Three-Body (redux)

Not quite a year ago I posted about watching the Chinese adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, a 2006 science fiction novel by Liu Cixin. At the time, I’d only seen the adaptation. Since then, I’ve read all three books of the trilogy, re-read the first, re-watched the Chinese adaptation, and now, holding my nose, am watching the Netflix adaptation.

Having read the book, especially having recently re-read it, I enjoyed the Chinese adaptation much more than I did the first time seeing it cold. It was a much richer experience, and that adaptation is very faithful to the book.

I thought for Sci-Fi Saturday, knowing much more now, I’d revisit the topic.

Looking back at it, that post from last March has perhaps a more negative tone than I intended based on how I’ve since talked about the show with friends. I think it snuck up on me a little. I started the opinion section with:

I can’t speak for the book, but this adaptation is slow-paced, melodramatic, and overwrought. In the extreme. The pacing is glacial. There are many flashbacks and semi-relevant images. Even the people seem to move and speak slowly. At first, I took this as an overly moody fantasy horror story, and despite its science fiction trappings, I think the label applies. It’s a slow-burning alien invasion story with a lot of padding (and the aliens themselves won’t show up for 400 years).

And, yes, those things are true, but perhaps not as large looming as they seemed the second time through. I think knowing the story (which isn’t trivially simple) and having seen the adaptation combined to make the second viewing a lot more enjoyable. Not sure if that says more about the story or about me.

In any event, I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading the first book and re-watching the Chinese adaptation. And in retrospect, I suspect the adaptation’s slow pacing is almost necessary due to the material’s overall density. The second time through I picked up on a number of points I missed the first time.

I enjoyed the second book okay, but just okay. It’s more of a space adventure, but the hole humanity is in only ends up deeper. The third book didn’t grab me that much. I’ll come back to that in a moment. The trilogy is generally dark and even existentially (and psychologically) horrific. In the post last March, I mentioned how I got the impression from the adaptation of a horror story.

But while that adaptation is moody and at times cinematically stylish, it is extremely faithful to the book. A lot of the dialog is identical, and all the characters are present. Back then I said about it, “thumbs up but with caveats.” Now, I’d give it two thumbs up (with some small caveats) and a strong Ah! rating.

Adaptations present three important questions for me:

1. What was removed?
2. What was changed?
3. What was added?

The first is almost always necessary. It can be surprising just how many minutes of TV or film can come from a few pages of text. Scripts tend to be much thinner than people expect. Illustrating the point, a number of substantial movies have been made from short stories (Arrival, for instance). Movies of novels have to cut things out, sometimes even entire characters or sub-plots. I’m usually okay with the cuts because I recognize their necessity.

The second seems to me to depend on the reason for the change. Sometimes it’s to update a historic element that viewers might not understand (or which is described in more detail in the text). And it can be a matter of taste. I like the change Zack Snyder made to the ending of Watchmen better than the one in the original text. On the other hand, I’m not big on changes with a strong political agenda behind them, and those have become common in Hollywood today. (The Netflix adaptation of The Three-Body Problem being a good example.)

The third item on the list is the one I have the most trouble with. Given the necessity of cutting things out, why add new material? It would be interesting to analyze a bunch of adaptations to see if the new material actually adds anything of value or substance. It often seems more a case of writer-director vanity, the need to put one’s own stamp on a work. I think that’s a tightrope act, and it’s easy to fall. (The Netflix adaptation is again a good example of this.)

Overall, I do judge adaptations on fidelity to the source. (The Netflix adaptation is a bad example of this.) That said, a clever and stylish remaking of the source can bring new life, but it requires skill to pull off.

As I’ve said before, when a movie, show, or book inspires me to take notes, it’s because I’m reacting strongly to it — negatively or positively. It’s approaching the Wow! and Ugh! ends of my rating scheme.

So, when I say I have a few notes about the third book… well, in this case due to a negative reaction, but not a terribly strong one (and only a few notes). More disappointment given the strength of the first book.

That first book is a strong narrative along two timelines, the modern day (2007) and what Ye Wenjie did back in the 1960s and 1970s. The former covers a short span of weeks, whereas the latter covers roughly two decades. The main characters of the story are the backbone of the two timelines. Ye Wenjie appears in both.

The second book, The Dark Forest (2008), covers hundreds of years as humans try to prepare for the coming alien invasion. It also features the “wallfacers” (and “wallbreakers”). It has a larger cast, and the action is more spread out among them and across time. (From what I understand, the Netflix adaptation extends into the second book.)

The third book, Death’s End (2010), felt more like a history than a story. Which, I think, is intentional on the author’s part. The name of the trilogy is Remembrance of Earth’s Past. My notes say it was “too sweeping” and “unsatisfying”. Also, “fantasy” and “boring”. Another note says, “too many details and info dumps” (and I usually like that sort of thing in my SF).

Liu Cixin explicitly denies the story is anti-human (philosophically misanthropic; you’d think I could relate) in one of his author’s notes, but I got a strong sense of it, nevertheless. It’s certainly not kind to humanity. That Liu explicitly denies it makes me wonder if others have gotten the same sense.

I might give the first book a soft Wow! rating, but I think I’d have to give the second book an Eh! rating and the third a Meh! rating. That said, I find it hard to define what a good ending might be given the initial setup. Overall, I’ll give a medium Ah! rating. Definitely worth checking out for science fiction fans.

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I tried to watch the Netflix adaptation, 3 Body Problem, shortly after it came out last year. It reeks of political correction, and I only made through two episodes before I bailed. (Ironically, political correction — which we look back at with horror — is what the Cultural Revolution was about. Ideology over facts, a sin committed by both the Left and the Right.)

Having revisited the first book and Chinese adaptation, I thought I’d gird my loins and get through the Netflix version. Last Friday, I watched those first two episodes again. The woke-based changes still make me shake my head, and I think it strongly reflects what’s wrong with Hollywood storytelling these days. But I’m determined to get through it. No matter how much beer I have to drink to numb the pain.

As you might expect, I have notes.

I’ll start with something I got wrong in the last post. Casting Benedict Wong as “Da” Shi does reflect his description in the book. It’s that I first encountered Yu Hewei as detective Shi Qiang in the Chinese version, and that formed my mental image of him as gaunt.

Their depiction of the particle experiment imagery is pretty wild. It actually illustrates nicely why particle theorists would despair. But as I said before, I think scientists would be fascinated by such wild physics and driven, not to suicide, but to intense curiosity. But one detail I picked up this second time through was the degree to which the sophons messed with those scientist’s perceptions, not just their science.

The opening scene, taking place back in the Cultural Revolution, which is where Ye Wenjie’s heart first got broken by (in)humanity, was pretty gripping, and it follows the first scene in the book. I thought to myself, “maybe this won’t be so bad after all.” (But, no, it is. Good beginning, though.)

Dr. Salazar gets a much shorter countdown in the eyes than Wang Miao did, and the bit with the photos is gone. Why are Salazar’s numbers so fuzzy, though?

At the 30-minute mark I was impressed by how much of the story they’d gotten through already. As I understand it, eight 45-minute Netflix episodes take the story into the second book. That means a lot has been cut out. It got to the point I was paying attention to the extreme compression of the story.

Another example of compression: the business where Ye Wenjie writes a letter for Bai Mulin and he later betrays her over it, that’s gone. She gets in trouble simply for having the book he gave her.

There’s a “No Smoking” cookie that references the “you can’t smoke here” business from the book and Chinese version.

Oof, the “girl boss” stuff is thick, but the story makes the mistake of thinking that being a strong woman means being an asshole. Dr. Salazar is an asshole. I know the usual cry is, “but when men are assholes, they’re admired as strong.” No, no they aren’t, not by anyone with an ounce of sense. An asshole is an asshole, full stop. Gender has nothing to do with it.

Double Oof. This version is such a corruption of the original text. A good example of egregious modern writing. That Jack Rooney character — a typical idiot clown. They seem to be reaching for Jack Black or Zach Galifianakis there. Hard pass.

What’s this business with cancer boy? Given the necessary story compression, why add something this irrelevant?

The magical reality of the VR world is typical Hollywood. It’s most realistically presented in the novel, basically realistic in the Chinese adaptation, but total Hollywood bullshit in the Netflix version.

The production somehow seems to have a negative tone to me. Joyless somehow.

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In closing a few words about that extreme story compression in the Netflix version. What’s consistently absent are supporting events that set up the actions the characters take. For instance, the fateful things Ye Wenjie does are shown to us in detail in the book and Chinese version. In the Netflix version, it all happens quickly and without any real context.

I find that lacks richness (and certainly context). It’s exactly what I mean when I say modern visual storytelling has become “iconic”. I mean icons in the sense of desktop icons — extremely simplified images that only have meaning in virtue of their association with something else, something more complicated.

Desktop icons stand for applications. Storytelling icons stand for more involved real-world actions. The depiction of romantic relationships is often a good example. Two characters fall in love (often at first meet). Why? Doesn’t matter, they’re an icon for all the couples who met and fell in love. Fill in your own details.

It’s a way to be more generic, more inkblot-like, and that lets people more easily insert themselves into the story. Which is a big deal these days, but that’s a topic for another post.

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Stay three-bodied, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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