The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep

Summary:

When human sailors are attacked by mysterious creatures of the deep, only one person can stop the war between land and sea: the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia

Director: Kang Hei Chul

Writers: Mike Ostrowski and Rae Benjamin

Based on: "A Little Sacrifice" by Andrzej Sapkowski

Produced by: Lauren Schmidt Hissrich

Cast:

Doug Cockle as Geralt of Rivia

Joey Batey as Jaskier

Anya Chalotra as Yennefer of Vengerberg

Christina Wren as Essi Daven

Emily Carey as Sh'eenaz

Reminder: Please keep the discussion respectful. Gatekeeping and bad faith comments will be removed

I would like to say that I didn't really like this movie, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. Sure, the original story is completely different (they butchered everything, but did you expect otherwise?) and even explores completely different GROUNDED themes (with Geralt's love relationship being the central theme, not a human-fish battle), additionally, it is highly inaccurate to the lore, and super actionized with great expansion to plot and characters. If you say "little sacrifice" everywhere it doesn't necessarily mean that you understood the story (I felt like they mentioned it every 3 minutes). I liked that the main heroes were mostly in character for their book counterparts, especially great voice acting by Doug Cockle and Joey Batey, it really was game Geralt, and Dandelion is not bad.

For Essi I have mixed feelings, I love that she is not made fat black trans lesbian or whatever (maybe it was easy because this is animation not live-action), she looks highly accurate in terms of looks which is super rare (if any) for shitflix. However, while she doesn't fight the enemies with bare hands (something that you'd expect of netflix writers), there is still this element of social justice eco-activist feminist in her, which was not true to her book character. But for the most part, she was spot on, at least they didn't make her an arrogant bitch. Also, They came up with nothing better than another villainous monarch/leader who wanted to ruin everything because they are assholes, I'm speaking about their version of Foltest, Stregobor, Vizimir, and Deglan from Nightmare of the Wolf. It's just dumb to reuse the same cliche. The animation and character design were great, but some action scenes felt too padded and unrealistic. While they change the central theme of this story, some bits taken directly from the short story were great (like Essi and Geralt's conversation). Another nice thing is that Yennefer who appears in dreams, even if she is voiced by Anya Chalotra, seems to be more faithful to books and games Yennefer, both in appearance and character.

What I found interesting though, is that this movie's plot is heavily reminiscent of Disney's version of Little Mermaid. I know that the original story by Sapkowski was inspired by Andersen's little mermaid, but this adaptation has numerous similarities to Disney's animated movie in particular (which was not in Andersen's story):

1. The whole plot of the Sea Witch disguising herself as a bride to a prince (in Disney it was Vanessa, it's strange but even her dress is of the same purple color),

2. The sea witch's ultimate plan was to usurp the throne of the underwater kingdom

3. The sea witch gives a potion to Ariel/Shee'naz to turn human, while singing a song that is similar to Poor Unfortunate Souls

4. She turns into a giant octopus in the end to battle the ship

5. While not necessarily a similarity, but prince's father is openly antagonistic which is a bit reminiscent of how King Triton was against Ariel's plans.

Intentionally or not, those seem like inspirations