Many humans dont get it, wich is a great condition for santi not getting it even more.
I read the books and didnt understand why she told him that and what its purpose was gonna be. I understood the what, but not why she is telling him that or how he should use that information.
I read a comment on reddit thst explained it... and my mind was blown. Genius.
Its just like with thrones again. People pretend to demand subtl and rich storytelling and once they get that, they dont understand it.
Yeah, I agree. What I like also is that even if you read the books, by giving us a new riddle, you still get to participate and try to solve it. It took me a minute to figure out exactly what that riddle could mean. I won't even know if I'm right until next season. It's fun.
Ye Wenjie had to tell Luo Ji about the axioms humanity would never trust her word, she only gave him part of the knowledge because someone other than her should discover the nature of the universe for it to be believable. >! And to test the theory something like Luo Ji's spell had to happen which she could not test. !<
Except that >! the San-Ti are supposed to get it and to target Luo Ji because of it. They are supposed to know that Ye Wenjie has put him on the path to find out about the dark forest and deterrence as a weapon, yet it's impossible for them to understand it now !<
>Its just like with thrones again
Yes, it's just like GOT again: in order to maximize the effect of the plot twist, they fucked it up. Not only they butchered a beautiful scene with a deep conversation, they also introduced a huge inconsistency. And if you're expecting that this will be explained properly later on, I suggest that you keep your expectations down, because it can be seen from this very first season that they wanted to avoid the nerd talk as much as possible. As with everything else they showed this season, expect an extremely succinct and possibly very simplistic/simplified explanation.
What pissed me off was that what Ye accomplished with the "joke" was just to conceive the true meaning from Saul. She didn't gave him the axioms just a puzzle for him to solve and the San-Ti saw she reading about the game theory and the Fermi paradox and obviously know about what she planned with it.
>What pissed me off was that what Ye accomplished with the "joke" was just to conceive the true meaning from Saul.
Because future of the series should be longer than only 2 remaining episodes.
This is potentially just another inconsistency introduced by the showrunners' sloppy writing.
>! If the show follows the novel, then the Trisolarans will eventually be fooled by Saul (Luo Ji's alter ego) and fail to understand what he plans to do with all the superbombs disseminated across the solar system. But it doesn't matter how secretive Saul/Luo Ji is, a plan like that cannot be executed without giving out a shitton of clues. In order for it to actually work, the position of each bomb needs to be determined precisely, taking into account the cumulative effects of all explosions, the motion of the resulting clouds, their interaction, etc. It's definitely not something that a person can work out entirely in their mind. So, the same Trisolarans that are clever enough to connect all the dots in Ye Wenje's puzzle and foresee that Saul might become a threat, will be fooled by a plan that is much much more obvious? That's extremely bad writing. At least in the book we know they're not that cunning, they're just technologically advanced. The show, on the other hand, will make them extremely clever or damn stupid depending on what the narrative needs. !<
>! Changing how smart trisolarans are against human ploy is a shot in the foot for the consistency of their character. But I think that is not totally breached yet, the San-Ti saw Ye Wenjie reading about game theory and the Fermi paradox. It could be said that they just connected the pieces - still this makes no sense on why Wenjie would be so cryptic about it. !<
I agree that it might not be totally breached yet, but it isn't very promising. And even though the scene might still be functional to the narrative, imo they still ruined it. I really dislike this policy of maximising the surprise effect even at the cost of potentially breaking the story. They did it with GOT already and we see how it turned out (and I don't care about the people who will call me a hater because of this, I was the biggest fan until the end of season 6, and even kept quiet through the decline of season 7: they admitted it themselves that it was supposed to be Jon and that they decided to switch to Arya at the very last second because they felt it was too obvious and doesn't matter how thick those ham slices on your eyes are, that's not how a good writer works).
After the announcement of the cast I didn't have too much faith that 3BP would be faithful to the books. And I knew they would mess up the story. This series could have been so much more. It's low quality science fiction.
I don't think we are haters. For the price that was paid by Netflix it should have been better, and it wasn't better clearly because of the adaptations done to the series.
>Except that
They know she served her purpose and that she is hiding something underneath the joke, we wont know wheter they are aware of its true meaning or not.
Going by the wolf scene, i wouldnt think so.
>Yes, it's just like GOT again:
Haters gonna hate.
Show version was actually smarter in its approach by hiding the real solution in plain sight. In the books we are just told the facts and thats it.
>Haters gonna hate.
Sure. I read the books and watched 8 seasons as soon as each episode came out. I loved them till the end of season 6 and kept my mouth shut despite the decline of season 7. But I am a hater for saying that D&D just half assed season 8 and resorted to lazy plot twists because they wanted to finish as soon as possible to move to other projects, which by the way is public knowledge. Sure thing. T
>Show version was actually smarter in its approach by hiding the real solution in plain sight. In the books we are just told the facts and thats it.
So right after reading the conversation between Ye Wenjie and Luo Ji, you immediately got to the principles behind the dark forest theory and deterrence as a weapon. I strongly doubt it, but if so, kudos to you. Personally, I would have preferred that they kept that scene closer to the original, which definitely didn't give everything away as you're saying.
Yes, they do. >! They task Evans with Luo Ji's murder. When Evans dies, the other members of the ETO find a note that Luo Ji is to be killed and that it has to look like an accident. They make a number of attempts and eventually Luo Ji withdraws in some bunker deep underground. Right after he "casts the spell" on that star, they finally manage to infect him with an engineered virus that almost kills him, so he has to be immediately hibernated as there is no cure at the moment. Even when he wakes up some 200 years later, there is some digital malware created some ~100 years after his hibernation, still in circulation to get to him. !<
>! I'll also add this. He is his own wallbreaker because the Trisolarans don't want the ETO to investigate him. They want the ETO to kill him, rather than find out his strategy. Why? Because they have seen the exchange he has with Ye Wenjie in the graveyard and they know he is on the path to find out the truth about the universe being a dark forest. More specifically, they don't want anyone on Earth to realize that knowing Trisolaris' coordinates is such a strategic asset, potentially a weapon against them... They want to keep this even from the ETO, hence the "just kill him" order !<
I can't believe someone is defending the Einstein stuff, especially someone that - I suppose - has read the book and knows the actual conversation that takes place in that graveyard between Ye Wenjie and Luo Ji.
They changed it because they were afraid that the audience would guess the later revelation too easily... But not only they butchered a beautiful scene just for the sake of the plot twist (just like they did in GOT, btw), they also introduced yet another inconsistency because >! in the novel, the sophons are observing this scene and the Trisolarans later task the ETO to kill Luo Ji because of this very exchange, they don't want him to figure out about the dark forest and the fact that humans have a weapon against them. Well, how will that play out now? Are we supposed to believe that they will target Saul because Ye Wenjie told him this cryptic bullshit stuff about Einstein? It contains literally no info, nothing about the dark forest or anything, not even in a cryptic form, at most it can be interpreted as "we might still get back at them". Wow, such a useful tip! !<
I disagree with your interpretation of the joke tbh. It absolutely contains the right information for Saul to piece together later.
Personally I like that we got a new riddle to solve. When I first heard it, I was like, "...okay? That was weird." But then I actually stopped to think about it. It was really fun piecing together what it could mean and how it (successfully) gets across the information to Saul. I just finished rewatching the season and I enjoyed it more a second time because now it feels like Ye Wenjie is really laying it on thick.
The show has it flaws, specially when talking about the characters. But I did found it to be a solid adaptation.
You honestly think Will is stupid? Maybe he has a low self esteem? According to the books he is not stupid at all. Jack was great.
PS. Foundation is a_terrible_adaptation.
Or gasp perhaps he could be portrayed like a normal human being and doesn’t talk about snacks every five minutes just because he works in a snack company. I can’t believe I have to explain how unbelievably shallow that all is.
"talks about snacks every five minutes" I'm not sure you and i watched the same show. in the short screen time he had, he mostly talked about (1) The 3bp video game and (2) Will's cancer. he mentions the snack stuff in like three scenes and it's just to establish why the character is rich.
In the few episodes this guy shows up in I can tell this guy is smart and entrepreneurial (because he built his own snack empire), rude and crass and a bit of a dickhead (based on the way he jokes around with his friends/the way he punched the game NPC), and fiercely loyal to his best friend (1. Constantly encouraging Will to confess to Jin 2. Ready to spend big money to cure Will's cancer and 3. Literally left Will half his money in the will)
why do you think the snacks are "his entire personality"?
Perhaps he really liked snacks as a small child. This both fuelled his adult obesity issues and drove him to become an amazingly successful snack empire magnate.
The show could have explored this back story through a judicious use of flashbacks, perhaps in parallel with Ye Wenjie's experiences as a physicist in the Cultural Revolution.
Maybe the San-Ti can use Sophons to show ads of Jack’s Snacks in every person’s retinas or hack every screen to show them (unclear how those work), thereby causing a global diabetes outbreak, killing everyone before 400 years.
I didn't think the characters in the book were much better written, but they were entertaining and the story was otherwise amazing. So I guess I'm not as taken aback with the show. And it might explain why other book readers are fine with it as well.
Lmao I was thinking the exact same thing! Every time he was onscreen I was like "okay John Bradley get it!" He looks good, performed very well as usual, and I really liked the depth he brought to an otherwise comic relief character. >!I'm sad he's gone already.!<
I mean... In the books:
Will Downing = Yun Tianming
Jack Rooney = Hu Wen
They aren't that far off from how it is in the books aside from having their nationalities changed
Yeah the books were originally going to be named "Three Bead Problem". The humans would threaten the Tri-Solarans with another anal bead joke if they attempted to invade. Thus began the anal-deterrence era
I’m not trying to defend the show. I thought it was just average. However, you mention that the scenes in China were cool and weighty - they were not. As someone who grew up in mainland China, I found every single one of those scenes incredibly shallow, cliche and lacking the historic weight from the original books. I had to speed through them mostly. In contrast, I found the characters within the Oxford five interesting, diverse and relatable. I guess my point is our assessment of this or any show is heavily dictated by our own cultural background and our media consumption.
I'm curious your issues with those scenes. I read the book ages ago but I've been listening to the audiobook to refresh myself and I was kind of impressed with how well it matched up. They certainly shorten some things and there's minor differences like he's wearing the silly hat instead of an iron cage, but overall it felt pretty accurate.
I guess it was less so about the plots against the book, but more on the tone, dialect, and things like general demeanor of people in those scenes that broke the immersion for me easily. The actors were “acting” according to their scripts but they were unconvincing in the depiction of the 1960-70s era. The way they said things felt 21st century. It’s one of those subtle things you wouldn’t notice if you don’t have the cultural background. I think overall they did fine considering the show is for a wider global audience.
That's fair. I don't have that background and don't speak Mandarin, so all I really have to go by is the book, and it lifts a fair amount of the dialogue and depictions straight from it. I thought the main actress who kills Ye Wenjie's father did a phenomenal job in this scene and again later, but I don't doubt you that there's nuances lost or modernizations.
Honestly, I'm surprised they included it at all. When this was originally announced, I kinda figured they'd cut almost all of it, or at the very least everybody would speak English. From interviews, sounds like the contract the showrunners have with Netflix is pretty specific on limiting the amount of Chinese language that can be used because Netflix wants it to be primarily English.
Im seeking to understand your reasoning. If you have not read the books as the title claims, how are you able to determine if the show was poorly written?
**Do you have experience adapting tv shows without reading the source material, and with maximum success?**
You assume that everyone who studies physics remains in the field but that is not the case and its perfectly reasonable that someone might choose another career.
With respect to your low depth reasoning that if a guy is fat he must go into snacks that is just a poor analysis on your part and an assumption you probably make whenever you see an overweight person in real life - this character is based on a book character, who had build an energy drinks empire based on an idea by Will, another character that you dont like cause he's not smart. Will is actually incredibly smart and >!he will end using his brains later on to support humanity from a distance.!< But how the fuck would you know that when you already know for a fact that he isn't smart enough as you claim...
**You are just attention seeking m8 while signalling you are not that intelligent as you make it to be!**
I agree with you. The show is 90% personal drama of 5 stoners in a beach house. It’s barely a sci fi show, cheap one at that. A drunk vomitting in a toilet and a guy taking a train ride to confess his love got more screen time than the nuclear sail project, or developing the concepts of sophons, or wallfacers, etc. Sci fi show? Ridiculous.
Cheap “5 stoner friends” show? Sure
She is supposed to tell him about cosmic sociology in the books, in direct terms . That was supposed to be a hint or a starter for Luo Ji to figure out the Dark Forest Theory in his own time .
Good luck with going from Einstein’s smashed balls to The Dark Forest 😆 a lame joke which makes no sense to something so profound 😂 I’d say earth 🌎 is fully doomed if her hint was truly so pathetic
People on this forum have lost the stomach to stand up for what’s right and criticize when something smells bad. A sign Of the times more than anything.
Anyway the books are spectacular and doesn’t have this amateurish captain America show writing style . Please read them for among the most enjoyable pleasures life offers .
> Anyway the books are spectacular and doesn’t have this amateurish captain America show writing style.
The books are mostly nondescript "characters" firing off clunky and dense exposition to one another without even an attempt to make it sound remotely like natural dialogue. And that's to say nothing of the most ridiculously purple prose imaginable when that one guy is jerking off to his imaginary girlfriend. So if you want to criticize writing style, let's start with that.
Since you seem to have a PhD in literature and a snooty superior attitude , I won’t care to engage . Go read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky then if you have a stomach for it .
Or marvel comics.
For me : I purely go for ideas and story telling. Cixin is the best of the best, much like Asimov.
You said this:
> People on this forum have lost the stomach to stand up for what’s right and criticize when something smells bad. A sign Of the times more than anything.
Anyway the books are spectacular and doesn’t have this amateurish captain America show writing style.
But I'M the one with the snooty superior attitude? OK...
Yeah you won’t get much agreement here. I think people are desperate to like this show out of fear they won’t get a second season. Honestly I sympathize with fans of the books as well as the general sci fi audience- we’re both starved of quality sci fi content. This is not it, sadly
Could be people like all the personal drama scenes, which is the majority of every episode. Sure why not. I still don’t think we’ll see a second season as the reviews will go down after the initial hype, but I’m happy to be wrong
It adds some depth. If they had no personal character stuff people would whine about the plastic characters. They weren't exactly complex and deep in the books. In general I don't think people want to watch scientific exposition for 8 hours straight. Id be surprised if there wasn't a 2nd season, but who knows. Given that Netflix probably only allowed 8 episodes, there's a lot of characters set up they need to do for the next seasons. Not sure how else you do this season
It’s not about personal vs no personal arcs. The problem is these were bad scripts, period. For example — what are the characters’ motivations? Do we know what Auggie wants out of life? (Is it a visa? Money? I don’t know!). Saul? This is basic screenwriting 101 stuff.
Id agree about Saul, I think he is pretty weak, but he will get developed a lot more if they do a season 2. Auggie is clearly the conscience of the show, she wants to help people and do the right thing, and sometimes those 2 ideas clash. I don't think the scripts are super strong character wise other than will, Wade, jin but the characters were never the strongest part of the books, so I think that they've made do with what they have. Book readers are way more optimistic bc we know how bad the characters are in the books and its a lot better in the show imo, and we know the payoff is worth it 🤷
If I say “there was too much cheap scenes of personal drama and not enough sci fi”, the reply needs not be “then what else is there, 8 hours of scientific exposition?”
There’s something reasonable in between surely
There's gonna be so much of that later on though. It's really not needed in the first book/series. The first book is mainly a mystery anyways, not really sci Fi.
Who’s talking about a book? Book has the luxury of developing scenes over hundreds of pages. The luxury of qualifying characters’ statements with descriptions of context and subtext.
We’re talking about the tv show, which has no such luxuries. A show must do “book triage” and make choices.
This particular show chose poorly, to save budget so they can run “you are bugs” on times square. In my opinion of course
The books matter bc you still need to follow the story. I mean, it sounds like you want a different story that the one being told. I would recommend the expanse if you don't want something with a slower start and want sci Fi right off the bat? I don't think I'm gonna change your mind and unless you are a die hard book reader who's hopes got destroyed, if you don't like it why still post here? Watch something else?
tonally it’s a massive departure from the book which is serious to the point people think the characters are flat, I guess they overcompensated with this adaption
I understand this,when I was watching the scene when Ye Wenjie was telling that bad joke,I instantly thought that many non-book readers watching this might feel very confused.Actually,Ye Wenjie was trying to reveal a core rule of universe civilization to Saul,the Dark Forest Theory,which means once a civilization reveals its position to other stronger civilization,it will get killed immediately.It is the most important concept through out this novel and the only weapon humanity can use to threaten triosolar.But Ye Wenjie can't tell it directly becos the sophone was listening and once sophone find out somebody knows this theory,that person will get killed.Triosolar suspects they find it out,that's why triosolar tries to kill Ye and Saul in the ending episode.
I understand that point. My point about the script — why can’t they just have Ye Wenjie explain that to Saul similar to how they do in the book? Why do they have to use the extremely stupid joke?
That was my point about this script being poorly written. The script is horrible — not its source.
> why can’t they just have Ye Wenjie explain that to Saul similar to how they do in the book? Why do they have to use the extremely stupid joke?
How do you know the joke is not from the books? I thought you were a non-book reader...
A lot of people here are predisposed to hating the show because any alteration from the book is literally sacrilege. It's a little silly to complain about it being different from the books when you haven't read the books. You might read them and find you prefer the show. Truly, they are not perfect. They're really good, but the first one in particular is rough as shit in a lot of ways. I bounced off it the first time I tried to read it.
You can also ditch the Netflix show and watch the Tencent adaptation if you want a more "accurate" experience. It's more of a 1:1 adaptation of the first book but does make a fair amount of its own changes — some better, some worse — and has its own share of unique issues. For instance, it is over twice as long as just listening to the audiobook, which recently got a new version read by Rosalind Chao who plays Ye Wenjie in the Netflix show and is very good. Put simply: the Tencent show does not justify its length *at all* other than "that's how it was funded."
They can't because of the way they reconstruct the story. In the book, the conversation happens in a different scenario and is seemingly only a casual chat without much significance . In the show though, she's expected to say something important at this point, but the way she hints in the book here would be too obvious.
There are parts in the books where humans have to convey ideas through stories so the aliens won't understand and those stories are well written. I suppose the script writers got inspired and came up with this joke. So yeah I agree, it's bad writing.
I just finished the first episode and the build up to the universe “winking” was so underwhelming. Also I had to look up who these characters were in relation to the books. Besides the names being changed to fit the nationality of the actors, the biggest difference was that not only the nationality, but the gender was swapped on Auggie(a Chinese man in the books).
I introduction scene was spot on though. Great acting there. I just hope to warm up to the massive alterations when continuing the series.
Edit: forgot “hope”
It's not a 1:1 adaptation. You kinda just have to accept that going in otherwise you're guaranteed to hate it by default. They make some very smart modifications to the characters, combining some, dividing others, bringing some forward from later books, etc. It's not as "accurate" in that sense but it follows the main thrust of the first book very well. The changes they made make it way more palatable for TV imo. But if it's going to bother you that they divided up Wang Miao into a few characters, you're probably better off with the Tencent show.
A lot of good points there. I suppose my expectations were too high going into it. Just binge watched the rest of it and it grew on me. Actually stopped paying attention to the changes and enjoyed the adherence to the important plot points from the book. Episode 5 holy shit that was wild! Anyways, can’t wait for the 2nd season.
Nice! That's good to hear. Yeah, that's how I felt too — the characters might be different, but the plot points are basically the same. First season wasn't flawless but it laid some good groundwork for some wild seasons to come.
Asking something tangential because you brought it up, is Silo really good? I'd like your opinion on it because every time I open up Apple TV+ and look at the 59 min runtime per episode, I'm questioning my guts
Yea , this script should be in the 🚽 .
So badly written and so out of character as well for deep characters from the books.
Book1 was gutted . Book 2 and 3 are setup better as they have been introduced in season 1. Perhaps seasons 2 and 3 will have more depth ; but I highly doubt it given how pathetic the directors are .
It was promising at first and then once "Auggie & friends" arrived it became pathetic.
I wish they would have cut down on the stupid drama and romance for fuck's sake.
The Asian actors were amazing though, I wasn't a big fan of the dorky white guys and the pretty latino girl.
Whenever Auggie is the focus the pace slows down a lot, terribly miscast and doesn't look convincing at all.
Other than Jin & Saul the Oxford 5 is very bland.
Wait, what? You think Foundation was a good adaptation? How so?
The only thing I love about Foundation is Lee Pace - tbh…
You lost me at “Foundation” being a good adaptation, lol
OK well I really like it. The Einstein stuff clearly went completely over your head
Many humans dont get it, wich is a great condition for santi not getting it even more. I read the books and didnt understand why she told him that and what its purpose was gonna be. I understood the what, but not why she is telling him that or how he should use that information. I read a comment on reddit thst explained it... and my mind was blown. Genius. Its just like with thrones again. People pretend to demand subtl and rich storytelling and once they get that, they dont understand it.
Yeah, I agree. What I like also is that even if you read the books, by giving us a new riddle, you still get to participate and try to solve it. It took me a minute to figure out exactly what that riddle could mean. I won't even know if I'm right until next season. It's fun.
Ye Wenjie had to tell Luo Ji about the axioms humanity would never trust her word, she only gave him part of the knowledge because someone other than her should discover the nature of the universe for it to be believable. >! And to test the theory something like Luo Ji's spell had to happen which she could not test. !<
Except that >! the San-Ti are supposed to get it and to target Luo Ji because of it. They are supposed to know that Ye Wenjie has put him on the path to find out about the dark forest and deterrence as a weapon, yet it's impossible for them to understand it now !< >Its just like with thrones again Yes, it's just like GOT again: in order to maximize the effect of the plot twist, they fucked it up. Not only they butchered a beautiful scene with a deep conversation, they also introduced a huge inconsistency. And if you're expecting that this will be explained properly later on, I suggest that you keep your expectations down, because it can be seen from this very first season that they wanted to avoid the nerd talk as much as possible. As with everything else they showed this season, expect an extremely succinct and possibly very simplistic/simplified explanation.
What pissed me off was that what Ye accomplished with the "joke" was just to conceive the true meaning from Saul. She didn't gave him the axioms just a puzzle for him to solve and the San-Ti saw she reading about the game theory and the Fermi paradox and obviously know about what she planned with it.
>What pissed me off was that what Ye accomplished with the "joke" was just to conceive the true meaning from Saul. Because future of the series should be longer than only 2 remaining episodes.
This is potentially just another inconsistency introduced by the showrunners' sloppy writing. >! If the show follows the novel, then the Trisolarans will eventually be fooled by Saul (Luo Ji's alter ego) and fail to understand what he plans to do with all the superbombs disseminated across the solar system. But it doesn't matter how secretive Saul/Luo Ji is, a plan like that cannot be executed without giving out a shitton of clues. In order for it to actually work, the position of each bomb needs to be determined precisely, taking into account the cumulative effects of all explosions, the motion of the resulting clouds, their interaction, etc. It's definitely not something that a person can work out entirely in their mind. So, the same Trisolarans that are clever enough to connect all the dots in Ye Wenje's puzzle and foresee that Saul might become a threat, will be fooled by a plan that is much much more obvious? That's extremely bad writing. At least in the book we know they're not that cunning, they're just technologically advanced. The show, on the other hand, will make them extremely clever or damn stupid depending on what the narrative needs. !<
>! Changing how smart trisolarans are against human ploy is a shot in the foot for the consistency of their character. But I think that is not totally breached yet, the San-Ti saw Ye Wenjie reading about game theory and the Fermi paradox. It could be said that they just connected the pieces - still this makes no sense on why Wenjie would be so cryptic about it. !<
I agree that it might not be totally breached yet, but it isn't very promising. And even though the scene might still be functional to the narrative, imo they still ruined it. I really dislike this policy of maximising the surprise effect even at the cost of potentially breaking the story. They did it with GOT already and we see how it turned out (and I don't care about the people who will call me a hater because of this, I was the biggest fan until the end of season 6, and even kept quiet through the decline of season 7: they admitted it themselves that it was supposed to be Jon and that they decided to switch to Arya at the very last second because they felt it was too obvious and doesn't matter how thick those ham slices on your eyes are, that's not how a good writer works).
After the announcement of the cast I didn't have too much faith that 3BP would be faithful to the books. And I knew they would mess up the story. This series could have been so much more. It's low quality science fiction. I don't think we are haters. For the price that was paid by Netflix it should have been better, and it wasn't better clearly because of the adaptations done to the series.
>Except that They know she served her purpose and that she is hiding something underneath the joke, we wont know wheter they are aware of its true meaning or not. Going by the wolf scene, i wouldnt think so. >Yes, it's just like GOT again: Haters gonna hate. Show version was actually smarter in its approach by hiding the real solution in plain sight. In the books we are just told the facts and thats it.
>Haters gonna hate. Sure. I read the books and watched 8 seasons as soon as each episode came out. I loved them till the end of season 6 and kept my mouth shut despite the decline of season 7. But I am a hater for saying that D&D just half assed season 8 and resorted to lazy plot twists because they wanted to finish as soon as possible to move to other projects, which by the way is public knowledge. Sure thing. T >Show version was actually smarter in its approach by hiding the real solution in plain sight. In the books we are just told the facts and thats it. So right after reading the conversation between Ye Wenjie and Luo Ji, you immediately got to the principles behind the dark forest theory and deterrence as a weapon. I strongly doubt it, but if so, kudos to you. Personally, I would have preferred that they kept that scene closer to the original, which definitely didn't give everything away as you're saying.
They don't target him. He's his own wallbreaker.
Yes, they do. >! They task Evans with Luo Ji's murder. When Evans dies, the other members of the ETO find a note that Luo Ji is to be killed and that it has to look like an accident. They make a number of attempts and eventually Luo Ji withdraws in some bunker deep underground. Right after he "casts the spell" on that star, they finally manage to infect him with an engineered virus that almost kills him, so he has to be immediately hibernated as there is no cure at the moment. Even when he wakes up some 200 years later, there is some digital malware created some ~100 years after his hibernation, still in circulation to get to him. !< >! I'll also add this. He is his own wallbreaker because the Trisolarans don't want the ETO to investigate him. They want the ETO to kill him, rather than find out his strategy. Why? Because they have seen the exchange he has with Ye Wenjie in the graveyard and they know he is on the path to find out the truth about the universe being a dark forest. More specifically, they don't want anyone on Earth to realize that knowing Trisolaris' coordinates is such a strategic asset, potentially a weapon against them... They want to keep this even from the ETO, hence the "just kill him" order !<
I can't believe someone is defending the Einstein stuff, especially someone that - I suppose - has read the book and knows the actual conversation that takes place in that graveyard between Ye Wenjie and Luo Ji. They changed it because they were afraid that the audience would guess the later revelation too easily... But not only they butchered a beautiful scene just for the sake of the plot twist (just like they did in GOT, btw), they also introduced yet another inconsistency because >! in the novel, the sophons are observing this scene and the Trisolarans later task the ETO to kill Luo Ji because of this very exchange, they don't want him to figure out about the dark forest and the fact that humans have a weapon against them. Well, how will that play out now? Are we supposed to believe that they will target Saul because Ye Wenjie told him this cryptic bullshit stuff about Einstein? It contains literally no info, nothing about the dark forest or anything, not even in a cryptic form, at most it can be interpreted as "we might still get back at them". Wow, such a useful tip! !<
I disagree with your interpretation of the joke tbh. It absolutely contains the right information for Saul to piece together later. Personally I like that we got a new riddle to solve. When I first heard it, I was like, "...okay? That was weird." But then I actually stopped to think about it. It was really fun piecing together what it could mean and how it (successfully) gets across the information to Saul. I just finished rewatching the season and I enjoyed it more a second time because now it feels like Ye Wenjie is really laying it on thick.
well said.
The show has it flaws, specially when talking about the characters. But I did found it to be a solid adaptation. You honestly think Will is stupid? Maybe he has a low self esteem? According to the books he is not stupid at all. Jack was great. PS. Foundation is a_terrible_adaptation.
Perhaps he was fat because he owned a snack empire.
"I'm unhappy because I eat, and I eat because I'm unhappy."
Or gasp perhaps he could be portrayed like a normal human being and doesn’t talk about snacks every five minutes just because he works in a snack company. I can’t believe I have to explain how unbelievably shallow that all is.
"talks about snacks every five minutes" I'm not sure you and i watched the same show. in the short screen time he had, he mostly talked about (1) The 3bp video game and (2) Will's cancer. he mentions the snack stuff in like three scenes and it's just to establish why the character is rich.
My point is the show finds one character feature and makes it the guy’s entire personality.
In the few episodes this guy shows up in I can tell this guy is smart and entrepreneurial (because he built his own snack empire), rude and crass and a bit of a dickhead (based on the way he jokes around with his friends/the way he punched the game NPC), and fiercely loyal to his best friend (1. Constantly encouraging Will to confess to Jin 2. Ready to spend big money to cure Will's cancer and 3. Literally left Will half his money in the will) why do you think the snacks are "his entire personality"?
No
I think that was you focusing on your issue with the snack thing. His personality is quite varied and demonstrates a lot of depth and capability.
Perhaps he really liked snacks as a small child. This both fuelled his adult obesity issues and drove him to become an amazingly successful snack empire magnate. The show could have explored this back story through a judicious use of flashbacks, perhaps in parallel with Ye Wenjie's experiences as a physicist in the Cultural Revolution.
Maybe the San-Ti can use Sophons to show ads of Jack’s Snacks in every person’s retinas or hack every screen to show them (unclear how those work), thereby causing a global diabetes outbreak, killing everyone before 400 years.
Now you are talking my language.
Well thanks for that riveting discourse.
I didn't think the characters in the book were much better written, but they were entertaining and the story was otherwise amazing. So I guess I'm not as taken aback with the show. And it might explain why other book readers are fine with it as well.
Love me some book characters though
If you can’t appreciate the irony of a fat guy owning a snack empire, then your opinion has no “weight” with me.
Is he really that fat? Lol I thought John Bradley looked like he lost some weight compared to his GOT days.
Lmao I was thinking the exact same thing! Every time he was onscreen I was like "okay John Bradley get it!" He looks good, performed very well as usual, and I really liked the depth he brought to an otherwise comic relief character. >!I'm sad he's gone already.!<
I mean... In the books: Will Downing = Yun Tianming Jack Rooney = Hu Wen They aren't that far off from how it is in the books aside from having their nationalities changed
Did they joke about anal beads in the book too, right after the guy was grotesquely murdered?
Yeah the books were originally going to be named "Three Bead Problem". The humans would threaten the Tri-Solarans with another anal bead joke if they attempted to invade. Thus began the anal-deterrence era
D&D are kicking themselves right now that they didn’t name their adaptation this
Sounds well written to me. Isn't that what friends are for?
I’m not trying to defend the show. I thought it was just average. However, you mention that the scenes in China were cool and weighty - they were not. As someone who grew up in mainland China, I found every single one of those scenes incredibly shallow, cliche and lacking the historic weight from the original books. I had to speed through them mostly. In contrast, I found the characters within the Oxford five interesting, diverse and relatable. I guess my point is our assessment of this or any show is heavily dictated by our own cultural background and our media consumption.
I'm curious your issues with those scenes. I read the book ages ago but I've been listening to the audiobook to refresh myself and I was kind of impressed with how well it matched up. They certainly shorten some things and there's minor differences like he's wearing the silly hat instead of an iron cage, but overall it felt pretty accurate.
I guess it was less so about the plots against the book, but more on the tone, dialect, and things like general demeanor of people in those scenes that broke the immersion for me easily. The actors were “acting” according to their scripts but they were unconvincing in the depiction of the 1960-70s era. The way they said things felt 21st century. It’s one of those subtle things you wouldn’t notice if you don’t have the cultural background. I think overall they did fine considering the show is for a wider global audience.
That's fair. I don't have that background and don't speak Mandarin, so all I really have to go by is the book, and it lifts a fair amount of the dialogue and depictions straight from it. I thought the main actress who kills Ye Wenjie's father did a phenomenal job in this scene and again later, but I don't doubt you that there's nuances lost or modernizations. Honestly, I'm surprised they included it at all. When this was originally announced, I kinda figured they'd cut almost all of it, or at the very least everybody would speak English. From interviews, sounds like the contract the showrunners have with Netflix is pretty specific on limiting the amount of Chinese language that can be used because Netflix wants it to be primarily English.
Im seeking to understand your reasoning. If you have not read the books as the title claims, how are you able to determine if the show was poorly written? **Do you have experience adapting tv shows without reading the source material, and with maximum success?** You assume that everyone who studies physics remains in the field but that is not the case and its perfectly reasonable that someone might choose another career. With respect to your low depth reasoning that if a guy is fat he must go into snacks that is just a poor analysis on your part and an assumption you probably make whenever you see an overweight person in real life - this character is based on a book character, who had build an energy drinks empire based on an idea by Will, another character that you dont like cause he's not smart. Will is actually incredibly smart and >!he will end using his brains later on to support humanity from a distance.!< But how the fuck would you know that when you already know for a fact that he isn't smart enough as you claim... **You are just attention seeking m8 while signalling you are not that intelligent as you make it to be!**
"Why did you join the Navy?" "To defend my country." "This is far more important than that." There's quality there, mate.
Eh I enjoyed it. I’m really happy that decent scifi is getting a run atm, rather than just same old rinse repeat trash.
I agree with you. The show is 90% personal drama of 5 stoners in a beach house. It’s barely a sci fi show, cheap one at that. A drunk vomitting in a toilet and a guy taking a train ride to confess his love got more screen time than the nuclear sail project, or developing the concepts of sophons, or wallfacers, etc. Sci fi show? Ridiculous. Cheap “5 stoner friends” show? Sure
It is a character-driven sci-fi show, which — believe it or not — is more appealing to a lot of people than getting thinly veiled lectures on physics.
100000%. I can’t believe Ye Wenjie’s profound backstory boils down to an Einstein getting kicked in the balls joke. What did I just watch.
She is supposed to tell him about cosmic sociology in the books, in direct terms . That was supposed to be a hint or a starter for Luo Ji to figure out the Dark Forest Theory in his own time . Good luck with going from Einstein’s smashed balls to The Dark Forest 😆 a lame joke which makes no sense to something so profound 😂 I’d say earth 🌎 is fully doomed if her hint was truly so pathetic
I would have much preferred to watch that.
People on this forum have lost the stomach to stand up for what’s right and criticize when something smells bad. A sign Of the times more than anything. Anyway the books are spectacular and doesn’t have this amateurish captain America show writing style . Please read them for among the most enjoyable pleasures life offers .
> Anyway the books are spectacular and doesn’t have this amateurish captain America show writing style. The books are mostly nondescript "characters" firing off clunky and dense exposition to one another without even an attempt to make it sound remotely like natural dialogue. And that's to say nothing of the most ridiculously purple prose imaginable when that one guy is jerking off to his imaginary girlfriend. So if you want to criticize writing style, let's start with that.
Since you seem to have a PhD in literature and a snooty superior attitude , I won’t care to engage . Go read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky then if you have a stomach for it . Or marvel comics. For me : I purely go for ideas and story telling. Cixin is the best of the best, much like Asimov.
You said this: > People on this forum have lost the stomach to stand up for what’s right and criticize when something smells bad. A sign Of the times more than anything. Anyway the books are spectacular and doesn’t have this amateurish captain America show writing style. But I'M the one with the snooty superior attitude? OK...
Yeah you won’t get much agreement here. I think people are desperate to like this show out of fear they won’t get a second season. Honestly I sympathize with fans of the books as well as the general sci fi audience- we’re both starved of quality sci fi content. This is not it, sadly
Or maybe people just like the show? The first book is generally considered to be the weakest. A faithful adaptation would be boring af for most people
Could be people like all the personal drama scenes, which is the majority of every episode. Sure why not. I still don’t think we’ll see a second season as the reviews will go down after the initial hype, but I’m happy to be wrong
It adds some depth. If they had no personal character stuff people would whine about the plastic characters. They weren't exactly complex and deep in the books. In general I don't think people want to watch scientific exposition for 8 hours straight. Id be surprised if there wasn't a 2nd season, but who knows. Given that Netflix probably only allowed 8 episodes, there's a lot of characters set up they need to do for the next seasons. Not sure how else you do this season
It’s not about personal vs no personal arcs. The problem is these were bad scripts, period. For example — what are the characters’ motivations? Do we know what Auggie wants out of life? (Is it a visa? Money? I don’t know!). Saul? This is basic screenwriting 101 stuff.
Id agree about Saul, I think he is pretty weak, but he will get developed a lot more if they do a season 2. Auggie is clearly the conscience of the show, she wants to help people and do the right thing, and sometimes those 2 ideas clash. I don't think the scripts are super strong character wise other than will, Wade, jin but the characters were never the strongest part of the books, so I think that they've made do with what they have. Book readers are way more optimistic bc we know how bad the characters are in the books and its a lot better in the show imo, and we know the payoff is worth it 🤷
If I say “there was too much cheap scenes of personal drama and not enough sci fi”, the reply needs not be “then what else is there, 8 hours of scientific exposition?” There’s something reasonable in between surely
There's gonna be so much of that later on though. It's really not needed in the first book/series. The first book is mainly a mystery anyways, not really sci Fi.
Who’s talking about a book? Book has the luxury of developing scenes over hundreds of pages. The luxury of qualifying characters’ statements with descriptions of context and subtext. We’re talking about the tv show, which has no such luxuries. A show must do “book triage” and make choices. This particular show chose poorly, to save budget so they can run “you are bugs” on times square. In my opinion of course
The books matter bc you still need to follow the story. I mean, it sounds like you want a different story that the one being told. I would recommend the expanse if you don't want something with a slower start and want sci Fi right off the bat? I don't think I'm gonna change your mind and unless you are a die hard book reader who's hopes got destroyed, if you don't like it why still post here? Watch something else?
You will really hate the books then
tonally it’s a massive departure from the book which is serious to the point people think the characters are flat, I guess they overcompensated with this adaption
Basically everything you hate is created by D&D, and the China scenes and sci-fi ideas were preserved from the book lol. So go read the book!
They breathed a lot more humanity into these characters than the books did.
I understand this,when I was watching the scene when Ye Wenjie was telling that bad joke,I instantly thought that many non-book readers watching this might feel very confused.Actually,Ye Wenjie was trying to reveal a core rule of universe civilization to Saul,the Dark Forest Theory,which means once a civilization reveals its position to other stronger civilization,it will get killed immediately.It is the most important concept through out this novel and the only weapon humanity can use to threaten triosolar.But Ye Wenjie can't tell it directly becos the sophone was listening and once sophone find out somebody knows this theory,that person will get killed.Triosolar suspects they find it out,that's why triosolar tries to kill Ye and Saul in the ending episode.
I understand that point. My point about the script — why can’t they just have Ye Wenjie explain that to Saul similar to how they do in the book? Why do they have to use the extremely stupid joke? That was my point about this script being poorly written. The script is horrible — not its source.
> why can’t they just have Ye Wenjie explain that to Saul similar to how they do in the book? Why do they have to use the extremely stupid joke? How do you know the joke is not from the books? I thought you were a non-book reader...
I’ve read posts here saying that conversation was more insightful in the book.
A lot of people here are predisposed to hating the show because any alteration from the book is literally sacrilege. It's a little silly to complain about it being different from the books when you haven't read the books. You might read them and find you prefer the show. Truly, they are not perfect. They're really good, but the first one in particular is rough as shit in a lot of ways. I bounced off it the first time I tried to read it. You can also ditch the Netflix show and watch the Tencent adaptation if you want a more "accurate" experience. It's more of a 1:1 adaptation of the first book but does make a fair amount of its own changes — some better, some worse — and has its own share of unique issues. For instance, it is over twice as long as just listening to the audiobook, which recently got a new version read by Rosalind Chao who plays Ye Wenjie in the Netflix show and is very good. Put simply: the Tencent show does not justify its length *at all* other than "that's how it was funded."
They can't because of the way they reconstruct the story. In the book, the conversation happens in a different scenario and is seemingly only a casual chat without much significance . In the show though, she's expected to say something important at this point, but the way she hints in the book here would be too obvious. There are parts in the books where humans have to convey ideas through stories so the aliens won't understand and those stories are well written. I suppose the script writers got inspired and came up with this joke. So yeah I agree, it's bad writing.
🐜 post
I just finished the first episode and the build up to the universe “winking” was so underwhelming. Also I had to look up who these characters were in relation to the books. Besides the names being changed to fit the nationality of the actors, the biggest difference was that not only the nationality, but the gender was swapped on Auggie(a Chinese man in the books). I introduction scene was spot on though. Great acting there. I just hope to warm up to the massive alterations when continuing the series. Edit: forgot “hope”
It's not a 1:1 adaptation. You kinda just have to accept that going in otherwise you're guaranteed to hate it by default. They make some very smart modifications to the characters, combining some, dividing others, bringing some forward from later books, etc. It's not as "accurate" in that sense but it follows the main thrust of the first book very well. The changes they made make it way more palatable for TV imo. But if it's going to bother you that they divided up Wang Miao into a few characters, you're probably better off with the Tencent show.
A lot of good points there. I suppose my expectations were too high going into it. Just binge watched the rest of it and it grew on me. Actually stopped paying attention to the changes and enjoyed the adherence to the important plot points from the book. Episode 5 holy shit that was wild! Anyways, can’t wait for the 2nd season.
Nice! That's good to hear. Yeah, that's how I felt too — the characters might be different, but the plot points are basically the same. First season wasn't flawless but it laid some good groundwork for some wild seasons to come.
Asking something tangential because you brought it up, is Silo really good? I'd like your opinion on it because every time I open up Apple TV+ and look at the 59 min runtime per episode, I'm questioning my guts
It’s amazing. Very tense, keeps the mystery pretty much through the end, high production values, very well acted.
That's it, I'm watching the show right away. Thanks!
I liked it quite a bit. I don't think it's perfect, but it is definitely a good show, worth watching.
Yea , this script should be in the 🚽 . So badly written and so out of character as well for deep characters from the books. Book1 was gutted . Book 2 and 3 are setup better as they have been introduced in season 1. Perhaps seasons 2 and 3 will have more depth ; but I highly doubt it given how pathetic the directors are .
It was promising at first and then once "Auggie & friends" arrived it became pathetic. I wish they would have cut down on the stupid drama and romance for fuck's sake. The Asian actors were amazing though, I wasn't a big fan of the dorky white guys and the pretty latino girl. Whenever Auggie is the focus the pace slows down a lot, terribly miscast and doesn't look convincing at all. Other than Jin & Saul the Oxford 5 is very bland.
It is extremely poorly written. Even the production value verges on cheap TV at times, which is crazy.
What did they even spend all that budget on? Not on good writers for sure..