The Three-Body Problem

I read Cixin Liu's series a couple of times in 2019 and 2020 and was blown away. . .so excited this show finally came out after the release date kept on getting delayed.

It's good that this show came out of a Chinese production company and captures the "feel" of the Cixin Liu's books very well so far. . .binge worthy watching all the episodes on WeTV.

The cast, acting and character development have been superb so far and the story has not been "watered down", "messed with" or "dumbed down" for the average viewer who hasn't read Cixin Liu's books. I would hate to see Netflix dissecting the story to dumb it down for the lowest common denominator (who have a hard time perhaps understanding the concepts in the stories) . . .and it will be interesting nonetheless with more of the characters not being Chinese in the Netflix version (to see if they can keep the "feel" of the story being told from a Chinese protagonist point of view . . . Time will tell.

The only problem I have with it is that the English subtitles flash by too quickly which some viewers will find off-putting and hard to catch. . .If they could hold the English subtitles on the screen longer, I would have given this a solid 9 for rating.

Give it to the Chinese themselves to adapt the work of their most beloved sci fi author to the silver screen almost word for word that they need 30 frickin' episodes to tell the whole story. I myself appreciate greatly the effort they pulled that you can see the love the directors and writers put in this project, contrasted to what their western counterparts do when it comes to adaptation these days. Need to work a little bit on the cgi parts tho, hope this show kills it at least in China so they may get the movie budget if the studio greenlits the adaption of the next two books, which I really hope they do. This is quiet frankly a fine alternative to the self-insert, politically driven hollywood projects, and yes, I have no intention at all to follow the netflix version of the adaptation no matter how much they put their budget into it (well, maybe just the trailer).

I just finished watching the 30 episodes of Three Body by Tencent. Loved it immensely. The main actors are fabulous. The production values are excellent. And, the story hews to the book very well.

Many will observe that the pace of the story seems slow at times, though I found it to be more of a zen experience in those episodes. In the end the series delivers the goods.

There are some a few odd quirks in the version released for English subtitle readers. The most odd is the occasional sudden insertion of completely out-of-context music, overwriting dialog and all other story sound. I've read that some copyright issues were being covered up, but boy did they do a sloppy job. A shame given how much work went into the production.

I particularly gained insight into the people of modern day China. It was revelatory to see how similar their daily lives are like mine/ours in the West. Even their views on politics and life were quite liberal and enlightened.

Highly recommend!

I have not read the trilogy. I learned about this series from my research after watching the netflix adaptation. I found the netflix series entertaining and well produced but I could tell it was drawing from source material more complex than what was presented. Thus my research to find out more about Liu Cixin. I was planning to start reading the trilogy (and I will) but saw this Chinese production.

So, I am pretty nerdy and I love more expository, detailed sc-fi. The flashy stuff is fun but give me some complex ideas to chew on and I am in heaven (think Mindwalk, Jacobs Ladder, Stalker). The Chinese production, Three-Body, has that in spades, maybe even too much. For me this series really drew out the existential crisis of the impending arrival of an more advanced extraterrestrial civilization. The motives of the various chacters are well developed as are the philosophical and scientific concepts. I found the acting and screenwriting mostly well done. The production quality was ok, though uneven (especially the soundtrack). I personally found the insights into modern Chinese culture quite fascinating as well.

I did find the subtitles to be poorly executed, often flashing too briefly to read easily. One episode had the subtitles out sync which obviously made for a tough watch. The pacing is uneven but really improves in the final 10 episodes (out of 30).

Overall I have really enjoyed the series. There is enough intellectual stuff to keep me engaged and the production is pretty good but not perfect. I look forward to reading the trilogy and then watching the series again.

This could be better than the netflix version, as it is a more faithful adaptation, but that's not always the most important thing and this show suffers with some pretty bad pacing issues because they are using dialogue directly from the book in some scenes and it seems as if they aren't leaving out a single page aside from chronologically shuffling a few things about. Not necessarily out of order overall, but out of order of how they are presented in the books.

There's a ton of exposition in the books that could actually be shortened in the show because you are actually able to show more of the things that the book had to tell you. They don't go this route. They show AND tell everything. It makes for some unnecessarily long scenes. This shouldn't have been more than 15 or 16 episodes max. I have a hard time believing that I would have liked this if I had not already read the novel.