3 Body Problem (Show Spoilers Only)

[Spockydog]

7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Sure, I don't doubt it will be important, it just seemed to drag and seemed to be more concerned with some dull love triangle story.

Those scenes with the sad, dying, Paul McCartney-eyed dude sucked the life out of things. Dude was so fucking wet and love sick and pathetic. Ugh. 

Edited April 4 by Spockydog

[Heartofice]

42 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Those scenes with the sad, dying, Paul McCartney-eyed dude sucked the life out of things. Dude was so fucking wet and love sick and pathetic. Ugh. 

Yes.

[Hippocras]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Those scenes with the sad, dying, Paul McCartney-eyed dude sucked the life out of things. Dude was so fucking wet and love sick and pathetic. Ugh. 

I actually adore this character. He says very little, but what he does say has a sense of kindness, longer term perspectives, and alternate realities. Very philosophical stuff, but connected back to the subject he was teaching.

Very rare to have such a gentle soul on TV but they are some of the most worrhwhile people to know in real life 

[Zorral]

Gotta say, none of the comments here or elsewere have provided the least nudge toward wanting to bother with this!

[Hippocras]

9 hours ago, Zorral said:

Gotta say, none of the comments here or elsewere have provided the least nudge toward wanting to bother with this!

It is a good show.

If you have previously read the books I get the sense you might have a harder time with it because it makes changes. Ditto if you are Chinese and want this series to remain emphatically Chinese. These are the two main groups complaining about it. There is also the group of people who just want to trash everything D&D do from now on out of misplaced spite. That kind of background chatter should not be the basis of your own personal experience and opinions.

IMO this is a show that can make sci-fi enjoyable to those of us who are generally quite uninterested in sci-fi, just as GoT brought fantasy to a non-fantasy audience. It does this WITHOUT relying entirely on heavy action sequences which makes it entirely unique. The science is not at all stripped out. It is still there, it has just been carefully handled so that someone who does not want a scientific lecture on their streaming screen can still enjoy themself.

Finally, it is very obvious watching this first season that most of it is set-up. There are a great number of small moments that seem to carry longer-term importance for future seasons. You will not get the pay-off in this season. In that sense it is a thinking person's show, and not one that provides instant gratification.

Edited April 5 by Hippocras

[Isis]

22 hours ago, Hippocras said:

SPOILERS for whole of season 1

3. The precise topic Will is teaching, in the very brief scene that we see of him teaching. Parallel realities. This seems very relevant to his future now that he is a floating brain. So too does the moment where Jin makes boats for him and herself. Seems like she too may one day be floating off into the unknown.

I found that scene to be a bit too on the nose especially as it comes right before his diagnosis. CHECK OUT THIS SYMBOLISM, GUYS.

[Hippocras]

5 hours ago, Isis said:

I found that scene to be a bit too on the nose especially as it comes right before his diagnosis. CHECK OUT THIS SYMBOLISM, GUYS.

Well if you have read the books or something and know what is coming, and also see the scene as ONLY about that than sure I guess. 

I have not read the books and suspect that this is not the end of Will's relevance to the story. I thought it was important to actually see this 5 second glimpse of him as a teacher teaching because it made him a character. He seemed like the kind of teacher who loves his subject and inspires receptive students. So if they were going to show him teaching, that was exactly the right topic. Why make the subject he was teaching irrelevant if they are making a scene anyway?

[Corvinus85]

Two episodes in and I think it's interesting and intriguing. 

But I just realized that D&D did again with the title. Why? Too long to write "the" in the title? It might seem a minor change, but it makes me wary again. Of course, I haven't read the book so I don't particularly have a reason to be annoyed.

[Hippocras]

42 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Two episodes in and I think it's interesting and intriguing. 

But I just realized that D&D did again with the title. Why? Too long to write "the" in the title? It might seem a minor change, but it makes me wary again. Of course, I haven't read the book so I don't particularly have a reason to be annoyed.

Why shouldn't an adaptation have a different title than the books? After all, itis different.

[Corvinus85]

2 minutes ago, Hippocras said:

Why shouldn't an adaptation have a different title than the books? After all, itis different.

I'm not saying it can't but it feels like the same pattern of simplification that they followed for GoT. And the show's title reads a bit silly to me without the "the".

 

[IFR]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

I'm not saying it can't but it feels like the same pattern of simplification that they followed for GoT. And the show's title reads a bit silly to me without the "the".

 

It could quite possibly be part of their contract, which had some unusual stipulations. They were, for instance, contractually limited to the amount of China and Chinese that could be included in their show.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

I'm not saying it can't but it feels like the same pattern of simplification that they followed for GoT. And the show's title reads a bit silly to me without the "the".

 

"A Three Body Problem"

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, Hippocras said:

If you have previously read the books I get the sense you might have a harder time with it because it makes changes. Ditto if you are Chinese and want this series to remain emphatically Chinese. These are the two main groups complaining about it. There is also the group of people who just want to trash everything D&D do from now on out of misplaced spite. That kind of background chatter should not be the basis of your own personal experience and opinions.

I'm none of the above. 

 

[Scott_N]

On 4/4/2024 at 6:16 PM, IFR said:

right now many of the reactions are that the show is decent enough, but is that it?

Exactly. I liked it well enough despite some weak acting (though I might have been a bit harsh on Cunningham in an earlier post; he did alright once he had more to do second half of the show). I'll watch a second season but I won't be counting down the days.

It was sloppy story telling at times too where I just sat back thinking this just makes no sense. Some reddit-trawling suggests most of those were deliberate show omissions with explanations existing in the books.

[Zorral]

The Bizarre Chinese Murder Plot Behind Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’
Lin Qi, a billionaire who helped produce the science-fiction hit, was poisoned to death by a disgruntled executive. His attacker now faces the death penalty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/world/asia/china-three-body-problem-murder.html

Quote

 

... Mr. Lin did not live to see “3 Body Problem” premiere on Netflix last month, drawing millions of viewers.

He was poisoned to death in Shanghai in 2020, at age 39, by a disgruntled colleague, in a killing that riveted the country’s tech and video-gaming circles where he had been a prominent rising star. That colleague, Xu Yao, a 43-year-old former executive in Mr. Lin’s company, was last month sentenced to death for murder by a court in Shanghai, which called his actions “extremely despicable.”

The court has made few specific details public, but Mr. Lin’s killing was, as a Chinese news outlet put it, “as bizarre as a Hollywood blockbuster.” Chinese media reports, citing sources in his company and court documents, have described a tale of deadly corporate ambition and rivalry with a macabre edge. Sidelined at work, Mr. Xu reportedly exacted vengeance with meticulous planning, including by testing poisons on small animals in a makeshift lab. (He not only killed Mr. Lin, but also poisoned his own replacement.)

Mr. Lin had spent millions of dollars in 2014 buying up copyrights and licenses connected to the original Chinese science-fiction book, “The Three-Body Problem,” and two others in a trilogy written by the Chinese author Liu Cixin. “The Three-Body Problem” tells the story of an engineer, called upon by the Chinese authorities to look into a spate of suicides by scientists, who discovers an extraterrestrial plot. Mr. Lin had wanted to build a franchise of global television shows and films akin to “Star Wars” and centered on the novels.

Mr. Lin would eventually link up with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the television series “Game of Thrones,” to work on the Netflix project. Mr. Lin’s gaming company, Youzu Interactive, which goes by Yoozoo in English, is no stranger to the HBO hit; its best-known release is an online strategy game based on the show called “Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming.”

Mr. Lin’s fate would change when he hired Mr. Xu, a lawyer, in 2017 to head a subsidiary of Yoozoo called The Three-Body Universe that held the rights to Mr. Liu’s novels. But not long afterward, Mr. Xu was demoted and his pay was cut, apparently because of poor performance. He became furious, according to the Chinese business magazine Caixin.

As Mr. Xu plotted his revenge, Caixin reported, he built a lab in an outlying district of Shanghai where he experimented with hundreds of poisons he bought off the dark web by testing them on dogs and cats and other pets. Caixin said Mr. Xu was both fascinated and inspired by the American hit TV series “Breaking Bad,” about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who teaches himself to make and sell methamphetamine, eventually becoming a drug lord. ....

 

 

[Zorral]

One of the comments to the story:

"The poisoning death of a billionaire boss by a disgruntled sociopath former employee (who also killed others) makes for a better movie than the sci-fi one, IMO!"

 

[House Cambodia]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

One of the comments to the story:

"The poisoning death of a billionaire boss by a disgruntled sociopath former employee (who also killed others) makes for a better movie than the sci-fi one, IMO!"

 

Don't worry, the body count will surpass all your expectations.

[Kalbear]

6 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

Don't worry, the body count will surpass all your expectations.

Is it...3?

[Rippounet]

Unless there's a major screw-up of sorts, 3 Body Problem should be in the top three science-fiction shows of the decade.

Whatever some may say, the first season is very strong for one that offered so little action, and it's merely an introduction to a story of such scope that few shows (or stories ) come even close, and it has the budget to match its story.
I think it's safe to say the next season is going to seriously blow some minds and that Netflix will make sure there is GoT-level global hype ; hate it or love it, everyone will be watching this, and I'm pretty certain that the visuals alone should make it worth one's time.

As far as contenders go, you have to look at The Expanse or Foundation, and I think most people would agree that the latter at least had a far weaker first season (and I do believe the jury's still out on its second ).
I really love Silo, but it's barely science-fiction at this point, and the title alone tells us we're simply not talking about the same scope. Similarly, lots of other sci-fi shows are really good, but just don't have such ambitious themes.
And as far as adaptations go, Foundation is just not a good one (the show has its merits, but come on...), whereas so far 3 Body Problem is rather faithful to the source material, while magnifying it. Because honestly, unless you can read Chinese, I don't think Liu Cixin's prose is quite praiseworthy (everyone here agreed that his characterization is mediocre).

One has to do some digging to find actual flaws. Sure, the Oxord five are a bit bland, but it's not worse than the book(s), Cunningham as Wade fucking owns every scene he's in, and Wong makes a great Da Shi.
I'm reluctant to trust D&D, but godamn it, they should be able to give us at least one crazy-ass second season. After that I dunno, but if Foundation was said to be impossible to adapt, then surely so is 3 Body Problem (I realize the actual title of the series is kind of a spoiler ) ; I'm already curious to see what choices they'll make to keep the viewer in.

TLDR: the next season at least should be mindblowing.

[Spockydog]

Has it been renewed?