Cursed on Netflix: First impressions

I don’t think I am alone when I say that the conclusion of Game of Thrones has left a certain “empty feeling” for a lot of people that were fans of the epic series. The fact that it fizzled out in the end is another story altogether but when I saw that Cursed had a similar look and feel to it, I was indeed intrigued but not terribly hopeful that it would be any good.

I made it through just a few episodes yesterday and this is how I feel so far in a nutshell: Underwhelmed

Now it is worth noting that I was similarly underwhelmed by G.O.T. when it was first released and actually only made it through an episode and a half before I switched it off only to be brought back in by adamant pals (one of whom was named Adam) who insisted that I turn it back on… I did so and it ended up being one of my favorite TV shows of all time (excluding the final, terrible 1.5 seasons of course.)

With Cursed it really takes a while to get moving as it seems almost nothing happens in the first 30 minutes. I realize that there needs to be some time given to backstory and I suppose, in their defense, they go get things going about as quickly as can be expected. We are introduced to the heroine “Nimue” (pronounced “Nim-way”) who it is fairly evident is going to be the only character we spend a great deal of time focusing on. The foreshadowing to her eventually becoming “The Lady in the Lake,” is fairly obvious from the get go and anyone familiar with the lore surrounding this finds it as no surprise that we are going to eventually run into a few of the other faces from “The Round” at some point in time during this series.

As we move onward in Nimue’s path towards greatness we are slowly introduced to her powers as she is part witch, a reviled sort of person in the current time period. She slowly gathers her crew and heads on her mission which isn’t actually all that obvious by the end of one episode.

The problems that I have with this series and I would imagine this is going to continue is that it seems very teen-ish while G.O.T. had very adult themes to it. I’m not saying that we have to have a ton of nudity and swearing for a show to be good, but the young-adult theme that is going on is not very appealing to me. I suspect that this is going to end up being about as popular with people who think as I do as Twilight did for me as far as vampires were concerned.

Another problem that I’ve run into is that it becomes rather clear early on that they do not have anywhere near the CGI budget that was allotted to G.O.T.. The special effect sequences that I have seen thus far have been rather fake looking and it almost make me think of shows such as Xena: Warrior Princess and other such shows that ended up having a devoted, but very niche market.

_{I suppose they are doing the best they can but this entire sequence seemed extremely fake}

Upon doing some further reading I have seen that many professional reviewers are stating that the first 2 episodes are “slow to the point of being awkward and if that is indeed the case perhaps I will try to stick it out and see what happens in episode 3 onward. Up to now, I have to say that I was a bit bored to the point where I picked up my phone and started looking at social media to pass the down-time, which was most of it.

The first episode ends in a way (not gonna spoil) that was meant to be a massive cliffhanger of epic action, but this is where the lack of budget was the most evident and I actually groaned while watching it. It was quite simply, bad.

I also realize that not just everyone can get the millions upon millions of dollars that was devoted to Game of Thrones and perhaps I should just chill on the comparison and let the show do its own thing.

I will say this though: If the show continues down this path of “teenage power” that it appears to have thus far, where every person under 21 years of age seems to be awesome and everyone over that is either a baddie or useless background person, I will likely lose interest pretty quickly.

For the time being I am going to go ahead and give this fantasy adventure the benefit of the doubt and if it becomes too cringe, I’ll have to back away.

Should I watch it?

If you aren’t a massive fantasy fan I don’t think there is going to be much appeal for you here. The reason why Game of Thrones was able to appeal to such a wide audience is because it had stories of human behavior and quests for power that are applicable in an ageless sort of manner. Thus far, Cursed doesn’t appear to have any of that and instead simply adds additional pieces to an already well-known story and this may not necessarily be a good thing.