Hal Kitchen
The Witcher is a series I have a bit of a turbulent relationship with. It’s one that has taken many forms—the original book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, the AAA gaming franchise, the Netflix series and now its latest iteration, the animated films starting with 2021’s The Brotherhood of the Wolf. I’ve tried all of them and I’ve never gotten very far. I made it about four episodes into the show, I played about 100 hours of The Wild Hunt (about one-third of it) and then gave up, and I wasn’t exactly convinced by the merits of The Brotherhood of the Wolf either. I do love this kind of epic historical fantasy, but the world and characters never seemed anything like as layered or interesting as those of Earthsea or Westeros. For saga whose main theme is that conflicts are never as simple as they first appear, they never get that nuanced, truth be told.
That theme returns with a vengeance in Sirens of the Deep. The Brotherhood of the Wolf always seemed like a strange foot to start off on given that as a prequel delving into the origins of the Witcher organization, none of the saga’s fan favorite characters make an appearance. Here though, we are reintroduced to stoic antihero Geralt (Doug Cockle, reprising his Golden Joystick award winning performance from the video games) and his sidekick bard Jaskier (Joey Batey) as they are contracted to slay a sea monster, and in so doing, find themselves caught in the middle of a brewing conflict between the land-dwellers and the kingdom of the Merpeople beneath the waves. Between The Little Mermaid, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Aquaman and Avatar: The Way of the Water we’ve had quite the glut of merfolk vs land-dweller battles on our screens lately, and why not, those are cool. However, I’m not sure any of those films are actually, you know…good. Sirens of the Deep had the potential to be the pulpy little movie that could and actually give us a fun, violent, and sexy battle of the oceans, but it succumbs to many of the same issues that plague not only those other movies but the Witcher series in general.
First, I’ve never understood the appeal of Geralt as a character. I mean, yes he’s very cool with his swords and his muscles but that it literally the extent of his character. For those unaware, Witchers are professional monster hunters for hire who obtain their magical powers by undergoing a “trial of the grasses” which strips them of emotion. So we have a protagonist who is by definition, emotionless and acting in purely pragmatic terms. That’s not fatal to a story, in fact I understand how it could benefit an episodic drama about navigating complex moral conflicts, our impartial hero trying to find the genuinely “right” path. But such a bland hero puts all the weight on the mystery and complexity of those conflicts and neither are really up to standard here. I wonder who’s sowing conflict between the humans and the merfolk? Is it the captain of the guards, is it the sexy local bard with a thing for our hero, is it the mermaid princess and her human princeling beau? Or is it her obviously evil aunt the sea witch who has potions to turn her human and sings songs in her evil lair? Yes, it’s literally the plot of The Little Mermaid, I wasn’t kidding.
The characters are just too underdeveloped for this conflict to have any real weight to it and it doesn’t help that so many irrelevant threads are shoehorned into the tight ninety minute runtime. I understand wanting to include flashbacks of Yennifer (Anya Chalotra) for fan-service, but they contribute nothing to the story but contextualize Geralt’s hesistance to get with Essi (Christina Wren, doing an awful accent by the way) and are meaningless to anyone not already familiar with their dynamic. This romantic subplot is hopelessly undercooked and with our hero so inherently unemotional, there’s nothing to get invested in. When we know the furthest it could possibly go is a random hookup, what drama does it add? There’s only a little more heat between the mermaid princess (Emily Carey) and the human prince (Camrus Johnson). She may be half-fish but it’s him that’s the flip-flopping wet blanket and it’s hard to root for them to get together either.
The conflict isn’t much deeper than the romance. We see the tension rise out of competition for resources, the sea monster Geralt is charged with killing has been eating the oysters the local fishermen rely on for food, but the real oyster shortage is caused by wasteful overfishing for pearls. It’s a credible source of conflict but not one that’s built upon. It’s just a backdrop to a handful of action scenes that unfold without much sense of peril or stakes. The highlight is a short duel Geralt fights with a fishy warrior, it’s a fast paced one on one sword-fight that requires all of Geralt’s strength, but later on we see whole armies of these warriors hacked to bits by regular human soldiers. The power scaling of these guys feels extremely inconsistent.
The manga-inspired animation is fairly polished but it lacks a real sense of individuality, a more stylized approach could have given the world of The Witcher a real sense of identity, but this feels like a very generic fantasy anime. That’s really where it is coming up short, there’s no real sense of personality. The silliness of the story, the lack of tension in the action and the one-dimensionality of the characters are one thing each but the absence of a real creative spark is what’s truly missing here. There’s no time to absorb the ambiance, no texture to the world, no internal conflict motivating the characters. If all your looking for is another adventure with the stern, sexy swordsman then Sirens of the Deep fits the bill, but those of us without Geralt posters on our walls can probably give it a miss.
