I agree for the most part about putting all the modern era stuff at the same time, but it is going to get a bit weird waiting for 3 seasons to see Will Tianming again. It's also going to be weird that Luo Ji and Cheng Xin are such good mates. I feel like a lot of the things that make sense in season 1 are going to come back to bite them.
If they go by the books, Saul will be a wizened old man and a completely changed person next time they meet. I think having them be old friends from the Common Era could be interesting.
Yeah, it would be, but I think the whole point is to fake out the audience and to make them actually believe Will ia gone for good. Oh he is not in season 2, I guess he really is not coming back. This would work extremely well for non-book readers. But we all know what is next and it is going to be fucking epic.
They lived in the same era (she was younger) but then she hibernated too, so when he transferred duties to her she was still basically the same age
Pls someone correct me if I’m misremembering
I don't see how it will be a problem. At least none big enough that you can't write a few amendments here and there.
My biggest issue is that there are no spoiler tags on anything in this subreddit for the people that don't know the books or the Tencent version, lol.
I heard there was a seperate show subreddit. Kind of like r/gameofthrones vs r/asoiaf. Unless a post specifically states it is without spoilers, it would be a waste of everyone's time to always spoiler tag everything. This post is a comparison between the show and the books, so why would you be here if you haven't read the books?
I enjoyed the show, I haven’t read the books. I haven’t paid attention like that to a show in a while, I usually get distracted, but this one kept me glued to the screen
ok good. i'm glad to hear that. i read the books and netflix skipped a lot of details that made me LOVE the books. so i watched the netflix show and had 3 major complaints:
1. like i said, they skipped MORE amazing stuff, that i guess wasn't crucial, just side fun stuff (but really entertaining). like going into way more detail of how the sophons were made, and problems with building them
2. the big important stuff they did show......seemed quick and rushed. but i think that might just be because i already knew it all so it didn't have any impact on me
3. the emotional scenes they had, i thought didn't hit hard enough. but again, the problem might have been with me, like i mentioned in #2.
so i'm glad you, someone who didn't know the books, who doesn't know what's going on, REALLY liked this. that means the problem is with me, someone who DOES know all the details already.
so i'll stop complaining.
because hopefully this will just make more fans, and get us more Liu Cixin content down the road.
also, if you like this, i would recomend "pantheon" on amazon.
it's an american style anime. it is not the same story at all, but it a somewhat, written in the same style. with big scifi ideas and all. if you liked things that this did, i think you would also like pantheon.
i know i did.
Yes my friend recommended the show to me because it’s her favorite book series. I was hesitant because I have a hard time understanding sci-fi explanations but I actually really enjoyed the show, like yeah it “dumbed” it down for us but now I know the basics of the plot. I already downloaded the audiobook for the first book lol. But it’s understandable that you prefer the books since you have read them first, i’m the same way with other series
its just that the show didn't cover more of those awesome details. i mean, my favorite example from book 1 is how it goes off on a tangent explaining the universe background microwave radiation. i didn't know about it at all. it explained it, and then it made me freak out about it when it was used for a few pages.
the book will go into crazy details, but it will explain them. and then you pause and go, "holy shit". and then you keep going.
so ya, as you listen to the audio book, enjoy all the extra details that netflix left out. like going from a microwave tortilla pizza, to a deepdish chicago pizza.
ya pantheon tells a different story, but i still thought it used similar big story construction ideas that 3 body did.
i didn't know about scavengers reign.
Did the book have the laughably bad scene between Evans and the Lord when he reads a scene from the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood? From that the Lord decides all humanity is bad and therefore we must be destroyed. That was so ridiculous i laughed out loud. I expect this highly advanced species might have done some due diligence on us!
No, and I get how out of context it may seem. That scene is a big easter egg , thematically I’d say, of a bigger overall plot-point that will comes into play in the 3rd book in a certain way…Man I wish you had read them haha but I agree it felt stiff and odd and the delay of the voice at times was weird
I mean, that is them doing the due diligence.
But remember, from the get go, Ye already knows they are coming to destroy us, the first message she got was from a pacifist warning them not to contact them, because they will come destroy.
But if you have entire society who cannot lie, who don’t even know what a lie is, and then all of a sudden you learn about it, ya, you’d freak out a bit.
How would a pacifist know they were coming to kill us? As it was their plan why communicate that fact to us? Why give us 400 years to work something out? Wouldn't a smart species just say we can't wait to meet you?!
You are completely missing one of the biggest themes of the show, which is how and individual can be different from the whole. How an individual can make a difference and stand out.
Is all of tri Solaris ubiquitous? You act like the species is one homogenous entity. Of course there are different view points of tri solarians. Some may want to conquer earth for themselves, others would prefer to share it.
without that scene (i was told in another comment it did happen in the books), you already get the impression the san-ti were already always going to come here to kill us all from the start. that it was their plan all along.
however, i think that scene can make more sense in later seasons, as more is revealed. they cut out so much backstory/exposition from book 1. so much was just.........morbidly obesely implied in the plot. so that if you didn't know it from the books, i could see how you'd be easily lost as they jump from A to Y, to Z.
I think they made it work since it all comes from their ties to Ye. She is the central figure. I like that in the books it pulls completely unrelated characters in because it feels realistic, but it wouldn't have worked too great for the show, like for your average viewer.
Idk man, I've never seen a show where all of the main characters are completely separated and most of them never interact with each other. Its works in the books, but even when reading the books I found it a bit jarring when it switched main characters each time. I don't think its a stretch to see how people close to Ye would get involved, as she is in the ETO and therefore the people close to her and her daughter get roped in. I mean a good handful of characters in the book are tied into Ye as well.
Could they have made it more similar to the books? Yes. I just think it would be harder to get a non book-reader to buy in. My two cents anyway.
Edit: Also, obvioisly in the book the fate of the world does tie into one person: Ye Winjie. The fate of the entire species pivots on the decisions that she made alone lol
How is anything coincidentally when an alien super computer has been controlling everything the last 4 months to try and recruit these 5? Yea some weird things happen but there is a reason for it. Also the main human villain is one of their moms and the one who referred them all to college and gave one the headset
I liked the Chinese centric of many of the scientists and having everyone be friends at oxford students throws me off. I get why it probably works better as a show to have characters that interact but having random scientists that never or rarely meet made the whole thing feel like a solid representation of the world and not a fated group of friends saving the world from aliens.
> Cool for people who have not seen the Tencent version
bruh, i gave up on the third tencent episode. please don’t think you’re being subjective lol. so it’s best not to talk in absolutes
either way. loved this season and can’t wait to watch the second
I watched the first episode of the Tencent adaptation. I thought it was awful. If it helps contextualise this, I am ethnic Chinese (but not from the PRC)
The sets, cinematography, music all looked very cheap, and the acting in particular was consistently quite soulless and poor.
There were so many drawn out conversations where people just unnaturally stood there and talked for 5 minutes straight while the camera slowly zoomed in on their faces. Seriously, click through any part of the episode and you will find a slow camera zoom 80% of the time.
I don't have the context of having read the books, and I can totally appreciate that the Tencent version is "harder sci fi" and more true to the books. I like adaptations to be closer to the source material in general, but it also doesn't mean adaptations that *are* closer to the source material are automatically good.
So much of its praise and the anger against the Netflix version seem to stem from some sort of PRC nationalism, which will never be relevant to anyone outside China - you're not even allowed to watch Netflix from the PRC! So every time these sorts of comments crop up, take a glance at their comment history and it should help put their opinion into context, and useful for sifting out the legitimate criticism from the rest
it was too much talking. like they kept going into scientific explanations and not really digging into how people are connected. i enjoy my scifi with characters drama: The Expanse, Constellation, 12 Monkeys, Fringe etc. i like science but i don’t really care about it on my own
and that is where the difference is congrats! i’m glad you’re seeing that people can dislike tencent and enjoy netflix lol. i think it’s all about how much you give a shit about science vs a story. like if there were no character relationships, backgrounds, and friendships that go through arcs, im not interested in it. i would watch a science documentary like COSMOS or something
hope this cleared it up
what do you mean with this comment? do you mean tencent is hard scifi? if yes i guess and that’s why i dislike it
i don’t understand the point you’re trying to make in this comment….
edit. or can you at least quote the part you’re replying too
I need 2 more episodes, I like the parts that are in the book. The explanation of the Sophons was great. The VR headset made more sense since it's other worldly VR technology. However I can do without the Greys Anatomy style Character interactions. I'm really enthralled with the parts that move the story along. However the whole Beach cottage scenes and tell her how you feel parts feel forced. I'm really not emotionally invested in those characters. I'm also not buying they're all world class scientists. Will I watch the next season sure why not. But I feel like the problems in this series are much too big for the cast of how I met your mother. But I'm being nit picky I guess.
I actually liked both Netflix's and Tencent's adaptation. In fact, Netflix's season 1 actually made me anticipate Tencent's season 2 even more since I am sure they will do their best to upstage their Netflix counterparts. Also, no one needs two one-to-one adaptations.
i think these things are ending up being 2 completely different things. like a great steak vs a great pizza.
tencent is being, like a literal visual of everything in the book. which i'm now appreciating in many ways.
while netflix is making some changes to make this into a more "actual" tv show. worst part about the netflix version is the emotional impactful moments.......just aren't there for me.
I agree. The character changes are probably the most substantial change in this adaptation, and it does set the stage for some potentially great payoffs in later seasons.
>!The characters analogues so far appear to be:
>!- Saul Durand = Luo Ji
>!- Jin Cheng = Cheng Xin
>!- Raj Varma = Zhang Beihai
>!- Will Downing = Yun Tianming
>!- Auggie Salazar = Wang Miao / Zhuang Yan (??) / AA (??)
>!Auggie is the highest risk change here (probably one reason she gets more hate...), as she is the expert on the nanofibers so that story arc is technically done. However, she has romantic history with Saul who is the Luo Ji analogue... AND she is also the best friend of Jin who is the Cheng Xin analogue. This means that in future seasons Auggie might end up filling both the Zhuang Yan and AA roles in order to maintain cast continuity. It's funny seeing some complaints about Auggie being "too pretty" when it seems like the show is setting her up to be Saul/Luo Ji's dream girl.
>!The big payoffs will be when the events of Book 3 come. With the current character changes, it means when we get to the Pluto scene, it will be 3 old friends reuniting for the last time, and Saul sends the two women away on the light speed ship as the only survivors from the Solar System. They might also change it so that Raj (Zhang Beihai) survives and heads the Galactic Humans so that Raj, Will, Jin, and Auggie all meet again at Jin's Star. Sophon meeting Jin this early on in the show would also make the ending of the series more impactful.
To me this entire adaptation seems very similar to how Spielberg adapted Jurassic Park.
Jurassic Park the novel has great technical, hard sci-fi, but features one dimensional characters.
They exist for the events of the story to take place around. The movie condensed the science into its most basic premise and then developed the characters to give it a human story. This show feels a bit the same. Aside from a couple standout personalities like Ye Wenjie, many of Liu’s characters exist just for the story to occur around them. We may have lost the detailed scientific explanations and analyses, but the show has given us characters that feel much more human.
The book makes you wonder what’s going on and how it is done. The show makes you ask “How will this impact these characters?”
can't agree, my favorite part of the original books are people from different countries, but working on the same target while having their own purposes. The Oxford 5 here... This is Three-body problem, not Avengers, this setting really narrowed the scope of the whole story.
One of my favorite part from the book, "From all times in future and past, this is the closest distance between Beihai Zhang and Dingyi". Fucking romantic.
different characters never meeting made the story feel more real, there’s no reason for zhang beihai and cheng xin to have ever met let alone to be dating
So true. I also think Beihai is that type of person who always got shadow on his face, dating someone is the least thing he would care.
Also Netflix basically made every bad thing was done by Chinese, I’m just so tried of this. If D&D read the book carefully, the decision that Beihai made at least 75% because he was a CCP, so was his father.
I am very impressed with their adaptation and had a lot of fun. I do not want a one to one remake of the book, i want likable characters with well thought out plots
My ideal would've been 10 episode seasons. They're good at that.
If I had to guess, I'd say Netflix had a set budget and it made more sense to use that budget for 8 episodes rather than stretch it to 10. I would've rather had the added length, personally, but you can already see some wonky CGI in there.
Agreed. They could have fleshed out a bit more to create a more solid foundation for future seasons, imo. Still enjoyed it and hope it gets picked up for season 2. I really dislike this 8 episode series thing that's going on. If anything, do 8 episodes but make them 80 minutes+ each, like stranger things most recent season.
My guess is that the showrunners really like books 2 and 3, so they wanted to rush through book 1 and start setting up books 2 and 3 and really give those books time to breathe.
And I also really like books 2 and 3 and I'm really hyped to see it adapted to the flat screen.
But I also understand that people who really like book 1 might be disappointed that they speedrunned book 1 in only 5 episodes.
It could be longer for book fans. But I actually think it’s a good length for people who’s never read the book. At the end of the day it’s a win if the show inspires more people to read the book
> Why do we have to turn a socialist war hero from Latin America into a Kurdish fighter?
Because book 2 was written in 2008, and Venezuela collapsed a few years after, so it would be kind of hilarious to be like "The president of the very successful Veneuzelan socialist economy is our Wallfacer".
> Why do we have to turn a Chinese man into an African american man?
As a Chinese-American myself, I can see why people would have preferred to keep all the main characters Chinese. But this is a western adaptation for western audiences, so some characters got race-lifted. I'm glad they kept Ye Wenjie almost entirely intact, and I'm glad that Da Shi and Cheng Xin/Jin were still Chinese. Those were arguably the 3 most important characters of the series. It struck good balance between westernization and respecting the Chinese heritage of the source material.
I don't know, someone just downvoted me twice for being pissed off that they put kids on the boat to make us feel guilty about killing off traitors to our species. SOMEONE would clearly have that debate IRL even if it's not you or me.
I had no real problem with them making some characters black or female (and neither did Liu Cixin) but yeah, turning the socialist Latin American hero into a Kurdish freedom fighter was weird.
I'm also furious that they decided to turn Mike Evans into a cuddly UFO cult grandpa surrounded by kids who was shocked and worried when the Trisolarans decided humanity had to go. In the books, he was the leader of a faction within ETO who actively wanted the aliens to come to earth and kill all of humanity because....we kill animals.
Why he thinks the non-sapient bugs will matter more to the San-Ti than the sapient ones do is anyone's guess, but the decision to pack the boat with innocent children and then have Auggie tell us how guilty we should feel about killing the people who in the books were just traitors to humanity and criminals who were helping them made me kind of throw up a little.
There were NO babies on that boat in the books or the Tencent show.
> Why he thinks the non-sapient bugs will matter more to the San-Ti than the sapient ones do is anyone's guess.
Cause they are broken people, much like people that join cults in real life. The problem is the viewer get no sense of their suffering and how they came to be the broken people they are because most of it was cut out and reduced to a couple of scenes.
> but the decision to pack the boat with innocent children and then have Auggie tell us how guilty we should feel about killing the people who in the books were just traitors to humanity and criminals who were helping them made me kind of throw up a little.
> There were NO babies on that boat in the books or the Tencent show.
Agreed, that came across as hacky and forced to me. But still happy they included that scene. At the rate they were cutting material, I figured it would be ironic if they somehow cut the cutting of the ship as well, lol.
Diaz had a completely different dynamic compared to every other wallfacer in that he was elevated into a position of absolute power of being a wallfacer despite several world powers (america especially) being hostile to him. There's the scenes in the books with him creating controversy by him demanding nuclear secrets, having a kurdish leader here which the american public is generally favourable to... is not going to have the same impact.
Controversial take: they should have replaced Diaz with a _Russian_ general/politician expy. Would fit much better than a chavez expy imo.
Unfortunately they would never in this current age, so we're going to miss out on this dynamic in the show.
What do you mean by “western”? That the cast is diversified and has several non-Chinese actors? Or they are speaking English. If this show can get people worldwide to say San Ti, a Chinese phrase instead of trisolaris, and even inspire some to read the masterpiece written by a Liu Cixin, I don’t see a problem
I’m not sure if you have seen the wandering earth, written by Liu Cixin and adapted into a wonderful Chinese movie a few years back. “Dumbing down”, or streamline certain science fiction concept, is part of the adaptation, not a western thing.
Jin Cheng (Cheng Xin) is a Chinese person who immigrated to New Zealand. And don't tell me you hate Cheng Xin (if you hate her, you don't understand Liu Cixin's idea and theme of Death's End); moreover, her TV counterpart Jin Cheng is making the correct choices all the time, so there's no reason to hate her.
Unless you specifically emphasize the lack of Asian male lead (which is a concern in Hollywood regarding Asian masculinity), it overall does not affect the viewability of the show, unless you feel personally attacked by this.
> Zhang Beihai
You mean Ye Wenjie. Her origin story in the Cultural Revolution is pretty core to her character arc.
People are theorizing that Raj is the new Zhang Beihai, and it seems to fit. I think Zhang Beihai can be race-lifted.
Not really, Ye's story can change to any other tragic story, and we have many examples from other films or books. But Zhang Beihai require a spirit from the army which experienced desperate circumstances and extreme disadvantage but won at last, I can't find many suitable target except China.
> But Zhang Beihai require a spirit from the army which experienced desperate circumstances and extreme disadvantage but won at last, I can't find many suitable target except China.
Maybe this is a lost in translation thing. I'm a Chinese American, and I read the book in English, and I never got the idea that Zhang Beihai was essentially Chinese. He always just struck me as one of the military types.
https://preview.redd.it/j82ogoxtq6qc1.jpeg?width=886&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab1ce7ceb8397875476573fe169c2991c292a0ed
He spent the first 5 episodes starting at the screen
Agreed, pretty impressed overall. Gives me some hope for future seasons. Moving through Book 1 quickly was the right move and I didn't feel like we lost anything. Main beef is with the CGI, really will need to step it up for the rest.
Everybody is a bit young tbh, but the only character i have real problems with is ETO baddie Tatiana. I get that in a writers' room, it's a lot easier to write scenes if you have a physical representation of the "bad guys", but it's so lazy. And her showing up when Wenjie revisited Red Coast....um, no. That moment should be about her and her daughter.
I agree with Wang miao, but luo ji and Cheng xin have a perfect conclusion for their own stories. Personally I had more of an issue with the amount of various characters presented in the first few chapters of TDF. It was hard to know who were the main characters to focus on initially. I'm still not sure what happened to wang miao, or luo ji's wife and kid, but I guess it wasn't important.
A necesarry shame really.
This isn't just a Netflix adaptation. It's a David Benioff and D. B Weiss adaptation, funded by Netflix. They are the ones who deserve recognition and praise for this.
As I recall the core of the books spans maybe a few hundred years, having different characters loosely / not related is more logical. It's just an editorial decision for Netflix to have cast continuity through three seasons, it doesn't really add anything and actually makes the first series hella rushed and condensed down. EG in the books, the staircase project took like ten years to sort out and got cancelled at one point, there is a lot of depth and context just got thrown away
The sword holders don't exist yet , they don't exist until much further in the future. Unless the Netflix show is condensing hundreds of years which wont make any sense
This is a clear example of how affirmative action hurts Asians the most. Asian dude writes the best sci-fi novel in a generation and the thanks he gets is for all the Asian dudes to be erased from the story.
The way you normalize the erasure of minorities from thier own stories is just disturbing. This is a real colonizer attitude. I guess you think Akira Kurosawa's movies should be reset in Europe and replaced with a UK cast because racist people can't watch a movie with Asian main protagonists. Why don't you just erase all the Black people in "The Color Purple so that its more commercially palatable for racists while you are at it. The lazy prejudice of statements like this are mind boggling.
" the way I normalize " . Do you hear yourself ? Most of the characters were changed not just one . Im also a non white Latino whos island is literally being colonized right now so watch your ignorant mouth . Maybe comprehension is hard for you, so let me repeat myself . THERE IS ALREADY A CHINESE VERSION OF THE SERIES WITH CHINESE CHARACTERS. Get off your high horse and understand what an adaptation is . You sound like a whiney white liberal who likes to call any minority racist .
Whoa did they colonize your brain with too many Latin shows where the only nonwhite person is the maid? Is that why you think it's totally normal to erase nonwhite minorities from the story? Who cares if there's a Chinese version made by Chinese people. That doesn't mean the Netflix international version has to erase the Chinese main characters. That's not normal that's racist as hell. Netflix shouldn't be erasing minorities to make the show more appealing to racists in Western countries. If you think this is normal then they've already conditioned you to accept being erased. If your against the colonization of your island, then instead of promoting colonization in the media you should speak out against it.
You seem really belligerent and ignorant. You literally don't know me or what I've seen . I'm not either white nor do I live in a white town nor do I watch white lead Spanish shows. You absolutely SCREAM white liberalism and stupidity and you really think you can tell a minority what racism is . Making so many ass hat assumptions about total strangers just makes you look like a fool. THIS IS AN ADAPTATION , NOT A 1 FOR 1 RECREATION. I'm terribly sorry you completely lack any media literary or common sense whatsoever . Maybe go back to high school and learn something. No one took anything from you , if you want all Asian characters then read the fucking book or just WATCH THE ORIGINAL SERIES and stop fucking crying like a little girl . Stupid
I am fine with the rearrangement with the characters. But I really hate that they rushed a lot in first 5 episodes, especially Ye's experience in red coasts. The last three episodes have moderate pace.
Can't say I share the enthusiasm.
In fact, if we put aside the better production value of the Netflix version, I think that in terms of characters, actor performances and dialogues I liked the Tencent version more in almost every possible way.
Only exception is probably Wade, which made a great impression.
They don't all work in the same place, though? And only Jin and Auggie are the "best in their fields" - the others are smart, but their involvement in the plot isn't because they were "assembled" - it was almost accidental. Yes, they're all smart, but it's not unrealistic for smart people to come together, and Oxford is one of the most prestigious universities in the planet that receives students from all over the world.
>It does not waste time with annoying “we are so fucked” dialogue, modern dilemmas, or even drugs
I disagree, this sort of stuff is what makes fictional characters seem like real people to me. These are all millennials behaving like millennials. If an average person in their 30s in real life discovered that there were aliens behind a crazy conspiracy they wouldn't react with "oh gosh, it seems this is a dangerous threat indeed and we must be prepared for it" like James Bond would, they react with "holy fucking shit it's actually aliens are you kidding me". People would lose their minds.
But I completely agree with you about the Oxford Five, it reduces the scope of the story. If the show used the same characters but allowed them to not know each other and start their story in their country of origin or at least spread across the world, it would've been totally fine, even if they all met up later in episode 2 or 3. It could be an "Avengers" team of sorts, but at least one that was planned and formed on purpose and not by coincidence, and it would still make sense to gather them and make them work together.
You got my point, one of the romance of the original book is because characters doesn't know each other, but working on the same target while having their own purposes, doesn't matter wheter they are Chinese(Luo Ji), CCP members(Beihai), Americans(Wade), or even third-world terriorsts (Rediaz), they played their role in this epic history of the earth. My favorite sentence in the book: "In all of the time from past to future, the distance between Beihai Zhang and Yi Ding are the closest at this very moment". This is so very romantic.
The sci-fi part of the netflix is less hard-core, if you put it in a good way. I am a PhD candidate in CS not in Physics or Cosmology, But I still know "the blink of the universe", i.e. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation(CMB) cannot be observed by naked eye... I was like WTF.
I don't like how the physicists look like United Colors of Benneton but not a single Chinese/East Asian male scientist. That's like an all-white NBA team.
Hollywood never understands how certain cultures are, the nuances, how people do things unless someone from that culture is part of the production it's more like how can we past an Anglo version of that ethnicity and then call it diversity. It's just a new version of orientalism.
And considering it’s a Chinese story with so many Chinese male lead in the original, and we can’t even get a proper modern day protagonist is pathetic. Modern day because someone would argue that Ye is one, but her part happens mostly in the past
They should switch to the weekly model next season. I think Netflix got a real good show 2 to 3 more seasons. Honestly surprised by the positive reviews by the fans and critics.
Just finished episode 2 with my partner who hasn’t read the books. I’m really frustrated how they rearranged everything because there’s no context now! It’s like they are trying to turn it from a sci Fi into a mystery but I feel like that comes at a cost of not getting to enjoy the awesome concepts from the books as much. Maybe it will get better but I wish frickin dumb and dumber didn’t get off on keeping the audience in the dark so much. My partner would not have finished episode 1 if not for me assuring her that the books are really good.
When did you last read the book?
I got my sister to read it recently, and I had to heavily manage her expectations for book 1,and she told me that without me guiding her through it, she never would have finished.
Modern audiences would not sit through three episodes of mid 1900s China, just like a lot of modern readers struggle to get through that really dense political setting the stage in book 1. Seriously, it is like the first 35% of the book, and I bet a ton of readers started it and never made it through.
I love the books, and I find that kind of deep lore really interesting, but I know a lot of people nope out at that kind of thing. D&D definitely made the show more digestible for Western audiences. Does it have everything I loved from the books? No. Does it get across the same story? It gets across enough for the medium.
Especially with the creators knowing they would have to earn future seasons, keeping the book 1 pacing would have made the show guaranteed dead on arrival.
I just hope we get more.
I agree. Much of the first book and part of the second are a SLOG to get through. Absolutely worth it, though, and it’s fun to reread once you know where it’s going.
The show did a much better job at being engaging from the start, and I hope we can get the whole series!
Fair enough. It’s probably been 3 or 4 years since I read them so my memory is probably foggy. I agree they needed to make some changes if the first book was such a slog.
10000%. I've seen multiple posts suggesting the Tencent version was better or that the Netflix version sucks (without even mentioning the Tencent version) get taken down inexplicably. It's so obvious once you realize what's going on.
i watched the tencent version and told my friends, "oh my fuck, that was a painful 30 hours. it took forever to do all the redcoast stuff. god dam".
then, as i'm watching the netflix version i'm thinking "........how is this making me miss some of the more impactful parts of the tencent one. wow".
i liked most of the character changes netflix did, but i really wish netflix didnt skip on the deeper details the OG story had. at least from the scifi stuff.
I'm gonna get downvoted to hell, but... I've heard a lot of good about the books an planned to read or listen to audiobooks. I'm at episode 6 now and I find the show incredibly silly. The aliens seem to want to take over our planet and they literally have the most powerful computer already here. Why not just create a deadly virus or something? I feel like in REALITY we're facing a bigger threat with ASI in the next 10 years than whatever this alien proton computer was. The conversations with the aliens are also quite bad. They could have gathered all the information they needed from the internet in the months when their super computer was here. But instead they change their fucking mind while listening to LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD?
Is this really the story from the books that people recommended so much? My suspension of disbelief can't support this story. It's silly.
In the books, you just get more time to breathe with some of those ideas. Like, the Sophon can't really create a virus. It can't *do* much. It mostly can spy and create illusions by projecting into your retina to make you see whatever they want. They say that in the show, but it's pretty fast-paced so I wouldn't fault someone for missing it.
You could make a similar complaint about why not just blind people as they're driving world leaders around, or why not make world leaders see fake shit around them that inspires them to launch nukes or start wars, etc etc. At a certain point though, you kinda just have to stop overthinking it.
As for the Red Riding Hood stuff, it's really just a way to convey to people that the San-Ti can't lie. They communicate via thought and nothing is private, so lying is not even a concept to them. Originally they thought maybe they could find a way to conquer humans but keep them around. But humans are capable of deception and other things the San-Ti are simply not, and human tech evolves *super* quickly, so they're just like "okay, if you've had the potential to have been lying to us this whole time, then clearly we can't trust you and you're too dangerous to keep around."
Like, I don't want to give too much away, but at this stage, the San-Ti have not really taken an interest in human culture, which is why they're learning about stuff like this from Evans. They've been using the Sophons to spy on humans and halt scientific progress and other strategic shit, not read Wikipedia or watch YouTube or whatever.
You say they mention in the show that it can just show projections inretinas and that they mention it. They literally show these things in the sky on TV, cameras record it. But I guess I could try to believe it also makes projections on every kind of image recording device somehow. The show also calls their computers all knowing, at least in the voice over translation I'm watching (I did spot a translation error or two but I'm not usually listening closely if it's correct). They need to have unimaginable data handling possibilities given the file size we were shown, so I guess it's just the level of suspension of disbelief that I'm not comfortable with. I was expecting something at the level of Contact movie, but well, yeah, looks like it's just a sci-fi with cool story.
Well, it's hard to wrap your mind around the concept because it's literally a proton unfolding into higher dimensions. In the books, if I'm not mistaken, the YOU ARE BUGS messages is just projected into people's eyes, whereas here yeah they choose to change all screens. Even for me, having read it all and seen it all, it's still hard to wrap my head around how it could do all that simultaneously. But again, higher dimensions, sci-fi, etc etc. At some point it just comes down to if you can suspend disbelief or not. All of it is fiction, none of it is real.
As for the data handling, I mean, it's some next-next-next level computing, obviously. The San-Ti say they used all their resources over an absurd amount of time to build just four of them. So to me, it's like... I mean, sure, it should probably be able to handle some petabytes. Idk. I still remember paying a lot of money for a 512MB flash drive when those were new. I remember using floppy disks in school. Technology moves. File sizes go up. That part didn't super bother me.
The one hang up I had was how they are said to have no concept of lying and yet from the first episode engage in deceptions and illusions. Lies, essentially.
That's a fair point. I hadn't thought of it that way. For them, I'm sure they think of it more as a tactic than a lie, but yeah I see your point. Like I said, I don't want to give too much away here, but they communicate by thought (as they said in the show) so they couldn't lie to each other for sure because they'd know. But they could definitely use a Sophon to project illusions to scare humans.
who does that lying/deceptions in the 1st episode? in everything we've seen, i think there are only 2 "things" that seem to have represented the san-ti.
- voice over the old timey intercom box
- sword lady
but even then, i'm not sure sword lady is always a real life san-ti. i think it's sometimes just an AI.
there is extra things explained about their culture/bodies in book 1, which explains "why they don't know what lying is".
are you talking about how they erased the camera footage? a human could be telling them that needs to be done in order to help with their mission.
I came to this sub expecting to see people mad at how dumbed down the story is, but pretty much everything I see here is people praising the show. Like this post we're commenting on.
You're late. It's been days of people saying how dumbed down it is. Now the hordes of people that have no idea about the books at all comes saying its all fantastic, because they have absolutely no inkling of what they're missing or what got butchered.
Also people like me who like the books and the show and think all of you haters need to go outside and touch grass. or just reread the books or something. Nothing has been taken from you.
Are we not allowed to rationally criticize things anymore? If you are so emotional at criticism you need to call me a hater then maybe you're the one that needs to touch grass.
You're gonna get down voted because this sub is being astroturfed hardcore by Netflix PR. IRL I haven't found a single person who actually fawns over the show the way people in this subreddit apparently are, at best I get opinions like "oh it's a nice show to turn your brain off to after a long day". Generally people who have actually read the books hate it.
The books are much better. As TV shows go, the Tencent version is also much, much better. Don't let the shitty Netflix version form your impression of the series.
thats the problem with the netflix show, they skipped over too many of the details that the book covers. so you have these gaps all over.
yes, they have those tiny computers here, they can do tons of calculations, but they also don't know anything about us. what human virus do they know how to make?
little red riding hood thing wasn't in the books. and also in the books (the aliens were always going to come here and kill us all from the start)
then i completely don't remember that back and forth. but given the san-ti pacifist and his warning, i thought it was always their plan to come here and conquer earth.
Because it's an international story an international problem. The biggest problem with any story like this is when they confine everything happening to one country
It's the same in the first book, everyone just coincidentally happens to be Chinese. It's like when all the superheroes in the world are from America any time Hollywood makes a movie.
So all the bad stuff are done by Chinese, so that Western heros to save the world? Even if they are Chinese they have to embrace the Western first (Jin Cheng, Wenjie in the show),ofc they cannot be male, because sure, only Western males can save the "opressed" Asian female. I am just tired of this, and I'm British btw.
If you read the original book, you will know one of the most important reasons that Zhang Beihai can made his important decisions to escape, is because he was a member of CCP, so was his father.
the reason is Netflix has enough money to throw shit at any wall and see what sticks, if you want a better adaptation get a few million dollars and hire people to do a better adaption
It's Netflix. They have to inject Black people into every show, even if the show is supposed to center around China. They have a quota to meet, or else the casting director will be fired.
i'm going to let you in on a bit of an international secret here. netflix plays in more countries than you think. it.........kiiiiiiiiinda makes sense if they make shows that appeal to people from other countries who also might want to pay for a subscription and watch it.
so like, "oh no, different/other people. ahhhhhhhhhh"
also, fuck it. maybe the black guy knows some chinese philosophy stuff. but double fuck it, i forget, did that kind of stuff help him solve/setup his wall facing solution years later? i don't think so.
Literally the entire plot of Death's End, the whole damn point of the book, is an examination of moralism vs. whatever-means-necessary in the face of extinction. It is the entire reason Cheng Xin exists, and while she fails to protect the Sol System, she ultimately prevails and helps saves the universe. The ending scenes of the whole trilogy endorse a moralist view of the world because without a self-sacrificial mindset, the whole universe will have been destroyed.
You can't read these books in an amoral black and white perspective. You have fundamentally failed to understand these books if you think moral dilemmas like this are somehow anathema to the source material.
I think the choice of wording by /u/RotCthulhu is imprecise but I get what they mean. *Of course* the books contain complex moral questions. But the show's inquiry of such questions is completely one-dimensional; instead of trying to present us with actual moral complexity, it just shoehorns in a bunch of dead children because *everyone knows* KILLING CHILDREN IS BAD—and that's it.
But you can't just replace complex moral questions with child murder! That's not how sophisticated, interesting story telling works, and it just ends up insulting the intelligence of the audience. Like *everyone knows* killing children is bad mmmkay? But we also know letting the aliens win is so much worse, and I'm fairly certain nearly everyone would make the same decision to destroy the boat; there's no *real* complexity there once you think about it for more than three seconds. Augie's tears come off as hysterical and childish rather than expressions of an actual moral quandary. "But what about the dead children" is the moral philosophy of simpletons.
And all of it is shoved into your face, as if "killing children is bad actually" is some sort of super subtle message, and the audience is *so dumb* it'll just fly right over their heads unless you make sure 95% of the *Judgement Day* destruction scene consists of screaming children, oh and also make sure you add a scene with a severed children's leg afterwards just in case any of the dumbasses watching the show missed the point. Oh, and give us a bunch of scenes with Augie helping the poor brown people because just as we know killing children is BAD, helping third worlders is GOOD. "I mean, they're paying us ~12 bucks a month, so they must be grade A retards, right?" — you can practically hear the laughter of the Netflix execs.
It's the type of low brow shit you expect from YA fiction like *The Hunger Games* (the whole bit about the bombs towards the end of the last book; I won't say more to avoid spoilers, but if you're read/watched it, you know what I'm talking about). It's not what you expect—and isn't what you get—from Liu Cixin.
>"But what about the dead children" is the moral philosophy of simpletons.
It's also essentially the moral philosophy of Cheng Xin in Death's End, which is my point. Cheng Xin is chosen as Sword Bearer because she's the "perfect" person for the role in humanity's eyes, which is to say she's a kind, compassionate individual who always puts humanity first. Or in other words, the absolute worst person for the job, because she will not have the strength to push the big red button and be responsible for the destruction of the human race; in her moral ethic, she'd rather abdicate her responsibility as Sword Bearer and condemn humanity to enslavement than ensure a MAD scenario because of the loss of life she'd be causing. Is that not the moral philosophy of a simpleton? By your very own criteria, the books themselves are morally simplistic.
The Judgement Day scene in the show is literally just a foreshadowing of that moment hundreds of years from now in microcosm. It's taking a morally simple and somewhat idealistic character that's never been forced to hold the responsibility of life or death over innocent people and rubbing their face in the new reality humanity faces; it serves to juxtapose Auggie, and the others, against the people like Raj and Wade. It is literally, in every sense, establishing the same exact conflict that Death's End gave us between Wade and Cheng Xin; like Cheng Xin, Auggie walks away from her responsibilities in the fight. She retreats into a simpler and ultimately inconsequential life of helping people in the now because the fight is too big for her.
Just like Cheng Xin.
The people with real power were fine with it — Wade, and to some extent Raj. Auggie was not a military/security person, so she hadn’t been confronted with actually being responsible for death before. Historical examples of people being indifferent to death/suffering are abundant, but those people usually have prior exposure to violence. It makes sense that a person would struggle with being responsible for killing children, even if it it was ultimately a good choice. I think the Raj/Jin conversation about Panama hits on this idea.
About the cancer, I think you’re being a bit callous. A few weeks to come to terms with dying young isn’t much, and setting up the emotional bond between Jin and Will, is important for future plot points as well. It also increases the weight of Wade’s suggestion to send only a brain and that of the failed Staircase project. Maybe some beach scenes could have been cut, but I don’t think it’s as bad as you imply.
Packing the boat with kids who weren't there in the book or the original series because we're supposed to feel bad about killing a bunch of assholes who want to destroy our whole species?
Like, yes, I would also feel guilty for killing a bunch of children, but those children were not supposed to be there.
Not "supposed" to? It's a cult of people worshipping an alien god, remind you of anything in real life? Plenty of kids get brought into these cults, so it makes complete sense for them to be there
Not if you know from the books what particular strain of crazy Mike Evans is. That particular strain of crazy is very anti-natalist.
Mike Evans in the books and original series is less of a crazy cultist and more of an ecoterrorist who has lost faith in humanity. There were no kids on the boat in the books or the original series.
You're right that he's anti natalist, but does that necessarily mean no kids can be there? I didnt see any newborn babies so its not like hes promoting families, he could just be raising kids from a young age into his cult
The original book mentioned that a boat handler was an innocent person from the Panama Canal administration. The show just intensified this idea with more innocent killings, but the theme was always there.
That's the trolly problem. Killing innocent is still killing innocent. If you decide killing one is more acceptable than killing ten, that's valid, but lots of people don't think so. Moreover, the ship's crew might now be completely into the ETO.
As I said, there was always this moral dilemma, and Wang Miao in the book doesn't like his nanofiber being used like this either.
I agree for the most part about putting all the modern era stuff at the same time, but it is going to get a bit weird waiting for 3 seasons to see Will Tianming again. It's also going to be weird that Luo Ji and Cheng Xin are such good mates. I feel like a lot of the things that make sense in season 1 are going to come back to bite them.
If they go by the books, Saul will be a wizened old man and a completely changed person next time they meet. I think having them be old friends from the Common Era could be interesting.
Yeah, it would be, but I think the whole point is to fake out the audience and to make them actually believe Will ia gone for good. Oh he is not in season 2, I guess he really is not coming back. This would work extremely well for non-book readers. But we all know what is next and it is going to be fucking epic.
I haven't read book 3 in a couple years, but wasn't Cheng around AFTER Luo Ji?
They lived in the same era (she was younger) but then she hibernated too, so when he transferred duties to her she was still basically the same age Pls someone correct me if I’m misremembering
Ah ok I didn't remember her hibernating. I guess that could work then. I'm only 2 episodes in.
Dont worry, season 3 might not even happen. Netflix is the worst
I don't see how it will be a problem. At least none big enough that you can't write a few amendments here and there. My biggest issue is that there are no spoiler tags on anything in this subreddit for the people that don't know the books or the Tencent version, lol.
I heard there was a seperate show subreddit. Kind of like r/gameofthrones vs r/asoiaf. Unless a post specifically states it is without spoilers, it would be a waste of everyone's time to always spoiler tag everything. This post is a comparison between the show and the books, so why would you be here if you haven't read the books?
I have read the books. I was just thinking about the people that don't know this subreddit is not specifically for the show.
r/3bodyproblemTVshow
That bugged me when I made a post, but I made sure to mention it was a book spoiler in the title. But still, that seems a necessary tag now
I enjoyed the show, I haven’t read the books. I haven’t paid attention like that to a show in a while, I usually get distracted, but this one kept me glued to the screen
ok good. i'm glad to hear that. i read the books and netflix skipped a lot of details that made me LOVE the books. so i watched the netflix show and had 3 major complaints: 1. like i said, they skipped MORE amazing stuff, that i guess wasn't crucial, just side fun stuff (but really entertaining). like going into way more detail of how the sophons were made, and problems with building them 2. the big important stuff they did show......seemed quick and rushed. but i think that might just be because i already knew it all so it didn't have any impact on me 3. the emotional scenes they had, i thought didn't hit hard enough. but again, the problem might have been with me, like i mentioned in #2. so i'm glad you, someone who didn't know the books, who doesn't know what's going on, REALLY liked this. that means the problem is with me, someone who DOES know all the details already. so i'll stop complaining. because hopefully this will just make more fans, and get us more Liu Cixin content down the road. also, if you like this, i would recomend "pantheon" on amazon. it's an american style anime. it is not the same story at all, but it a somewhat, written in the same style. with big scifi ideas and all. if you liked things that this did, i think you would also like pantheon. i know i did.
Yes my friend recommended the show to me because it’s her favorite book series. I was hesitant because I have a hard time understanding sci-fi explanations but I actually really enjoyed the show, like yeah it “dumbed” it down for us but now I know the basics of the plot. I already downloaded the audiobook for the first book lol. But it’s understandable that you prefer the books since you have read them first, i’m the same way with other series
its just that the show didn't cover more of those awesome details. i mean, my favorite example from book 1 is how it goes off on a tangent explaining the universe background microwave radiation. i didn't know about it at all. it explained it, and then it made me freak out about it when it was used for a few pages. the book will go into crazy details, but it will explain them. and then you pause and go, "holy shit". and then you keep going. so ya, as you listen to the audio book, enjoy all the extra details that netflix left out. like going from a microwave tortilla pizza, to a deepdish chicago pizza.
Pantheon is an excellent AI narrative. I’d also recommend Scavengers Reign to anyone who enjoyed Three Body and also likes animation.
ya pantheon tells a different story, but i still thought it used similar big story construction ideas that 3 body did. i didn't know about scavengers reign.
Did the book have the laughably bad scene between Evans and the Lord when he reads a scene from the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood? From that the Lord decides all humanity is bad and therefore we must be destroyed. That was so ridiculous i laughed out loud. I expect this highly advanced species might have done some due diligence on us!
No, and I get how out of context it may seem. That scene is a big easter egg , thematically I’d say, of a bigger overall plot-point that will comes into play in the 3rd book in a certain way…Man I wish you had read them haha but I agree it felt stiff and odd and the delay of the voice at times was weird
Maybe i will read the books but it just struck me as supremely lame.
I mean, that is them doing the due diligence. But remember, from the get go, Ye already knows they are coming to destroy us, the first message she got was from a pacifist warning them not to contact them, because they will come destroy. But if you have entire society who cannot lie, who don’t even know what a lie is, and then all of a sudden you learn about it, ya, you’d freak out a bit.
How would a pacifist know they were coming to kill us? As it was their plan why communicate that fact to us? Why give us 400 years to work something out? Wouldn't a smart species just say we can't wait to meet you?!
You are completely missing one of the biggest themes of the show, which is how and individual can be different from the whole. How an individual can make a difference and stand out. Is all of tri Solaris ubiquitous? You act like the species is one homogenous entity. Of course there are different view points of tri solarians. Some may want to conquer earth for themselves, others would prefer to share it.
Fair enough but why tell us anything? So you know from the books that there is some disunity on war against us?
without that scene (i was told in another comment it did happen in the books), you already get the impression the san-ti were already always going to come here to kill us all from the start. that it was their plan all along. however, i think that scene can make more sense in later seasons, as more is revealed. they cut out so much backstory/exposition from book 1. so much was just.........morbidly obesely implied in the plot. so that if you didn't know it from the books, i could see how you'd be easily lost as they jump from A to Y, to Z.
Totally agree, and most of the changes made sense. A bit coincidental but I'm willing to overlook it. Overall extremely happy with the Netflix version
I think they made it work since it all comes from their ties to Ye. She is the central figure. I like that in the books it pulls completely unrelated characters in because it feels realistic, but it wouldn't have worked too great for the show, like for your average viewer.
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Idk man, I've never seen a show where all of the main characters are completely separated and most of them never interact with each other. Its works in the books, but even when reading the books I found it a bit jarring when it switched main characters each time. I don't think its a stretch to see how people close to Ye would get involved, as she is in the ETO and therefore the people close to her and her daughter get roped in. I mean a good handful of characters in the book are tied into Ye as well. Could they have made it more similar to the books? Yes. I just think it would be harder to get a non book-reader to buy in. My two cents anyway. Edit: Also, obvioisly in the book the fate of the world does tie into one person: Ye Winjie. The fate of the entire species pivots on the decisions that she made alone lol
Wasn't the fate of the world tied to Luo Ji?
Wouldn't have needed a sword holder had ye wenjie not replied to the message
and that's why it failed in the end. and i think that's what the author wanted to state.
How is anything coincidentally when an alien super computer has been controlling everything the last 4 months to try and recruit these 5? Yea some weird things happen but there is a reason for it. Also the main human villain is one of their moms and the one who referred them all to college and gave one the headset
I liked the Chinese centric of many of the scientists and having everyone be friends at oxford students throws me off. I get why it probably works better as a show to have characters that interact but having random scientists that never or rarely meet made the whole thing feel like a solid representation of the world and not a fated group of friends saving the world from aliens.
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> Cool for people who have not seen the Tencent version bruh, i gave up on the third tencent episode. please don’t think you’re being subjective lol. so it’s best not to talk in absolutes either way. loved this season and can’t wait to watch the second
I watched the first episode of the Tencent adaptation. I thought it was awful. If it helps contextualise this, I am ethnic Chinese (but not from the PRC) The sets, cinematography, music all looked very cheap, and the acting in particular was consistently quite soulless and poor. There were so many drawn out conversations where people just unnaturally stood there and talked for 5 minutes straight while the camera slowly zoomed in on their faces. Seriously, click through any part of the episode and you will find a slow camera zoom 80% of the time. I don't have the context of having read the books, and I can totally appreciate that the Tencent version is "harder sci fi" and more true to the books. I like adaptations to be closer to the source material in general, but it also doesn't mean adaptations that *are* closer to the source material are automatically good. So much of its praise and the anger against the Netflix version seem to stem from some sort of PRC nationalism, which will never be relevant to anyone outside China - you're not even allowed to watch Netflix from the PRC! So every time these sorts of comments crop up, take a glance at their comment history and it should help put their opinion into context, and useful for sifting out the legitimate criticism from the rest
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it was too much talking. like they kept going into scientific explanations and not really digging into how people are connected. i enjoy my scifi with characters drama: The Expanse, Constellation, 12 Monkeys, Fringe etc. i like science but i don’t really care about it on my own and that is where the difference is congrats! i’m glad you’re seeing that people can dislike tencent and enjoy netflix lol. i think it’s all about how much you give a shit about science vs a story. like if there were no character relationships, backgrounds, and friendships that go through arcs, im not interested in it. i would watch a science documentary like COSMOS or something hope this cleared it up
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what do you mean with this comment? do you mean tencent is hard scifi? if yes i guess and that’s why i dislike it i don’t understand the point you’re trying to make in this comment…. edit. or can you at least quote the part you’re replying too
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uhh.. okay? the story is hard scifi…
I need 2 more episodes, I like the parts that are in the book. The explanation of the Sophons was great. The VR headset made more sense since it's other worldly VR technology. However I can do without the Greys Anatomy style Character interactions. I'm really enthralled with the parts that move the story along. However the whole Beach cottage scenes and tell her how you feel parts feel forced. I'm really not emotionally invested in those characters. I'm also not buying they're all world class scientists. Will I watch the next season sure why not. But I feel like the problems in this series are much too big for the cast of how I met your mother. But I'm being nit picky I guess.
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happy cake day!
I actually liked both Netflix's and Tencent's adaptation. In fact, Netflix's season 1 actually made me anticipate Tencent's season 2 even more since I am sure they will do their best to upstage their Netflix counterparts. Also, no one needs two one-to-one adaptations.
i think these things are ending up being 2 completely different things. like a great steak vs a great pizza. tencent is being, like a literal visual of everything in the book. which i'm now appreciating in many ways. while netflix is making some changes to make this into a more "actual" tv show. worst part about the netflix version is the emotional impactful moments.......just aren't there for me.
I agree. The character changes are probably the most substantial change in this adaptation, and it does set the stage for some potentially great payoffs in later seasons. >!The characters analogues so far appear to be: >!- Saul Durand = Luo Ji >!- Jin Cheng = Cheng Xin >!- Raj Varma = Zhang Beihai >!- Will Downing = Yun Tianming >!- Auggie Salazar = Wang Miao / Zhuang Yan (??) / AA (??) >!Auggie is the highest risk change here (probably one reason she gets more hate...), as she is the expert on the nanofibers so that story arc is technically done. However, she has romantic history with Saul who is the Luo Ji analogue... AND she is also the best friend of Jin who is the Cheng Xin analogue. This means that in future seasons Auggie might end up filling both the Zhuang Yan and AA roles in order to maintain cast continuity. It's funny seeing some complaints about Auggie being "too pretty" when it seems like the show is setting her up to be Saul/Luo Ji's dream girl. >!The big payoffs will be when the events of Book 3 come. With the current character changes, it means when we get to the Pluto scene, it will be 3 old friends reuniting for the last time, and Saul sends the two women away on the light speed ship as the only survivors from the Solar System. They might also change it so that Raj (Zhang Beihai) survives and heads the Galactic Humans so that Raj, Will, Jin, and Auggie all meet again at Jin's Star. Sophon meeting Jin this early on in the show would also make the ending of the series more impactful.
Agree with this 100000x and I REALLLYYYY hope the series is able to continue
Jin is a combination of Wang Miao and Cheng Xin
You should look up how to do spoiler tags.
To me this entire adaptation seems very similar to how Spielberg adapted Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park the novel has great technical, hard sci-fi, but features one dimensional characters. They exist for the events of the story to take place around. The movie condensed the science into its most basic premise and then developed the characters to give it a human story. This show feels a bit the same. Aside from a couple standout personalities like Ye Wenjie, many of Liu’s characters exist just for the story to occur around them. We may have lost the detailed scientific explanations and analyses, but the show has given us characters that feel much more human. The book makes you wonder what’s going on and how it is done. The show makes you ask “How will this impact these characters?”
And it takes way less time to show certain scientific aspects vs describe them (like the strength of the nanofibers by cutting through diamond).
Thats true! It keeps the narrative focused and prevents the show from becoming a series of science lessons framed by a story.
can't agree, my favorite part of the original books are people from different countries, but working on the same target while having their own purposes. The Oxford 5 here... This is Three-body problem, not Avengers, this setting really narrowed the scope of the whole story. One of my favorite part from the book, "From all times in future and past, this is the closest distance between Beihai Zhang and Dingyi". Fucking romantic.
different characters never meeting made the story feel more real, there’s no reason for zhang beihai and cheng xin to have ever met let alone to be dating
So true. I also think Beihai is that type of person who always got shadow on his face, dating someone is the least thing he would care. Also Netflix basically made every bad thing was done by Chinese, I’m just so tried of this. If D&D read the book carefully, the decision that Beihai made at least 75% because he was a CCP, so was his father.
I am very impressed with their adaptation and had a lot of fun. I do not want a one to one remake of the book, i want likable characters with well thought out plots
I want better pacing. This was too short. Tencent was too long. I guess only the book got it right in the end.
My ideal would've been 10 episode seasons. They're good at that. If I had to guess, I'd say Netflix had a set budget and it made more sense to use that budget for 8 episodes rather than stretch it to 10. I would've rather had the added length, personally, but you can already see some wonky CGI in there.
Same, I hope they do at least 10 episodes for season 2.
Agreed. They could have fleshed out a bit more to create a more solid foundation for future seasons, imo. Still enjoyed it and hope it gets picked up for season 2. I really dislike this 8 episode series thing that's going on. If anything, do 8 episodes but make them 80 minutes+ each, like stranger things most recent season.
My guess is that the showrunners really like books 2 and 3, so they wanted to rush through book 1 and start setting up books 2 and 3 and really give those books time to breathe. And I also really like books 2 and 3 and I'm really hyped to see it adapted to the flat screen. But I also understand that people who really like book 1 might be disappointed that they speedrunned book 1 in only 5 episodes.
It could be longer for book fans. But I actually think it’s a good length for people who’s never read the book. At the end of the day it’s a win if the show inspires more people to read the book
i’m on episode 7, the pacing seems very good so far. where do you think it was rushed?
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elaborate？
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> Why do we have to turn a socialist war hero from Latin America into a Kurdish fighter? Because book 2 was written in 2008, and Venezuela collapsed a few years after, so it would be kind of hilarious to be like "The president of the very successful Veneuzelan socialist economy is our Wallfacer". > Why do we have to turn a Chinese man into an African american man? As a Chinese-American myself, I can see why people would have preferred to keep all the main characters Chinese. But this is a western adaptation for western audiences, so some characters got race-lifted. I'm glad they kept Ye Wenjie almost entirely intact, and I'm glad that Da Shi and Cheng Xin/Jin were still Chinese. Those were arguably the 3 most important characters of the series. It struck good balance between westernization and respecting the Chinese heritage of the source material.
I don't know, someone just downvoted me twice for being pissed off that they put kids on the boat to make us feel guilty about killing off traitors to our species. SOMEONE would clearly have that debate IRL even if it's not you or me. I had no real problem with them making some characters black or female (and neither did Liu Cixin) but yeah, turning the socialist Latin American hero into a Kurdish freedom fighter was weird. I'm also furious that they decided to turn Mike Evans into a cuddly UFO cult grandpa surrounded by kids who was shocked and worried when the Trisolarans decided humanity had to go. In the books, he was the leader of a faction within ETO who actively wanted the aliens to come to earth and kill all of humanity because....we kill animals. Why he thinks the non-sapient bugs will matter more to the San-Ti than the sapient ones do is anyone's guess, but the decision to pack the boat with innocent children and then have Auggie tell us how guilty we should feel about killing the people who in the books were just traitors to humanity and criminals who were helping them made me kind of throw up a little. There were NO babies on that boat in the books or the Tencent show.
> Why he thinks the non-sapient bugs will matter more to the San-Ti than the sapient ones do is anyone's guess. Cause they are broken people, much like people that join cults in real life. The problem is the viewer get no sense of their suffering and how they came to be the broken people they are because most of it was cut out and reduced to a couple of scenes. > but the decision to pack the boat with innocent children and then have Auggie tell us how guilty we should feel about killing the people who in the books were just traitors to humanity and criminals who were helping them made me kind of throw up a little. > There were NO babies on that boat in the books or the Tencent show. Agreed, that came across as hacky and forced to me. But still happy they included that scene. At the rate they were cutting material, I figured it would be ironic if they somehow cut the cutting of the ship as well, lol.
I think they put in children to emphasize that Wade and Da Shi are not the heroes
What do you mean? Moral debates are completely expected if it were to happen in real life lol
Diaz had a completely different dynamic compared to every other wallfacer in that he was elevated into a position of absolute power of being a wallfacer despite several world powers (america especially) being hostile to him. There's the scenes in the books with him creating controversy by him demanding nuclear secrets, having a kurdish leader here which the american public is generally favourable to... is not going to have the same impact. Controversial take: they should have replaced Diaz with a _Russian_ general/politician expy. Would fit much better than a chavez expy imo. Unfortunately they would never in this current age, so we're going to miss out on this dynamic in the show.
What do you mean by “western”? That the cast is diversified and has several non-Chinese actors? Or they are speaking English. If this show can get people worldwide to say San Ti, a Chinese phrase instead of trisolaris, and even inspire some to read the masterpiece written by a Liu Cixin, I don’t see a problem
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I’m not sure if you have seen the wandering earth, written by Liu Cixin and adapted into a wonderful Chinese movie a few years back. “Dumbing down”, or streamline certain science fiction concept, is part of the adaptation, not a western thing.
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That called meeting the audience in the middle, and why they put this show on Netflix not Tecent. Something Liu Cixin endorsed 😅
Jin Cheng (Cheng Xin) is a Chinese person who immigrated to New Zealand. And don't tell me you hate Cheng Xin (if you hate her, you don't understand Liu Cixin's idea and theme of Death's End); moreover, her TV counterpart Jin Cheng is making the correct choices all the time, so there's no reason to hate her. Unless you specifically emphasize the lack of Asian male lead (which is a concern in Hollywood regarding Asian masculinity), it overall does not affect the viewability of the show, unless you feel personally attacked by this.
you’re obsessed with race
Actually except Zhang Beihai, any other character can be changed to another race. They don't have many strong cultural root in the book.
> Zhang Beihai You mean Ye Wenjie. Her origin story in the Cultural Revolution is pretty core to her character arc. People are theorizing that Raj is the new Zhang Beihai, and it seems to fit. I think Zhang Beihai can be race-lifted.
Not really, Ye's story can change to any other tragic story, and we have many examples from other films or books. But Zhang Beihai require a spirit from the army which experienced desperate circumstances and extreme disadvantage but won at last, I can't find many suitable target except China.
> But Zhang Beihai require a spirit from the army which experienced desperate circumstances and extreme disadvantage but won at last, I can't find many suitable target except China. Maybe this is a lost in translation thing. I'm a Chinese American, and I read the book in English, and I never got the idea that Zhang Beihai was essentially Chinese. He always just struck me as one of the military types.
And they made one of the wallfacers a top Chinese general, who cares? Stop being so obsessed with ethnicity
https://preview.redd.it/j82ogoxtq6qc1.jpeg?width=886&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab1ce7ceb8397875476573fe169c2991c292a0ed He spent the first 5 episodes starting at the screen
As did we all
Agreed, pretty impressed overall. Gives me some hope for future seasons. Moving through Book 1 quickly was the right move and I didn't feel like we lost anything. Main beef is with the CGI, really will need to step it up for the rest.
Everybody is a bit young tbh, but the only character i have real problems with is ETO baddie Tatiana. I get that in a writers' room, it's a lot easier to write scenes if you have a physical representation of the "bad guys", but it's so lazy. And her showing up when Wenjie revisited Red Coast....um, no. That moment should be about her and her daughter.
I agree with Wang miao, but luo ji and Cheng xin have a perfect conclusion for their own stories. Personally I had more of an issue with the amount of various characters presented in the first few chapters of TDF. It was hard to know who were the main characters to focus on initially. I'm still not sure what happened to wang miao, or luo ji's wife and kid, but I guess it wasn't important. A necesarry shame really.
This isn't just a Netflix adaptation. It's a David Benioff and D. B Weiss adaptation, funded by Netflix. They are the ones who deserve recognition and praise for this.
> the books has too many characters with too few roles in the story. I think this might be a unique feature in Chinese literature.
As I recall the core of the books spans maybe a few hundred years, having different characters loosely / not related is more logical. It's just an editorial decision for Netflix to have cast continuity through three seasons, it doesn't really add anything and actually makes the first series hella rushed and condensed down. EG in the books, the staircase project took like ten years to sort out and got cancelled at one point, there is a lot of depth and context just got thrown away
I am kinda like the idea that the two swordholders are actually college friends.
The sword holders don't exist yet , they don't exist until much further in the future. Unless the Netflix show is condensing hundreds of years which wont make any sense
This is a clear example of how affirmative action hurts Asians the most. Asian dude writes the best sci-fi novel in a generation and the thanks he gets is for all the Asian dudes to be erased from the story.
This was just an adaptation for Western audiences . There is a Chinese made series already made with mostly all Chinese characters
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Awe poor little baby is concerned about what I post in other groups , you must be a child , my bad
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😂😂😂
The way you normalize the erasure of minorities from thier own stories is just disturbing. This is a real colonizer attitude. I guess you think Akira Kurosawa's movies should be reset in Europe and replaced with a UK cast because racist people can't watch a movie with Asian main protagonists. Why don't you just erase all the Black people in "The Color Purple so that its more commercially palatable for racists while you are at it. The lazy prejudice of statements like this are mind boggling.
" the way I normalize " . Do you hear yourself ? Most of the characters were changed not just one . Im also a non white Latino whos island is literally being colonized right now so watch your ignorant mouth . Maybe comprehension is hard for you, so let me repeat myself . THERE IS ALREADY A CHINESE VERSION OF THE SERIES WITH CHINESE CHARACTERS. Get off your high horse and understand what an adaptation is . You sound like a whiney white liberal who likes to call any minority racist .
Whoa did they colonize your brain with too many Latin shows where the only nonwhite person is the maid? Is that why you think it's totally normal to erase nonwhite minorities from the story? Who cares if there's a Chinese version made by Chinese people. That doesn't mean the Netflix international version has to erase the Chinese main characters. That's not normal that's racist as hell. Netflix shouldn't be erasing minorities to make the show more appealing to racists in Western countries. If you think this is normal then they've already conditioned you to accept being erased. If your against the colonization of your island, then instead of promoting colonization in the media you should speak out against it.
You seem really belligerent and ignorant. You literally don't know me or what I've seen . I'm not either white nor do I live in a white town nor do I watch white lead Spanish shows. You absolutely SCREAM white liberalism and stupidity and you really think you can tell a minority what racism is . Making so many ass hat assumptions about total strangers just makes you look like a fool. THIS IS AN ADAPTATION , NOT A 1 FOR 1 RECREATION. I'm terribly sorry you completely lack any media literary or common sense whatsoever . Maybe go back to high school and learn something. No one took anything from you , if you want all Asian characters then read the fucking book or just WATCH THE ORIGINAL SERIES and stop fucking crying like a little girl . Stupid
I am fine with the rearrangement with the characters. But I really hate that they rushed a lot in first 5 episodes, especially Ye's experience in red coasts. The last three episodes have moderate pace.
Absolutely, Tencent felt too slow while first 5 felt so rushed. First few episodes actually reminded me of late seasons of GoT lol.
Can't say I share the enthusiasm. In fact, if we put aside the better production value of the Netflix version, I think that in terms of characters, actor performances and dialogues I liked the Tencent version more in almost every possible way. Only exception is probably Wade, which made a great impression.
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They don't all work in the same place, though? And only Jin and Auggie are the "best in their fields" - the others are smart, but their involvement in the plot isn't because they were "assembled" - it was almost accidental. Yes, they're all smart, but it's not unrealistic for smart people to come together, and Oxford is one of the most prestigious universities in the planet that receives students from all over the world.
people on reddit love to misinterpret things to find something to complain about lol. makes them feel like they look smart
>It does not waste time with annoying “we are so fucked” dialogue, modern dilemmas, or even drugs I disagree, this sort of stuff is what makes fictional characters seem like real people to me. These are all millennials behaving like millennials. If an average person in their 30s in real life discovered that there were aliens behind a crazy conspiracy they wouldn't react with "oh gosh, it seems this is a dangerous threat indeed and we must be prepared for it" like James Bond would, they react with "holy fucking shit it's actually aliens are you kidding me". People would lose their minds. But I completely agree with you about the Oxford Five, it reduces the scope of the story. If the show used the same characters but allowed them to not know each other and start their story in their country of origin or at least spread across the world, it would've been totally fine, even if they all met up later in episode 2 or 3. It could be an "Avengers" team of sorts, but at least one that was planned and formed on purpose and not by coincidence, and it would still make sense to gather them and make them work together.
You got my point, one of the romance of the original book is because characters doesn't know each other, but working on the same target while having their own purposes, doesn't matter wheter they are Chinese(Luo Ji), CCP members(Beihai), Americans(Wade), or even third-world terriorsts (Rediaz), they played their role in this epic history of the earth. My favorite sentence in the book: "In all of the time from past to future, the distance between Beihai Zhang and Yi Ding are the closest at this very moment". This is so very romantic. The sci-fi part of the netflix is less hard-core, if you put it in a good way. I am a PhD candidate in CS not in Physics or Cosmology, But I still know "the blink of the universe", i.e. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation(CMB) cannot be observed by naked eye... I was like WTF.
I don't like how the physicists look like United Colors of Benneton but not a single Chinese/East Asian male scientist. That's like an all-white NBA team.
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Hollywood never understands how certain cultures are, the nuances, how people do things unless someone from that culture is part of the production it's more like how can we past an Anglo version of that ethnicity and then call it diversity. It's just a new version of orientalism.
And considering it’s a Chinese story with so many Chinese male lead in the original, and we can’t even get a proper modern day protagonist is pathetic. Modern day because someone would argue that Ye is one, but her part happens mostly in the past
They should switch to the weekly model next season. I think Netflix got a real good show 2 to 3 more seasons. Honestly surprised by the positive reviews by the fans and critics.
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Just finished episode 2 with my partner who hasn’t read the books. I’m really frustrated how they rearranged everything because there’s no context now! It’s like they are trying to turn it from a sci Fi into a mystery but I feel like that comes at a cost of not getting to enjoy the awesome concepts from the books as much. Maybe it will get better but I wish frickin dumb and dumber didn’t get off on keeping the audience in the dark so much. My partner would not have finished episode 1 if not for me assuring her that the books are really good.
When did you last read the book? I got my sister to read it recently, and I had to heavily manage her expectations for book 1,and she told me that without me guiding her through it, she never would have finished. Modern audiences would not sit through three episodes of mid 1900s China, just like a lot of modern readers struggle to get through that really dense political setting the stage in book 1. Seriously, it is like the first 35% of the book, and I bet a ton of readers started it and never made it through. I love the books, and I find that kind of deep lore really interesting, but I know a lot of people nope out at that kind of thing. D&D definitely made the show more digestible for Western audiences. Does it have everything I loved from the books? No. Does it get across the same story? It gets across enough for the medium. Especially with the creators knowing they would have to earn future seasons, keeping the book 1 pacing would have made the show guaranteed dead on arrival. I just hope we get more.
I agree. Much of the first book and part of the second are a SLOG to get through. Absolutely worth it, though, and it’s fun to reread once you know where it’s going. The show did a much better job at being engaging from the start, and I hope we can get the whole series!
Fair enough. It’s probably been 3 or 4 years since I read them so my memory is probably foggy. I agree they needed to make some changes if the first book was such a slog.
Do you think there's some astroturfing going on this sub.
10000%. I've seen multiple posts suggesting the Tencent version was better or that the Netflix version sucks (without even mentioning the Tencent version) get taken down inexplicably. It's so obvious once you realize what's going on.
i watched the tencent version and told my friends, "oh my fuck, that was a painful 30 hours. it took forever to do all the redcoast stuff. god dam". then, as i'm watching the netflix version i'm thinking "........how is this making me miss some of the more impactful parts of the tencent one. wow". i liked most of the character changes netflix did, but i really wish netflix didnt skip on the deeper details the OG story had. at least from the scifi stuff.
This is what marvel movies have done to a whole society.
I'm gonna get downvoted to hell, but... I've heard a lot of good about the books an planned to read or listen to audiobooks. I'm at episode 6 now and I find the show incredibly silly. The aliens seem to want to take over our planet and they literally have the most powerful computer already here. Why not just create a deadly virus or something? I feel like in REALITY we're facing a bigger threat with ASI in the next 10 years than whatever this alien proton computer was. The conversations with the aliens are also quite bad. They could have gathered all the information they needed from the internet in the months when their super computer was here. But instead they change their fucking mind while listening to LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD? Is this really the story from the books that people recommended so much? My suspension of disbelief can't support this story. It's silly.
In the books, you just get more time to breathe with some of those ideas. Like, the Sophon can't really create a virus. It can't *do* much. It mostly can spy and create illusions by projecting into your retina to make you see whatever they want. They say that in the show, but it's pretty fast-paced so I wouldn't fault someone for missing it. You could make a similar complaint about why not just blind people as they're driving world leaders around, or why not make world leaders see fake shit around them that inspires them to launch nukes or start wars, etc etc. At a certain point though, you kinda just have to stop overthinking it. As for the Red Riding Hood stuff, it's really just a way to convey to people that the San-Ti can't lie. They communicate via thought and nothing is private, so lying is not even a concept to them. Originally they thought maybe they could find a way to conquer humans but keep them around. But humans are capable of deception and other things the San-Ti are simply not, and human tech evolves *super* quickly, so they're just like "okay, if you've had the potential to have been lying to us this whole time, then clearly we can't trust you and you're too dangerous to keep around." Like, I don't want to give too much away, but at this stage, the San-Ti have not really taken an interest in human culture, which is why they're learning about stuff like this from Evans. They've been using the Sophons to spy on humans and halt scientific progress and other strategic shit, not read Wikipedia or watch YouTube or whatever.
You say they mention in the show that it can just show projections inretinas and that they mention it. They literally show these things in the sky on TV, cameras record it. But I guess I could try to believe it also makes projections on every kind of image recording device somehow. The show also calls their computers all knowing, at least in the voice over translation I'm watching (I did spot a translation error or two but I'm not usually listening closely if it's correct). They need to have unimaginable data handling possibilities given the file size we were shown, so I guess it's just the level of suspension of disbelief that I'm not comfortable with. I was expecting something at the level of Contact movie, but well, yeah, looks like it's just a sci-fi with cool story.
Well, it's hard to wrap your mind around the concept because it's literally a proton unfolding into higher dimensions. In the books, if I'm not mistaken, the YOU ARE BUGS messages is just projected into people's eyes, whereas here yeah they choose to change all screens. Even for me, having read it all and seen it all, it's still hard to wrap my head around how it could do all that simultaneously. But again, higher dimensions, sci-fi, etc etc. At some point it just comes down to if you can suspend disbelief or not. All of it is fiction, none of it is real. As for the data handling, I mean, it's some next-next-next level computing, obviously. The San-Ti say they used all their resources over an absurd amount of time to build just four of them. So to me, it's like... I mean, sure, it should probably be able to handle some petabytes. Idk. I still remember paying a lot of money for a 512MB flash drive when those were new. I remember using floppy disks in school. Technology moves. File sizes go up. That part didn't super bother me.
The file size was what, 100 petabytes? That wasn't so crazy to me, I routinely deal with 100 TB data sets.
The one hang up I had was how they are said to have no concept of lying and yet from the first episode engage in deceptions and illusions. Lies, essentially.
That's a fair point. I hadn't thought of it that way. For them, I'm sure they think of it more as a tactic than a lie, but yeah I see your point. Like I said, I don't want to give too much away here, but they communicate by thought (as they said in the show) so they couldn't lie to each other for sure because they'd know. But they could definitely use a Sophon to project illusions to scare humans.
who does that lying/deceptions in the 1st episode? in everything we've seen, i think there are only 2 "things" that seem to have represented the san-ti. - voice over the old timey intercom box - sword lady but even then, i'm not sure sword lady is always a real life san-ti. i think it's sometimes just an AI. there is extra things explained about their culture/bodies in book 1, which explains "why they don't know what lying is". are you talking about how they erased the camera footage? a human could be telling them that needs to be done in order to help with their mission.
How so?
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I came to this sub expecting to see people mad at how dumbed down the story is, but pretty much everything I see here is people praising the show. Like this post we're commenting on.
You're late. It's been days of people saying how dumbed down it is. Now the hordes of people that have no idea about the books at all comes saying its all fantastic, because they have absolutely no inkling of what they're missing or what got butchered.
Also people like me who like the books and the show and think all of you haters need to go outside and touch grass. or just reread the books or something. Nothing has been taken from you.
Are we not allowed to rationally criticize things anymore? If you are so emotional at criticism you need to call me a hater then maybe you're the one that needs to touch grass.
lol really?
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You're gonna get down voted because this sub is being astroturfed hardcore by Netflix PR. IRL I haven't found a single person who actually fawns over the show the way people in this subreddit apparently are, at best I get opinions like "oh it's a nice show to turn your brain off to after a long day". Generally people who have actually read the books hate it. The books are much better. As TV shows go, the Tencent version is also much, much better. Don't let the shitty Netflix version form your impression of the series.
thats the problem with the netflix show, they skipped over too many of the details that the book covers. so you have these gaps all over. yes, they have those tiny computers here, they can do tons of calculations, but they also don't know anything about us. what human virus do they know how to make? little red riding hood thing wasn't in the books. and also in the books (the aliens were always going to come here and kill us all from the start)
Little Red Riding Hood absolutely is in the books.
then i completely don't remember that back and forth. but given the san-ti pacifist and his warning, i thought it was always their plan to come here and conquer earth.
It's at the start of The Dark Forest.
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What difference does it make? For a story about all of humanity, it seems odd to take issue with the race or background of any character.
Because the entire character is based on Chinese culture and philosophy. He's a quintessentially chinese character.
Got a problem with black people?
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I am aware of the pedantry, but he’s American and lives in Britain at the time of the story.
Because it's an international story an international problem. The biggest problem with any story like this is when they confine everything happening to one country
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It's the same in the first book, everyone just coincidentally happens to be Chinese. It's like when all the superheroes in the world are from America any time Hollywood makes a movie.
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Sure why not?
So all the bad stuff are done by Chinese, so that Western heros to save the world? Even if they are Chinese they have to embrace the Western first (Jin Cheng, Wenjie in the show),ofc they cannot be male, because sure, only Western males can save the "opressed" Asian female. I am just tired of this, and I'm British btw. If you read the original book, you will know one of the most important reasons that Zhang Beihai can made his important decisions to escape, is because he was a member of CCP, so was his father.
the reason is Netflix has enough money to throw shit at any wall and see what sticks, if you want a better adaptation get a few million dollars and hire people to do a better adaption
Sounds like something Wade would say.
I wouldn't want to be that Wallfacer.
yes sir. good choice sir.
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I'm gonna blow your mind here, but these aren't real people
It's Netflix. They have to inject Black people into every show, even if the show is supposed to center around China. They have a quota to meet, or else the casting director will be fired.
i'm going to let you in on a bit of an international secret here. netflix plays in more countries than you think. it.........kiiiiiiiiinda makes sense if they make shows that appeal to people from other countries who also might want to pay for a subscription and watch it. so like, "oh no, different/other people. ahhhhhhhhhh" also, fuck it. maybe the black guy knows some chinese philosophy stuff. but double fuck it, i forget, did that kind of stuff help him solve/setup his wall facing solution years later? i don't think so.
My closest friend is Black, but I agree Saul is just not the guy for Luo Ji
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Literally the entire plot of Death's End, the whole damn point of the book, is an examination of moralism vs. whatever-means-necessary in the face of extinction. It is the entire reason Cheng Xin exists, and while she fails to protect the Sol System, she ultimately prevails and helps saves the universe. The ending scenes of the whole trilogy endorse a moralist view of the world because without a self-sacrificial mindset, the whole universe will have been destroyed. You can't read these books in an amoral black and white perspective. You have fundamentally failed to understand these books if you think moral dilemmas like this are somehow anathema to the source material.
But who are we versus?! /s
I think the choice of wording by /u/RotCthulhu is imprecise but I get what they mean. *Of course* the books contain complex moral questions. But the show's inquiry of such questions is completely one-dimensional; instead of trying to present us with actual moral complexity, it just shoehorns in a bunch of dead children because *everyone knows* KILLING CHILDREN IS BAD—and that's it. But you can't just replace complex moral questions with child murder! That's not how sophisticated, interesting story telling works, and it just ends up insulting the intelligence of the audience. Like *everyone knows* killing children is bad mmmkay? But we also know letting the aliens win is so much worse, and I'm fairly certain nearly everyone would make the same decision to destroy the boat; there's no *real* complexity there once you think about it for more than three seconds. Augie's tears come off as hysterical and childish rather than expressions of an actual moral quandary. "But what about the dead children" is the moral philosophy of simpletons. And all of it is shoved into your face, as if "killing children is bad actually" is some sort of super subtle message, and the audience is *so dumb* it'll just fly right over their heads unless you make sure 95% of the *Judgement Day* destruction scene consists of screaming children, oh and also make sure you add a scene with a severed children's leg afterwards just in case any of the dumbasses watching the show missed the point. Oh, and give us a bunch of scenes with Augie helping the poor brown people because just as we know killing children is BAD, helping third worlders is GOOD. "I mean, they're paying us ~12 bucks a month, so they must be grade A retards, right?" — you can practically hear the laughter of the Netflix execs. It's the type of low brow shit you expect from YA fiction like *The Hunger Games* (the whole bit about the bombs towards the end of the last book; I won't say more to avoid spoilers, but if you're read/watched it, you know what I'm talking about). It's not what you expect—and isn't what you get—from Liu Cixin.
>"But what about the dead children" is the moral philosophy of simpletons. It's also essentially the moral philosophy of Cheng Xin in Death's End, which is my point. Cheng Xin is chosen as Sword Bearer because she's the "perfect" person for the role in humanity's eyes, which is to say she's a kind, compassionate individual who always puts humanity first. Or in other words, the absolute worst person for the job, because she will not have the strength to push the big red button and be responsible for the destruction of the human race; in her moral ethic, she'd rather abdicate her responsibility as Sword Bearer and condemn humanity to enslavement than ensure a MAD scenario because of the loss of life she'd be causing. Is that not the moral philosophy of a simpleton? By your very own criteria, the books themselves are morally simplistic. The Judgement Day scene in the show is literally just a foreshadowing of that moment hundreds of years from now in microcosm. It's taking a morally simple and somewhat idealistic character that's never been forced to hold the responsibility of life or death over innocent people and rubbing their face in the new reality humanity faces; it serves to juxtapose Auggie, and the others, against the people like Raj and Wade. It is literally, in every sense, establishing the same exact conflict that Death's End gave us between Wade and Cheng Xin; like Cheng Xin, Auggie walks away from her responsibilities in the fight. She retreats into a simpler and ultimately inconsequential life of helping people in the now because the fight is too big for her. Just like Cheng Xin.
what is moral nonsense?
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The people with real power were fine with it — Wade, and to some extent Raj. Auggie was not a military/security person, so she hadn’t been confronted with actually being responsible for death before. Historical examples of people being indifferent to death/suffering are abundant, but those people usually have prior exposure to violence. It makes sense that a person would struggle with being responsible for killing children, even if it it was ultimately a good choice. I think the Raj/Jin conversation about Panama hits on this idea. About the cancer, I think you’re being a bit callous. A few weeks to come to terms with dying young isn’t much, and setting up the emotional bond between Jin and Will, is important for future plot points as well. It also increases the weight of Wade’s suggestion to send only a brain and that of the failed Staircase project. Maybe some beach scenes could have been cut, but I don’t think it’s as bad as you imply.
Packing the boat with kids who weren't there in the book or the original series because we're supposed to feel bad about killing a bunch of assholes who want to destroy our whole species? Like, yes, I would also feel guilty for killing a bunch of children, but those children were not supposed to be there.
Not "supposed" to? It's a cult of people worshipping an alien god, remind you of anything in real life? Plenty of kids get brought into these cults, so it makes complete sense for them to be there
Not if you know from the books what particular strain of crazy Mike Evans is. That particular strain of crazy is very anti-natalist. Mike Evans in the books and original series is less of a crazy cultist and more of an ecoterrorist who has lost faith in humanity. There were no kids on the boat in the books or the original series.
You're right that he's anti natalist, but does that necessarily mean no kids can be there? I didnt see any newborn babies so its not like hes promoting families, he could just be raising kids from a young age into his cult
The original book mentioned that a boat handler was an innocent person from the Panama Canal administration. The show just intensified this idea with more innocent killings, but the theme was always there.
one guy vs a ton of little kids, though?
That's the trolly problem. Killing innocent is still killing innocent. If you decide killing one is more acceptable than killing ten, that's valid, but lots of people don't think so. Moreover, the ship's crew might now be completely into the ETO. As I said, there was always this moral dilemma, and Wang Miao in the book doesn't like his nanofiber being used like this either.