In case any of you had the idea of testing out the new Witcher animated movie: it's Netflix all right.
It has all the formulaic hallmarks of a Netflix production. While the over-all percentage of DEI characters was kept to a bare minimum, the king was mid-way through revealed to have married a woman of 'swarthy skin' (African) and his son is of mixed race. (He immediately looked suspicious in a Netflix way.) The rest all appear to be Caucasian, although they did flirt with a white looking 'princess' with an Arab wardrobe and retinue.
Story: The fighting and the story arc are, of course, dominated and moved forward by women. How can it not be? It's basically 'The Little Mermaid', but ran through a Witcher universe meat grinder. And for some inexplicable reason (Netflix) they gave the underwater witch a musical number when she tells of the potion that can give the mermaid princess legs, just like in 'The Little Mermaid', rofl.
Voice acting: The voice acting is hysterically bad for one of the female characters, but is over all passable. (Obligatory DEI voice actors in the list.)
Action: The action is actually well-choreographed (they make use of digital models), but you care little for the outcome due to the Netflix curse of who really gives a shit what happens.
Animation quality: somewhat superior than a DC animated movie (bigger budget, no doubt) but still has the same anemic and lifeless feel of a DC animated movie.
Verdict: stylish looking trash.
iirc there's a short story about that in one of Sapkowski short story collections. since you dont mention it, do you know it? how much is the movie influenced by that? are 'mermaids' similar to how they're described in the story? or do they just throw everything away and do their own interpretation of what this would look like in the witcher universE?
According to the link in my post, they throw away the heart of the story and added a lot of fluff, including 'The Little Mermaid' elements, in order to get a full movie out of it, (e.g. a bullying backstory on Jaskier.) Whether the mermaids are similar, I don't know.