"A witcher never hesitates."
Hello everyone!
It's only a week or so, give or take this time.
Anyway, in case you haven't been paying attention, The Witcher has taken the world by storm both by the professionals portraying the characters in the show, the characters themselves, and the story from under the pen of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
With the heightened awareness that season two is dropping towards the end of this year, Netflix then went on to announce a few spin-offs, both in television show and movie format, and the movie dropped first.
Well, anime movie I should say, as it was in anime style.
Either way, it definitely dropped at the end of August, and people seem to be giving out mixed vibes about it.
But The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, is here and rearing to be seen!
Links to previous reviews that are related to the original work can be found at the bottom of the page, as I'm slowly making my way through the source material (this includes the critically acclaimed Wild Hunt game, but I haven't gotten that far yet).
So without further ago, let's get right into it, shall we?
Nightmare focuses on a character Witcher fans recognize as mentor to the one and only Geralt of Rivia, one Vesemir (Theo James), who in this story begins as a child servant at an estate, and not a very good one either since he kinda dreams of going elsewhere, getting money to be able to provide for himself and the people he cares about, etc.
Then one day, at the market, he and another serving girl, Illyana (his crush, mind you), run into a witcher, Deglan (Graham McTavish), who explains that he heard about the illness of their mistress, and knows she's been possessed, so he heads on up to the estate and, with Vesemir's help, ends up curing her (the help here is more Deglan's amusement really, as Vesemir freezes when the monster takes on the shape of Illyana).
However, given the payment that Deglan collects, Vesemir makes the choice to follow the man to Kaer Morhen, the ancestral witcher stronghold and school, where he willingly submits himself to the trials and tests that will eventually make him into a witcher.
Not many of the group of boys there at the time survive, certainly not the boy he swore was going to make it to the end, much to Vesemir's grief, and on top of that Illyana sends him a letter saying that she had been sold to another family and he should forget her. This, among many other things, compounds into who Vesemir later becomes when he grows to full manhood: a charming, handsome, arrogant SOB who takes people's money and doesn't much care about them at all.
Hence why at the very beginning when a noble family gets attacked, travelling at night (because why the heck would you travel by day?), Vesemir deals with the monster, which wasn't supposed to speak but snarls something at him before dying, and then leaves the nobles as is, taking the valuables and leaving.
This further incenses sorceress Tetra (Lara Pulver), who has been campaigning for the king to oust the witchers from Kaer Morhen on the grounds that they are too arrogant, too dangerous, and just too everything, and should be eliminated, right along the lines of the Elves or Dwarves. The witchers have a champion in Lady Zerbst, however, who usually goes toe-to-toe with Tetra to defend them, so the king hasn't decided anything yet.
Luckily for the witchers, given it sounds like it'll be another boring winter when Vesemir returns to Kaer Morhen after turning down Elf Filavandrel when the man, sometimes friend, asks the witcher for help with missing Elf girls.
Vesemir's luck runs out as he and Luka, another witcher, take off to a tavern that night to escape the screams of the next batch of boys, and get baited into a fight with the king's soldiers ... naturally it's unfair since the soldiers never stand a chance, but it lands the witchers in prison, and they are again saved by Lady Zerbst, who suggests that the witchers, and Tetra, should go figure out what's attacking people in the forests.
She also reveals herself to Vesemir, because she's Illyana, the girl he loved back in the day! But in contrast to his MUCH slower aging because of his transmutations, she looks every bit of her near 70 years, though viewers can immediately notice that Vesemir doesn't much care for that, only that he still cares for HER.
Anyway.
On the road with Tetra, she shares a story about how a witcher conned a priest into making money, killing a young sorceress for it, a con Vesemir applauds in his mercenary mind, but they're distracted by a powerful illusion that Tetra dispels, revealing the problem: Kitsu, the Elf girl who went missing first ... and who sics one of her monsters on the pair. Teaming up, they manage to defeat it, and find the den ... with more girl corpses, and Filavandrel.
The trio realize that Kitsu has been experimenting on the kidnapped girls, like she had been experimented on, and the only ones with transmutation knowledge are the mages working for the witchers at Kaer Morhen. Vesemir vehemently denies having any knowledge of this, but he suspects who might be behind it. So after Filavandrel leaves with the only Elf hybrid survivor - and some parting remarks in Tetra's direction, augmented by Vesemir pointing out that the den used to be a school, before the sorcerers ran one of their cleansing stunts that nearly wiped out the Elves to begin with.
He then returns to Kaer Morhen on his hunch, realizing Deglan has been breeding new monsters to keep witchers in business - which Tetra brings before the king, and it ends in Luka's death regardless of Illyana's pleas. She then rushes to the stronghold to warn the witchers that Tetra has incited the rage of the villagers and they're coming for them.
Not only that, but Tetra destroyed Kitsu's den, lied to the Elf, and teamed up with her to bring the wrath of the hybrid and other monsters on the witchers too, which is the most hypocritical thing of the entire movie. What, the villagers are just FINE with hoards of monsters suddenly showing up? Who's to say they won't turn on them after they're done with the witchers???
Even on the brink of destruction though, Vesemir and Illyana share a tender moment in which he clearly shows that he's never forgotten her, and has loved her all his life - still does, no matter what she looks like. Love is stronger than looks.
Then the battle begins; Vesemir tries reasoning with Tetra, to no avail, and one by one the witchers fall in the defense of their home. Illyana takes the boys to the cellars to wait it out, until one of them admits he knows of a way that might save them, and she sends them off. Deglan, meanwhile, sends Vesemir after Tetra, who's gunning for the mages so that no more witchers can ever be made.
Vesemir is first accosted by Kitsu and plunged into a vision in which he married Illyana and had children, but breaks free of it and engages in a fight with the two women, eventually killing both - only for it to be revealed as ANOTHER illusion, as he's killed one of the mages and stabbed Illyana through instead.
Distraught, he might have died there as Tetra sneaks up on him, revealing she's the daughter of the sorceress from that con story, and it's heavily implied that Vesemir was the witcher who swindled the priest (or so it implies this online, but I don't quite get it as I never actually got the sense Vesemir did it, he would have boasted about it if he had, in my opinion). But she gloats before finishing the job - which was to exterminate witchers, like they exterminated Elves - and Deglan kills her before dying, too.
Vesemir takes a dying Illyana to a lake, which she had always dreamed off, and she passes away in his arms, giving us the second time of his entire life that Vesemir cries, and it's HEARTBREAKING.
He then follows after the young fledgling witchers, giving them a choice to either finish their training, or leave. They all pick up the witcher medallions, choosing to become what Vesemir is - and we see a glimpse of little Geralt as well, on the start of his transmutation journey. But we also see the reason Kaer Morhen is in ruin and the witcher numbers are so low - basically, the mages are performing genocide across the continent against any race that isn't human (it should be argued mages aren't human either, but, you know ...).
And that - if Illyana's death doesn't do it for you - is the saddest story of all.
An hour and twenty minutes long, Nightmare of the Wolf gives us a good look at Vesemir's backstory and what he left behind, the choices he could have made for a life with a wife and children and instead went for the gold and glory, never minding the fact people fear witchers. It also shows us WHY Kaer Morhen is in ruins today, why Geralt seems to be one of the last of a dying race (though truth be told I didn't see the mages among the dead so I mean, some SHOULD have survived), and the fact that people are just the worst.
Let's not even get started on the sorcerers. Literally, the only reason the witchers are persecuted in the story is because they want them gone, and while there's some logic in that monsters seem to be going extinct anyway (but not COMPLETELY, so who would fight them with the defenders gone anyway?), the mages aren't exactly angels either (also Tetra has no room for calling out Illyana as a former servant - she's a servant's kid herself, but a mage now while Illyana married a noble, sooooo).
Filavandrel implies it heavily, as does Vesemir, and it's one of the rare instances Vesemir shows emotion about something other than coin and a lavish life, showing there IS a good man underneath all the narcissism and bravado.
And I mean, for some reason we get a gratuitous tub shot with Vesemir, butt shot included, but does it surprise us? I swear the tub is going to be a running joke in the Witcher universe, right next to the unicorn!
A poignant, cautionary tale that explains why Vesemir made the choices he did and how he turns into who he is later on, and mostly just a heaping hour and half of anime you can generally enjoy, I highly recommend watching this. It can be watched before you see The Witcher, or after, or in between, as it's not quite imperative before season 2 yet.
But remember, Illyana say: 'Killing is easier than tolerating'. It resonates even more in today's world.
Let's try and turn that around, shall we?
Because today's society reminds me too much of the villagers who attacked Kaer Morhen WITH the monsters, turning into monsters themselves through that act, or exposing their inner monsters, if you want it that way.
And I don't want to live in a world like that.
xx
*images and video not mine
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