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abeautifulblog · 2 years

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so obviously the writing for twn geralt leaves a lot to be desired, but what do you think of henry cavill's acting? i definitely liked him better as geralt in season 1, but i'm not sure if that was because of the less-awful (though still disappointing) writing and costuming or if his acting did actually dip in quality.

I think it did take a dip in S2 (though in hcav's defense, you try emoting around those contact lenses o_o), and I wonder if he had a different acting coach for S1 or something.

There was a surprising amount of nuance in his nonverbal performance in S1 -- standout scenes to me were his feral caginess with Renfri, the part where Foltest is telling him how lucky he is to have no emotions (while the look on Geralt's face says he knows it's not true, and it's painful to have to listen to this, but he also knows how utterly futile it is try to argue), and his early, wary interactions with Yen in the djinn episode.

(I know he got some flak when it came out that he'd unilaterally cut a lot of Geralt's dialogue from S1 (and the showrunners really need to stop letting him call the shots), but in retrospect, after having seen the writing in S2, I wonder if he might have dodged us a bullet.)

That said, he doesn't really have much chemistry with... anybody, or not chemistry that he's bringing to the table anyway. He's compelling with Jaskier in S1, and Jaskier's compelling with Yen in S2, but the secret ingredient there would appear to be Joey. And part of that is due to a failure in hcav's acting -- that his body language is often at opposition to the emotions/relationship that the scene is trying to convey.

An easy hack to show love/interest/affection is to have Character A constantly orienting their body toward Character B. It's what everyone's going nuts over in OFMD, because Taika Waititi's Blackbeard is locked onto Stede like a fuckin' sunflower, and it makes his adoration palpable.

Meanwhile, here's what Destined True Love in TWN looks like:

They are miles apart. Someone's built a fucking pillow barricade down the middle. Geralt, you want to put your sword between you as well, just to be on the safe side?

And even when they roll over to face each other, they still don't touch. They don't reach out to each other. It doesn't seem to even occur to them to do anything but stay on their own sides of the invisible barrier down the center of the bed:

(Her line here is like "Are you bored?" and you can FUCKIN' SEE WHY SHE'S ASKING.)

But yeah, it just kills me that even in this, the scene that is the height of their S1 romance, all the indications of intimacy are just missing. Why aren't they holding each other? Why don't we see them chasing that closeness, that connection? Hands that can't keep from tracing over each other's skin; sleepy kisses nestled into each other's hair? All the thousand soft touches that physical intimacy is made of?

Something more like this:

A world of difference.

And I won't say that's entirely on hcav -- the director should have caught it, and directed them to cuddle instead -- but I daresay if Joey Batey had been doing that scene, he wouldn't have needed to be told to make the physicality match the emotional content.

#like I'll be honest #I'm not interested in Yenralt at all #but a non-negligible part of that is how unconvincing they made that romance #bro you need to sell me on it #I'm not bringing my own investment here #asks #witcher shit #twn critical

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