... Well, then you'd be punching up. But instead you're making fun of something that we are actually at a disadvantage in.
Huh, the games did phenomenally well in America. Weird. /s
We're in an age of knee-jerk finger pointing, with the problem getting worse the higher you get in society. It's just one giant game of blame hot-potato.
Here's the thing: The producers don't owe the fans shit. They don't owe the fans an explanation even. They owe the investors an explanation. The fans are just there, that's the reality of being a fan of something. We don't get a say, we just can choose to watch or not, and then decide to trash it or praise it online if we want to.
So while there's a problem going up the ladder of the blame game, there's another one coming back down the ladder, and it's entitlement. For some odd reason there's an air of "we deserve this content, exactly to our specifications" and it permeates games, movies, music, all of the entertainment content we have been inundated with as a society. And I think the culture generally leans towards encouraging it because it keeps the culture thriving. But it also keeps us in the exact status quo we're in as a society, beholden to these billionaire publishers we all rail on daily.
Because let's face it: We as a society spend an enormous amount of energy and as such, destroy a lot of the planet, on all this entertainment. If we can't accept that as a fact then we're fucking doomed.
So... the supply side matters but the demand side does not? Pfft.
If you make a thing that has an established fan base, and the fans are not happy, you screwed up. This isn't a problem with fans, it's a you problem. So how do you NOT screw up? You listen to the fans. Ideally, you hire people who are fans themselves.
Let's analogize: say carrots are in high demand - people can't get enough of them. And you tell everyone you have a big shipment of carrots coming in. And you set up a store called "Jim-Bob's Carrot Emporium", and people are lined up around the block... but it turns out the only thing you sell are potatoes... yeah, people are going to be pissed, and they will be justified, because you sold them a lie.
Fans are very important. I think you may be on to something that we as a society are starting to feel entitled when it comes to media, but downplaying the importance of the fans and saying they don’t matter is a bit too much.
In recent memory I can think of a few examples where fans had a major effect on the entertainment content we received.
The response to the first Sonic trailer was abysmal and much of the internet called them out for Sonic’s design. The studio listened… the artist who designed Sonic’s look even went to Twitter to thank people for all of the feedback. Then they went back, redesigned his look throughout the film and we got a pretty solid film out of that.
The entirety of #ReleaseTheSnyderCut managed to convince WB to bring Snyder back and let him finish his vision.
I mean even in comics, the fans mattered. How many times have comics held contests or write-ins to vote on decisions for certain characters or directions to take the story. The big one that comes to mind is the death of Jason Todd. People hated his Robin and voted to kill him off. Eventually he was brought back as Red Hood, but none of this would have occurred without the fans.
Oh and who could possibly forget Morbius getting rereleased because Sony mistakenly thought people loved it since there was so much online discussion and memes regarding the movie. For better or worse, fans (consumers) did that.
There's a difference between choosing and listening to fans (critics) to improve and being made to feel obligated to do so. This society literally harasses people over being upset at fictional portrayals of cartoons. Sometimes harassed right out of their chosen career. Game devs know this very well.
Content creators have no obligations to the consumers of the content, period. No more than Picasso had an obligation to paint landscapes. He didn't care to so he didn't.
Content creators, publishers, etc: they're free to make schlock we don't like, and we're free to express our disdain for it, and I'm free to point out that the folks wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy. And cringey to boot. There's a line crossed when you start insisting and making personal commentary at all. A publisher's interests and the fan's interests are not always aligned. That's fine. You can deal with it, I promise. You bring up the snyder cut: Know who probably drove that whole push? The studio. Yeah, every one of those "fans" got played. This kind of shit is unacceptable. Period.
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/justice-league-the-snyder-cut-bots-fans-1384231/
Don't encourage it.
Oh, so you're free to complain, but when others do it it's cringey? Got it.
Declaring "I shall not be purchasing [thing] because [reason]" in public is yes, very cringey. You just, don't buy the thing. That's all. No look-at-me-i'm-important declaration necessary.
My complaint isn't the same as that bullshit. Try again.
He's really blaming the execs and showrunner between the lines I think. Saying she had to "make tough decisions" means "she fucked up". It's Netflix and the showrunner who think they need to go to the lowest common denominator with scripts to appeal to Americans, especially hard fantasy/sci-fi. So he's kinda pissed at both groups really not just audiences.
It's a shame because other works like GOT 1-5 show the opposite. Go for complex, go for the source material, and audiences will be patient for it.
Then blame execs and showrunners, not the audience. American audiences are savvier than he thinks, just because he had one pitch that didn't fare well with American audiences doesn't mean that they won't embrace more complicated elements of The Witcher.
Plus it just sounds sad; blame audiences for something you, as a producer, can't effectively produce.
He wasn't showrunner, just EP on 16 episodes, and he can't burn the showrunner or Netflix if he wants more work in the industry.
I didn't say he was a showrunner.
This is the kinda guy that would yell at parking sign for smashing into his car.
It's worse, he's smashing his face with it and yet refuses to acknowledge the parking sign while complaining about some other imaginary obstacle instead.
If it were true that Americans & social media wanted such simplified plot, it would have been more successful than it was.
Season 2 ("Book 1" in the US), I agree made some TERRIBLE changes, especially around Yennifer's relationship with Ciri.
Having just finished Season 3, however, I feel like they mostly pulled back into following the book's major plotlines. Sure, a TV show makes some concessions on content, but overall I felt it followed the books "okay". Everything that happened in Thanedd was close, and everything after that too, in the final 3 episodes. Rience was the strangest change to me, since that doesn't happen for several books and it's Ciri's doing.
Does the general public agree? Or are we still so mad about Season 2 that we refuse to see Season 3 positively?
I'm not watching S3, knowing Cavill won't be back. Not worth investing anymore time. The series is a failure to me.
This. I see no point in investing any more of time in this show. Netflix needs to fire everybody, pull every episode from existence, and just start over with people who actually care about the source material and are willing to invest the time, effort, and respect to do it right.
I guess you two are answering my last question - we're so mad at Season 2 that the negative verdict is decided regardless.
My point was that Season 3 seems to have pulled back and DID honor the source material much better, but I guess it was too late.
Yeah, fair, but I didn’t like the first season, either. Cavill was perfect, Joey Batey as Dandelion was… fine… and that is where the positives stopped. The show was a mess from the start and you can’t just erase those seasons if they did happen to do a little better on 3… and knowing that Cavill is out for season 4… there is just no point. I’d rather replay Witcher 3 again than ever watch another minute of that show.