“Couldn’t Stop Watching It”: Henry Cavill On Netflix’s ‘Arcane’

Within a week of its release, Netflix’s animated series ‘Arcane: League of Legends‘ has ranked first on Netflix’s Top 10 charts of fifty-two countries and second in the United States. Since its premiere on 6 November 2022, the series has been critically praised for its all-around entertainment. Renowned actor and an ardent video game lover, Henry Cavill too crowned the action-adventure series binge-worthy.

The series is based on Riot Games’ 2009 multiplayer video game, League of Legends. On the game’s tenth anniversary, Netflix announced the adaptation of this video game into a televised series. Reviews tell that the animation series has even attracted a crowd that has never played the game before. The Netflix series has already become a television prodigy winning four Emmy Awards, nine Annie Awards and many more.

Unraveling ‘Arcane‘

‘Arcane‘ season one revolved around the champion characters of the video game, Vi and Jinx. The tension shared between the utopian city Piltover and the oppressed underbelly Zaun leads to the sisters being orphaned. Vander, who leads the rebellion against Piltover raised the girls as his own. Years later while robbing a penthouse Jinx breaks an arcane crystal that leads to an explosion and that’s how she gets her name. Vander tries to cool things off with the penthouse owners and the police but the crystal are not ordinary. As they fall into a spiral of the underworld happening, they unravel new stories of the past and struggle with a battle ahead and new technologies. Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Purnell give voices to the characters Vi and Jinx.

Arcane has been critically appraised for its engaging storylines and subplots, constructive characters and art designs as it deals with the theme of poverty, civil unrest and classism. A writer for video game entertainment website IGN wrote, “classic in the making, and the nail in the coffin of the so-called video game curse.” He further continued “delivers a killing blow to the idea that video games cannot be masterfully adapted… with compelling characters, an endearing story, and fascinating lore and worldbuilding, as well as striking visuals”.

Henry Cavill Actor Likes Animation

It’s not an unexpected surprise that the robust DC superhero is in raptures of the ‘Arcane‘ series. Henry Cavill’s first love was video games. The actor has talked frequently about his attachment to them as they were his escape from the crazy ongoings of the world. ‘The Witcher‘ actor has admitted to playing the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt numerous times before being cast for the series.

In an interview with BBC Radio, Henry thanked film critic Ali Plumb for recommending the series to him. On praising the animation Henry humorously related, I couldn’t stop watching it, and it got really late, and Natalie was like ‘Right, we should probably go to bed’ and I was like “No, no, no, no, no, nope, gotta keep on watching.” The two agreed and binged the entire season. As fans pout over completing the series overnight, Netflix gave them a ray of sunshine as they announced the production of the next season.