Review of The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf (2021) by Greenisgood — 26 Aug 2021

TL;DR - As a standalone movie or maybe like an alternate telling this movie is great, but we do know that this movie is supposed to be canon in the current Cavill live-action and as such was a bit disappointing.

The animation is spectacular and the story is a great stand-alone, but I was definitely expecting a little bit more. It all boils down to how much you expect, being Studio Mir it could be that I may have expected a bit more but being Studio Mir I know that they can deliver more so I guess this is subjective.

The Good.

The animation is absolutely amazing, everything flows seamlessly and I would not be expecting anything less from Studio Mir, the ATLA and LOK series are a big part of my love for animation and my itch was satisfied here.

It is sufficiently gory as well not shying away from tearing up children and showing how generally **** life is in The Witcher universe for the commoners, this gritty feeling is well translated from the games and books.

The voice cast was good, no standouts as such everyone really gave a good performance. The overall story was probably the best part where we see secret plots and greed cloud judgments putting characters we like in difficult decisions.

By the end, I was not really sure who to root for everyone was doing whatever they were doing for their own purposes, there are hints of general good sentiment here and there but in general, the grey morality of the universe was well portrayed.

The action was fast, frantic and fun, some of the witcher spells were seriously OP but it's an anime-style production I guess it is just a re-telling of the magic system, this didn't annoy me too much but it was definitely a little simplistic.

I love the story, I enjoyed how the hordes of monsters were not the main threat but it was a vindictive mage effectively giving a good supporting story as to why witchers and mages do not like each other and are always at odds.

The pacing was fine for the most part but a tad bit uneven, you will not really ride smoothly things slow a little too much in parts and rush through certain things that should have a little more added to it, but it is an entertaining watch nevertheless.

The Bad.

The whole magic system felt a little simplistic, I was eagerly waiting for Studio Mir's version of the magic system in the witcher series. I guess I should have expected it and being a fan of the ATLA and LOK series it should please me to see similar stuff like the bending from the aforementioned series, but I was really let down by how simplistic it felt.

If I am someone who has not seen the Avatar series I may have enjoyed it more, but seeing something as distinctive as the witcher series magics reduced into a sort of bending was quite a big letdown I was expecting Studio Mir to embody the essence better.

Some of the creature designs were also really bland although the creatures are not ever really a front runner for driving the show I still expected a more unique flavor.

The pacing was also off at certain points, after a fantastic start with great pacing. The movie just starts getting uneven meandering around stuff that really has no connection to the overall plot and then rushing through things that really needed more scenes.

The scenes of Vesemir and Illayana as adults were just rushed so much, we could not really feel satisfied after seeing two friends who loved each other meet after such a long time, I really liked their chemistry and wished we spent more time with them considering how the climax plays out.

We even spent so little time with the mage Terra, again considering the climax we really needed to spend more time with terra either liking her or either disliking so that what happens has more of an impact and meaning but again it rushes so quickly that by the end Terra was just a neutral feeling I could not feel the characters being conflicted even though the primary aspect of the story is conflicted morality.

Final Words.

Ok look, I could go on for hours talking about stuff that I liked and did not like in detail, but at the end of the day the main takeaway is it was a solid watch, but it definitely could have been a lot better.

The movie may hopefully mean more or get better when we see how much this ties into the Season 02 of the live-action Witcher series, until then it was a good watch to satisfy the craving for more witcher media because finishing The Wild Hunt for the 10th time still does not give me a full feeling.