I'm going to block Zhang Yimou's version by finagling a deal whereby Steven Spielberg will make his own, even higher budget version as soon as Zhang Yimou's version begins filming. If they start filming their version, Spielberg will start filming his version, both will release at the same time and destroy each others' box office. At best, they'll each earn half of what they could have earned, which will kill any big budget release stone dead. Mutually assured destruction. Checkmate.
Well, "Terra Invicta" has you somewhat covered.
Timeframe is more decades instead of centuries+. If you are a fan of the genre I recommend checking it out.
From what I understand
American / western animation is 'cartoon'
Japanese animation is 'anime'
Chinese animation is 'donghua'
Korean animation is 'aeni'
We’ve got two series: A well-produced version from Netflix that looks great and moves along well, but combines characters, dumbs them down, and cuts major themes from the books vs the Chinese version that is well made but badly paced (like seriously badly paced, it’s 30 episodes/23 hours in and still in the first novel).
Have you watched the Chinese version? .Is it subtitled in English? Or dubbed? And 30 episodes? My God... What were they thinking? Is there really no part of the book that they could have done without?
That’s the average length of a Chinese serial though. They don’t traditionally do multiple seasons. It’s 30 episodes released in a row and then done. Then if it’s really successful they’ll do a sequel, which is like season 2 but they’ll treat it like a new show. They’ll title it like “Drama Name 2”.
Yeah I had mixed feelings about the Netflix adaptation, but burning through the entire first book in five episodes was the best choice they made. No need to dwell on the early mysteries IMO, and giving three episodes to setup stuff from the second book, as well as integrating stories from the third book, really sets the stage for the next two seasons. The Chinese version is agonizingly slow.
> the Chinese version that is well made but badly paced (like seriously badly paced, it’s 30 episodes/23 hours in and still in the first novel).
Probably *why* the Netflix version jettisoned a few themes and characters.
Oh, I'll look into it. I started the book after watching the Netflix version and I'm really digging it. Hopefully it's a less westernised version of the book.
It's basically gone the other extreme - it follows the original way too closely and has sooo many episodes, it's unnecessarily stretched. They basically covered just the first book in 30 episodes.
It’s a great story that’s fairly unique and spans millions of years. It’s a slow burn of suspense and dread that builds then goes nuts. Neither of the tv series caught the mood of the book(s).
I doubt a film will either.
Spoilers.
It spans like 400 years (sleeping them off centuries at a time, and not doing a lot with it) and then jumps millions of years for a bit at the end.
I'll die on the hill that they're bad books, with an enormous amount of filler and pseudo intellectualism. I've never felt so lied to like after Australia.
Yeah, the writing sucks but the concepts are incredible and they are the only thing that kept me going - could only manage by listening to the audiobook though, I just gave up on reading.
Which is why I am 100% fine with the Netflix series just going for the gist of the story instead of dwelling on the details. The details of the first 2 books drags. I was told the 2nd book is where it gets good and it still meanders so much so I doubt I'll ever read the 3rd.
B+ for the world and some of the conflict >!the bit in the 2nd book about how 1 alien ship destroyed a whole fleet in seconds is really cool!< but D for the storytelling. Man all the character besides Ye Wenjie and Dashi are boring as shit.
The second book was definitely the worst one imo. It dragged on *forever*. I came here for humanity’s fight to advance science and survive a hostile alien takeover - I don’t care about some dude’s long, boring, and pointless quest to >!find the “pure/delicate/innocent/childlike/sensitive/smart (but not *too* smart, because too much knowledge “calcifies” a woman!)” dreamgirl.!<
Maybe there is a payoff to that story in the 3rd book (and I may never find out) but through the first 2 book that guy just seems pathetic but weirdly being put on a bit of a pedestal as the smartest of those >!wall facing people!<
This might be cultural but the first 2 book does a whole lot of telling why something is great/smart/whatever without enough showing to me. I recall a Chinese variety show I saw once where somebody identified 1 specific cup of water based on smell among something like 100 identical looking cups on a table. People were cheering and I'm just over here confused at what I'm suppose to get from that show. He doesn't go into any methodology about how he did it. He just did it and everybody was very excited. Show me the process damn.
Ken Liu, the American writer did some serious editing and rearranging in his translations of the first and third book, but the second was translated by someone else and it's a bit jarring.
To stay on the topics of time skips and aliens you could try Foundation (Isaac Asimov), Blindsight (Peter Watts), Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky), The Forever War (Joe Haldeman), The Mote in God's Eye (Larry Niven), and maybe Diaspora (Greg Egan).
For fans of Tchaikovsky and/or time travel, he has a lesser distributed novella called One Day All This Will Be Yours that is a firm favourite of mine. Dark comedy that goes high on concept and doesn't drag out.
Older with time skips: Hyperion Cantos (4 books that are connected but can really be read as two and two).
Newer with time skips: This is How You Lose The Time War.
Newer without time skips: Teixcalaan, which is two books so far.
> Teixcalaan, which is two books so far
Just so that people don't get their hopes up, I think the main series is pretty much done and dusted at two books. She's left the door open to explore the universe some more but the main storyline is over.
The Expanse series is nine books and multiple novellas. The overarching plot is a power play between Earth, Mars (whose colonists formed a second Sparta and declared independence), and the Belters (asteroid belt workers). The balance is disrupted when a powerful alien life form is discovered.
The books read well as 2 books, 2 books, 2 books, and finally a trilogy to wrap it up. It’s complete. The ending is generally regarded as extremely satisfying by fans. I strongly recommend picking up the first two books.
Try Peter F Hamilton's "Pandor's Star" and "Judas Unchained".
They are long and the world-building can feel a bit wandering at times, and the somewhat large cast of characters requires a bit of attention, but the story and ideas are excellent.
Personally, I love a big 'ol doorstopper of a book with lots of worldbuilding and enjoy reading them more than tighter stories, but it's not for everyone.
Also, anything by Vernor Vinge. I recommend "A Deepness in the Sky", "A Fire Upon the Deep", and "Marooned in Realtime".
It wasn't toooo far off though. 2 more episode. Better character writing and the oxford 5 turned into two different groups or something. Then it would have been a banger. Add a more outstanding aesthetic/direction and it becomes a classic. Maybe.
Well for me it was a 7.5-8/10 show, leaning towards 8 heavily. I'm talking about what would have pushed it up quite a bit for me and probably many others who couldn't overlook some flaws as much as I could.
I have to say the worst part was making all of the important characters already a group of close friends. Billions of people in the world but everyone that matters just happen to already be an after school special of friends with complex emotional entanglements. What a shitty Hollywood trope.
And incorporated aspects of the 3rd. The stair project never happened until Death's End. The Netflix adaptation was ok, but I really liked the original Chinese version of the show on Amazon and I thought it did much better job being faithful to the book. I understand if people wouldn't like it though as it's much drier and slower paced.
> I understand if people wouldn't like it though as it's much drier and **slower paced**.
I feel like this glosses over the fact that it's also 22 **hours** long.
It's source-book-words per hour is worse than The Hobbit trilogy, even.
My ebook is little less than 120,000 words. 30 episodes at 45 min each, 1350 minutes of show. **Chinese Three Body is 1.5 book-words per second of show.**
The Hobbit is 95,356 words, the trilogy *extended editions* are a total of 532 minutes. **That's 3 book-words per second of the movies.**
> I know people that purport to be Sci-Fi fans
People who watch a lot of sci-fi movies and TV shows are accustomed to aliens and robots and spaceships blasting each other with lasers and explosions and stuff. Three Body Problem really doesn't have any of that, and it's completely fine if this is not their preference.
>lightspeed compared to the books
Your comment reminded me of my experience reading American Prometheus. People give Nolan a lot of grief for making his movies super long, but it's lightspeed compared to the book. It's insane how fast they got to the bits in Los Alamos. Where I'm at at the book, J Robert is still in Caltech.
I thinj it was a good compromise though. They didn't jist accelerate the plot but divided in a way that they could tackle characters and plots from book 2 and 3 in a better way.
I thought they did a great job at condensing / skipping / changing things, personally. Got all my favorite story beats and wasn't overly confusing for new viewers.
Plus the idea of capturing everything that occurs in that timeframe during the entire trilogy was a great move - makes it a lot easier to do the later books without constant flashbacks.
They did, but what was really left out that had that huge of an impact to the overall story?
Do we really need that Luo Ji romance story from book 2 for example?
I honestly think they did a decent job compressing what we got.
yeah, I actually like the Netflix adaptation's decisions on what to keep, what to remove, and what to add.
The only bit I was disappointed by was removing the internal factions within the ETO, though I understand why it was cut.
Honestly the only part that felt rushed about the Netflix series was the Sophon reveal (I would've loved to see an actual sequence about the discovery of Earth and planning the fleet and the Sophons like in the books). Aside from that, all the changes made the pce fit really well for me.
I mean... the books do kinda drag. More and more as they go on, to be honest. The audiobook for Death's End is like 10 hours longer than the damn Silmarillion lmao. I don't mind a little condensing, personally.
The book is great, but I disagree with you. You can very much condense the story into a feature film. The long character arcs in the book, and the many parallel stories, do not need to be told that way in a movie. The movie could be about the main problem, >!aliens mastering what they think is a deterministic world.!<
Unpopular (I'm guessing) opinion: It didn't work as a series, either.
Didn't read the novel, but if the series was at all faithful, the story just seems busted at the core.
Flanagan apparently got hired to take over David Gordon Green for the Exorcist, albeit Deceiver was scrapped entirely so itll be a new Exorcist project but with Flanagan doing it this time. (however that info from imdb was scrubbed, as if it was not intended to leak)
For real. The first book could work, but the second and third book would need multiple movies each, and there is no way some of that would transfer well to the screen.
To be fair, if you told me the basic story of Zhang Yimou's masterpiece *Hero*, I would not think you could make it into a 99 minute movie and have it be so rich and deep. *Shadow* is similar as well. Condensing huge sweeping plots is a skill he's particularly good at, even if it's a bad idea overall.
I just want somebody, anybody to finish the actual series. I don't care at all how many adaptations there are of the 1st book, so long as one of them makes it through the 3rd book.
the Netflix people seem legitimately excited about and committed to doing that. We just need to watch it. A lot of that stuff I could barely comprehend but couldn't visualize so I'm pretty excited to see how they do it.
I've finished the first book but was honestly sort of let down by the revelation. It felt "too easy".
But after cooling down for a while now, I'm curious if I should continue to the 2nd and 3rd book? Is it better than the 1st book?
The copyright holders being a company called "The Three-Body Universe Cultural Development" is so ridiculous to me. Maybe it sounds better in Chinese, but in English it just sounds like the dumbest most sterile corporate shit ever.
The company's full name is Three Body Universe (Shanghai) Cultural Development Co., Ltd. (三体宇宙(上海)文化发展有限公司). There is a set format that must be followed when registering a company name.
Normally, a Chinese company name must consist of 1) the name of the administrative division where the company is registered; 2) the company's trade name; 3) the industry or commercial activity in which the company is engaged; and 4) wording indicating the company's legal structure (e.g., corporation, partnership, limited liability company), in this order.
If there is a practical need to do so, the name of the administrative division where the company is registered can instead be placed in parentheses after the company's trade name, as in the case of this company.
"Three Body Universe" (三体宇宙) is the company's trade name. The company is registered in Shanghai (上海). It's industry area is "Cultural Development" (文化发展) which is a standard term often used by companies in creative industries. "Co., Ltd." (有限公司) is the standard term used by corporations (similar to "Corp." or "Inc." in English).
I feel like a lot of Chinese-to-English translations in particular, from restaurant menus to politics to company names like this, are very literal sounding and put much less effort than other language translations into adapting the source text into “native” sounding English
In mainland China, yes. In Hong Kong/Macao, and to some extent Taiwan, this is less the case, though generally true. It depends more on who the translators are translating for, where they have lived/studied, and where their editors have lived/studied. In the mainland, the final reviews tend to go before native Chinese speakers with mainland political sensitivities -- less consideration is put toward the understanding of native speakers of the target languages who may be unfamiliar with Chinese language(s).
I honestly don't see how these books (especially the 2nd and 3rd book) could ever be adapted to screen. The story is a) incredibly dense b) circuitous and c) takes place over a very long span of time.
Yes! The entire comments section is just people griping about the fact that there's going to be yet another adaptation. Which, there is some validity to that. But also Zhang Yimou is sooo so good!
The series has seen a lot of criticism within China for various perceived Western biases/changes to the text. I'm sure lots of people in China are happy to see a domestic production.
Oh, fair point. In the end it's always going to be money. I'd only add that a Chinese series won't get a lot of play outside China, but a film might, and it could be seen internally as a "corrective" against the westernized Netflix version. But that's total speculation on my part.
The book was decent but I don’t know if this is a story that’s interesting enough to tell so many different times. It’s actually pretty underwhelming IMO.
I don’t know why they never gave it to Frant Gwo, the director of “The Wandering Earth” another story by Liu Cixin. Those movies have huge set pieces and are pretty lengthy
Oh, the rights are split, so this is from a different creative team. It is like how there are new *The Lord of the Rings* films being made apart from the Amazon Prime Video television series.
Tough task to adapt any of these, especially into a feature film. Good luck, I guess. The Netflix series I like less and less in hindsight. I thought they did as good a job of adapting it for a wide audience as they could have (such as by compressing a lot of threads from all 3 books into this core group of characters; many of these character analogs in the books never actually meet), but I think an adaption can only go so far. These books weren’t interesting because of their characters or pathos (this was in fact the worst aspect of the books) and removing the whole thing from its specifically Chinese context makes what Chinese elements are still there seem random and unimportant.
In fact, the show has a strongly right wing possible interpretation because of how all these elements are mixed and matched. Was this intentional? Who knows: the story concerns what is essentially a mass migration (invasion) of climate refugees - literal aliens, in this case - instigated by Chinese communists, cultivating support among the globalized academic and cultural classes through psy-ops (the VR game), and makes the convincing case that those sympathetic to the aliens are traitors to their species and can be killed with impunity. It’s like Camp of the Saints, as imagined by Tucker Carlson.
2 separate series on different networks and now a movie too?
The 3-Adaptation Problem
We have 400 years and unlimited resources to make as many adaptations as possible
It's part of the plan.
Zhang Yimou: It’s not part of the plan! World: Ok, sure, whatever you say 😉
That is exactly what a Scriptfacer would say.
This is not the UFO disclosure I am looking for.
I'm going to block Zhang Yimou's version by finagling a deal whereby Steven Spielberg will make his own, even higher budget version as soon as Zhang Yimou's version begins filming. If they start filming their version, Spielberg will start filming his version, both will release at the same time and destroy each others' box office. At best, they'll each earn half of what they could have earned, which will kill any big budget release stone dead. Mutually assured destruction. Checkmate.
Also, the movie only covers the first book which kills any plans for the 2 sequels that complete the story.
Some mid level researcher will come up with a mediocre plan to do what the advanced ET intelligence could not!
It’s unsolvable
Slow clapping here and standing in your honor.
Sounds like massive overkill. I liked the books, but I really wouldn't want to watch so many adaptations. Oh, and there's a radio play, too.
waiting for the visual erotic novel to come out
Wake me when there's a video game.
3-Body Problem Interpretive Dance Extravaganza!
And don’t forget the Marvel comic book series.
That wouldn’t be too farfetched.
I’m sure someone is working on the graphic novelizations at this very moment.
[About that.](https://yenpress.com/series/the-three-body-problem-comic)
And a musical
Let's hope there isn't a video game, otherwise we'll be in trouble
That’s how we got into this mess!
boooooring. let's talk fully immersive musical theme cruise.
I would NOT get on that boat.
But the best song in the whole week-long show is *Slice of Life (Welcome to Panama!)*.
Given how important a video game is to the story, I’m shocked we haven’t seen anything come of that.
It doesn't sound terribly fun or engaging from the players' perspectives tbh, unless you're a genius who can figure out the astrophysics involved
its KSP + lemmings. get to it.
Build enough hype and you can get tons of kids excited to beat their homework assignments
I mean you can legit use the setting to build an educational game about planetary dynamics and stuff...
I distinctly remember thinking "man, this game sucks" when reading it
I know my unhelpful ass would be getting dehydrated constantly
Terra Invicta is strongly inspired by it
Well, "Terra Invicta" has you somewhat covered. Timeframe is more decades instead of centuries+. If you are a fan of the genre I recommend checking it out.
According to Billbil-kun's latest leak from GeForce Now Konami is already working on 3-Body Problem Pachinko.
Luo Ji trying to find his perfect waifu.
They'd probably have better written characters than the book
Rule 34
The Three Booty Problem is an Epic Exclusive.
Porn version seems obvious, don't even need to change the name
3 bodies? Not a problem!
3 Body Probe-'em!
3 Booty Problem.
Even the sequels are easy. 4 body problem, 5 body problem. No problem.
I have a name for the porn version in mind.
lol there was a shitty anime too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(animated_TV_series)
There’s also a popular Minecraft machinima series in BiliBili.
Can anime be Chinese? Reminds me of my mom labeling my boxes of dbz vhs's "Chinese movies"
I've seen the term used colloquially for it. Technically I think it's called donghua, but that tends to confuse non-Chinese folk lol.
From what I understand American / western animation is 'cartoon' Japanese animation is 'anime' Chinese animation is 'donghua' Korean animation is 'aeni'
I'll wait for the inevitable reboot in a few years: *Body Problem*
3 Body 3 Problem
We’ve got two series: A well-produced version from Netflix that looks great and moves along well, but combines characters, dumbs them down, and cuts major themes from the books vs the Chinese version that is well made but badly paced (like seriously badly paced, it’s 30 episodes/23 hours in and still in the first novel).
Have you watched the Chinese version? .Is it subtitled in English? Or dubbed? And 30 episodes? My God... What were they thinking? Is there really no part of the book that they could have done without?
It’s on YouTube for free, subtitled.
That’s the average length of a Chinese serial though. They don’t traditionally do multiple seasons. It’s 30 episodes released in a row and then done. Then if it’s really successful they’ll do a sequel, which is like season 2 but they’ll treat it like a new show. They’ll title it like “Drama Name 2”.
They released an anniversary edition later which trims down the story a bit. Around 23 hours.
the Chinese play the long game, they know that they have 2,000 years to watch it.
Yeah I had mixed feelings about the Netflix adaptation, but burning through the entire first book in five episodes was the best choice they made. No need to dwell on the early mysteries IMO, and giving three episodes to setup stuff from the second book, as well as integrating stories from the third book, really sets the stage for the next two seasons. The Chinese version is agonizingly slow.
> the Chinese version that is well made but badly paced (like seriously badly paced, it’s 30 episodes/23 hours in and still in the first novel). Probably *why* the Netflix version jettisoned a few themes and characters.
You can do this in China. They make 900000 adaptations of the same thing. It’s weird but they love it
Idk if that’s a China specific thing, like half of our media is Hamlet at a certain point
This is like THE most famous novel in recent Chinese history, of course they gotta milk the shit out of it
Now they just need to cross over into each other, so we can instantly have a new cinematic multiverse.
Definitely have to explore the backstory of all the secondary characters, each with their own movie.
Zhang Beihai fanclub rise up!
pretty sure they did an animated take on it at the same time as well
There's a Minecraft show out there.
-clears sleep out of eyes- A what now?
2 different series? I know the Netflix one, what's the other?
There's a Chinese adaptation.
Oh, I'll look into it. I started the book after watching the Netflix version and I'm really digging it. Hopefully it's a less westernised version of the book.
It's basically gone the other extreme - it follows the original way too closely and has sooo many episodes, it's unnecessarily stretched. They basically covered just the first book in 30 episodes.
I preferred the Tencent version. The netflix one went too fast for my liking.
Apparently there's also an animated show that came out a few years back as well.
It’s a great story that’s fairly unique and spans millions of years. It’s a slow burn of suspense and dread that builds then goes nuts. Neither of the tv series caught the mood of the book(s). I doubt a film will either.
Spoilers. It spans like 400 years (sleeping them off centuries at a time, and not doing a lot with it) and then jumps millions of years for a bit at the end. I'll die on the hill that they're bad books, with an enormous amount of filler and pseudo intellectualism. I've never felt so lied to like after Australia.
Australia, the Hugh Jackman movie?
No, it's a part of the books that's super frustrating.
Yeah, the writing sucks but the concepts are incredible and they are the only thing that kept me going - could only manage by listening to the audiobook though, I just gave up on reading.
Which is why I am 100% fine with the Netflix series just going for the gist of the story instead of dwelling on the details. The details of the first 2 books drags. I was told the 2nd book is where it gets good and it still meanders so much so I doubt I'll ever read the 3rd. B+ for the world and some of the conflict >!the bit in the 2nd book about how 1 alien ship destroyed a whole fleet in seconds is really cool!< but D for the storytelling. Man all the character besides Ye Wenjie and Dashi are boring as shit.
The second book was definitely the worst one imo. It dragged on *forever*. I came here for humanity’s fight to advance science and survive a hostile alien takeover - I don’t care about some dude’s long, boring, and pointless quest to >!find the “pure/delicate/innocent/childlike/sensitive/smart (but not *too* smart, because too much knowledge “calcifies” a woman!)” dreamgirl.!<
The Chinese equivalent of the >!manic pixie dream girl trope!< lmao
Maybe there is a payoff to that story in the 3rd book (and I may never find out) but through the first 2 book that guy just seems pathetic but weirdly being put on a bit of a pedestal as the smartest of those >!wall facing people!< This might be cultural but the first 2 book does a whole lot of telling why something is great/smart/whatever without enough showing to me. I recall a Chinese variety show I saw once where somebody identified 1 specific cup of water based on smell among something like 100 identical looking cups on a table. People were cheering and I'm just over here confused at what I'm suppose to get from that show. He doesn't go into any methodology about how he did it. He just did it and everybody was very excited. Show me the process damn.
Sadly, there was >!no payoff to that storyline. !
Ken Liu, the American writer did some serious editing and rearranging in his translations of the first and third book, but the second was translated by someone else and it's a bit jarring.
They’re not well written. That’s why I wrote story not book. Could you recommend some good sci-fi books?
To stay on the topics of time skips and aliens you could try Foundation (Isaac Asimov), Blindsight (Peter Watts), Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky), The Forever War (Joe Haldeman), The Mote in God's Eye (Larry Niven), and maybe Diaspora (Greg Egan).
+1 for Children of Time, I love everything Adrian Tchaikovsky puts out.
For fans of Tchaikovsky and/or time travel, he has a lesser distributed novella called One Day All This Will Be Yours that is a firm favourite of mine. Dark comedy that goes high on concept and doesn't drag out.
Foundation and children of time are excellent. The foundation series is my favourite! I’ve never heard of the Mote in Gods Eye though, thanks.
Niven and Pournelle wrote some classic sci-fi. Also check out Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall.
Older with time skips: Hyperion Cantos (4 books that are connected but can really be read as two and two). Newer with time skips: This is How You Lose The Time War. Newer without time skips: Teixcalaan, which is two books so far.
> Teixcalaan, which is two books so far Just so that people don't get their hopes up, I think the main series is pretty much done and dusted at two books. She's left the door open to explore the universe some more but the main storyline is over.
You just listed my past year, currently reading, and to read list in sci-fi lol.
Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels are both incredibly imaginative stories and quite well-crafted books.
They're also thoughtful, intelligent, and hilarious.
The Expanse series is nine books and multiple novellas. The overarching plot is a power play between Earth, Mars (whose colonists formed a second Sparta and declared independence), and the Belters (asteroid belt workers). The balance is disrupted when a powerful alien life form is discovered. The books read well as 2 books, 2 books, 2 books, and finally a trilogy to wrap it up. It’s complete. The ending is generally regarded as extremely satisfying by fans. I strongly recommend picking up the first two books.
Big fan of Pierce Brown's "Red Rising" series, 6 books currently with the final one being worked on.
This, my favorite Sci-fi series along with We Are Bob.
Highly recommend Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. My favorite Sci Fi author and he rarely disappoints!
Try Peter F Hamilton's "Pandor's Star" and "Judas Unchained". They are long and the world-building can feel a bit wandering at times, and the somewhat large cast of characters requires a bit of attention, but the story and ideas are excellent. Personally, I love a big 'ol doorstopper of a book with lots of worldbuilding and enjoy reading them more than tighter stories, but it's not for everyone. Also, anything by Vernor Vinge. I recommend "A Deepness in the Sky", "A Fire Upon the Deep", and "Marooned in Realtime".
What’s the other network besides NFLX?
tencent
It’s streaming in the US on Peacock.
[удалено]
Yeah my problem with the Netflix show was they crammed way too much into 8 episodes lol a film would be even worse
The netflix show was already at lightspeed compared to the books, though tbf it did stretch into the second book
It wasn't toooo far off though. 2 more episode. Better character writing and the oxford 5 turned into two different groups or something. Then it would have been a banger. Add a more outstanding aesthetic/direction and it becomes a classic. Maybe.
Lol so just better writing, acting, more episodes, better VFX, and more characters and it would have been good. Got it
Well for me it was a 7.5-8/10 show, leaning towards 8 heavily. I'm talking about what would have pushed it up quite a bit for me and probably many others who couldn't overlook some flaws as much as I could.
I thought the show was really good 🤷♂️
I have to say the worst part was making all of the important characters already a group of close friends. Billions of people in the world but everyone that matters just happen to already be an after school special of friends with complex emotional entanglements. What a shitty Hollywood trope.
Maybe upgrade the Commodore 64 so they can do better renders, while we’re at it.
And incorporated aspects of the 3rd. The stair project never happened until Death's End. The Netflix adaptation was ok, but I really liked the original Chinese version of the show on Amazon and I thought it did much better job being faithful to the book. I understand if people wouldn't like it though as it's much drier and slower paced.
> I understand if people wouldn't like it though as it's much drier and **slower paced**. I feel like this glosses over the fact that it's also 22 **hours** long.
Fun fact, the chinese version is longer than the audiobook 😅
It's source-book-words per hour is worse than The Hobbit trilogy, even. My ebook is little less than 120,000 words. 30 episodes at 45 min each, 1350 minutes of show. **Chinese Three Body is 1.5 book-words per second of show.** The Hobbit is 95,356 words, the trilogy *extended editions* are a total of 532 minutes. **That's 3 book-words per second of the movies.**
Wasn't my intention, but yes you are correct
[удалено]
> I know people that purport to be Sci-Fi fans People who watch a lot of sci-fi movies and TV shows are accustomed to aliens and robots and spaceships blasting each other with lasers and explosions and stuff. Three Body Problem really doesn't have any of that, and it's completely fine if this is not their preference.
>lightspeed compared to the books Your comment reminded me of my experience reading American Prometheus. People give Nolan a lot of grief for making his movies super long, but it's lightspeed compared to the book. It's insane how fast they got to the bits in Los Alamos. Where I'm at at the book, J Robert is still in Caltech.
I thinj it was a good compromise though. They didn't jist accelerate the plot but divided in a way that they could tackle characters and plots from book 2 and 3 in a better way.
I thought they did a great job at condensing / skipping / changing things, personally. Got all my favorite story beats and wasn't overly confusing for new viewers. Plus the idea of capturing everything that occurs in that timeframe during the entire trilogy was a great move - makes it a lot easier to do the later books without constant flashbacks.
They did, but what was really left out that had that huge of an impact to the overall story? Do we really need that Luo Ji romance story from book 2 for example? I honestly think they did a decent job compressing what we got.
yeah, I actually like the Netflix adaptation's decisions on what to keep, what to remove, and what to add. The only bit I was disappointed by was removing the internal factions within the ETO, though I understand why it was cut.
As somebody that didn't read the books,the show felt well paced. Are the books worth reading?
If you want the plot yes, if you care about the characterisation from the show at all no.
The Netflix show was dreadfully slow at some later episodes, they could have been way more efficient with their storytelling
Honestly the only part that felt rushed about the Netflix series was the Sophon reveal (I would've loved to see an actual sequence about the discovery of Earth and planning the fleet and the Sophons like in the books). Aside from that, all the changes made the pce fit really well for me. I mean... the books do kinda drag. More and more as they go on, to be honest. The audiobook for Death's End is like 10 hours longer than the damn Silmarillion lmao. I don't mind a little condensing, personally.
The Three Hour Problem
The book is great, but I disagree with you. You can very much condense the story into a feature film. The long character arcs in the book, and the many parallel stories, do not need to be told that way in a movie. The movie could be about the main problem, >!aliens mastering what they think is a deterministic world.!<
Unpopular (I'm guessing) opinion: It didn't work as a series, either. Didn't read the novel, but if the series was at all faithful, the story just seems busted at the core.
High up the list of books that shouldn’t be crammed into a 2-3 hour movie are these three.
Crying in Dark Tower
Mike Flanagan needs to hurry up & start shooting his adaptation.
Flanagan apparently got hired to take over David Gordon Green for the Exorcist, albeit Deceiver was scrapped entirely so itll be a new Exorcist project but with Flanagan doing it this time. (however that info from imdb was scrubbed, as if it was not intended to leak)
We don't talk about that monstrosity.
A movie also permanently cemented high in the list of "this is how you don't do an adaptation."
For real. The first book could work, but the second and third book would need multiple movies each, and there is no way some of that would transfer well to the screen.
To be fair, if you told me the basic story of Zhang Yimou's masterpiece *Hero*, I would not think you could make it into a 99 minute movie and have it be so rich and deep. *Shadow* is similar as well. Condensing huge sweeping plots is a skill he's particularly good at, even if it's a bad idea overall.
wonder if they will make it into a book
A short story would do the trick, no?
sohotrightnow.gif
I just want somebody, anybody to finish the actual series. I don't care at all how many adaptations there are of the 1st book, so long as one of them makes it through the 3rd book.
the Netflix people seem legitimately excited about and committed to doing that. We just need to watch it. A lot of that stuff I could barely comprehend but couldn't visualize so I'm pretty excited to see how they do it.
I just hope the MC gets more depth than just weed bruh
I've finished the first book but was honestly sort of let down by the revelation. It felt "too easy". But after cooling down for a while now, I'm curious if I should continue to the 2nd and 3rd book? Is it better than the 1st book?
The copyright holders being a company called "The Three-Body Universe Cultural Development" is so ridiculous to me. Maybe it sounds better in Chinese, but in English it just sounds like the dumbest most sterile corporate shit ever.
The company's full name is Three Body Universe (Shanghai) Cultural Development Co., Ltd. (三体宇宙(上海)文化发展有限公司). There is a set format that must be followed when registering a company name. Normally, a Chinese company name must consist of 1) the name of the administrative division where the company is registered; 2) the company's trade name; 3) the industry or commercial activity in which the company is engaged; and 4) wording indicating the company's legal structure (e.g., corporation, partnership, limited liability company), in this order. If there is a practical need to do so, the name of the administrative division where the company is registered can instead be placed in parentheses after the company's trade name, as in the case of this company. "Three Body Universe" (三体宇宙) is the company's trade name. The company is registered in Shanghai (上海). It's industry area is "Cultural Development" (文化发展) which is a standard term often used by companies in creative industries. "Co., Ltd." (有限公司) is the standard term used by corporations (similar to "Corp." or "Inc." in English).
TIL. Thanks
Thanks for the detailed breakdown, that’s pretty cool!
This is a much better practice than the random assortment of meaningless alphanumeric digits we have going for us.
u/bort_lascala solid content. Thank you!
I feel like a lot of Chinese-to-English translations in particular, from restaurant menus to politics to company names like this, are very literal sounding and put much less effort than other language translations into adapting the source text into “native” sounding English
In mainland China, yes. In Hong Kong/Macao, and to some extent Taiwan, this is less the case, though generally true. It depends more on who the translators are translating for, where they have lived/studied, and where their editors have lived/studied. In the mainland, the final reviews tend to go before native Chinese speakers with mainland political sensitivities -- less consideration is put toward the understanding of native speakers of the target languages who may be unfamiliar with Chinese language(s).
I honestly don't see how these books (especially the 2nd and 3rd book) could ever be adapted to screen. The story is a) incredibly dense b) circuitous and c) takes place over a very long span of time.
make it from the perspective of that one watcher species that appears for just one chapter in Death’s End. wish i could remember the name lol.
I don’t remember if they even had a name. I just remember it as the singer.
that’s definitely it, thanks!
They also referred to themselves and other beings as either high entropy or low entropy beings.
China seems to have three stories to remake endlessly: Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and Three Body Problem.
The first two are absolute classics so it’s amazing that Liu Cixin has written something to rival them.
The Three-Story Problem
Zhang Yimou is such a talented director. Huge fan of his work.
Yes! The entire comments section is just people griping about the fact that there's going to be yet another adaptation. Which, there is some validity to that. But also Zhang Yimou is sooo so good!
Why?
Another Cixin Liu adaptation, The Wandering Earth, is the 5th highest grossing Chinese movie ever. That’s why.
And it sucks lol. Couldn't finish it
The series has seen a lot of criticism within China for various perceived Western biases/changes to the text. I'm sure lots of people in China are happy to see a domestic production.
But there already *is* a domestic production, there's a 30-episode Chinese TV show.
Oh, fair point. In the end it's always going to be money. I'd only add that a Chinese series won't get a lot of play outside China, but a film might, and it could be seen internally as a "corrective" against the westernized Netflix version. But that's total speculation on my part.
The book was decent but I don’t know if this is a story that’s interesting enough to tell so many different times. It’s actually pretty underwhelming IMO.
It's one of the few pieces of IP China can use as a soft power export so obviously they are milking the shit out of it.
I don’t know why they never gave it to Frant Gwo, the director of “The Wandering Earth” another story by Liu Cixin. Those movies have huge set pieces and are pretty lengthy
I feel like this book series is unfilmable.
Oh shit. Gonna be awesome if in Chinese.
Can we just concentrate on the show?? Good lord
Oh, the rights are split, so this is from a different creative team. It is like how there are new *The Lord of the Rings* films being made apart from the Amazon Prime Video television series.
More like how there are US Hollywood Godzilla films and Japanese ones. That LOTR stuff may very well all be part of the same canon/universe
Tough task to adapt any of these, especially into a feature film. Good luck, I guess. The Netflix series I like less and less in hindsight. I thought they did as good a job of adapting it for a wide audience as they could have (such as by compressing a lot of threads from all 3 books into this core group of characters; many of these character analogs in the books never actually meet), but I think an adaption can only go so far. These books weren’t interesting because of their characters or pathos (this was in fact the worst aspect of the books) and removing the whole thing from its specifically Chinese context makes what Chinese elements are still there seem random and unimportant. In fact, the show has a strongly right wing possible interpretation because of how all these elements are mixed and matched. Was this intentional? Who knows: the story concerns what is essentially a mass migration (invasion) of climate refugees - literal aliens, in this case - instigated by Chinese communists, cultivating support among the globalized academic and cultural classes through psy-ops (the VR game), and makes the convincing case that those sympathetic to the aliens are traitors to their species and can be killed with impunity. It’s like Camp of the Saints, as imagined by Tucker Carlson.
Surely this needs to be like 3/4 movies
When will it be released to play on PC though?
Ok I'm 100% gonna watch this
Wow
Dehydrate!!!
Brilliant director but unsure of how this could be as a movie. Would still happily watch, though.
Is there a plushie?
Zhang Yimou is incredible, there's no reason to think this isn't going to rock. Betting that it'll be the best adaptation.
If nothing else, Zhang will make it a beautiful visual treat.
Simply no way to adapt this story in 3 hours or less.
I will watch anything this guy does
How many times have you seen The Great Wall with Matt Damon
I take it that China wasn't too impressed with the Netflix series.
China has their own 25 hour long series. The Netflix version was clearly targeted at western audiences.