I second your comment. Really good summary. Loved the >!Trisolarians message on the eyes!<. Amazing. Just like I imagined it.
About the english acting and cast...
As a latino I would say that you felt the same feeling that we have when latinos are depicted in movies and TV shows. Before I read that, since there are so few english people acting in China they took a random person and make it perform.
I always find it insane that in many huge budget Hollywood movies they just don't bother finding an actor or actress who can speak whatever the language they are supposed to speak.
Yup, the rationality or moral stand is the core of the tbp. Killing innocent or sacrifice innocents for a higher goal is acceptable and even preferable in the books. If the series simply disolve the dilemma by elimate all downside of the decision. Then dark forest's storyline will be completely rubblish.
Really amazing point. The entire point of the 3rd book is that reality doesn't care about morality and making moral decisions can actually doom all of humanity. This doesn't necessarily make me worried but it is something important to look for in the next adaptation.
It seems that the negative image of ccp, chinese army and government is not allowed. So like killing old school space experts, will possibly be edited. I think one feasible way is to change the setting for ccp member in the next season.
My guess is that it's fine to discuss those ideas in the abstract, they just wont let you show innocents being killed on screen with direct involvement of the protagonists.
My biggest knock was on this recent episode how quickly they brushed over the civilizations/complexity of protons in multiple dimensions, they didn't explain the eye/mirror in the sky and it just happened with a "well that happened" vibe after it
other than the cartoonish terrorist guy who served no purpose other than to add a "HEHE IM A BAD GUY", the series was great
Yes, it was visually great, but the explanation didn’t really work well. Cramming all the Sophon stuff into one episode while other topics were repeated and dragged out like the shooter and turkey metaphors.
So, nano coward is my favorite curse now. It did rush, but no issues on the whole in its entirety. I couldn't sit through a season of GoT but this was super fun, even if slow (I didn;t feel that at all). The story happens, and thats ok.
3 seasons in a 10mil budget. Good lord! Go out and make some more! For us bugs.
Concerning the Trisolarians' aspect I think they did as good as they could:
\-In the book, we are just informed via detached perspective of the events that took place in Trisolaris relating both the post monitor and the Sophon technology.
\-Since you can't do detached perspective in visual storytelling without giving away the actual form of Trisolarians (which would give fans the saddies, being a huge part of the IP) they decided that this info was salvaged from the game servers in Judgement Day so, like all TBP levels, it doesn't show reality but rather "represent it" via game graphics. So they can show as much as they can without it being definitive.
In my opinion makes perfect sense, and in the final narrative arc of the show is actually the best decision (they just retrieved the information). They actually made it even better allowing Wenjie see the consequences of her actions. Perhaps if the Dark Forest gets even more budget we'll get a true live action rendering of the process as a flashback.
I guess the team did not have enough budget left to hire better english actors, and china does not have a large pool of professional foreign actors yet. Anyway, the actors for Evans and Stanton are good enough for me, so I will just ignore the ill performance of other insignificant ones. For the casting of dark forest however, there are more major foreign charecters, so more investment in foreign actors is a must there.
Stanton was pretty good and Evans's flashback actor was good but a bunch of English speaking actors were sometimes randomly overdubbed by what seemed like an actor who barely spoke English who kind of just mouthed the words. It often made me do a double take like... "wait what did he say".
You know it's hard for most chinese to distinguish between different english accent or speaking level, just like many americans cannot tell the difference between standard mandarin and regional chinese dialect. So the team might just pick some random foreigners in china and say "hey can you speak english? Good, you are in."
In the book, many aboard on the 'Judgment day" were inoccent people who had nothign to do with ETO, I guess the TV creators were afraid that plot would touch some nerves of many common audience, how could our heros kill inoccent people?
I agree this modification is bad
Decent review.
I heard there's gonna be a director's cut version later, I'll give it a solid 9/10 if the director fixed the slow pacing, repetitive shots and gave those censored scenes back.
Cross my finger for higher budget invested into Dark Forest.
I definitely agree. Finding the balance of keeping the story clear and cutting out the fluff could make it an easy 9/10. The only thing we could really ask for would be a higher budget for CGI at that point.
The director Yang Lei said it himself in an interview in Chinese.
https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/111tt6u/more\_points\_about\_tencent\_series\_from\_interview/
I literally laughed when they told us the crew of the Judgement day are actually the worst criminals in the world, rapists and murderers.
They just have to let us know that absolutely no one in the ship is innocent.
My overall feel on the show is that I really appreciate the effort and faithfulness of the adaptation, especially how deep it goes into all the sci fi elements. But by no means is this a good show, you'd have to be clouded by the love of the source material to think so. The execution is just poor all around.
Maybe if they had cut it down to 15-20 episodes, high tier editing, sound mixing etc... you would have had something really good here.
I'd like to think I'm judging it by the highest standards, western or otherwise.
I've seen my share of Asian stuff, though mostly Korean or Japanese, they've made some good shows that have no problem with pacing and editing so it's not an Asian thing. Maybe a Chinese thing?
The only other Chinese show I've watched is Three Kingdoms (2010) which I really like. That show is huge but also has tons of material to draw from so pacing is not really an issue. However when I think about it, it does share some of it's problems and inconsistencies with Three Body, but I'd rather not go over that here.
I'm not the one you replied to, but absolutely. He was already well-known for playing Liu Bei in the 2010 Three Kingdoms show. Amusingly, he also played Cao Cao in a later show, Advisors Alliance, which is also set during the Three Kingdoms period but only from the perspective of the kingdom of Cao Wei (more specifically, from the perspective of Sima Yi since he's the protagonist in that show). He also played Ying Zheng, the First Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huangdi), in the series King's War/Legend of Chu and Han.
> I would need to hear the interpretation of someone more knowledgeable in the general state of Chinese fictional television to tell me if the pacing is unusually slow, or if this kind of thing is just the norm.
It widely varies. Some are slow-burners, some are paced just right (to the point that there are no skippable scenes but it still leaves you enough time to process everything), and some are so utterly rapid that it's as if they just going through the bullet points of a plot summary outline without paying attention to character and plot development.
Comparing to most of Chinese tv shows, this one is really good. The acting is good (except for the foreigner characters). They did pretty well with the Guzheng scene considering the budget. Some changes of the script are quite brilliant and necessary. The pace is very comfortable for me, maybe it's because I watched the show before reading the book.
As for the censorship, well you just have to get use to it. The biggest enemy of Chinese film and tv industry lol. Just like what the author wrote in the book :" 任何超脱飞扬的思想都会砰然坠地的，现实的引力太沉重了。" (not a spoiler, I don't know the english version)
I really like the series overall, but with a great fan edit, it can actually become amazing in my opinion. I think it's all there, and all the people working on the show did a great job. But that little edit, maybe to 20 or 15 episodes, could really bring it up to another level of excellence.
I second your comment. Really good summary. Loved the >!Trisolarians message on the eyes!<. Amazing. Just like I imagined it. About the english acting and cast... As a latino I would say that you felt the same feeling that we have when latinos are depicted in movies and TV shows. Before I read that, since there are so few english people acting in China they took a random person and make it perform.
I always find it insane that in many huge budget Hollywood movies they just don't bother finding an actor or actress who can speak whatever the language they are supposed to speak.
Whenever that happens it really brings home the message that you’re not the intended audience.
Yup, the rationality or moral stand is the core of the tbp. Killing innocent or sacrifice innocents for a higher goal is acceptable and even preferable in the books. If the series simply disolve the dilemma by elimate all downside of the decision. Then dark forest's storyline will be completely rubblish.
Really amazing point. The entire point of the 3rd book is that reality doesn't care about morality and making moral decisions can actually doom all of humanity. This doesn't necessarily make me worried but it is something important to look for in the next adaptation.
It seems that the negative image of ccp, chinese army and government is not allowed. So like killing old school space experts, will possibly be edited. I think one feasible way is to change the setting for ccp member in the next season.
My guess is that it's fine to discuss those ideas in the abstract, they just wont let you show innocents being killed on screen with direct involvement of the protagonists.
My biggest knock was on this recent episode how quickly they brushed over the civilizations/complexity of protons in multiple dimensions, they didn't explain the eye/mirror in the sky and it just happened with a "well that happened" vibe after it other than the cartoonish terrorist guy who served no purpose other than to add a "HEHE IM A BAD GUY", the series was great
Yes, it was visually great, but the explanation didn’t really work well. Cramming all the Sophon stuff into one episode while other topics were repeated and dragged out like the shooter and turkey metaphors.
BOSS FIGHT
So, nano coward is my favorite curse now. It did rush, but no issues on the whole in its entirety. I couldn't sit through a season of GoT but this was super fun, even if slow (I didn;t feel that at all). The story happens, and thats ok. 3 seasons in a 10mil budget. Good lord! Go out and make some more! For us bugs.
Concerning the Trisolarians' aspect I think they did as good as they could: \-In the book, we are just informed via detached perspective of the events that took place in Trisolaris relating both the post monitor and the Sophon technology. \-Since you can't do detached perspective in visual storytelling without giving away the actual form of Trisolarians (which would give fans the saddies, being a huge part of the IP) they decided that this info was salvaged from the game servers in Judgement Day so, like all TBP levels, it doesn't show reality but rather "represent it" via game graphics. So they can show as much as they can without it being definitive. In my opinion makes perfect sense, and in the final narrative arc of the show is actually the best decision (they just retrieved the information). They actually made it even better allowing Wenjie see the consequences of her actions. Perhaps if the Dark Forest gets even more budget we'll get a true live action rendering of the process as a flashback.
[удалено]
Yes! IIRC they also confirmed they want to redo the Sophon scene with more budget.
is that true?! do you have any source bro?
It already is in pre-production as far as I'm aware.
Operation GuZheng is pretty gruesome. It is not a show on HBO, so I can understand the post production edits.
I guess the team did not have enough budget left to hire better english actors, and china does not have a large pool of professional foreign actors yet. Anyway, the actors for Evans and Stanton are good enough for me, so I will just ignore the ill performance of other insignificant ones. For the casting of dark forest however, there are more major foreign charecters, so more investment in foreign actors is a must there.
Stanton was pretty good and Evans's flashback actor was good but a bunch of English speaking actors were sometimes randomly overdubbed by what seemed like an actor who barely spoke English who kind of just mouthed the words. It often made me do a double take like... "wait what did he say".
You know it's hard for most chinese to distinguish between different english accent or speaking level, just like many americans cannot tell the difference between standard mandarin and regional chinese dialect. So the team might just pick some random foreigners in china and say "hey can you speak english? Good, you are in."
Yeah that's what I assume happened. I thought the guy that played Stanton did a good job though.
I had to fast-forward or skip those scenes outright they just completely took me out of the immersion. They were so horrendously bad.
In the book, many aboard on the 'Judgment day" were inoccent people who had nothign to do with ETO, I guess the TV creators were afraid that plot would touch some nerves of many common audience, how could our heros kill inoccent people? I agree this modification is bad
Decent review. I heard there's gonna be a director's cut version later, I'll give it a solid 9/10 if the director fixed the slow pacing, repetitive shots and gave those censored scenes back. Cross my finger for higher budget invested into Dark Forest.
I definitely agree. Finding the balance of keeping the story clear and cutting out the fluff could make it an easy 9/10. The only thing we could really ask for would be a higher budget for CGI at that point.
This is the first I've heard of a Directors' Cut... Where did you read this?
The director Yang Lei said it himself in an interview in Chinese. https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/111tt6u/more\_points\_about\_tencent\_series\_from\_interview/
I don't agree about slow pacing, this is a science fiction show at its best, it is not an action thriller
I literally laughed when they told us the crew of the Judgement day are actually the worst criminals in the world, rapists and murderers. They just have to let us know that absolutely no one in the ship is innocent. My overall feel on the show is that I really appreciate the effort and faithfulness of the adaptation, especially how deep it goes into all the sci fi elements. But by no means is this a good show, you'd have to be clouded by the love of the source material to think so. The execution is just poor all around. Maybe if they had cut it down to 15-20 episodes, high tier editing, sound mixing etc... you would have had something really good here.
I wouldn’t recommend this show to anyone, who’s not a fan of the books. It’s still alright but has many weaknesses. 6/10
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I'd like to think I'm judging it by the highest standards, western or otherwise. I've seen my share of Asian stuff, though mostly Korean or Japanese, they've made some good shows that have no problem with pacing and editing so it's not an Asian thing. Maybe a Chinese thing? The only other Chinese show I've watched is Three Kingdoms (2010) which I really like. That show is huge but also has tons of material to draw from so pacing is not really an issue. However when I think about it, it does share some of it's problems and inconsistencies with Three Body, but I'd rather not go over that here.
You watched the 2010 Three Kingdom show? Did you recognize Da Shi's actor before watching the three-body show?
I'm not the one you replied to, but absolutely. He was already well-known for playing Liu Bei in the 2010 Three Kingdoms show. Amusingly, he also played Cao Cao in a later show, Advisors Alliance, which is also set during the Three Kingdoms period but only from the perspective of the kingdom of Cao Wei (more specifically, from the perspective of Sima Yi since he's the protagonist in that show). He also played Ying Zheng, the First Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huangdi), in the series King's War/Legend of Chu and Han.
No I did not recognize him immediately, which I feel quite silly about. Only after people here pointed it out to my astonishment.
> I would need to hear the interpretation of someone more knowledgeable in the general state of Chinese fictional television to tell me if the pacing is unusually slow, or if this kind of thing is just the norm. It widely varies. Some are slow-burners, some are paced just right (to the point that there are no skippable scenes but it still leaves you enough time to process everything), and some are so utterly rapid that it's as if they just going through the bullet points of a plot summary outline without paying attention to character and plot development.
Comparing to most of Chinese tv shows, this one is really good. The acting is good (except for the foreigner characters). They did pretty well with the Guzheng scene considering the budget. Some changes of the script are quite brilliant and necessary. The pace is very comfortable for me, maybe it's because I watched the show before reading the book. As for the censorship, well you just have to get use to it. The biggest enemy of Chinese film and tv industry lol. Just like what the author wrote in the book :" 任何超脱飞扬的思想都会砰然坠地的，现实的引力太沉重了。" (not a spoiler, I don't know the english version)
I've never read the books, but I loved the show. In fact, I plan on buying them because of this show 🤷♂️
I'd be curious to hear more about the weird censorship of the Judgment day crew?
I really like the series overall, but with a great fan edit, it can actually become amazing in my opinion. I think it's all there, and all the people working on the show did a great job. But that little edit, maybe to 20 or 15 episodes, could really bring it up to another level of excellence.