I haven't seen so much effort put into a set in years. This would decent if it wasn't so damn propogandistic. Of course the message is "communism hates science".
From the Netflix science-fiction series Three Body Problem
I haven't seen so much effort put into a set in years. This would decent if it wasn't so damn propogandistic. Of course the message is "communism hates science".
From the Netflix science-fiction series Three Body Problem
As a Chinese, this is probably the part I like the most about the Netflix version. The other changes aren’t good at all, but the Tencent version also filmed the CR part but ended up on the cutting floor due to the censorship. The director and the actors have said as much.
The Netflix CR scene is almost a 1:1 recreation of the book’s Chinese dialogue. At least Netflix didn’t add unnecessary lines which could be interpreted as blatant propaganda. Here, it’s just being faithful to the book.
The Cultural Revolution was a huge mess. Most people agree to that.
Im a chauvinist willing to justify anything
I started reading the first book a couple years ago when the netflix show was announced, more coincidence than anything. I did some research into this opening chapter because it seemed really ham fisted and I was wondering what was going on, as this is a Chinese book, from china.
I ended up seeing this opinion a lot, that yes, among actual Chinese people it is a shameful bit of an otherwise proud history and is used as a cautionary tale more than anything, aka learning from mistakes and improving the process.
idk if it's just me but that made me appreciate China more. In the west we're not able to admit we did anything bad. It takes some growth to say "okay maybe the public execution of professors was a bit overboard, we can do this better".
You either die Trotsky or be the icepick.
Yeah most economics professors deserve the
I am obviously too young to have experienced that, but I’ve seen “online discourse” saying that Liu was actually being restrained with his description about the CR scenes. I’ve heard from older generations that it was bloodier and messier than that.
I have friends whose parents and grandparents (intellectuals and academics) had been banished to the countryside during the CR. So the trauma is very real.
So do you think the Netflix version is worth a watch?
If you have already read the book series, go ahead and treat it as an entertainment.
If you haven’t read the books, then the Tencent series (which I don’t think is very good production-wise especially when compared to Western prestige television, and it drags a lot, but the progression was much better structured since it followed the book structure very closely) does a better job in unravelling both the mystery and the sci-fi plots, despite all its flaws. Also, a new director’s cut version has been released in China (just before the Netflix drop lol) that is apparently better paced but I don’t know when the subtitle translation will be done.
Regarding the Netflix series, I’d describe it as someone who tries to tell a story but is so keen to get to the punchline early, so afraid of losing the audience that they’d forgotten to build up the tension, which is what makes the ultimate payoff worth it.
The cool sci-fi concepts are there but they aren’t built up in the way the books (and the Tencent version) did in a believable manner, so it all comes down to “yeah it works because the show said so” without even trying to convince you in a way that you’d at least think they are feasible or believable.
The mystery part also played out the same: the audience isn’t invited to “play along” with the characters in the VR puzzles, since unlike the books and the Tencent series, the Netflix series doesn’t even throw you a bone of a clue as to how to solve the puzzle. You simply have to take what the characters say for granted.
In other words, it seems to me that the show creators were so keen to get to the plotlines of Books 2 and 3 (which is undeniably far better than Book 1, and are being built up concurrently in the first season) that they did so at the expense of Book 1 plots. I think this is a major mistake, because there are so much wasted potential from Book 1 in the series.
Another thing is that, as strange as it sounds, the scale of operations appeared far smaller when it comes to humanity fighting against an alien invasion that could end with our extinction. Even in the Tencent series that is set (almost) entirely in China, the command centers have representatives of many countries collaborating to discuss how to neutralize the threat. In the Netflix series, it’s all done in a secluded room by two guys in London lol. Like, how am I supposed to believe that the entire humanity’s effort to strategize against an alien invading force is going to be done by a small number of people in London of all places?
And all the main characters from Books 1, 2 and 3 all happen to know each other, and are close friends to begin with? People sometimes criticize that the main book characters are mostly Chinese, but at least they are people who barely crossed each other’s paths throughout the entire narration of the story. They might as well be people who had come from different countries. In the Netflix series, the cast is diverse but they are all close friends who just happen to be the protagonists of the story lol.
The fact that the only time they were faithful to the original book was to shit on China is no coincidence. They already changed all the Chinese characters into white westerners. If they had any real principles they would've changed all the cultural revolution parts into red scare equivalents. This is just like how the Avatar movie made all the Asian characters white except the bad guys.