Generic and Derivative, Blood Origin is The Worst Game of Thrones Knock-off Yet
The Witcher: Blood Origin debuted on December 25 much to the excitement (and subsequent disappointment) of the franchise fans.
Ahead of the spin-off release they based their opinions on the series' trailers and argued if the prequel about the Witcher world without any witchers is bad or very bad. A lot of fans of the franchise had a point since the prequel is focused on the blossoming elven kingdom while none of the witchers is there to fight monsters, which do not exist.
The release of the spin-off seems to have extremely disappointed Nick Schager of Daily Beast who penned a long review of The Witcher: Blood Origin, calling it "the worst Game of Thrones copycat yet".
"The Witcher has become a sluggish chore that's only propped up by the glowering charisma of Henry Cavill, " says the entertainment critic in his review, adding that it lacks Cavill's "star magnetism". In addition, the prequel stands aside for "its consuming, crushing lack of imagination, its action indulging in fantasy clichés with almost belligerent zeal," Schager believes.
Stepping up his critique, Schager says that 2022 brought us House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which he calls "two superior franchise-extending efforts." In contrast, The Witcher: Blood Origin's "derivativeness falls somewhere between depressing and embarrassing," the critics argues.
Fair enough. But this is certainly just an opinion of an industry pro and sometimes what critics think is good is different from what fans thinks is cool.
Since the fans were expecting the show to fail, most of the comments on Reddit are obviously negative. Some fans of The Witcher universe believe that the prequel is definitely not good although they do not hate it the way some do. They believe that exploring the fall of the elves and the merging of the worlds is pretty interesting.
One of the things which they also paid attention to is the production value – it is clearly a step down from the original series but the quality is still good enough not to distract them.
The fans argue that the pace of the show is problematic. For them trying to squeeze so much lore, story and characters into only 4 episodes does not look like a brilliant idea. And one of the biggest issues is the spin-off's writing, which some of the fans find too weak. They say dialogues are terrible and characters' backstories are just dumped on the viewers while the characters' motivations are nonexistent.
Other redditors call The Witcher: Blood Origin "the most inconsistent fantasy world" they have ever seen. They have noted that the accents are all over the place and in general the elven culture looks like a copypaste of the current Witcher show, which does look terribly strange because any society tends to evolve and undergo transformations.
Interestingly, the fans praised the show for being diverse but at the same time they agree that when diversity turns into the main point of the series, it is never good. Moreover, it can totally ruin any show.