Netflix's Three Body Problem

Couldn't find a thread for it, but anyone watch Netflix's 3 Body Problem?

I'm two episodes in and enjoying it well enough.

It's really weird how the show is about Viewers Are Morons. I'm borderline face-blind and even worse with names, so when they reveal that half-Asian Vera Ye's mom was Ye Wenjie like it was supposed to be a surprise was... odd. They did something similar the next episode, but I don't remember what it was exactly.

Have been watching it (not finished yet) and having some vague memories of the book I think that a lot of this is given the moved at lot around.

The revelation of Ye Wenjie and her response to the San-ti (Trisolarians is the translation the novel used) is part of the big climax of the books at the very end, not a quarter of the way through.

I mean, it's a trilogy of books, so this one adapts the first one.

I actually made the page (was reading the book when the teaser came out) but I didn’t end up liking the book all that much so haven’t been motivated to check the show out. I found the book too technobabbly and lacking interesting characters (except for Wenjie and the inspector guy). Do those descriptions apply to the show?

The show attempts to be better about that. I’d say there’s not a lot in the way of technobabble so far, and much more focus on the characters as people.

More accurately, this first season isn’t adapting the first book; rather it’s adapting the common era stuff from all the books & divides Wang Miao partially into new characters - partially merging him with the show’s version of Book 3’s main character

Edited by TheAirman on Apr 12th 2024 at 12:04:06 PM

Only three episodes in but my thoughts: I find the story interesting but the characters really... less so. Jack and Jin are pretty alright, Auggie is a swirling black hole of charisma, Saul has the most traits but so far just seems to act how he needs to for any given situation (along with the painfully spelled out "boy, you sure have Unresolved Sexual Tension with Auggie, just so you know and to reiterate in case there's some invisible audience").

I think Jack was the most interesting character of the main cast, possibly by merit of being the token non-scientist thus where most of the other main characters' personalities can be boiled down to "I fucking love science". Well, Jin also has "and also, not letting Follower die horribly is good" and the fact that apparently getting to Level Four in the game just involves realizing "hey... it's good to save people in this game about saving people" and having nothing to do with the science that she's so good at is odd but it seems like something that should set her apart from other people.

Oh, I do like the police characters, Benedict Wong and Davos Seaworth. They're fun.

Taking about this as an adaptation is complicated. The book was entirely set in China, and except for the evil environmentalist there weren't any non-Chinese human characters. A few of the characters in the show have a clear equivalent in the books, but many don't.

And it's hard to judge if that's a good thing or not, since characterization was never really the book's strong point.