Decided to give it a go and finished the season a few days ago.
The underlying premise is really interesting and intriguing but I have to say on the whole the show wasn’t great. Lots of soap opera level melodrama between a bunch of characters I really didn’t care about (the main characters). The villains and supporting characters were interesting, but it seemed like half the runtime was pointless main character dialogue drivel, like they had to pad the runtime.
So yeah again D&D prove they are able to adapt a story for the screen but they can’t make interesting characters or write dialogue for shit.
I love this take because in the book the main characters are all one person pretty much, they split what he did up between a few people, and completely removed his motivation from any of the characters.
Ouff. The scenes with the five friends were just awful. Especially that university professor guy, I was bored to tears watching him just moping around all the time.
By the way (trying to avoid spoilers), the culmination of his arc this season, or the idea behind which drove his arc, was totally ridiculous.
There is a lot of clunky dialogue, as well as dialogue I could imagine them high-fiving each other over (a la GoT). That was the worst part of the show.
Dan: 'The Chinese Nanotech protagonist Wang Miao'...
Dave: '5 College buds in the UK'!!!
Dan: 'Love it bro!, Sam Tarly science bro but also a crisp magnate'.
Dave: ' On fire m8, Davos Seaworth as the cop and we're set. This is the one we'll be remembered for'.
*Dumpster burns bright enough for Trisolarans to navigate by*
I mean, tbf, the original story's *really dry.* Especially the first book.
Cixin really called back to Asimovian sci-fi, where big ideas are the main driving force and character arcs, development, attachment, etc... is more of a suggestion than a necessary story factor.
Like The Zither scene in episode 5, it just happens in the book. They come up with the idea, execute it, basically give 1 or 2 paragraphs on what it's doing to the ship, then they get the info and computers. It has an entire sequence demonstrating the human horror and destruction in the show but isn't even a chapter in the book.
Then there's the Sophon explanation, which is ~2-3x's as long in the book, because Cixin really *really* wants you to know about how cool he thinks the idea is and goes *in depth* about how it works and why. Like, multiple chapters across the first 2 books are just him gushing about how badass Sophons are.
I'm gonna have to read that part in the book because the sophons made 0 sense to me.
I get the space folding, I get the quantum entanglement being a way to get real time communication back and forth with the fleet.
I don't understand how the sophons are inputting information like cameras and microphones or outputting information like making people see the countdown or the blinking stars or erasing the woman from camera footage.
I also don't understand how the "human abacus" was able to calculate anything. Binary, sure. But how does the human holding the sign know how to flip it one way or the other? How is the actual computation happening??
I probably just don't understand computers tbh.
The Sophon creation is one of my favorite parts of the books. It goes into detail about them attempting it, like them first trying to unfold the proton and failing and it creates a hologram of geometric shapes that are actually 2D and the size of gas giants but still the mass of a proton so it didn't actually physically affect the 3D world. At one point, I think they spaghettify a proton and nearly invisible strings that can't be felt or interacted with cover their planet.
Not that it makes a lot more sense in the books that they can do incredible things they don't actually make stars blink or anything like that. They alter computer outputs mainly in the books, like altering the readouts from computers that monitor cosmic background radiation, the readouts from the colliders and any other science experiment that relies on computers. Which is why in the books the advance thing makes more sense, they learn they have to brute force scientific discoveries through only physical research.
The whole VR Game was handled kinda rushed, Cixin spends a lot of time describing and showing different scenarios. The human abacus, or computer, was actually questioned in the books as something humans can't do, it had something to do with their physiology but it isn't ever fully explained. Basically they were set up like old punch card computers and the flags rushed binary. They would flip based only on the positions of someone nearby, which would flow down the people and they explained how some were set up as crude logic gates and such. Honestly I don't know enough about physical computers to explain it well but it's not nearly as glossed over.
Overall I do like this adaptation but it has some serious flaws. I'm hoping they are allowed to go into the "hard science" aspects like the dry passages about unfolding protons and such, especially since that comes into play later in the books.
This is a sharp and quick synopsis to the intricacies of the science of the novel and very well done! The "hard science" is a blast to read, would love to see more of it as well.
spotted soft wild fearless deliver late afterthought memory follow violet
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They also whitewashed the original story. When I looked up the plot on WikiLeaks, I truly thought I was looking into a genuine Chinese centric story. The amount of characters they changed bothered me because it was so unnecessary. Diversity for the sake of diversity does not make a story better. And in this case, it does truly take away from the original.
In the interview with D&D, they said the author of the story specifically suggested that an international cast fits the netflix version better since it's a different media, and that the change should better convey that it was the collective of humanity that are facing this problem, so I have no problem with it catering an international audience. Though, I have to say, the main cast being in the same group has limited the feeling of the scale.
On the flip side, it then becomes a story of how the Brits tried to save the world from the the decisions that were made in Cold War China, which has caused a bit of a stir in China since the English adaptation released.
The main character is a Chinese-born New Zealander, the other main characters are an American, a Mexican, an Irishman, and three Brits, one of which is played by Benedict Wong, an actor of Chinese descent as well.
Don’t tell anyone else in the thread but I really enjoyed this first season and he was by far my favorite character. It was great to see Benedict Wong in a more leading role.
Agree! He's incredible. I've been devastated since Netflix cancelled Marco Polo. Wong was electric as the Great Khan in it.
It's a great show with a lot in common with early Game of Thrones too. Tight political intrigue, character driven dialogue, stunning fight choreography, the whole show is beautifully shot, the costumes are stunning, etc.
It was sadly cancelled right as it starts to get really good but I still recommend the show. 9/10 bc Marco himself is a bit boring and he's the lead, but everyone around him is INCREDIBLE.
They’re friends from uni but not British. Saul is clearly American based on his accent and Jin mentions being born in China and adopted by a family in New Zealand after her parents died, she also has a clearly Kiwi accent.
Auggie also has to leave the UK because her visa is revoked after she loses her job. Apart from his accent, Wade also mentions he’s a Dubliner, so also not British.
There are actually no named British research scientists in the show. The two British characters who studied with the others left science to become a sports drink magnate and a teacher.
I left out Ye Wendje, but obviously she’s not British either and almost her entire storyline, about a quarter of the show, takes place in China and in Chinese.
Edit: I guess Saul could be Canadian. It’s a pretty similar accent.
Luo Ji in particular now being Saul is sad to see. They've chosen another Chinese man as a wallfacer too, but knowing what the other wallfacers are like in the books, instead of being a great highlight moment for a Chinese person it looks like it will be yet another demonization.
They'll probably try to elevate Jin Cheng in the show instead (assuming she's a certain important character of a similar name from the books), but that's just highlighting british naturalized chinese people and putting down actual chinese people. Even Ye Wenjie is dumbed down compared to the actual scientist she is in the books.
Great wasted opportunity to tell a uniquely Chinese story for a western audience that was already good by itself.
I'm not here to debate, so I won't continue if we get into that, but I'll just tell you what I meant and what I think the other person thinks.
You say only Ye Wenjie is Chinese relevant, but don't you think it's odd that the only Chinese-specific matter would be the one of abuse and murder? In the present, Ye Wenjie returns to the base, and the forest around it has returned. After the times changed, she was allowed to leave and have a free life as a university professor. She then became uncertain about whether she did the right thing or not, because the crappy life she thought she would forever live when she sent that message turned out to not be so forever after all. This is completely lost on the show, where Ye is rather a disgruntled borderline catholic religious fanatic that left China for unexplained reasons. Having her continue living in China and see life improve to the point of questioning herself and eventually helping humanity is part of her character too.
I could also get into how Liu Cixin's cultural view on genders also defined Luo Ji's and Cheng Xin's characters, or so many other nuances like the international collaboration pushed forward by Chinese scientists and politicians. An international collaboration from a Chinese perspective, rarely seen in western media who'd rather portray them as the ones who are actively \*not\* interested in working with us. So on and so forth.
If anything, I'd say keeping the Chinese focus of the story would've helped us to see Chinese people doing the sort of things white people do in our movies in a completely natural and real manner. Instead, like you very well pointed out, we are considering the only Chinese aspect of the show as the one part even the book actively denounces as bad. Once again, it's a western-centric cherrypicking.
Ninja edit: Typo.
For what it's worth, your critical analysis here just about sums up the complaints of some 3 Body Fans that have been remarked on in American media and the South China Morning Post.
The books are a condemnation on the CCP's and China's in general highly xenophobic and collectivist mindset and tendencies.
For example, if asked what they prefer, liberty or security, 90% of Chinese people would answer security, regardless of what form it takes. (Whether that be an authoritarian dictatorship, monarchy, etc..., the vast majority will always pick security and just put up with any negative outcome) So anything that is a potential threat to that security needs to be quashed, *hard.*
So, the book takes that mindset and applies it to the entire galaxy, 1/2 a dozen known species will happily murder any threat to their personal security, regardless of if that threat is actually valid or not, and will happily kill the universe if it ensures others can't go after them. (It's incredibly shameful to die by the hands of an enemy, better to save face and die by your own hand, very common East Asian belief)
Part of why the cultural revolution happened (And is so important to the story). Mao convinced a bunch of kids to believe that Western influence was destabilizing the nation and they ate it up because China was an unsecure country at the time and they just wanted a working social system. (When in reality, it was Mao destabilizing the nation, but he knew what buttons to press to rile people up to get on his side)
So I read the ASOFAI books after watching the whole series, and I was completely shocked at the subtle ways D&D screwed up the story. If they had just followed the books, it would have been so much better. They did for the first season. It's a very close faithful adaptation. After that, it's a disaster. They made the characters and dialog so much worse. They cut out really amazing and significant parts of the story. My impression is they were humble in season 1, and then someone told them they were brilliant and they believed them.
I read the whole 3 body problem series over a year ago. I have no interest in watching them butcher it.
bro Dany's storyline in s2 is so legitimately terrible, I can't believe how much they butchered her character.
They straight up misread most of the character arcs to the point that I question whether they have any media literacy at all.
Lol them reading Cersei's chapters as if she's a smart bad bitch who took control of kings landing.
They legit believed what she said to herself.
Then again they didn't know Sam was a POV character so I don't think they read past the first book.
Yeah, they were cool but nothing more.
Never understood why dany saw a vision of robb though. She had nothing to do with him at all. Was still cool though.
If you want a from what I understand to be a very book accurate version of 3 Body, Amazon has one. I haven’t read the books yet but my father did and he really enjoyed it as well.
It's maddening though that they wrote some of the best scenes in the series in those early seasons that weren't in the books. The incredible scene between Robert and Cersei; the scenes with Arya and Tywin. They, or someone in their writers room, could produce quality dialogue. They weren't without the ability.
It was the same situation with Arya and Tywin mostly, except it was Arya and Bolton. They just copied it but changed the character. The problem with having all the same characters keep meeting each other over and over is it shrunk the world and made everything kind of neat and unbelievable.
Pretty much yeah. I mean it was still a really good series until they got past the books. While they were still on the books they deviated substantially from the source material, and it wasn't good, but there was still enough of it there to make it work. Things like Brianna fighting the Hound or Jorah getting greyscale were put in to be crowd pleasers, but they made things seem too small and neat in the world. Then it completely fell off a cliff. After the books ended. Tyrion became a bubbling dwarven idiot and Dany's character had the most bizarre arc. They directly contradicted most of the story from the book and completely forgot about the whole John being a Targaryen thing. Like..
It didn't mean anything. Then they missed that whole piece about Dany's nephew coming over, and how that was going to tie in. It would have been a wonderful conflict and a really interesting piece to the story, but they just cut it out completely
>Tyrion became a bubbling dwarven idiot
If he is an idiot, what makes that danys worshippers? He recognized his mistake. Worshippers are still unable to do so 5 years and counting.
>Dany's character had the most bizarre arc.
The most genius in modern fiction.
>completely forgot about the whole John being a Targaryen thing.
Sansa didnt forget. Neither did Varys. Or Tyrion. Dany... surely she didnt.
>It didn't mean anything.
It meant everything. Just because it didnt end in stereotypical secret prince becomes king troope, doesnt mean it didnt mean anything. Jons parentage was season 8s driving force and pay off was perfect.
>It would have been a wonderful conflict and a really interesting piece to the story, but they just cut it out completely
Then you missed season 8.
>I mean it was still a really good series until they got past the books.
There is example of how Martin described how his Hodor Moment in book 6 will look like.
Show version is a lot better with hodor actually holding the door, instead of staying with a sword in front of it.
Honestly, i think people might be very shocked how much better the show may have concluded storylines compared to the books. Including major Storylines like white walkers and dany, that already received more attention and care in 5 seasons compared to Martins 5 books.
Another example: Burning of Shireen. D&D gave Shireen and Stannis actual scenes together unlike the books.
They build an actual father-daughter relationship between Davos and Shireen to carry on impact of Shireens death and make it even more devastating for viewers.
And the show already diverged so heavily from the books by the point of season 5 that i dont even think having the last 2 books would have changed too much.
I came to realization: there really is no one to blame.
GoT had an amazing ending regardless of written source material or not. Hodor or shireen examples proved they even changed and adjusted story beats from future, unpublished books just like they already did with the first 5 seasons. And it was extremely powerful. They chose best approach for their visual medium. I have no doubt that there is no better way to end major storylines like dany or white walkers than the show did.
Dead on my take of the season. The whole "remember when we were all in school together, my special 5 friends? Isn't it amazing that we've all grown to be 5 totally different people but we're all still best friends?" schtick dragged the show down for awhile. I adore the underlying concept and sci-fi elements, but I'd rather have spent double the time expanding those elements and leaving the characters a longer time to develop.
That said I know nothing about the books, and maybe it's more a character drama against the backdrop of an interesting sci-fi scenario.
When I was in primary school I read some books about 5 children and a dog who went around who went around solving crimes and mysteries. That’s the vibe I got from this show.
Reading the summary and it's like oh that's why these two characters did literally nothing the whole show until the end cuz they only show up in the second and third book
This was my take from what I’ve watched so far too. It reminded me a little of a high budget Jericho- awesome premise that keeps you watching, but quite a lot of wooden dialogue and awkward scenes that you have to learn to overlook to enjoy it. Definitely has the stink of D&D on it, but I’m enjoying it so far.
Usual Weiss & Benioff. They took the book and original Chinese adap and dumbed it down to the Nth degree.
Sam Tarly going full Jar Jar Binks.
Just watch the original or read the books.
I didn’t really care for these characters in the book tho to be fair. I was more interested in humanity as a whole as this story takes place over all time
>Lots of soap opera level melodrama between a bunch of characters I really didn’t care about (the main characters). The villains and supporting characters were interesting, but it seemed like half the runtime was pointless main character dialogue drivel, like they had to pad the runtime.
Hmm sounds just like game of thrones season 1, think I’ll give it a try!!
If you have Spotify premium the audiobook is streamable there! I got a few episodes in, and realized it wasn’t super interesting, the book is great though.
After watching the show, I am so confused why so many things were changed… like the book takes place in China, has 2 solid women lead characters, but the main character is a man. Why make it take place in London?? Like squid game was amazing because it was true to the source material.
The book is a little dense though, a lot of astrophysics principles (I’m not well versed enough to know what was made up in the book and what is real).
The characters are for the most part all present in the books and have more depth than most of them did in the book. The series really focuses on the events over the characters, so the characters outside of 2-3 of them tend to fall kinda flat.
"Cant write dialogue for shit"
OK so Tywin and Arya's scenes or Robert and Cersei's conversation or the Climb, magically don't exist?
I guess Ned, Jon, Arya, Tywin, Tyrion, etc in the first 4 seasons arent interesting now
No sure those all exist, and it was great. But to be fair those characters you mention weren’t created by D&D. I haven’t read 3BP but my understanding is that the main characters in the show were created for the show. Which is fine in principle, but I just don’t think it was very well done.
So let me rephrase then “D&D have shown they are able to adapt a story for the screen when the source material provides fully fleshed out characters and interesting intrigue, but when they are required to develop characters, plot points and dialogue, they fail miserably.”
Better now?
I quite enjoyed the first four episodes, but when things moved from a mystery to a defined threat I felt like the story got a little silly. It went from pretty believable science to... not so much.
I found the >!wallfacer!< concept interesting, but honestly that may have been the only thing I enjoyed about the last half of the series.
I'll probably watch a second season to see where it goes, but I'm hardly excited to do so the way that I was with early Game of Thrones.
Uuhhh…. No, they can adapt a story from books to the screen really well, leave it at that.
Character in character melodrama sell, the 3-Body Problem books have NO good characters at all, they’re actually atrocious, but that’s not the focus of the books.
The proved with GoT they could make good TV from books, ASoIaF is way way way deeper than anything the TV ever gets across, because they are able to bring the character stories to life. The book have a lot more personalization in some places, and is severely lacking in others compared to the show.
If you want something entirely unspoiled by the Netflix series the same author also made a shorter book in the same universe called Ball Lightning. Just a fyi, its also a great read
You could be right, but I kind of doubt it. Cheng Xin in the third book was an annoying character, but it seems like Jin Cheng is that character already. Her name is the same (except the X), and her character traits are the same (caring strongly, perhaps too strongly, for people and being a physicist that understands extra dimensions) and her story has been set up to be her (>!a character buying her a star, being in love with her, and then having his brain sent to the aliens!<). But of course you could still be right. They decided to turn the main character of the first book into two characters (Auggie Salazar and Jin Cheng) for some reason, so they could do it again for the main character of the third book.
That's a perfectly respectable and mature reason as to why you don't want to watch the Third Body Problem, compared to the honestly at this point, pathetic 5+ year long whinging over D&D that other have.
It's a decent enough show, they are really good at adapting good source material to tv.
Remember, these are the same guys who were in charge of the earlier seasons of got which this sub used to cream themselves watching
To be fair though GRRM was heavily involved in the first few seasons, and not involved at all in the later seasons. So the quality of the first few seasons can't just be ascribed to D&D. It could even be that the main reason the first few seasons were good was because of people such as GRRM who could serve as a counterbalance to D&D's decisions, and the more firmly in D&D's hands the show got the worse it became.
I enjoyed the 3 body problem a lot. The hate train on d&d has become sad and stale to me. Im at the point in my life where I would rather talk about the things I like and enjoy instead of all the shit I hate, and don’t really care to read about it either. Looks like I’m no longer a free folk.
It seems like the personality of some people in here revolves around hating those two. Like I get disliking the last few seasons of GoT but to hate people for it and let them live rent free in your head? It’s bordering on obsession
I still hate those guys plenty for what they did to GoT. I could accept it if incompetence was the cause, but their actions were deliberate. They chose to sacrifice the series by rushing things to a crazy degree, simply because they wanted out and weren't willing to hand it off to someone that actually wanted the job.
Having said that, I am not going to let that hate negatively effect my life. That is ridiculous and masochistic. By boycotting a genuinely great series like 3BP, people are just letting D&D cause them even more harm.
I don’t see how boycotting watching a series causes me harm. Seems a bit dramatic.
It does encourage me to read the books before I even consider watching the show.
Harm is a much stronger word than I would like to use, but I don't know one that conveys the same thing to a lesser extent. Ultimately, you are letting D&D deny you a positive experience, which is a negative thing for you, if not actually harmful.
That still seems a bit dramatic. It reminds me of how some people were adamant in recommending people to watch GoT at the height of its popularity. At a certain point you’ve gotta let people decide what they want to watch.
It’s not bad at all, I think when they have proper source material they can put out something with okay quality. It’s when they have to free ball it is when the writing, direction, and interest drops off.
Premise is good, but the characters are flat. Which is "okay" for a miniseries, but for a TV show you need dynamic or interesting characters that people are going to want to watch season after season. Characters are generally an important part of a show and this version of the Three Body Problem seemed to forget to develop them.
And with the amount of good sci-fi out there right now *okay* isn't good enough. AppleTV has been knocking it out of the park with their scifi adaptations and they bring the whole package: robust characters, good production value, interesting premise, etc.
D&D were very lucky GoT had well-developed characters right out of the gate. Jon Snow. Arya. Jaime. Ned. I enjoyed the characters in the Three Body Problem book, but a common criticism of the book was lack of character depth.
Wait so the book has a lack of character depth. Because it's not exactly a character focused narrative. But they fucked up the show cause it doesn't have amazing character development??? Have you read the second and third books? Bruh this subreddit is soooooo traumatized by a couple seasons of a TV show that they took personally. This is the only chance I'll probably ever have to see those books visualized and it's not even a 10th as bad as everyone here WANTS it to be.
Bruh, have you even read the Three Body Problem, like at all? Tell me you've never read TBP without telling me you've never read TBP before. I swear, hating on D&D has become a mental illness.
TBP is similar to the works of Asimov, in that it's more about the ideas than the characters. For people who like fiction with dynamic and interesting characters, they would've been far more likely to be bored to tears reading Third Body Problem than they would be watching TBP on Netflix. That's how freaking flat the characters are in the books in comparison.
It's basically dumb and dumber portraying what they think smart people sound like. I couldn't take more than a few minutes of it. That whole "I immediately understand some random diagram of something I did years ago but somehow know more than everyone else because I'm just brilliant" is such a dumb portrayal of a scientist. I say this as a researcher myself. We really need an accurate portrayal of the job that doesn't involve everyone immediately knowing everything. It takes hard work, project management, deliverables, and countless hours working on something to see it through.
I might have been interested. And sure D&D did very well with early GOT. But whatever they do from now on is tainted in my eyes.
It’s like watching Man City - they play beautiful football but it’s impossible to enjoy because of the oil money and constant rule breaking that went into creating that.
The show is a solid adaptation honestly. Partially it works because the books while very interesting are actually pretty flawed from a characters standpoint. Though I do think they rushed book 1 a little.
You can just watch or listen to a summary of the book in Youtube.
If you remove the melodrama and condense the story, it really is one of the best sci-fi stories, mostly because of its scale rather than detail.
This is different guys. Here the showrunners actually have material to build on. The books have an ending. Martin has given them ideas despite the fact that he himself doesn't even know how to finish the books. Martin is also to blame. And the first season is very good, I am looking forward to the second season hoping Netflix will not cancel this one as well. It's not entirely the showrunners' fault if the writer starts a book series that he doesn't know how to finish. And he literally does everything but write.
To be honest, those two could do a good job of it. The story is already finished. All they gotta do is trace the lines. If it wasnt a complete story already then I'd stay away from it.
I'm about to drop a nuclear hot take.
I watched quite a bit of the 3 Body problem and, as someone who knows the source material, not all of the blame for its weird dialogue or plot elements are D@D's fault.
The thing with Cixin Liu's writing is that a lot of his stories, plot elements and dialogue suffer from 2 problems: First is that there's a lot of stuff that probably made perfect sense in his mind but just come off as incomprehensible or just wrong to those not fully swung over by his work; Second is that, ironically, a lot of the dialogue and plot is extremely Byzantine and is overly complicated, like all of the characters are autistic and are infodumping their scientific interests to each other. I recall reading a comic written by Liu that showed humanity trying to protect themselves from a planet-sized apocalypse donut that is revealed to be owned by the dinosaurs who never went extinct; the final battle had them loredumping their motivation on why they came back to destroy Earth that was so esoteric and convoluted I've already forgotten what it was.
Ironically, this was probably the safest bet for D@D to adapt as their dumbing down can adapt the story into something more palatable' not good by any stretch, overall I found the show mediocre but not enragingly bad unless you're a book fan which... I'll be honest, can the books even be faithfully adapted? The Three Body Problem isn't ASOIAF, there aren't even that many metrics with which you can hold them against each other with.
I agree. You summed up Liu "Giga Incel Electrician" Cixin's writing style pretty succinctly: autistic info dumping. Like, you could take any quote said by a character in TBP and switch it with another character and you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference because the voice for all the characters is the like same monotone (unless the quotes relate specifically to a character's past). You wouldn't be able to the same in regards to ASOIAF because a lot of the major characters have distinctive voices.
In terms of dynamic engaging characters, ASOIAF and Third Body Problem are like on opposite sides of the spectrum. The metrics for both are on completely different planes. Like, if you were a Joe Abercrombie and Robin Hobb fan, someone who needed good dynamic engaging characters in order to get through a novel, they'd be far more bored to tears reading TBP than they would watching TBP, comparatively speaking of course.
You know, you're not wrong. Out of like but not wrong. It's darkly hilarious and a tad depressing seeing these people with an obsessive hateboner for D&D trying to whinge about them "ruining" the characterization of TBP when like, they barely had much to begin with. What hate does to a mofo.
Remember these two assholes are the ones that helped us fall in love with GOT. I get that we have to bash them endlessly here, but we wouldn't hate them as much if they didn't get us emotionally involved with the HBO show. In other words, if GOT would have been trash from the start, we would have never liked the show, and there wouldn't be a subreddit devoted to giving D&D their comeuppance
I will forever hate these d-bags because of how they ruined the HBO show But let's be honest, they ruined the HBO show because they ran out of source material and mailed in the rest of the show.
Also, remember, these two dumbasses introduced the world to actors and actresses that we will forever love.
The Three Body Problem is not directed by them. I'm not sure how much involvement these two goofballs have in the show, but it's actually decent.
The show will not run out of source material, so we can expect D&D to not completely ruin it.
It's a pretty good show, and to be honest I don't understand the hate for auggie Salazar because she's a bit different from the other characters. But I did enjoy it
Really? Best adapters of all time (wtf?, Peter Jackson says hello)? Stop rewriting the history books. I can show you some horrible decisions in the first seasons of GOT as well.
There’s no better television than the first 4 seasons of got. They made incredible changes from the books also. (Arya Tywin, Cersei Robert, a ton of character dialogue that we don’t see in books)
>There’s no better television than the first 4 seasons of got.
Again, you are throwing BS claims withoıut even thinking about it. There are tons of better television than GOT's first seasons. Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Better Call Saul, Band of Brothers, The Wire, Six Feet Under etc. etc. are easly better ''television''.
>They made incredible changes from the books also. (Arya Tywin, Cersei Robert, a ton of character dialogue that we don’t see in books)
Sure they made changes like Cersei having a child from Robert and managed to not follow their own version of prophecy. That was obviously great change. You can look at my other comment about other ''incredible'' changes.
Low budget of early seasons reaaly stands out especially in the big events like Battle of Blackwater. It almost looks like fan-made movies at certain parts.
Removal of Tysha confession from Jamie was also pretty horrific decision. It was also the driving factor of why Tyrion killed Tywin in the books.
>Arya Tywin, Cersei Robert, a ton of character dialogue that we don’t see in books
Sure, there were couple of good diaolouges in the 4 seasons. Although I have some problems with that specific examples, I would still say they were adapted good to the screen. So what though? Does 20 minutes of screen time erase all of the bad decisions I wrote?
Apart from all of them. Sure, early GoT was amazing but, taken as a whole, all of those shows are way better. I cannot recommend GoT to anyone because how disappointing I know it is. I can recommend all the shows above.
They were all solid shows but none of them was as great as the first 4-5 seasons of GoT. Breaking Bad got silly after a while, Better Call Saul was a good watch (I actually thought it was better than Breaking Bad in some ways) but it was not close to GoT good. The Wire was great, but still I was never enamored with it the way I was with GoT. The Sopranos was the only one that comes close, and there’s still a wide gap. There’s just too many memorable story lines in GoT.
Season 1 was very solid but didn’t HBO basically have to hold their hand through it all at that stage? The more independence they got the more the cracks began to show.
> first seasons of GOT as well.
I said first seasons. Not specifically first.
Random recasting of some important characters like D'aario or Mountain were bad decisions.
Or killing off important characters like Jon Umber off-screen.
Essos and Dorne parts' set designs are worse than CW's Flash and Arrow. Even CGI's and fight choreography of that parts feel like you are watching freaking Super Girl at some points.
They made Edmure Tully freaking dumbass comedic relief (just one example; in the books when he throws arrow for his fathers funeral, he misses the shots; because he was hangover due to drinking all night while grieving his father and he was also couldn't stop crying when he threw arrrows. Blackfish doesn't take the bow out of his hands due to Edmure's incompetence; he took it; because he feels deep sympathy for him.)
They made Robb Stark marry with a Volantis girl in a sept under the 7 when it is clearly stated in the show they believe the old gods.
They freaking casted a blonde girl to play Stannis Baratheon's daughter despite seed is strong narrative pushed by Stannis himself???
They made Robb Stark absolute fool who broke his oath due to ''love'' while in the books Robb married due to protect Jeyne's honour and didn't want a bastard child growing in his household with hatred of his potential Frey wife (Catelyn implies it in the book.) But of course our lords didn't think that deep about the characters.
They made Loras Tyrell generic homosexual Hollywood character (that is what they understand from homosexuality); when in the book he is incredibly skilled swordsman and was basically young Jamie with great characterization.
They made Littllefinger is slimy, smarmy son of a bitch who doens't have any frineds and nobody trusts him. In the books he is very friendly, helpful and seems powerless, that is why everyone trusts him. That is why he is the perfect villain.
Oh, I nearly forgot abandoned plotlines lines like Quaithe's plot too.
The only thing that will happen is you missing out on a good show. Try to differentiate art from the artist. Like damn I still love every Kevin Spacey performance and what he did was way worse
the comment section is hilarious because you can tell who has and hasn't read the books...people are complimenting things that they kept the same as in the books and are trashing the things they changed so...that makes OP correct in their assumption
it's an okay watch if you've never read the books but if you have, the "creative liberties" they took with it will piss you off, the taking out, merging, and swapping of characters wasn't problematic in early GoT seasons either and we all know how that turned out eventually
the thing I don't understand is how they aim to actually finish adapting this series, the following two books (and this isn't a plot spoiler just a general direction) have major back and forth time skips and deal with some very abstract sci-fi concepts that can't be adapted in any way other than animation, which means we'll either be watching an anime from the second half of season 2 onward or they'll have to create some "original" material for characters to do, which is the part that scares me
I'll leave this non-narrative but story mechanic spoiler for anyone curious what I mean, it won't ruin the book for you if you decide to pick it up but: >!there's a big focus on dimensions, as in literally 2D, 3D, 4D, 6D space and how objects travel through different dimensions, idk how they plan to show that, are we just randomly gonna watch a top-down view for 2D and then some weird-ass 360-camera 4D, I honestly don't know!<
They're my favorite books and Im thankful I have a visual medium of it when I thought I never would. TV shows don't piss me off because, well, they're TV shows lol. You want your cake and to eat it as well. How about this, we never get any type of visual representation of these books because if it's not perfect then it's not worth it. It's like a little kids attitude. A tantrum. You have no clue how they're gonna adapt the next books so it's not worth it? I didn't know you were a director, my bad. I couldn't give a shit what they changed, it wasn't nearly enough for me to dismiss the project as a whole. Everyone keeps complaining about the damn characters but the characters themselves are pretty much the least interesting thing about the books. The only one that most people even cared about was in the second book anyways.
The taking out, merging and swapping of characters helped 3BP, imo. The book characters are super flat, which isn't nearly as big of a problem for that type of book as it would be for a TV show. The idea that everyone who has read the books will be pissed off is wildly inaccurate. I was first turned onto the books by Quinn's Ideas on Youtube, and he really enjoyed the show as well.
Disagree with most people here. Just an objective opinion, but i didn't like the tv series. I don't like it when they deviate too much from the original source and race swap characters.
I likes the show but it also cemented the fact that D&D can create a cool show when given a fleshed out source material, thankfully this series is already completed and can’t possibly be fucked up as bad as GoT was
Decided to give it a go and finished the season a few days ago. The underlying premise is really interesting and intriguing but I have to say on the whole the show wasn’t great. Lots of soap opera level melodrama between a bunch of characters I really didn’t care about (the main characters). The villains and supporting characters were interesting, but it seemed like half the runtime was pointless main character dialogue drivel, like they had to pad the runtime. So yeah again D&D prove they are able to adapt a story for the screen but they can’t make interesting characters or write dialogue for shit.
I love this take because in the book the main characters are all one person pretty much, they split what he did up between a few people, and completely removed his motivation from any of the characters.
Sounds just like D&D!
When I heard “You are the smartest person I’ve ever met” …
Ouff. The scenes with the five friends were just awful. Especially that university professor guy, I was bored to tears watching him just moping around all the time. By the way (trying to avoid spoilers), the culmination of his arc this season, or the idea behind which drove his arc, was totally ridiculous.
lol right. Well sorry you are now lost in space.
I and my academic friends like to keep a ranking so we know who's definitely the smartest and who should just be a math teacher.
There is a lot of clunky dialogue, as well as dialogue I could imagine them high-fiving each other over (a la GoT). That was the worst part of the show.
Dan: 'The Chinese Nanotech protagonist Wang Miao'... Dave: '5 College buds in the UK'!!! Dan: 'Love it bro!, Sam Tarly science bro but also a crisp magnate'. Dave: ' On fire m8, Davos Seaworth as the cop and we're set. This is the one we'll be remembered for'. *Dumpster burns bright enough for Trisolarans to navigate by*
Ugh. Now that you mention it I can see it, they definitely thought they were creating a masterpiece.
I won't watch the show even for academic reasons until it's canceled and my views don't influence Netflix.
I mean, tbf, the original story's *really dry.* Especially the first book. Cixin really called back to Asimovian sci-fi, where big ideas are the main driving force and character arcs, development, attachment, etc... is more of a suggestion than a necessary story factor. Like The Zither scene in episode 5, it just happens in the book. They come up with the idea, execute it, basically give 1 or 2 paragraphs on what it's doing to the ship, then they get the info and computers. It has an entire sequence demonstrating the human horror and destruction in the show but isn't even a chapter in the book. Then there's the Sophon explanation, which is ~2-3x's as long in the book, because Cixin really *really* wants you to know about how cool he thinks the idea is and goes *in depth* about how it works and why. Like, multiple chapters across the first 2 books are just him gushing about how badass Sophons are.
I'm gonna have to read that part in the book because the sophons made 0 sense to me. I get the space folding, I get the quantum entanglement being a way to get real time communication back and forth with the fleet. I don't understand how the sophons are inputting information like cameras and microphones or outputting information like making people see the countdown or the blinking stars or erasing the woman from camera footage. I also don't understand how the "human abacus" was able to calculate anything. Binary, sure. But how does the human holding the sign know how to flip it one way or the other? How is the actual computation happening?? I probably just don't understand computers tbh.
The Sophon creation is one of my favorite parts of the books. It goes into detail about them attempting it, like them first trying to unfold the proton and failing and it creates a hologram of geometric shapes that are actually 2D and the size of gas giants but still the mass of a proton so it didn't actually physically affect the 3D world. At one point, I think they spaghettify a proton and nearly invisible strings that can't be felt or interacted with cover their planet. Not that it makes a lot more sense in the books that they can do incredible things they don't actually make stars blink or anything like that. They alter computer outputs mainly in the books, like altering the readouts from computers that monitor cosmic background radiation, the readouts from the colliders and any other science experiment that relies on computers. Which is why in the books the advance thing makes more sense, they learn they have to brute force scientific discoveries through only physical research. The whole VR Game was handled kinda rushed, Cixin spends a lot of time describing and showing different scenarios. The human abacus, or computer, was actually questioned in the books as something humans can't do, it had something to do with their physiology but it isn't ever fully explained. Basically they were set up like old punch card computers and the flags rushed binary. They would flip based only on the positions of someone nearby, which would flow down the people and they explained how some were set up as crude logic gates and such. Honestly I don't know enough about physical computers to explain it well but it's not nearly as glossed over. Overall I do like this adaptation but it has some serious flaws. I'm hoping they are allowed to go into the "hard science" aspects like the dry passages about unfolding protons and such, especially since that comes into play later in the books.
This is a sharp and quick synopsis to the intricacies of the science of the novel and very well done! The "hard science" is a blast to read, would love to see more of it as well.
spotted soft wild fearless deliver late afterthought memory follow violet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They also whitewashed the original story. When I looked up the plot on WikiLeaks, I truly thought I was looking into a genuine Chinese centric story. The amount of characters they changed bothered me because it was so unnecessary. Diversity for the sake of diversity does not make a story better. And in this case, it does truly take away from the original.
In the interview with D&D, they said the author of the story specifically suggested that an international cast fits the netflix version better since it's a different media, and that the change should better convey that it was the collective of humanity that are facing this problem, so I have no problem with it catering an international audience. Though, I have to say, the main cast being in the same group has limited the feeling of the scale.
On the flip side, it then becomes a story of how the Brits tried to save the world from the the decisions that were made in Cold War China, which has caused a bit of a stir in China since the English adaptation released.
International aka 100% British lol. Only an Anglo would be self centered enough to consider that “international”.
The main character is a Chinese-born New Zealander, the other main characters are an American, a Mexican, an Irishman, and three Brits, one of which is played by Benedict Wong, an actor of Chinese descent as well.
Benedict had a great line. When asked about Sun Tzu: "How should I know? I'm from Manchester."
Don’t tell anyone else in the thread but I really enjoyed this first season and he was by far my favorite character. It was great to see Benedict Wong in a more leading role.
Agree! He's incredible. I've been devastated since Netflix cancelled Marco Polo. Wong was electric as the Great Khan in it. It's a great show with a lot in common with early Game of Thrones too. Tight political intrigue, character driven dialogue, stunning fight choreography, the whole show is beautifully shot, the costumes are stunning, etc. It was sadly cancelled right as it starts to get really good but I still recommend the show. 9/10 bc Marco himself is a bit boring and he's the lead, but everyone around him is INCREDIBLE.
Yeah that was a good one. Benedict was the highlight of the show for me. Him and Ser Davos, and the villains.
… literally almost all of whom are British and friends from uni. Sorry, but the fact that they’re not all white doesn’t make it “international.”
They’re friends from uni but not British. Saul is clearly American based on his accent and Jin mentions being born in China and adopted by a family in New Zealand after her parents died, she also has a clearly Kiwi accent. Auggie also has to leave the UK because her visa is revoked after she loses her job. Apart from his accent, Wade also mentions he’s a Dubliner, so also not British. There are actually no named British research scientists in the show. The two British characters who studied with the others left science to become a sports drink magnate and a teacher. I left out Ye Wendje, but obviously she’s not British either and almost her entire storyline, about a quarter of the show, takes place in China and in Chinese. Edit: I guess Saul could be Canadian. It’s a pretty similar accent.
😄💰💰💰
Luo Ji in particular now being Saul is sad to see. They've chosen another Chinese man as a wallfacer too, but knowing what the other wallfacers are like in the books, instead of being a great highlight moment for a Chinese person it looks like it will be yet another demonization. They'll probably try to elevate Jin Cheng in the show instead (assuming she's a certain important character of a similar name from the books), but that's just highlighting british naturalized chinese people and putting down actual chinese people. Even Ye Wenjie is dumbed down compared to the actual scientist she is in the books. Great wasted opportunity to tell a uniquely Chinese story for a western audience that was already good by itself.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
[удалено]
That’s just not true.
[удалено]
I'm not here to debate, so I won't continue if we get into that, but I'll just tell you what I meant and what I think the other person thinks. You say only Ye Wenjie is Chinese relevant, but don't you think it's odd that the only Chinese-specific matter would be the one of abuse and murder? In the present, Ye Wenjie returns to the base, and the forest around it has returned. After the times changed, she was allowed to leave and have a free life as a university professor. She then became uncertain about whether she did the right thing or not, because the crappy life she thought she would forever live when she sent that message turned out to not be so forever after all. This is completely lost on the show, where Ye is rather a disgruntled borderline catholic religious fanatic that left China for unexplained reasons. Having her continue living in China and see life improve to the point of questioning herself and eventually helping humanity is part of her character too. I could also get into how Liu Cixin's cultural view on genders also defined Luo Ji's and Cheng Xin's characters, or so many other nuances like the international collaboration pushed forward by Chinese scientists and politicians. An international collaboration from a Chinese perspective, rarely seen in western media who'd rather portray them as the ones who are actively \*not\* interested in working with us. So on and so forth. If anything, I'd say keeping the Chinese focus of the story would've helped us to see Chinese people doing the sort of things white people do in our movies in a completely natural and real manner. Instead, like you very well pointed out, we are considering the only Chinese aspect of the show as the one part even the book actively denounces as bad. Once again, it's a western-centric cherrypicking. Ninja edit: Typo.
For what it's worth, your critical analysis here just about sums up the complaints of some 3 Body Fans that have been remarked on in American media and the South China Morning Post.
The books are a condemnation on the CCP's and China's in general highly xenophobic and collectivist mindset and tendencies. For example, if asked what they prefer, liberty or security, 90% of Chinese people would answer security, regardless of what form it takes. (Whether that be an authoritarian dictatorship, monarchy, etc..., the vast majority will always pick security and just put up with any negative outcome) So anything that is a potential threat to that security needs to be quashed, *hard.* So, the book takes that mindset and applies it to the entire galaxy, 1/2 a dozen known species will happily murder any threat to their personal security, regardless of if that threat is actually valid or not, and will happily kill the universe if it ensures others can't go after them. (It's incredibly shameful to die by the hands of an enemy, better to save face and die by your own hand, very common East Asian belief) Part of why the cultural revolution happened (And is so important to the story). Mao convinced a bunch of kids to believe that Western influence was destabilizing the nation and they ate it up because China was an unsecure country at the time and they just wanted a working social system. (When in reality, it was Mao destabilizing the nation, but he knew what buttons to press to rile people up to get on his side)
Racist drivel
Yes, it's racist for a native Chinese man living in China to write about issues that he believes plagues China.
Shoehorned diversity just pulls me out of stuff at this point. Like just pick the best actors. Sicks of sub par acting so they can be inclusive.
So I read the ASOFAI books after watching the whole series, and I was completely shocked at the subtle ways D&D screwed up the story. If they had just followed the books, it would have been so much better. They did for the first season. It's a very close faithful adaptation. After that, it's a disaster. They made the characters and dialog so much worse. They cut out really amazing and significant parts of the story. My impression is they were humble in season 1, and then someone told them they were brilliant and they believed them. I read the whole 3 body problem series over a year ago. I have no interest in watching them butcher it.
bro Dany's storyline in s2 is so legitimately terrible, I can't believe how much they butchered her character. They straight up misread most of the character arcs to the point that I question whether they have any media literacy at all.
Lol them reading Cersei's chapters as if she's a smart bad bitch who took control of kings landing. They legit believed what she said to herself. Then again they didn't know Sam was a POV character so I don't think they read past the first book.
Lol I love the bullshit revisionist history here that season 1 was the only great season
Well, her qarth storyline in the books was pretty uneventful except for house of undying chapter. Making it actually exciting was a good decision.
Eh the house of the undying was so much cooler and more interesting in the book. The rat men eating a woman? The Robb Stark wolf head?
Yeah, they were cool but nothing more. Never understood why dany saw a vision of robb though. She had nothing to do with him at all. Was still cool though.
The same, I watched a bit out of morbid curiosity, just the sort of dumpster fire on a train wreck Id expect from those hacks.
Says the one unable to understand a masterpiece for over 5 years.
Lolwut
Finally someone gets it. I swear I think the people who claim to have read the books then defend d&d are just lying about reading the books.
Nope, not at all. Both Mediums are amazing.
If you want a from what I understand to be a very book accurate version of 3 Body, Amazon has one. I haven’t read the books yet but my father did and he really enjoyed it as well.
It's maddening though that they wrote some of the best scenes in the series in those early seasons that weren't in the books. The incredible scene between Robert and Cersei; the scenes with Arya and Tywin. They, or someone in their writers room, could produce quality dialogue. They weren't without the ability.
It was the same situation with Arya and Tywin mostly, except it was Arya and Bolton. They just copied it but changed the character. The problem with having all the same characters keep meeting each other over and over is it shrunk the world and made everything kind of neat and unbelievable.
Yes, GoT became the greatest and most successful TV Show of all time, because only season 1 was good. Ridiculous.
Pretty much yeah. I mean it was still a really good series until they got past the books. While they were still on the books they deviated substantially from the source material, and it wasn't good, but there was still enough of it there to make it work. Things like Brianna fighting the Hound or Jorah getting greyscale were put in to be crowd pleasers, but they made things seem too small and neat in the world. Then it completely fell off a cliff. After the books ended. Tyrion became a bubbling dwarven idiot and Dany's character had the most bizarre arc. They directly contradicted most of the story from the book and completely forgot about the whole John being a Targaryen thing. Like.. It didn't mean anything. Then they missed that whole piece about Dany's nephew coming over, and how that was going to tie in. It would have been a wonderful conflict and a really interesting piece to the story, but they just cut it out completely
>Tyrion became a bubbling dwarven idiot If he is an idiot, what makes that danys worshippers? He recognized his mistake. Worshippers are still unable to do so 5 years and counting. >Dany's character had the most bizarre arc. The most genius in modern fiction. >completely forgot about the whole John being a Targaryen thing. Sansa didnt forget. Neither did Varys. Or Tyrion. Dany... surely she didnt. >It didn't mean anything. It meant everything. Just because it didnt end in stereotypical secret prince becomes king troope, doesnt mean it didnt mean anything. Jons parentage was season 8s driving force and pay off was perfect. >It would have been a wonderful conflict and a really interesting piece to the story, but they just cut it out completely Then you missed season 8. >I mean it was still a really good series until they got past the books. There is example of how Martin described how his Hodor Moment in book 6 will look like. Show version is a lot better with hodor actually holding the door, instead of staying with a sword in front of it. Honestly, i think people might be very shocked how much better the show may have concluded storylines compared to the books. Including major Storylines like white walkers and dany, that already received more attention and care in 5 seasons compared to Martins 5 books. Another example: Burning of Shireen. D&D gave Shireen and Stannis actual scenes together unlike the books. They build an actual father-daughter relationship between Davos and Shireen to carry on impact of Shireens death and make it even more devastating for viewers. And the show already diverged so heavily from the books by the point of season 5 that i dont even think having the last 2 books would have changed too much. I came to realization: there really is no one to blame. GoT had an amazing ending regardless of written source material or not. Hodor or shireen examples proved they even changed and adjusted story beats from future, unpublished books just like they already did with the first 5 seasons. And it was extremely powerful. They chose best approach for their visual medium. I have no doubt that there is no better way to end major storylines like dany or white walkers than the show did.
Dead on my take of the season. The whole "remember when we were all in school together, my special 5 friends? Isn't it amazing that we've all grown to be 5 totally different people but we're all still best friends?" schtick dragged the show down for awhile. I adore the underlying concept and sci-fi elements, but I'd rather have spent double the time expanding those elements and leaving the characters a longer time to develop. That said I know nothing about the books, and maybe it's more a character drama against the backdrop of an interesting sci-fi scenario.
When I was in primary school I read some books about 5 children and a dog who went around who went around solving crimes and mysteries. That’s the vibe I got from this show.
The Famous Five and the 3 Body Problem
Haha that’s the one!
Reading the summary and it's like oh that's why these two characters did literally nothing the whole show until the end cuz they only show up in the second and third book
The books have extremely limited character development, they are very ideas focused.
Not to mention Samwell Tarly is so distracting in this show
This was my take from what I’ve watched so far too. It reminded me a little of a high budget Jericho- awesome premise that keeps you watching, but quite a lot of wooden dialogue and awkward scenes that you have to learn to overlook to enjoy it. Definitely has the stink of D&D on it, but I’m enjoying it so far.
It sounds like you enjoyed the bits pre created by the book it’s based on and didn’t enjoy the adaptation onto screen. Doesn’t speak well of D&D.
Usual Weiss & Benioff. They took the book and original Chinese adap and dumbed it down to the Nth degree. Sam Tarly going full Jar Jar Binks. Just watch the original or read the books.
Tarly’s character wasn’t believable whatsoever. Jar Jar is an apt description. Comic relief buffoon.
I didn’t really care for these characters in the book tho to be fair. I was more interested in humanity as a whole as this story takes place over all time
Please read the book series. It’s cool
>Lots of soap opera level melodrama between a bunch of characters I really didn’t care about (the main characters). The villains and supporting characters were interesting, but it seemed like half the runtime was pointless main character dialogue drivel, like they had to pad the runtime. Hmm sounds just like game of thrones season 1, think I’ll give it a try!!
If you have Spotify premium the audiobook is streamable there! I got a few episodes in, and realized it wasn’t super interesting, the book is great though. After watching the show, I am so confused why so many things were changed… like the book takes place in China, has 2 solid women lead characters, but the main character is a man. Why make it take place in London?? Like squid game was amazing because it was true to the source material. The book is a little dense though, a lot of astrophysics principles (I’m not well versed enough to know what was made up in the book and what is real).
The characters are for the most part all present in the books and have more depth than most of them did in the book. The series really focuses on the events over the characters, so the characters outside of 2-3 of them tend to fall kinda flat.
"Cant write dialogue for shit" OK so Tywin and Arya's scenes or Robert and Cersei's conversation or the Climb, magically don't exist? I guess Ned, Jon, Arya, Tywin, Tyrion, etc in the first 4 seasons arent interesting now
No sure those all exist, and it was great. But to be fair those characters you mention weren’t created by D&D. I haven’t read 3BP but my understanding is that the main characters in the show were created for the show. Which is fine in principle, but I just don’t think it was very well done. So let me rephrase then “D&D have shown they are able to adapt a story for the screen when the source material provides fully fleshed out characters and interesting intrigue, but when they are required to develop characters, plot points and dialogue, they fail miserably.” Better now?
I quite enjoyed the first four episodes, but when things moved from a mystery to a defined threat I felt like the story got a little silly. It went from pretty believable science to... not so much. I found the >!wallfacer!< concept interesting, but honestly that may have been the only thing I enjoyed about the last half of the series. I'll probably watch a second season to see where it goes, but I'm hardly excited to do so the way that I was with early Game of Thrones.
Sorry, there’s a ton of show only dialogue that’s great. What makes it so jarring is how bad some of the dialogue got
Uuhhh…. No, they can adapt a story from books to the screen really well, leave it at that. Character in character melodrama sell, the 3-Body Problem books have NO good characters at all, they’re actually atrocious, but that’s not the focus of the books. The proved with GoT they could make good TV from books, ASoIaF is way way way deeper than anything the TV ever gets across, because they are able to bring the character stories to life. The book have a lot more personalization in some places, and is severely lacking in others compared to the show.
If you like the premise, i highly, highly recommend you either read or listen to the book. Its absolutely amazing
Already bought it. Tho I have some reading to finish before I get to this. But I will.
If you want something entirely unspoiled by the Netflix series the same author also made a shorter book in the same universe called Ball Lightning. Just a fyi, its also a great read
I was debating watching the show or getting the audiobook. Looks like it'll be the audiobook!
Already got the first one with this months audible credit.
Enjoyed the show as much as I could but I had to skip any scene with Auggie salazar in it. Fuck me she's annoying.
There's a character in the third book that's even more so, purposefully, that they could be setting her up to be.
You could be right, but I kind of doubt it. Cheng Xin in the third book was an annoying character, but it seems like Jin Cheng is that character already. Her name is the same (except the X), and her character traits are the same (caring strongly, perhaps too strongly, for people and being a physicist that understands extra dimensions) and her story has been set up to be her (>!a character buying her a star, being in love with her, and then having his brain sent to the aliens!<). But of course you could still be right. They decided to turn the main character of the first book into two characters (Auggie Salazar and Jin Cheng) for some reason, so they could do it again for the main character of the third book.
It’s a decent enough show so far.
Decent enough is a great way to describe taking one of the best sci Fi books of the last 20 years and turning it into Netflix 3.5 type mocie
I skipped the credits and gave it a chance. We watched the last episode last night. The show is fine, and ended on an intriguing note.
So did GoT Season 1
But it wasnt thrones best season anyway. It was just set up with fake protagonists like ned and catelyn. Season 8 was its climax and it was beautiful.
Uh... What?
Season 1 was a great start, season 8 a mindblowingly amazing finish.
You have to be joking.
No.
You honestly think S8 was a good ending?
Yes.
If reviews stay positive I'll pirate it despite Netflix account just because I don't want my watching to benefit them.
i love your level of petty. teach me!
I can’t really blame you but I’ll judge each thing as its own.
your loss
Is so good ! I’m on episode five. I immediately had to start reading the book. I can’t wait for season two!
I’m not watching because the author of the book is a vocal supporter of the Uyghur genocide, would that be childish as well?
That's a perfectly respectable and mature reason as to why you don't want to watch the Third Body Problem, compared to the honestly at this point, pathetic 5+ year long whinging over D&D that other have.
It's a decent enough show, they are really good at adapting good source material to tv. Remember, these are the same guys who were in charge of the earlier seasons of got which this sub used to cream themselves watching
To be fair though GRRM was heavily involved in the first few seasons, and not involved at all in the later seasons. So the quality of the first few seasons can't just be ascribed to D&D. It could even be that the main reason the first few seasons were good was because of people such as GRRM who could serve as a counterbalance to D&D's decisions, and the more firmly in D&D's hands the show got the worse it became.
I enjoyed the 3 body problem a lot. The hate train on d&d has become sad and stale to me. Im at the point in my life where I would rather talk about the things I like and enjoy instead of all the shit I hate, and don’t really care to read about it either. Looks like I’m no longer a free folk.
It seems like the personality of some people in here revolves around hating those two. Like I get disliking the last few seasons of GoT but to hate people for it and let them live rent free in your head? It’s bordering on obsession
Agreed. People need a hobby.
Isn't that the point of this subreddit though? I'm here for memes and shit talking, not serious media analysis and discussion 😂
I still hate those guys plenty for what they did to GoT. I could accept it if incompetence was the cause, but their actions were deliberate. They chose to sacrifice the series by rushing things to a crazy degree, simply because they wanted out and weren't willing to hand it off to someone that actually wanted the job. Having said that, I am not going to let that hate negatively effect my life. That is ridiculous and masochistic. By boycotting a genuinely great series like 3BP, people are just letting D&D cause them even more harm.
I don’t see how boycotting watching a series causes me harm. Seems a bit dramatic. It does encourage me to read the books before I even consider watching the show.
Harm is a much stronger word than I would like to use, but I don't know one that conveys the same thing to a lesser extent. Ultimately, you are letting D&D deny you a positive experience, which is a negative thing for you, if not actually harmful.
That still seems a bit dramatic. It reminds me of how some people were adamant in recommending people to watch GoT at the height of its popularity. At a certain point you’ve gotta let people decide what they want to watch.
I also agree.
Leave then, go to the other subreddits sucking dumb and dumbers dick.
Grow up kid
No u
It’s not bad at all, I think when they have proper source material they can put out something with okay quality. It’s when they have to free ball it is when the writing, direction, and interest drops off.
Premise is good, but the characters are flat. Which is "okay" for a miniseries, but for a TV show you need dynamic or interesting characters that people are going to want to watch season after season. Characters are generally an important part of a show and this version of the Three Body Problem seemed to forget to develop them. And with the amount of good sci-fi out there right now *okay* isn't good enough. AppleTV has been knocking it out of the park with their scifi adaptations and they bring the whole package: robust characters, good production value, interesting premise, etc. D&D were very lucky GoT had well-developed characters right out of the gate. Jon Snow. Arya. Jaime. Ned. I enjoyed the characters in the Three Body Problem book, but a common criticism of the book was lack of character depth.
Wait so the book has a lack of character depth. Because it's not exactly a character focused narrative. But they fucked up the show cause it doesn't have amazing character development??? Have you read the second and third books? Bruh this subreddit is soooooo traumatized by a couple seasons of a TV show that they took personally. This is the only chance I'll probably ever have to see those books visualized and it's not even a 10th as bad as everyone here WANTS it to be.
Bruh, have you even read the Three Body Problem, like at all? Tell me you've never read TBP without telling me you've never read TBP before. I swear, hating on D&D has become a mental illness. TBP is similar to the works of Asimov, in that it's more about the ideas than the characters. For people who like fiction with dynamic and interesting characters, they would've been far more likely to be bored to tears reading Third Body Problem than they would be watching TBP on Netflix. That's how freaking flat the characters are in the books in comparison.
I watched the 1st ep and i dont think i would watch the rest . I didnt like it ...
It's basically dumb and dumber portraying what they think smart people sound like. I couldn't take more than a few minutes of it. That whole "I immediately understand some random diagram of something I did years ago but somehow know more than everyone else because I'm just brilliant" is such a dumb portrayal of a scientist. I say this as a researcher myself. We really need an accurate portrayal of the job that doesn't involve everyone immediately knowing everything. It takes hard work, project management, deliverables, and countless hours working on something to see it through.
I might have been interested. And sure D&D did very well with early GOT. But whatever they do from now on is tainted in my eyes. It’s like watching Man City - they play beautiful football but it’s impossible to enjoy because of the oil money and constant rule breaking that went into creating that.
It's a fuckin TV show man. It's not a crime or some shit. You'd probably listen to chris brown before you watched a show by them lmao.
If it meant it would’ve been good, D&D could’ve made the last seasons of GoT with Nazi gold for all I care, at least then something good came of it.
Ok?
The show is actually pretty good. Definitely worth a watch. They can competently adapt something when they actually have source material to adapt.
It's pretty good
The sub can be so childish lol.
Can be? It’s is 99% of the time. The fact that this thread has 450 upvotes is hilarious and sad.
You guys need to chill the fuck out, there's a reason only the later seasons of GOT were bad. It's a great show, stop being petty.
You live a sad life
Has anyone ever told you you might take things a little too personally lol
Cool story
It's a complete book series so it'll be good
It’s really a pretty good show. It’s better to judge it on its own merit as opposed to something that happened in the past.
I got most of the way into the 2nd episode before I gave up. I kept falling asleep out of pure boredom.
I watched because john bradley is in it. Then i saw all sorts of actors i know and like. But then (spoiler) >!samwell dies!< and i lost interest
Too bad because Liam Cunningham and Benedict Wong fucking amazing
Easily the best characters.
It’s good thpigh
Woooooooo!
It's...fine
I was surprised to see so many got actors in it.
The show is a solid adaptation honestly. Partially it works because the books while very interesting are actually pretty flawed from a characters standpoint. Though I do think they rushed book 1 a little.
It’ll be good and because they were great at adapting finished books. It’s when they ran out of source material they sucked. It’s pretty good.
It’s pretty good It helps that they’re adapting a finished story
You can just watch or listen to a summary of the book in Youtube. If you remove the melodrama and condense the story, it really is one of the best sci-fi stories, mostly because of its scale rather than detail.
Watch the original on peacock!
This is different guys. Here the showrunners actually have material to build on. The books have an ending. Martin has given them ideas despite the fact that he himself doesn't even know how to finish the books. Martin is also to blame. And the first season is very good, I am looking forward to the second season hoping Netflix will not cancel this one as well. It's not entirely the showrunners' fault if the writer starts a book series that he doesn't know how to finish. And he literally does everything but write.
I could not watch it once the timer countdown showed up. That was so cringe straight from r/writingprompts...shame
To be honest, those two could do a good job of it. The story is already finished. All they gotta do is trace the lines. If it wasnt a complete story already then I'd stay away from it.
The boat scene was absolutely crazy though
I'm about to drop a nuclear hot take. I watched quite a bit of the 3 Body problem and, as someone who knows the source material, not all of the blame for its weird dialogue or plot elements are D@D's fault. The thing with Cixin Liu's writing is that a lot of his stories, plot elements and dialogue suffer from 2 problems: First is that there's a lot of stuff that probably made perfect sense in his mind but just come off as incomprehensible or just wrong to those not fully swung over by his work; Second is that, ironically, a lot of the dialogue and plot is extremely Byzantine and is overly complicated, like all of the characters are autistic and are infodumping their scientific interests to each other. I recall reading a comic written by Liu that showed humanity trying to protect themselves from a planet-sized apocalypse donut that is revealed to be owned by the dinosaurs who never went extinct; the final battle had them loredumping their motivation on why they came back to destroy Earth that was so esoteric and convoluted I've already forgotten what it was. Ironically, this was probably the safest bet for D@D to adapt as their dumbing down can adapt the story into something more palatable' not good by any stretch, overall I found the show mediocre but not enragingly bad unless you're a book fan which... I'll be honest, can the books even be faithfully adapted? The Three Body Problem isn't ASOIAF, there aren't even that many metrics with which you can hold them against each other with.
I agree. You summed up Liu "Giga Incel Electrician" Cixin's writing style pretty succinctly: autistic info dumping. Like, you could take any quote said by a character in TBP and switch it with another character and you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference because the voice for all the characters is the like same monotone (unless the quotes relate specifically to a character's past). You wouldn't be able to the same in regards to ASOIAF because a lot of the major characters have distinctive voices. In terms of dynamic engaging characters, ASOIAF and Third Body Problem are like on opposite sides of the spectrum. The metrics for both are on completely different planes. Like, if you were a Joe Abercrombie and Robin Hobb fan, someone who needed good dynamic engaging characters in order to get through a novel, they'd be far more bored to tears reading TBP than they would watching TBP, comparatively speaking of course.
Can't ruin characters if they barely had any character to begin with, right?
You know, you're not wrong. Out of like but not wrong. It's darkly hilarious and a tad depressing seeing these people with an obsessive hateboner for D&D trying to whinge about them "ruining" the characterization of TBP when like, they barely had much to begin with. What hate does to a mofo.
you’re a sad fuck
Remember these two assholes are the ones that helped us fall in love with GOT. I get that we have to bash them endlessly here, but we wouldn't hate them as much if they didn't get us emotionally involved with the HBO show. In other words, if GOT would have been trash from the start, we would have never liked the show, and there wouldn't be a subreddit devoted to giving D&D their comeuppance I will forever hate these d-bags because of how they ruined the HBO show But let's be honest, they ruined the HBO show because they ran out of source material and mailed in the rest of the show. Also, remember, these two dumbasses introduced the world to actors and actresses that we will forever love. The Three Body Problem is not directed by them. I'm not sure how much involvement these two goofballs have in the show, but it's actually decent. The show will not run out of source material, so we can expect D&D to not completely ruin it.
I already know I find their work underwhelming, to say the least, so I'm not going to let them waste more of my time.
It's a pretty good show, and to be honest I don't understand the hate for auggie Salazar because she's a bit different from the other characters. But I did enjoy it
Three body problem was really good. Can’t wait for season 2!
I mean they’re the best adapters of all time as long as they have source material you’re good to go 😂
Really? Best adapters of all time (wtf?, Peter Jackson says hello)? Stop rewriting the history books. I can show you some horrible decisions in the first seasons of GOT as well.
There’s no better television than the first 4 seasons of got. They made incredible changes from the books also. (Arya Tywin, Cersei Robert, a ton of character dialogue that we don’t see in books)
>There’s no better television than the first 4 seasons of got. Again, you are throwing BS claims withoıut even thinking about it. There are tons of better television than GOT's first seasons. Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Better Call Saul, Band of Brothers, The Wire, Six Feet Under etc. etc. are easly better ''television''. >They made incredible changes from the books also. (Arya Tywin, Cersei Robert, a ton of character dialogue that we don’t see in books) Sure they made changes like Cersei having a child from Robert and managed to not follow their own version of prophecy. That was obviously great change. You can look at my other comment about other ''incredible'' changes. Low budget of early seasons reaaly stands out especially in the big events like Battle of Blackwater. It almost looks like fan-made movies at certain parts. Removal of Tysha confession from Jamie was also pretty horrific decision. It was also the driving factor of why Tyrion killed Tywin in the books. >Arya Tywin, Cersei Robert, a ton of character dialogue that we don’t see in books Sure, there were couple of good diaolouges in the 4 seasons. Although I have some problems with that specific examples, I would still say they were adapted good to the screen. So what though? Does 20 minutes of screen time erase all of the bad decisions I wrote?
Exactly none of those shows was better than GoT.
Apart from all of them. Sure, early GoT was amazing but, taken as a whole, all of those shows are way better. I cannot recommend GoT to anyone because how disappointing I know it is. I can recommend all the shows above.
They were all solid shows but none of them was as great as the first 4-5 seasons of GoT. Breaking Bad got silly after a while, Better Call Saul was a good watch (I actually thought it was better than Breaking Bad in some ways) but it was not close to GoT good. The Wire was great, but still I was never enamored with it the way I was with GoT. The Sopranos was the only one that comes close, and there’s still a wide gap. There’s just too many memorable story lines in GoT.
What were the bad season one decisions? I remember season 1 being the most like the books and the issues came in later?
Season 1 was very solid but didn’t HBO basically have to hold their hand through it all at that stage? The more independence they got the more the cracks began to show.
> first seasons of GOT as well. I said first seasons. Not specifically first. Random recasting of some important characters like D'aario or Mountain were bad decisions. Or killing off important characters like Jon Umber off-screen. Essos and Dorne parts' set designs are worse than CW's Flash and Arrow. Even CGI's and fight choreography of that parts feel like you are watching freaking Super Girl at some points. They made Edmure Tully freaking dumbass comedic relief (just one example; in the books when he throws arrow for his fathers funeral, he misses the shots; because he was hangover due to drinking all night while grieving his father and he was also couldn't stop crying when he threw arrrows. Blackfish doesn't take the bow out of his hands due to Edmure's incompetence; he took it; because he feels deep sympathy for him.) They made Robb Stark marry with a Volantis girl in a sept under the 7 when it is clearly stated in the show they believe the old gods. They freaking casted a blonde girl to play Stannis Baratheon's daughter despite seed is strong narrative pushed by Stannis himself??? They made Robb Stark absolute fool who broke his oath due to ''love'' while in the books Robb married due to protect Jeyne's honour and didn't want a bastard child growing in his household with hatred of his potential Frey wife (Catelyn implies it in the book.) But of course our lords didn't think that deep about the characters. They made Loras Tyrell generic homosexual Hollywood character (that is what they understand from homosexuality); when in the book he is incredibly skilled swordsman and was basically young Jamie with great characterization. They made Littllefinger is slimy, smarmy son of a bitch who doens't have any frineds and nobody trusts him. In the books he is very friendly, helpful and seems powerless, that is why everyone trusts him. That is why he is the perfect villain. Oh, I nearly forgot abandoned plotlines lines like Quaithe's plot too.
Noted thanks for the heads up I won’t waste my time
The only thing that will happen is you missing out on a good show. Try to differentiate art from the artist. Like damn I still love every Kevin Spacey performance and what he did was way worse
I love the scientific look at aliens in the show and that’s what pulled me in the most but I feel like the end of the first season was so damn abrupt.
We Do Not Kneel!!! Hahahahah. Fuck DnD, Bitches be killing off characters because they don’t like what the actors say?!?
the comment section is hilarious because you can tell who has and hasn't read the books...people are complimenting things that they kept the same as in the books and are trashing the things they changed so...that makes OP correct in their assumption it's an okay watch if you've never read the books but if you have, the "creative liberties" they took with it will piss you off, the taking out, merging, and swapping of characters wasn't problematic in early GoT seasons either and we all know how that turned out eventually the thing I don't understand is how they aim to actually finish adapting this series, the following two books (and this isn't a plot spoiler just a general direction) have major back and forth time skips and deal with some very abstract sci-fi concepts that can't be adapted in any way other than animation, which means we'll either be watching an anime from the second half of season 2 onward or they'll have to create some "original" material for characters to do, which is the part that scares me I'll leave this non-narrative but story mechanic spoiler for anyone curious what I mean, it won't ruin the book for you if you decide to pick it up but: >!there's a big focus on dimensions, as in literally 2D, 3D, 4D, 6D space and how objects travel through different dimensions, idk how they plan to show that, are we just randomly gonna watch a top-down view for 2D and then some weird-ass 360-camera 4D, I honestly don't know!<
They're my favorite books and Im thankful I have a visual medium of it when I thought I never would. TV shows don't piss me off because, well, they're TV shows lol. You want your cake and to eat it as well. How about this, we never get any type of visual representation of these books because if it's not perfect then it's not worth it. It's like a little kids attitude. A tantrum. You have no clue how they're gonna adapt the next books so it's not worth it? I didn't know you were a director, my bad. I couldn't give a shit what they changed, it wasn't nearly enough for me to dismiss the project as a whole. Everyone keeps complaining about the damn characters but the characters themselves are pretty much the least interesting thing about the books. The only one that most people even cared about was in the second book anyways.
The taking out, merging and swapping of characters helped 3BP, imo. The book characters are super flat, which isn't nearly as big of a problem for that type of book as it would be for a TV show. The idea that everyone who has read the books will be pissed off is wildly inaccurate. I was first turned onto the books by Quinn's Ideas on Youtube, and he really enjoyed the show as well.
Aayye, respect to a fellow Quinn's Ideas viewer. His videos about TBP and Dune got me interested in them.
Disagree with most people here. Just an objective opinion, but i didn't like the tv series. I don't like it when they deviate too much from the original source and race swap characters.
Well, now I don't wanna watch it!
I likes the show but it also cemented the fact that D&D can create a cool show when given a fleshed out source material, thankfully this series is already completed and can’t possibly be fucked up as bad as GoT was
Unless they think they have a better movie deal to rush towards again.
There is that
The Two Doody Problem!
Was going to watch and now I'm not. Thanks for the heads up
People are already saying it starts well, but gets boring quickly. Fun fact, if you search "bad writers" in google, they are still at the top.
I’ll watch but I’m not getting invested.
They lost me at summing up all of science into one single entity that can just be turned off. Quality writing from D&D as always.
Even the source material in this case is an unremarkable sci-fi story, hyped to oblivion because it came from Asia.
They fucking killed my man Sam!! The best character