The Witcher Producer Blames Season 3's Critical Crash On Its American Audience
Henry Cavill's final days as Geralt of Rivia probably won't rank among his career highlights. "The Witcher Season 3" boasts the series' lowest fan rating so far, but are American viewers to blame for its shortcomings? In an interview with Wyborcza (via Redanian Intelligence), producer Tomek Baginski said that they had to dumb down the fantasy series for the international market, which is heavily influenced by American taste buds.
"When a series is made for a huge mass of viewers, with different experiences, from different parts of the world, and a large part of them are Americans, these simplifications not only make sense, they are necessary," Baginski said. "It's painful for us, and for me too, but the higher level of nuance and complexity will have a smaller range, it won't reach people. Sometimes it may go too far, but we have to make these decisions and accept them."
That being said, Baginski doesn't only blame American audiences for the poorly-received elements of "The Witcher" Season 3. The producer also believes that the show was designed to appeal to a generation of people who require non-challenging entertainment.
The Witcher producer also blames TikTok and YouTube for Season 3's failures
There's a scene in the movie "BASEketball" where Ted Denslow (Ernest Borgnine), an elderly billionaire, lambasts the youth over their obsession with Zima, hula hoops, and "Pac-Man" video games — all of which he blames for causing short attention spans. Tomek Baginski has similar views, noting that contemporary young people's interests have made them apathetic toward the type of nuanced entertainment "The Witcher" could be.
During the aforementioned interview, the producer said that TikTok and YouTube have made young people more reluctant to engage with complex, emotional plots. These services are designed to make people hop between different videos in quick succession, and they've conditioned viewers to lose interest in long-form viewing. "Okay, so it's time to be serious," he added. "Dear children, what you do to yourself makes you less resilient for longer content, for long and complicated chains of cause and effect."
Netflix's "The Witcher" adaptation is arguably more streamlined than the Andrzej Sapkowski novels it's based on, but isn't that the case with most adaptations? Furthermore, Season 3 was criticized for delivering an underwhelming story that didn't live up to previous installments of the series. Of course, the producer is entitled to his opinion, and it's bound to get fans talking.