Netflix’s ‘The Witcher’ EP Tomek Bagiński Says Series Made “Simplifications” To The Source Material Primarily Because American Audiences Would Not Grasp A “Higher Level Of Nuance And Complexity”
As if the press surrounding the widely-panned third season of Netflix’s The Witcher couldn’t get any worse, series executive producer Tomek Bagiński has claimed that the changes made to Andrej Sapkowski’s original works were done in order to ‘simplify’ the source material for wider – and more specifically American – audiences.
Bagiński, who directed the cinematic intros for all three of CD PROJEKT RED’S The Witcher video games and has served as an EP on the Netflix series since its inception, made this revelation during a recent post-season-three-premiere interview given to Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
Asked by the outlet’s Radosław Czyż for his thoughts regarding how “some people criticize the show for making up weird plots that changed what worked well in the books,” the series EP opined in turn, “But when you start discussing it, it usually turns out that screenwriters thought this solution out, that it’s not completely crazy.”
“It’s no secret that we [the series production team and fans] often disagree,” said Bagiński, per a translation of the interview provided by the fantasy fiction-centric news outlet Redanian Intelligence. “Things are created in the discussion. Michał Niewiara, who is our tester, does a great job, he checks what fits the world from books. Sometimes we get such a long list of things from him, because in many places we went in a different direction. But there’s a reason for it every time.
“Sometimes the changes are the result of production chaos, because, for example, an actor fell ill and his plot needs to be edited and rewritten within a few hours so that it can be shot the next day, because this is not a plot for which the whole production machine will stop,” he explained. ” There are a lot of understandable reasons why controversial decisions are made, but the viewer does not have this context, so sometimes it hurts because something was better in the book.”
Attempting to provide more context to his argument, Bagiński then recalled how he “had the same perceptual block when I presented Hardkor 44 [his alternate-history take on the Warsaw Uprising of World War II] abroad years ago”.
“[I] tried to explain: there was an uprising against Germany, but the Russians were across the river, and on the German side there were also soldiers from Hungary or Ukraine,” he said. “For Americans, it was completely incomprehensible, too complicated, because they grew up in a different historical context, where everything was arranged: America is always good, the rest are the bad guys. And there are no complications.”
Thus, said the Knights of the Zodiac (2023) director, “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.”
“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,” he ultimately asserted. “Sometimes it may go too far, but we have to make these decisions and accept them.”
As noted by Redanian Intelligence, this is the second such time that Bagiński has discussed his belief that The Witcher needed to be ‘simplified’ in order to engage a wider audience.
Speaking with YouTube channel Imponderabilia in 2022, Bagiński detailed how “We resign from cause-and-effect chains, from linear narration. This book-like narration. When it comes to shows, the younger the public is, the logic of the plot is less significant.”
Pressed by his host for an idea as to “What is significant” to younger audiences, the creator asserted, “Just emotions. Just pure emotions. A bare emotional mix. Those people grew up on TikTok and YouTube, they jump from video to video.”
Ultimately, Bagiński closed out his thoughts by addressing this next generation of viewers, declaring, “Dear children, what you do to yourself makes you less resilient for longer content, for long and complicated chains of cause and effect.”
NEXT: ‘The Witcher’ Executive Producer Tomek Bagiński Confirms Ciri Will Take Center Stage In Season 4
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