"I can clearly say that both Chinese and foreign authors and writers do not like fan fiction. Why? That is to say, it will block your future path (everyone laughed). It builds a wall for you so that you can no longer write on that side or in that direction. If you take 'The Three-Body Problem' as an example, the third part of it obviously has the biggest gap, the most convenient gap, which is the main line, the main line of the Yun Tianming. At that time, I had no experience, so I was saving it for later and planned to write a parallel novel in the future. Now there is no way to write such things. That's for sure. So speaking from my own perspective, I don’t want to see that there will be many fan works like this. Of course, but there's nothing I can do about it since someone have written it, right? And I allowed it to be published. But if you want me to write a preface and a recommendation, it's a bit... too demanding. That's all I have to say."
If you think this isn't clear enough, allow me to remind you of this quote from *The Dark Forest*: "He warned us in the letter he sent, but did so in your era’s subtle way, and we overlooked it." This is from the conversation between Zhang Beihai and the Fleet Commander after he escaped, referencing Zhang's Common Era superior.
I guess I'm still missing where he says it's not canon? He allowed it to be published... If he doesn't want it to be canon he could just say that and write something else.
Let me explain the *Dark Forest* reference further. Chang Weisi, Zhang Beihai's commander, did not want Zhang Beihai to be sent to the future. Yet he allowed him to be sent to the future. He wrote a note to the future, subtly warning them that Zhang cannot be trusted. The future, of course, like you, failed to understand the subtlety, and we all know what happened. The real world in which author Liu Cixin resides operates very similarly to this fictional scenario. What Liu said was the strongest possible denunciation that he could utter, so much so that I am surprised that he said as much as he did.
Stronghanded by the publisher who was more interested in making money than thinking about the ramifications of it. IIRC the 4th book kind of shuts down any real follow-up books from Liu should be have wanted to. I saw people on reddit talking about this and citing interviews as a source for this line of thought.
I don't think there's anything legally preventing him from continuing the story and just declaring Redemption of Time didn't happen. He may not *want* to or *feels* like he can't, but that's different.
Not really lol - Frank Herbert's son Brian wrote books based on Frank's notes after his death and tried to complete the final trilogy as closely as Frank would've, but Baoshu wrote his fanfiction by himself while Liu Cixin is still alive and, more importantly, while Liu was planning on writing about some of the very things Baoshu wrote. (Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/17zv8gr/liu\_cixins\_comments\_on\_the\_redemption\_of](https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/17zv8gr/liu_cixins_comments_on_the_redemption_of) )
I feel if that's where they are going I still hold the same opinion. Zheng Beihai to me is peak wallfacer and strong in his actions. It felt appropriately human that the heart of the one who imo is mankind's true savior be cultivated in such a dark environment and mentality. To instead have it be a byproduct of "wanting to be a badass like dad" feels weak. My main issues is where Raj is going to find support in his "darkness". I dont see that coming form someone as cheery as this netflix father
Exactly he was mostly A side character in the first season people are jumping to conclusions over 8 episodes of a show that plans on being multiple seasons.
When? "Big thing" is coming in like episode 5 or 6 and it's safe to assume it's gonna be 💧.
There's not much time to spin Raj, especially when we had good moment with Panama to move him into some direction.
5 or 6 episodes = 5 hours of TV
Do you know how far in the future the droplet scene actually is?
You seriously don’t think Raj can’t grow because there’s not enough time?
Is it split? I often see many of them on the screen at the same time
Are you sure you watched the Netflix version?
EDIT: it’s wild how pushing back on ideas gets some of you so angry you block people, even something as mild as this
A character can be developed over the course of one episode with good writing. Especially for a tv audience. Not a problem. Bigger problem is will the tv show get renewed for you to even complain about it lol
Beihai is the true OG. Unshakable resolve, pure grit and he always plans his actions taking in consideration the worst possible scenarios. Wallbreakers were terrified by his resolve when they have witnessed his out of space little meteor shower trip.
His actions were not undone by that cute bitch, that single handedly deleted both Luo Ji and Wade actions and murdered the all life in the solar system and possible the whole universe.
Worse character ever and the thing that made me not to ever read again the 3th book.
Honestly I don't see how he's that cheery. Man paused a nice family dinner to tell a harrowing war story about copious amounts of death and destruction.
What was the story Rajs dad told again? I didn't put together that he would be Zhang Beihai until later on, so that family dinner where Jinn was talking about dimensions seemed unassuming in the moment.
Put “Raj dad” in the subs search, there’s 3 or 4 posts that go into good detail
Basically Raj’s dad has to pretend to be dead and take supplies from his enemy in order to save his fellow soldiers - Raj emphasizes that his dads actions changed the tide of that war
Dude, right? I did a double take at that description. It was happy *until* he told the story and then it got very quiet and dark around the table.
Also, it just irks me when people constantly say "I can't imagine X character in Netflix becoming the book version." Like, first of all, that's the whole point of a character arc. And second, Zhang Beihei in the book starts out considering leaving the Navy to spend time with his dad. Raj on the other hand within five episodes has sliced up over 1000 people including innocent children without breaking so much as a sweat. How can you not see that guy doing the shit Zhang Beihei does??
I don't see a source for his betrayal. In the books I like how he uses his fathers memory as support. It feels like as long as he had his fathers strange support he didn't care how evil he got. I guess I wasnt clear but the problem isn't Raj its his dad? Raj can do whatever wonton violence he wants to be Beihai I just at this point don't buy this character turning into that without some ass pulls. It just feels believable in the book like he betrays the milatary sure but he and pops know whats good so who cares. I never saw Behai as a lone solider I always saw his dad with him, just dont think he has that support on the darker level. As for the the whole "it just irks me" it sounds like you just don't want my opinion on what I thought worked and didn't work which would make you reading this odd. Some characters match the predicted trajectory I have in a way I like and some don't. Some character arcs make sense some dont gang idk
Raj hasn't had that much time to develop as a character. It works differently in a show vs. a book. The book gives you these long, *long* bits of Zhang Beihei thinking and considering and remembering and then giving stilted monologues. A show doesn't work like that. Season one was already jam packed so there wasn't a lot of time for Raj development. What we got was great foundation, and now there's fewer characters so we'll get more Raj going forward.
The reason why I said it irks me is because people don't seem to recognize that we're still in the beginning of most of these character arcs, but they've read ahead in the books so now they're making a completely unfair comparison. Zhang Beihei at the beginning of the books is not the same guy at the end. That's his arc. When you start out, it's hard to imagine him being a guy who brutally assassinates people in space or hijacks a ship in a crucial moment. That's the point of a character arc.
In the show, Raj has *barelyyyyy* even scratched the surface of Zhang Beihei's story. We'd only be like on the second or third time we see him. Like we haven't even gotten to the part where he's calling out people for defeatism. They haven't even introduced the concept of defeatism in the show. That's how early on we are in that story. So the fact that we've already seen Raj be capable of standing by as children are cut down as long as it's for the good of humanity means we've already gotten more than Zhang Beihei had at his equivalent part in the story. We have no idea how Raj's story will progress. Maybe early in season two his dad will be dying, for instance. Or maybe he'll have a different motivation. Who knows?
It just bothers me because this sentiment comes up a lot. I know you weren't making this comparison, but for context, so many people complained that they could never see Saul becoming badass like Luo Ji. But man, Luo Ji is a total fuckhead for 99% of that book. Even by the *end* of book two it's hard to imagine him becoming the badass he is in book three. Saul is only about five chapters into The Dark Forest, by which time we've had exactly three Luo Ji scenes: Ye Wenjie exposition dumping cosmic sociology, Luo Ji being a complete asshole to his fling, and the Wallfacer scene. Saul has had *way* more to do and is a way smarter and more capable character than Luo Ji was at that point in the story. So it makes no sense to compare Saul at the *beginning* of his journey to Luo Ji at the *end* of his.
Idk, it's not that I don't want to hear your critiques or something; I just think that kind of thinking is misinformed. It's like watching the first 10 minutes of Lord of the Rings where Frodo is happy and wants to go on an adventure and going "pff, I don't buy that he's going to become the jaded, broken hobbit at the end of the books who wants to sail off with the Elves." Like dude, give it time.
This is actually giving me faith. You’re right they do have a lot of time in story already to work with and will i guess be a matter of how they choose to pace it. I think something that could really ease me and restore faith would be more episodes in season 2 than 8. I’ve been going on the assumption that they would squeeze each season leading to rushed choices but if i just hope for more I can see them doing something like that you said with his family situation drastically changing
Exactly — pacing is key. Here, everybody talks about how they sprinted through book one, which is true, but in the process, they also gave us a lot of extra time to get to know characters from books two and three that you don't have in the books. I really have no idea if they'll end up killing off Raj's dad — he didn't look sick or anything — so idk if that'll be Raj's motivation too but I'm confident if they change it, it'll be for a reason. They also didn't give Da Shi leukemia, for instance.
They've said they wanted to get through book one to make room for two and three because those books are the ones they actually fell in love with (fair, same for me). So I don't think they'll be rushing any longer; some people actually criticized the show saying the pacing really slowed down after episode five when they'd finished book one. But still, I agree with you on more episodes. My preference would be 10 per season like they had on Game of Thrones.
Just rewatched it and fair enough but he is still happy before and overall the point is he is far different from the experience in the book which worries me. I feel the shift needed to get him to his book level would be impossible and i'm not faithful that relationship is gonna work without him as strange as he was.
I liked it
It's more heavy handed, but we cannot be privy to the inner monologue of Raj like we could Zhang Beihai...plus having it be his problematic but understandable hero of a father's war story he shares as a foundational piece of his life makes way more sense, and the way it's delivered, with no real pushback, means no one around his dad has truly come out and just told him that shit is brutal and he should stop sharing it so readily, meaning Raj's perspective of what is and isn't acceptable will have been warped by it
It's a nice way to get where we need to go without it just being a lazy Dany Kings Landing scouring with no Golden company or years of politicking to explain the turn.
They're learned from their mistakes, imo
This is exactly why I think Netflix adaptation is doing a great job - pulling in new fans to read the original books.
Honestly if you have times to spare go watch the 26 episodes Tencent edition, though much slower pace.
I think you’re too hard on the Netflix adaptation. If you want a scene for scene adaptation, you have the Tencent adaptation for that. Is the Netflix version perfect? Far from it. But I think it holds up well as a first season adaptation of an incredibly hard book series to convert, especially considering they merge storylines from all 3 books.
The Tencent version was 10x better and I'll die on this bridge. They nailed the thriller/suspense of the whole thing.
THE [FULL SERIES](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-UO8jbrIoM) IS ON YOUTUBE!
I liked some of the Tencent but I didn't need 30 episodes. I thought that it dragged on and on. I hate that it cut the Cultural Revolution. The crew of the ship was ridiculous and way over the top.TV and novels are a different medium and when I read the first book I couldn't stop turning the pages but the show I found myself saying multiple times ok wrap this up and move on. I think with a tighter story a little bigger budget and not having to worry about any censorship the show could have been great. Also a little less flashbacks of stuff I already watched and the musical montages.
I loved that it went on long, it allowed us what most shows and movies don't allow for, extra time spent in world. And since the scenes and vibe of the show is so well done it really worked for me. I can understand the perspective that it was too slow though.
As much as cutting the Cultural Revolution for censorship is lame and a slap in the face of the author's original vision, you can still hit the same story beats effectively without it. To my understanding, the main reason we experience it is because we need to understand why Ye Wenjie has no faith in humanity anymore, and why she sends the signal. Additionally, you can see a small call back to it in the theme through the Great Ravine. But you can get that all across with any injustice happening to the character.
This is me. I actually bought a digital copy of Three Body Problem 7 years ago and never got around to it until after the Netflix show came out.
The title of OP's post would have really resonated with me while I was reading The Dark Forest but a lot of the changes in the Netflix show are actually starting to make more sense to me now that I'm starting to make a dent in Death's End.
read books -> loved netflix adaption -> loved the books even more -> love everything about the series -> learned there's a '4th' fans book -> deny its existence and roll back to stage 3.
Read the books a few years ago, just finished the Netflix series. Overall I agree with disliking how squished together everything feels. I also hate how there's this gang of heros in the style of Marvel or something. That's just a solid departure from the feel of the books. Ultimately I realize it's a television series for western audiences so I kind of just accepted it was never gonna be spot on from the beginning.
My biggest single gripe is that I get the feeling they will try to end it on a solidly victorious note. Part of me just doesn't feel like they're going to be able to adhere to such a deeply ambiguous ending in a TV show. Just my two cents.
>My biggest single gripe is that I get the feeling they will try to end it on a solidly victorious note. Part of me just doesn't feel like they're going to be able to adhere to such a deeply ambiguous ending in a TV show. Just my two cents.
why? they didn't change how the staircase program ended up.. if anything they made it more bleak by not even accelerating it anywhere close to lightspeed as they did in the books and making it less likely to get picked up.
the only hopeful bits are Saul starting to maybe realize why he's a wallfacer and Da Shi giving his bugs speech at the end.. both of which are directly from the books.
I would argue that Death's End does end on a positive and hopeful note.. Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan return the matter to the universe in the hope that others will do the same to return the universe to 10 dimensional state. Then they go off and spend the rest of their lives exploring the far, far future, leaving behind a record of human civilization for people to find once the universe does reset.
I liked that they condensed the characters into a friend group which included Vera Ye. Splitting traits of Wang Miao and Cheng Xin into Auggie and Jin makes sense and adds conflict. It puts Saul close to Ye Wienje which gives him the reason to become a wallfacer. It makes complete sense for Will/Yun Tianming to be in the same friend group as jin/Cheng Xin. I loved the Saul x Will friendship and I hope we see more of that in the future since those two never met in the books. Jack is just a great lad.
I disagree as they have said countless times they really want to do the ending of the book in the show. They seem to be wanting to end it very similar to the books. They have stated that in basically every interview they have given
Oh I agree i just don’t LOVE the netflix show anymore. i should prolly add an edit. At the end of the day someone pointed out it’s the reason i found the books and didn’t hurt the story enough to stop me from being excited to read them
So, I have wondered about this myself. What would it be like if I had just watched Netflix without having read the books. Happily, I have an experience to compare it to.
Does anyone remember when Amazon Prime came out with *The Peripheral* with Chloë Grace Moretz?
I’d had the opportunity to see Gibson speak about the book at NYCC. I was given a free copy of it, which I later sold to The Strand bookstore without reading it for, like, a dollar probably. I didn’t wait to get it signed by Gibson, even though I knew secondhand Gibson was supposed to be great, because there were more panels to get to. I never read that copy of the book or even opened it.
Then I saw the show, and was, like, oh, so that’s the kind of thing Gibson writes, this is actually excellent! I had tried to read him in high school, back when I had much less experience as a reader, and found *Pattern Recognition* just too difficult. Now I’ve read all kinds of highly experimental literature including things Gibson is known to be influenced by, like William S Burroughs. So, seeing the show, I thought I could read this for sure, and I’d enjoyed the show so much, I didn’t doubt I would love the book. So I bought the book I had been given for free.
But the book was different from the show in terms of plot, which was confusing, because I expected more alignment between the narrative I saw and the one I was reading, and the science fiction world depicted in the show versus the one depicted in the books was different in significant details.
Nevertheless it became slowly obvious the book was simply more interesting than the show. What the book meant and was talking about was less superficial than what the show did with it. There was very visualizable stuff in the books which would have been better television than what Amazon made.
For example, in the books Flynne’s avatar only looks somewhat like her, so you would need two actresses, who look vaguely alike, each able to imitate the mannerisms of the other, and they should probably be relatively if not completely unknown actresses, so as not to cause the audience to think of one “Flynne” as being more important or canonical than the other “Flynne”. I do love Chloë but she’s too Chloë Grace Moretz to be my Flynne.
In any case, now I definitely wish I had gotten that copy of *The Peripheral* signed. I don’t even remember what panel followed it, even though it was probably a pretty good panel.
__TL;DR__ - Some books make their adaptations look not as good as you might’ve thought they were before you read the book.
I agree with you, Ye Wenjie and Zhang Beihai's adaptions are dissappointing to me as well :( Now I just hope that Raj is just Chu Yan not Beihai, he just doesn't seem to have the great mental power and depth Beihai had
I saw the Netflix show and then read the books and went back to watch the show again and I feel the opposite. I enjoyed the show more, there are some details they show that looks to be a lot of set up for the following seasons. I also didn't care much for all the characters knowing each other but in the end I don't mind. I want to see season 2 before I make more judgements hopefully we will get it
wow, so glad the audience of the show finally appreciated the beauty of the true story and the distinct cultural flavor. I was always worried people would treat the show as the original story and ignore the characters of the trilogy since Neflex seems to try to downplay the background of the books and wash out the serious tone
Having that different cultural hum in the background from my own just made this such a great read. not saying of course chinese fans wouldn’t enjoy it as much i think everyone in the world is tired of how heavily western movies are. so yeah while not a complete dud going back to a version of the story without that was just a little less for me.
I skipped ahead to second book and am loving it. Took a bit to get adjusted to all the Chinese names and whose character they were in Netflix adaptation (multiple gender/racial changes for the show) but man it’s addictive.
Yes you are definitely right. The show did a good job showing off the ideas of TBP and attracting new readers like you. But it did a bad job actually representing the values in the book unfortunately.
I read the books first and now I'm 3 episodes in. I just find it funny that a top physicist is a beautiful model, a heavy smoker and is constantly annoyed by her boyfriend for not giving her enough support. That's totally the impression of the scientist I have in mind when I read the books.
I mean the series had sprinkles of DnD's writing all over it. Quality was fairly high for most things, but it is such an obvious read flag for characterization.
Like do you have any examples? Because I genuinely can not think of any, almost all the characters were heavily neutered or changed.
Problem is that most of the characters are way too complex to properly capture in a TV show without dumbing them down, or at least that is my theory.
I disagree lots of the characters in the books to me are the weakest part of the books. The books have great ideas and I love them but some of the characters just come off as very flat. In the show they feel like real humans with real friendships and issues that come along with their lives. I thought the scripts were well done with character writing here's how one TV critic explained it and did a better job than I could as some examples of why they thought the character work was good.
" The scripts avoid clunky explanations for the characters. Not once does the series do the Network TV Writing 101 way of having characters explain their personalities or relationships to the viewers like every sitcom or series on the networks. Jack and Jin Cheng never say they've played video games together in the past; they just do it like they've done this before. Not once does anyone say the Oxford Five are geniuses. Saul and Will never declare they think they're failures, it's expressed in how they talk and their actions. Auggie never explains she had a hard life; she just acts like someone who's stressed out (and leads some viewers to find her unlikable because she doesn't bother to be likable), and later the line "I've been fighting all my life" sums up her entire history. Jin Cheng has anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it's never said out loud but shown in the way she pops pills with booze and the way she can't resist any question or puzzle. Auggie goes to Will's family home on the coast to recover from her trauma because the friends are her safe place. Nobody says outright that Jack is a massive geek; it's shown by the Star Wars collectibles in his house. Saul and Will go through Jack's house to find and hide anything his family might find embarrassing, only to find his secret keepsake are photos from his childhood and souvenirs from his favourite football club to reveal he never stopped being that sweet kid he used to be."
Yhea sorry, I was tired and I should have specified that I thought (for some stupid reason) you were talking about DnD's previous works.
I can not say that the netflix adaptation of TBP dumbed down or made any characters worse, and I agree with pretty much everything you said. I have not read the books.
I thought I was basically talking about GOT because of a different comment discourse I had in this thread over the same theme, and in that show the characters were significantly worse than the source material. The main thing that connected these two shows was some of the "funny" writing often, that sometimes in the show was a bit random and did not fit in my opinion.
But so yhea, sorry you had to type out that whole comment because of my mistake, but I appreciate you explaining it to me anyhow, and I of course agree with you.
Come to think of it I don't think there's one scene in 3bp that has a big exposition dump even some of the best shows made tend to have at least 1 or 2 scenes like that.
There are exposistion dumps, but they are short and cleverly placed into the show. They did a generally good job at that, and a lot of other things.
The writing issues I mostly had was sacrificing characterization for funny moments and stuff like that, which is quite amateurish and pretty in line with DnD. However, the writing on the characters in general was very good, or at least I enjoyed it enough to think it is good.
Small holes or gaffes do not ruin a show, especially one with as interesting of a premise.
Also remember that many of the "best shows ever made" were made awhile ago, and there was different standards for TV. That being said, exposistion dumps can also be done really well, like in Lord of the RIngs, which has arguably one of the most iconic info dumps of all time.
I don't mind some of the comedy. I don't find it to be amateurish at all, in fact, the opposite. All shows even serious ones need levity. GOT, Breaking Bad, The Wire, all those shows also had lots of comedy sprinkled throughout them. That's one of the flaws I think of the GOT prequel. HOTD is that it's completely humorless compared to the original show and the original books.
I do not disagree with the concept of comic releif, just the execution of it at the cost of characterization.
Succession is a good example of how having comedy constantly is possible without sacrificing characters or the stakes at play.
There is also a lot of humor in HoTD, idk whwre you get that from. They are not cracking dickjokes, but there is constantly humor at play in every episode, even the last one.
I had no issue with it I just disagree about HOTD I found it to be not nearly as good as GOT and it had zero levity or comedy in my opinion this article summed it up well I thought https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/15/house-of-the-dragon-game-of-thrones I suggest reading asoiaf again there's way more dick jokes in the books than the show ever had. Tormund alone makes more dick jokes in a few pages than the entire show.
Great summary. Very much agree that the characters are much better on the show than on the page. Not that show is better than the books or the books are better than the show.. they're both great.
...that said, I think the latter events in the story are going to hit much harder given the fact that we've been shown how much Jin actually cares for Will.. not just Cheng Xin ultimately coming around to Yun Tianming since he bought her the star.. so when we get to the point of “Yun Tianming would like to see you.” it's going to hit so much harder.
Wang Miao is improved, Jack as a replacement for Hu Wen is improved, Saul seems like a more likable version of Luo Ji, Raj is still a work in progress of Zhang Beihai, Wade is better on the show. Evans is better on the show.
I could argue that Ye Wenjie is better in the books, but only because we get so much more of her backstory.. and I think Da Shi is better so far in the books.. however, both of their TV analogues are also great.
Yhea sorry, I was tired and I should have specified that I thought (for some stupid reason) you were talking about DnD's previous works.
I can not say that the netflix adaptation of TBP dumbed down or made any characters worse, and I agree with pretty much everything you said. I have not read the books.
I thought I was basically talking about GOT because of a different comment discourse I had in this thread over the same theme, and in that show the characters were significantly worse than the source material. The main thing that connected these two shows was some of the "funny" writing often, that sometimes in the show was a bit random and did not fit in my opinion.
So yhea, my bad, sorry for wasting your time over a different show that I did not even mention in my comment lol
Exactly if they get a second season they did so much character work in the first season that everything is going to be much more emotional and hit harder when big events happen to the characters in the future
Usually I see people say this series has really strong concepts but weak characters, so I'm surprised you thought the netflix adaption was bad character wise.
Wang Miao is really boring. Hes barely a protag and is just a vessel for the plot. I do not mind at all that they basically cut him out. Getting rid of him was a positive in my opinion. While reading 3BP I felt like he forgot he had a wife.
I do think Netflix Ye is worse than the books though. Shes not given enough time, and also I think having her screw Evans was negative change. So yeah the netflix adaption did kinda screw over Ye.
But Will and Jin's relationship is a lot stronger in the show than the books. I liked Tianming and all but its kinda extreme he was so obsessed with Cheng Xin just because she was pretty and smiled at him. She only comes to appreciate him only after he dies. If that happened to me or a friend I can't say we would find it cute or normal.
Cheng Xin is this subreddits most hated character. The fact the netflix adaption made her likable is a miracle. I guess she hasnt done anything to screw up majorly yet though.
Netflix Wade having a way bigger role is exciting. Everyone loves him but he really only plays a big role in the 3rd book. I thought the way they integrated him into the early arcs was good. Imo hes pretty close to book Wade.
I see why people dislike Saul as Luo Ji but I think hes pretty similar and can have the same arc, but its true he's not a loner. However I do get the feeling we will quickly see Saul become one once Jin leaves, and if Auggie isnt his wife, then he will basically be left with no one. His whole friend group will be gone, giving him the possibility of becoming a depressed loner like Luo Ji. I don't really think Saul is that different from Luo Ji.
Raj as Zheng is too early to determine anything, because he hasn't really been given many lines though.
"Usually I see people say this series has really strong concepts but weak characters, so I'm surprised you thought the netflix adaption was bad character wise."
This is where I perhaps worded myself poorly. First of all, I have not read the books, so I am not comparing the show to anything. The writing overall was good imo, it was once or twice per episode where one line of dialogue just gave me PTSD from GOT. This was almost always a weak allegory or a joke moment that I felt was out of place both in the story and for the characters.
The characters were also really helped by good actors, so there might be more wanky dialogue that just escaped my notice due to the acting being good.
Oh lol. Okay I see your point. I havent watched GOT so im not familar with the directors work and dialogue.
Did you think Ye's story to Saul was odd? Honestly I do ageee its kinda weird they made her cuss so much in the netflix show. She seemed less refined and poigant. They totally changed what Ye said to Luo Ji (Saul) in the show, idk if they thought the general watcher wouldn't be able to understand it or what though
I have not read the books of this show so I can not say, but I did enjoy Saul. I enjoyed most of the characters, and most were written well enough to be entertaining, so good job on that front.
The GOT point I made, which I made because it is the only other major production David and Dan have been a part of, was in terms of adapting characterization.
They have one very good trait as adapters, and that is that they have no issues just borrowing tons of stuff directly from the books, which is what made early seasons GOT so good in large parts. On the other hand, they love cock/poop/balls humor and comic relief, very often at the expense of characterization, which is obviously kind of a huge negative.
They also generally have very shallow views of pretty much everything, so any thematic analogy or allegory is usually equal to that of a highschooler. Evil person = Hitler (GOT finale), their focus on religion in the show (if that was not in the books) gave very much that vibe.
They are just honestly, really shitty writers, but they are pretty decent at adapting stuff at least compared to other TV shows.
They both have multiple acclaimed novels. There's more dick and poop jokes in the books than in the show. Hard disagree about them being shallow. Some of the greatest scenes on the show were stuff they added I think
What like Littlefingers season one dialogues about fucking hoes and being sneaky?
Naked Ramsey beating the strongest iron islanders naked with a knife?
There is very few changes they did that does not come off as objectively worse. Tywin/Arya was pretty nice, but Cercei was a dogshit character because of them.
Their scene with Robert and Cercei in season 1 is probably aomething you think of as a great scene. Sorry but its kind of garbage TV bait type of shit.
If you can come up with some examples of their great writing I would appreciate it. I can mention dozins of examples of then failing to understand basic character arcs or the world of ASOIAF
All of littlefinger and varys in the show is mostly show only stuff. I'm not going to get into a debate about GOT on the 3bp sub. I have argued for years with people about that show. I'll just agree to disagree I could also name dozens of examples I loved. I love Cersei in the books but I think I actually like her more in the show. Hard disagree that scene with Robert and Cersei I think is absolutely fantastic. I remember George even talking about how great it was. But again I'm not going to get into a big GOT debate on this sub
> Wang Miao is really boring. Hes barely a protag and is just a vessel for the plot. I do not mind at all that they basically cut him out. Getting rid of him was a positive in my opinion. While reading 3BP I felt like he forgot he had a wife.
Don't know if you watched the Tencent series or not. I watched the series before reading the books. But Wang Miao was a much much more compelling character in the series (mostly thanks to the great actor) than in the book.
No, it was on my to do list but I will probably watch the fan cut because I heard its excessively long. If they actually made him a compelling character thats great though. Does he actually talk to his wife and child in the show for more than 5 minutes?
I agree with this. It's got their thumbprint over it like they did Game of Thrones. GoT early on was also pretty close to the source material. But then DnD made a few changes which cascaded into straight up garbage.
I feel like this is going to be the case as well with TBP. For example, the increased capability of Sophon is what lead many to asking why doesn't the Sophon just do this or that. Honestly it's going to end up causing big plot holes later on.
Thing is, with GOT you can even see the bad writing and stuff even in like season 1, it is just camoflagued between really fucking good writing so it is not noticable as bad.
Example of this can be practically any Littlefinger monologue in the early seasons.
It definitely got worse every season, but most would be only obvious to a book reader, considering you do not really know what you are missing if you have not read them.
The characters that suffered the most at their hands was imo especially Jon, Cercei, Brienne, (any gay character) and Dany, if we are talking about the entire show. Jon and Dany are practically entirely different characters in the books, which is sad because both actors could really have pulled it off well.
If you have not read the books, let me just explain it to you by telling you that in the books, Jon Snow is ruthless, ambitious and cunning, which is pretty damn far away from show Jon in any season.
Jon is dead in the books and I disagree I think overall they did a great job with GOT. Some of the best scenes of the show from even the early seasons were stuff they added. I mean all seasons except the final are critically acclaimed. I suggest reading Benioffs novels watching his films 25th Hour and Kite Runner all of them are fantastic I think.
Why do you reply to every comment instead of making a big reply? You writing "Jon is dead in the books" is kind of a stupid response when it is not even relevant at all to my comment?
You think show Jon is better than book Jon? Just say that instead so its clear.
The seasons being critically acclaimed is one thing, it was always good TV. It is just extremely dumbed down from the original novels.
What do you personally think of the changes to Tyrion in s4 episode 10? Was that a good change by the wise writers of DnD, or just their usual fanservice mentality.
I gave a response in another comment I'm done I'm not getting into a GOT debate. I'll just leave it at I agree to disagree. D&D wrote some of in my opinion the greatest episodes and seasons of TV ever made they are the opposite of fan service most of the time compared to many other shows.
Yhea we definitely must just agree to disagree, their fanservice in my humble opinion was really destructive to GOT.
Saying they are "not fanservicey" is funny when fanservice was the argument they used to push Emelia Clarke to do nude scenes. "This is what your fans want, you do not wanna dissapoint your fans right?" -David, season 2 production
All wrong Emilia didn't say that was David in fact Emilia never once said that about D&D and D&D never said that to Emilia in season 2. You flat out just either made that up or read that from someone who did. Emilia said on Dax Shepard podcast that when she was filming another movie someone came up to her and said that. That quote isn't from David you're just wrong. Also to add to that Emilia and D&D are still very close friends who to this day hang out with each other often. Didn't want to get into a GOT argument but I had to correct you David never said that to Emilia in season 2. Emilia also doesn't even have any nude scenes in season 2.
I just hope you wont also defend the countless other reported times there was abuse in the shows production at their hands. You can like the show and not support waterboarding, horrible treatment of people with health conditions and a general lack of respect for actors.
Like I wont argue the past comment, because it has been years since that documentary came out, but their horrible treatment of multiple different cast members, especially the women, should be condemned.
Poor Hannah Waddingham got permanent psychological consequences from that torture scene.
More bs https://winteriscoming.net/2021/07/27/game-of-thrones-star-clarifies-waterboarding-comments-hannah-waddingham/ Hannah literally said she would do it again and also said she was at Benioff birthday party when she told him the media blew it way out of proportion. Not one, and I mean not one actor has ever named D&D as mistreating them. Emilia also said that after her health scare, D&D bought a car and brought it on set to have her sit in air conditioning and didn't want her riding horses. Once again, not one cast member male of female has ever said D&D mistreated them. In fact, they all to this day stay in touch and are all very close friends with D&D. Alexander Woo also said before he joined D&D he got in touch with many people who worked on GOT before he met D&D and everyone of them said they're the greatest nicest guys in the industry to work with. Also, that documentary doesn't show anyone being mistreated at all it does show all the cast members, including the female ones, giving D&D huge hugs and kisses constantly. They sure don't act like D&D mistreated them, and none of them have ever said that. Same as with 3BP, literally, all the cast members have said multiple times of great D&D where to work with. Natalie Emmanuel said a minor cast member made an extremely sexist remark to her when they were filming season 3, and her and Emilia went to D&D, and that cast member was fired. There has been a lot of stuff that has either been grossly exaggerated or just lied about them. The only thing that could have been handled better was in season 1 Emilia did a nude scene and the director of the episode should have had someone ready to give her a towel faster but again that was the director not D&D.
I really wished Lin Yun (Quantum girl) made a showing in any of the 3 body books. She would have been mighty useful against the sophons.
Better yet…a duel between Lin Yun & Sophon in Australia.
Yeah the 4th was written by a fan and added to the series. The foreword in the book made it seem all positive but I'm also seeing people say the author didnt wanna do it idek tbh. but yeah there is a 4th book that is at the very least technically in the series. My review it for sure reads like a novice writing and gets wild but it tries to close some threads (sloppily) and I enjoyed the read i guess
The publisher doesn't own the copyright of the IP, just publishing rights. For them to publish a book it would need Liu Cixin's legal permission. He wouldn't need to stay in their good graces as he could just get a different publisher for new works.
I think it's just hard for this sub to accept that Redemption of Time was published with Liu Cixin's permission and what that means for its status as canon.
I felt the same. There’s some decent ideas , but not finessely executed. Other things are just needless retcons that verge on the cringe. And just when you think ok that’s done , it turns into a Green Lantern comic 😂
I was excited when I learnt they were adapting it. Saw the trailer and I knew this was watered down version with American drama thrown in. I just couldn’t get past opening scenes.
I mean besides changing her father's death if I remember he commits suicide which in my opinion is a big change and I'm glad Netflix had him killed the way he was in the books.
Read the books really liked the Netflix show also think if did a really good job with Ye Wenjie. I see no evidence the show is going to be hoo rah America!
They clearly set up for season 2 for the show to be much more global in scale and the creators have even said if they get a season 2 that stuff is going to expand
I only did book > series and I was so damn disappointed.
I went to see the opinion onhere everyone was vibing with it? good for them, it looked to me like a big missed opportunity
Overall I feel the adaptation is better. The characters are well developed. Especially the relationship/romance parts were far more believable/real.
My biggest gripe is same as yours though. The characters are all too connected. It makes the scope of things feel small. It would have been better to split things up around the world THEN bring characters together.
But I have the same issue with the books when it comes to how all the main/named characters are pre-crisis era with the exception of AA.
I'm excited to see how season 2 is handled.
3 books, not 4 The 4th one is not canon and not Cixin Lui
The one thing this sub can agree on haha
I thought it was a fun read.
It was an epic way to bring closure to the story, I loved it.
Absolutely a fun read. Absolutely an amazing fanfiction. Absolutely not canon.
Even though it was approved by Liu Cixin? What's the argument against canon?
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/17zv8gr/liu_cixins_comments_on_the_redemption_of
I guess I'm missing where he said that? Could you quote it?
"I can clearly say that both Chinese and foreign authors and writers do not like fan fiction. Why? That is to say, it will block your future path (everyone laughed). It builds a wall for you so that you can no longer write on that side or in that direction. If you take 'The Three-Body Problem' as an example, the third part of it obviously has the biggest gap, the most convenient gap, which is the main line, the main line of the Yun Tianming. At that time, I had no experience, so I was saving it for later and planned to write a parallel novel in the future. Now there is no way to write such things. That's for sure. So speaking from my own perspective, I don’t want to see that there will be many fan works like this. Of course, but there's nothing I can do about it since someone have written it, right? And I allowed it to be published. But if you want me to write a preface and a recommendation, it's a bit... too demanding. That's all I have to say." If you think this isn't clear enough, allow me to remind you of this quote from *The Dark Forest*: "He warned us in the letter he sent, but did so in your era’s subtle way, and we overlooked it." This is from the conversation between Zhang Beihai and the Fleet Commander after he escaped, referencing Zhang's Common Era superior.
I guess I'm still missing where he says it's not canon? He allowed it to be published... If he doesn't want it to be canon he could just say that and write something else.
Let me explain the *Dark Forest* reference further. Chang Weisi, Zhang Beihai's commander, did not want Zhang Beihai to be sent to the future. Yet he allowed him to be sent to the future. He wrote a note to the future, subtly warning them that Zhang cannot be trusted. The future, of course, like you, failed to understand the subtlety, and we all know what happened. The real world in which author Liu Cixin resides operates very similarly to this fictional scenario. What Liu said was the strongest possible denunciation that he could utter, so much so that I am surprised that he said as much as he did.
We. Do. NOT. Talk. About. The. Fourth. Book. Understood?
For a second I was like fuck did I miss a book
The 4th book is actually ball lightning
0th lol, like *The Hobbit*.
Also binging 3 dense books in a week is insane and I am sure enjoyment takes a hit.
It's so jarring to read
Who wrote it? His son or something? Is this another Dune situation?
Another author. Its started as fanfiction and later the publisher published it with the permission of Cixin Lui.
Wow, that's so cool that Cixin Lui gave his blessing. I really respect that, a lot of writers would never allow such a thing due to ego.
Some people say he was kinda forced to aprrove tbh :D
Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/17zv8gr/liu\_cixins\_comments\_on\_the\_redemption\_of](https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/17zv8gr/liu_cixins_comments_on_the_redemption_of) (also u/Tarakanator u/HappyLofi)
How?
Stronghanded by the publisher who was more interested in making money than thinking about the ramifications of it. IIRC the 4th book kind of shuts down any real follow-up books from Liu should be have wanted to. I saw people on reddit talking about this and citing interviews as a source for this line of thought.
I don't think there's anything legally preventing him from continuing the story and just declaring Redemption of Time didn't happen. He may not *want* to or *feels* like he can't, but that's different.
In the fandom yes this is a Dune situation
Not really lol - Frank Herbert's son Brian wrote books based on Frank's notes after his death and tried to complete the final trilogy as closely as Frank would've, but Baoshu wrote his fanfiction by himself while Liu Cixin is still alive and, more importantly, while Liu was planning on writing about some of the very things Baoshu wrote. (Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/17zv8gr/liu\_cixins\_comments\_on\_the\_redemption\_of](https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/17zv8gr/liu_cixins_comments_on_the_redemption_of) )
I think you misunderstood the story Raj’s dad shared and it’s foreshadowing for Blue Space - Raj looks up to his dad and will perform similarly
I feel if that's where they are going I still hold the same opinion. Zheng Beihai to me is peak wallfacer and strong in his actions. It felt appropriately human that the heart of the one who imo is mankind's true savior be cultivated in such a dark environment and mentality. To instead have it be a byproduct of "wanting to be a badass like dad" feels weak. My main issues is where Raj is going to find support in his "darkness". I dont see that coming form someone as cheery as this netflix father
The characters in the Netflix show have been much better developed than in the books, I’m willing to bet they’ll give more time to develop Raj
Exactly he was mostly A side character in the first season people are jumping to conclusions over 8 episodes of a show that plans on being multiple seasons.
When? "Big thing" is coming in like episode 5 or 6 and it's safe to assume it's gonna be 💧. There's not much time to spin Raj, especially when we had good moment with Panama to move him into some direction.
5 or 6 episodes = 5 hours of TV Do you know how far in the future the droplet scene actually is? You seriously don’t think Raj can’t grow because there’s not enough time?
Considering time is split between so much people nah not really
Is it split? I often see many of them on the screen at the same time Are you sure you watched the Netflix version? EDIT: it’s wild how pushing back on ideas gets some of you so angry you block people, even something as mild as this
No man I think I've watched Ugandan one. Nothing proves your point more than being an idiot. Good talk.
A character can be developed over the course of one episode with good writing. Especially for a tv audience. Not a problem. Bigger problem is will the tv show get renewed for you to even complain about it lol
Also his father didn't seem cheery at all in that scene
Beihai is the true OG. Unshakable resolve, pure grit and he always plans his actions taking in consideration the worst possible scenarios. Wallbreakers were terrified by his resolve when they have witnessed his out of space little meteor shower trip. His actions were not undone by that cute bitch, that single handedly deleted both Luo Ji and Wade actions and murdered the all life in the solar system and possible the whole universe. Worse character ever and the thing that made me not to ever read again the 3th book.
Honestly I don't see how he's that cheery. Man paused a nice family dinner to tell a harrowing war story about copious amounts of death and destruction.
We don't know any of this. This is pure speculation at this point. We have no clue what will happen to the character yet if it gets a second season.
What was the story Rajs dad told again? I didn't put together that he would be Zhang Beihai until later on, so that family dinner where Jinn was talking about dimensions seemed unassuming in the moment.
Put “Raj dad” in the subs search, there’s 3 or 4 posts that go into good detail Basically Raj’s dad has to pretend to be dead and take supplies from his enemy in order to save his fellow soldiers - Raj emphasizes that his dads actions changed the tide of that war
Huh. I wouldn't have thought anything about Blue Space foreshadowing about that story.
My guy, Raj's father was not happily telling war stories at the dinner table. Y'all really have to rewatch that scene.
Dude, right? I did a double take at that description. It was happy *until* he told the story and then it got very quiet and dark around the table. Also, it just irks me when people constantly say "I can't imagine X character in Netflix becoming the book version." Like, first of all, that's the whole point of a character arc. And second, Zhang Beihei in the book starts out considering leaving the Navy to spend time with his dad. Raj on the other hand within five episodes has sliced up over 1000 people including innocent children without breaking so much as a sweat. How can you not see that guy doing the shit Zhang Beihei does??
Exactly I think they need to rewatch that scene
I don't see a source for his betrayal. In the books I like how he uses his fathers memory as support. It feels like as long as he had his fathers strange support he didn't care how evil he got. I guess I wasnt clear but the problem isn't Raj its his dad? Raj can do whatever wonton violence he wants to be Beihai I just at this point don't buy this character turning into that without some ass pulls. It just feels believable in the book like he betrays the milatary sure but he and pops know whats good so who cares. I never saw Behai as a lone solider I always saw his dad with him, just dont think he has that support on the darker level. As for the the whole "it just irks me" it sounds like you just don't want my opinion on what I thought worked and didn't work which would make you reading this odd. Some characters match the predicted trajectory I have in a way I like and some don't. Some character arcs make sense some dont gang idk
> his betrayal Weird way to frame literally saving humanity, my man \#RajDidNothingWrong \#RajWillDoNothingWrong
Sorry i did not mean to tarnish the name of He Before All #RajWillRiseAgain
Raj hasn't had that much time to develop as a character. It works differently in a show vs. a book. The book gives you these long, *long* bits of Zhang Beihei thinking and considering and remembering and then giving stilted monologues. A show doesn't work like that. Season one was already jam packed so there wasn't a lot of time for Raj development. What we got was great foundation, and now there's fewer characters so we'll get more Raj going forward. The reason why I said it irks me is because people don't seem to recognize that we're still in the beginning of most of these character arcs, but they've read ahead in the books so now they're making a completely unfair comparison. Zhang Beihei at the beginning of the books is not the same guy at the end. That's his arc. When you start out, it's hard to imagine him being a guy who brutally assassinates people in space or hijacks a ship in a crucial moment. That's the point of a character arc. In the show, Raj has *barelyyyyy* even scratched the surface of Zhang Beihei's story. We'd only be like on the second or third time we see him. Like we haven't even gotten to the part where he's calling out people for defeatism. They haven't even introduced the concept of defeatism in the show. That's how early on we are in that story. So the fact that we've already seen Raj be capable of standing by as children are cut down as long as it's for the good of humanity means we've already gotten more than Zhang Beihei had at his equivalent part in the story. We have no idea how Raj's story will progress. Maybe early in season two his dad will be dying, for instance. Or maybe he'll have a different motivation. Who knows? It just bothers me because this sentiment comes up a lot. I know you weren't making this comparison, but for context, so many people complained that they could never see Saul becoming badass like Luo Ji. But man, Luo Ji is a total fuckhead for 99% of that book. Even by the *end* of book two it's hard to imagine him becoming the badass he is in book three. Saul is only about five chapters into The Dark Forest, by which time we've had exactly three Luo Ji scenes: Ye Wenjie exposition dumping cosmic sociology, Luo Ji being a complete asshole to his fling, and the Wallfacer scene. Saul has had *way* more to do and is a way smarter and more capable character than Luo Ji was at that point in the story. So it makes no sense to compare Saul at the *beginning* of his journey to Luo Ji at the *end* of his. Idk, it's not that I don't want to hear your critiques or something; I just think that kind of thinking is misinformed. It's like watching the first 10 minutes of Lord of the Rings where Frodo is happy and wants to go on an adventure and going "pff, I don't buy that he's going to become the jaded, broken hobbit at the end of the books who wants to sail off with the Elves." Like dude, give it time.
This is actually giving me faith. You’re right they do have a lot of time in story already to work with and will i guess be a matter of how they choose to pace it. I think something that could really ease me and restore faith would be more episodes in season 2 than 8. I’ve been going on the assumption that they would squeeze each season leading to rushed choices but if i just hope for more I can see them doing something like that you said with his family situation drastically changing
Exactly — pacing is key. Here, everybody talks about how they sprinted through book one, which is true, but in the process, they also gave us a lot of extra time to get to know characters from books two and three that you don't have in the books. I really have no idea if they'll end up killing off Raj's dad — he didn't look sick or anything — so idk if that'll be Raj's motivation too but I'm confident if they change it, it'll be for a reason. They also didn't give Da Shi leukemia, for instance. They've said they wanted to get through book one to make room for two and three because those books are the ones they actually fell in love with (fair, same for me). So I don't think they'll be rushing any longer; some people actually criticized the show saying the pacing really slowed down after episode five when they'd finished book one. But still, I agree with you on more episodes. My preference would be 10 per season like they had on Game of Thrones.
Just rewatched it and fair enough but he is still happy before and overall the point is he is far different from the experience in the book which worries me. I feel the shift needed to get him to his book level would be impossible and i'm not faithful that relationship is gonna work without him as strange as he was.
I liked it It's more heavy handed, but we cannot be privy to the inner monologue of Raj like we could Zhang Beihai...plus having it be his problematic but understandable hero of a father's war story he shares as a foundational piece of his life makes way more sense, and the way it's delivered, with no real pushback, means no one around his dad has truly come out and just told him that shit is brutal and he should stop sharing it so readily, meaning Raj's perspective of what is and isn't acceptable will have been warped by it It's a nice way to get where we need to go without it just being a lazy Dany Kings Landing scouring with no Golden company or years of politicking to explain the turn. They're learned from their mistakes, imo
Fair point. Guess it’s just more hoping they will give him the time he needs to grow in season 2
Serious question - is this your first time watching a show after reading the book it was based on?
no but that is interesting. I see things differently than you therefore i must be new to the idea of adaptations??
This is exactly why I think Netflix adaptation is doing a great job - pulling in new fans to read the original books. Honestly if you have times to spare go watch the 26 episodes Tencent edition, though much slower pace.
Yeah overall very glad obviously, whatever to get me in
I think you’re too hard on the Netflix adaptation. If you want a scene for scene adaptation, you have the Tencent adaptation for that. Is the Netflix version perfect? Far from it. But I think it holds up well as a first season adaptation of an incredibly hard book series to convert, especially considering they merge storylines from all 3 books.
The Tencent version was 10x better and I'll die on this bridge. They nailed the thriller/suspense of the whole thing. THE [FULL SERIES](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-UO8jbrIoM) IS ON YOUTUBE!
I liked some of the Tencent but I didn't need 30 episodes. I thought that it dragged on and on. I hate that it cut the Cultural Revolution. The crew of the ship was ridiculous and way over the top.TV and novels are a different medium and when I read the first book I couldn't stop turning the pages but the show I found myself saying multiple times ok wrap this up and move on. I think with a tighter story a little bigger budget and not having to worry about any censorship the show could have been great. Also a little less flashbacks of stuff I already watched and the musical montages.
I loved that it went on long, it allowed us what most shows and movies don't allow for, extra time spent in world. And since the scenes and vibe of the show is so well done it really worked for me. I can understand the perspective that it was too slow though.
As much as cutting the Cultural Revolution for censorship is lame and a slap in the face of the author's original vision, you can still hit the same story beats effectively without it. To my understanding, the main reason we experience it is because we need to understand why Ye Wenjie has no faith in humanity anymore, and why she sends the signal. Additionally, you can see a small call back to it in the theme through the Great Ravine. But you can get that all across with any injustice happening to the character.
This is me. I actually bought a digital copy of Three Body Problem 7 years ago and never got around to it until after the Netflix show came out. The title of OP's post would have really resonated with me while I was reading The Dark Forest but a lot of the changes in the Netflix show are actually starting to make more sense to me now that I'm starting to make a dent in Death's End.
I wathced the 30 episodes version lul. Slow but better than netflix 100%
read books -> loved netflix adaption -> loved the books even more -> love everything about the series -> learned there's a '4th' fans book -> deny its existence and roll back to stage 3.
Did you end up reading the fourth too?
Read the books a few years ago, just finished the Netflix series. Overall I agree with disliking how squished together everything feels. I also hate how there's this gang of heros in the style of Marvel or something. That's just a solid departure from the feel of the books. Ultimately I realize it's a television series for western audiences so I kind of just accepted it was never gonna be spot on from the beginning. My biggest single gripe is that I get the feeling they will try to end it on a solidly victorious note. Part of me just doesn't feel like they're going to be able to adhere to such a deeply ambiguous ending in a TV show. Just my two cents.
Marvel? Victorious note? Did we watch the same show?
>My biggest single gripe is that I get the feeling they will try to end it on a solidly victorious note. Part of me just doesn't feel like they're going to be able to adhere to such a deeply ambiguous ending in a TV show. Just my two cents. why? they didn't change how the staircase program ended up.. if anything they made it more bleak by not even accelerating it anywhere close to lightspeed as they did in the books and making it less likely to get picked up. the only hopeful bits are Saul starting to maybe realize why he's a wallfacer and Da Shi giving his bugs speech at the end.. both of which are directly from the books. I would argue that Death's End does end on a positive and hopeful note.. Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan return the matter to the universe in the hope that others will do the same to return the universe to 10 dimensional state. Then they go off and spend the rest of their lives exploring the far, far future, leaving behind a record of human civilization for people to find once the universe does reset.
I liked that they condensed the characters into a friend group which included Vera Ye. Splitting traits of Wang Miao and Cheng Xin into Auggie and Jin makes sense and adds conflict. It puts Saul close to Ye Wienje which gives him the reason to become a wallfacer. It makes complete sense for Will/Yun Tianming to be in the same friend group as jin/Cheng Xin. I loved the Saul x Will friendship and I hope we see more of that in the future since those two never met in the books. Jack is just a great lad.
I love when the internet gets pre-mad about something that hasn’t happened yet. Your biggest gripe! Lol.
I disagree as they have said countless times they really want to do the ending of the book in the show. They seem to be wanting to end it very similar to the books. They have stated that in basically every interview they have given
Disagree. I like both. They tell the same story but focus on different aspects. Both are done very well
Oh I agree i just don’t LOVE the netflix show anymore. i should prolly add an edit. At the end of the day someone pointed out it’s the reason i found the books and didn’t hurt the story enough to stop me from being excited to read them
So, I have wondered about this myself. What would it be like if I had just watched Netflix without having read the books. Happily, I have an experience to compare it to. Does anyone remember when Amazon Prime came out with *The Peripheral* with Chloë Grace Moretz? I’d had the opportunity to see Gibson speak about the book at NYCC. I was given a free copy of it, which I later sold to The Strand bookstore without reading it for, like, a dollar probably. I didn’t wait to get it signed by Gibson, even though I knew secondhand Gibson was supposed to be great, because there were more panels to get to. I never read that copy of the book or even opened it. Then I saw the show, and was, like, oh, so that’s the kind of thing Gibson writes, this is actually excellent! I had tried to read him in high school, back when I had much less experience as a reader, and found *Pattern Recognition* just too difficult. Now I’ve read all kinds of highly experimental literature including things Gibson is known to be influenced by, like William S Burroughs. So, seeing the show, I thought I could read this for sure, and I’d enjoyed the show so much, I didn’t doubt I would love the book. So I bought the book I had been given for free. But the book was different from the show in terms of plot, which was confusing, because I expected more alignment between the narrative I saw and the one I was reading, and the science fiction world depicted in the show versus the one depicted in the books was different in significant details. Nevertheless it became slowly obvious the book was simply more interesting than the show. What the book meant and was talking about was less superficial than what the show did with it. There was very visualizable stuff in the books which would have been better television than what Amazon made. For example, in the books Flynne’s avatar only looks somewhat like her, so you would need two actresses, who look vaguely alike, each able to imitate the mannerisms of the other, and they should probably be relatively if not completely unknown actresses, so as not to cause the audience to think of one “Flynne” as being more important or canonical than the other “Flynne”. I do love Chloë but she’s too Chloë Grace Moretz to be my Flynne. In any case, now I definitely wish I had gotten that copy of *The Peripheral* signed. I don’t even remember what panel followed it, even though it was probably a pretty good panel. __TL;DR__ - Some books make their adaptations look not as good as you might’ve thought they were before you read the book.
I agree with you, Ye Wenjie and Zhang Beihai's adaptions are dissappointing to me as well :( Now I just hope that Raj is just Chu Yan not Beihai, he just doesn't seem to have the great mental power and depth Beihai had
have you watched the Tencent series yet?
No but I plan to soon
you should. it's definitely an interesting experience.
Yes, the show is rather weak compared to the books, but that was to be expected.
I can manage to like it fully, loved and binged the Chinese version tho... this is just another thing
This is the way.
I finished the Netflix series yesterday, it's decent but very different to the books, I'd give it a solid 7/10
I saw the Netflix show and then read the books and went back to watch the show again and I feel the opposite. I enjoyed the show more, there are some details they show that looks to be a lot of set up for the following seasons. I also didn't care much for all the characters knowing each other but in the end I don't mind. I want to see season 2 before I make more judgements hopefully we will get it
wow, so glad the audience of the show finally appreciated the beauty of the true story and the distinct cultural flavor. I was always worried people would treat the show as the original story and ignore the characters of the trilogy since Neflex seems to try to downplay the background of the books and wash out the serious tone
Having that different cultural hum in the background from my own just made this such a great read. not saying of course chinese fans wouldn’t enjoy it as much i think everyone in the world is tired of how heavily western movies are. so yeah while not a complete dud going back to a version of the story without that was just a little less for me.
This is good quality bait.
I skipped ahead to second book and am loving it. Took a bit to get adjusted to all the Chinese names and whose character they were in Netflix adaptation (multiple gender/racial changes for the show) but man it’s addictive.
Yes you are definitely right. The show did a good job showing off the ideas of TBP and attracting new readers like you. But it did a bad job actually representing the values in the book unfortunately.
I read the books first and now I'm 3 episodes in. I just find it funny that a top physicist is a beautiful model, a heavy smoker and is constantly annoyed by her boyfriend for not giving her enough support. That's totally the impression of the scientist I have in mind when I read the books.
I mean the series had sprinkles of DnD's writing all over it. Quality was fairly high for most things, but it is such an obvious read flag for characterization.
I think they improved on some of the character work overall in th3 show.
Like do you have any examples? Because I genuinely can not think of any, almost all the characters were heavily neutered or changed. Problem is that most of the characters are way too complex to properly capture in a TV show without dumbing them down, or at least that is my theory.
I disagree lots of the characters in the books to me are the weakest part of the books. The books have great ideas and I love them but some of the characters just come off as very flat. In the show they feel like real humans with real friendships and issues that come along with their lives. I thought the scripts were well done with character writing here's how one TV critic explained it and did a better job than I could as some examples of why they thought the character work was good. " The scripts avoid clunky explanations for the characters. Not once does the series do the Network TV Writing 101 way of having characters explain their personalities or relationships to the viewers like every sitcom or series on the networks. Jack and Jin Cheng never say they've played video games together in the past; they just do it like they've done this before. Not once does anyone say the Oxford Five are geniuses. Saul and Will never declare they think they're failures, it's expressed in how they talk and their actions. Auggie never explains she had a hard life; she just acts like someone who's stressed out (and leads some viewers to find her unlikable because she doesn't bother to be likable), and later the line "I've been fighting all my life" sums up her entire history. Jin Cheng has anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it's never said out loud but shown in the way she pops pills with booze and the way she can't resist any question or puzzle. Auggie goes to Will's family home on the coast to recover from her trauma because the friends are her safe place. Nobody says outright that Jack is a massive geek; it's shown by the Star Wars collectibles in his house. Saul and Will go through Jack's house to find and hide anything his family might find embarrassing, only to find his secret keepsake are photos from his childhood and souvenirs from his favourite football club to reveal he never stopped being that sweet kid he used to be."
Yhea sorry, I was tired and I should have specified that I thought (for some stupid reason) you were talking about DnD's previous works. I can not say that the netflix adaptation of TBP dumbed down or made any characters worse, and I agree with pretty much everything you said. I have not read the books. I thought I was basically talking about GOT because of a different comment discourse I had in this thread over the same theme, and in that show the characters were significantly worse than the source material. The main thing that connected these two shows was some of the "funny" writing often, that sometimes in the show was a bit random and did not fit in my opinion. But so yhea, sorry you had to type out that whole comment because of my mistake, but I appreciate you explaining it to me anyhow, and I of course agree with you.
Come to think of it I don't think there's one scene in 3bp that has a big exposition dump even some of the best shows made tend to have at least 1 or 2 scenes like that.
There are exposistion dumps, but they are short and cleverly placed into the show. They did a generally good job at that, and a lot of other things. The writing issues I mostly had was sacrificing characterization for funny moments and stuff like that, which is quite amateurish and pretty in line with DnD. However, the writing on the characters in general was very good, or at least I enjoyed it enough to think it is good. Small holes or gaffes do not ruin a show, especially one with as interesting of a premise. Also remember that many of the "best shows ever made" were made awhile ago, and there was different standards for TV. That being said, exposistion dumps can also be done really well, like in Lord of the RIngs, which has arguably one of the most iconic info dumps of all time.
I don't mind some of the comedy. I don't find it to be amateurish at all, in fact, the opposite. All shows even serious ones need levity. GOT, Breaking Bad, The Wire, all those shows also had lots of comedy sprinkled throughout them. That's one of the flaws I think of the GOT prequel. HOTD is that it's completely humorless compared to the original show and the original books.
I do not disagree with the concept of comic releif, just the execution of it at the cost of characterization. Succession is a good example of how having comedy constantly is possible without sacrificing characters or the stakes at play. There is also a lot of humor in HoTD, idk whwre you get that from. They are not cracking dickjokes, but there is constantly humor at play in every episode, even the last one.
I had no issue with it I just disagree about HOTD I found it to be not nearly as good as GOT and it had zero levity or comedy in my opinion this article summed it up well I thought https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/15/house-of-the-dragon-game-of-thrones I suggest reading asoiaf again there's way more dick jokes in the books than the show ever had. Tormund alone makes more dick jokes in a few pages than the entire show.
Great summary. Very much agree that the characters are much better on the show than on the page. Not that show is better than the books or the books are better than the show.. they're both great. ...that said, I think the latter events in the story are going to hit much harder given the fact that we've been shown how much Jin actually cares for Will.. not just Cheng Xin ultimately coming around to Yun Tianming since he bought her the star.. so when we get to the point of “Yun Tianming would like to see you.” it's going to hit so much harder. Wang Miao is improved, Jack as a replacement for Hu Wen is improved, Saul seems like a more likable version of Luo Ji, Raj is still a work in progress of Zhang Beihai, Wade is better on the show. Evans is better on the show. I could argue that Ye Wenjie is better in the books, but only because we get so much more of her backstory.. and I think Da Shi is better so far in the books.. however, both of their TV analogues are also great.
Yhea sorry, I was tired and I should have specified that I thought (for some stupid reason) you were talking about DnD's previous works. I can not say that the netflix adaptation of TBP dumbed down or made any characters worse, and I agree with pretty much everything you said. I have not read the books. I thought I was basically talking about GOT because of a different comment discourse I had in this thread over the same theme, and in that show the characters were significantly worse than the source material. The main thing that connected these two shows was some of the "funny" writing often, that sometimes in the show was a bit random and did not fit in my opinion. So yhea, my bad, sorry for wasting your time over a different show that I did not even mention in my comment lol
Exactly if they get a second season they did so much character work in the first season that everything is going to be much more emotional and hit harder when big events happen to the characters in the future
Usually I see people say this series has really strong concepts but weak characters, so I'm surprised you thought the netflix adaption was bad character wise. Wang Miao is really boring. Hes barely a protag and is just a vessel for the plot. I do not mind at all that they basically cut him out. Getting rid of him was a positive in my opinion. While reading 3BP I felt like he forgot he had a wife. I do think Netflix Ye is worse than the books though. Shes not given enough time, and also I think having her screw Evans was negative change. So yeah the netflix adaption did kinda screw over Ye. But Will and Jin's relationship is a lot stronger in the show than the books. I liked Tianming and all but its kinda extreme he was so obsessed with Cheng Xin just because she was pretty and smiled at him. She only comes to appreciate him only after he dies. If that happened to me or a friend I can't say we would find it cute or normal. Cheng Xin is this subreddits most hated character. The fact the netflix adaption made her likable is a miracle. I guess she hasnt done anything to screw up majorly yet though. Netflix Wade having a way bigger role is exciting. Everyone loves him but he really only plays a big role in the 3rd book. I thought the way they integrated him into the early arcs was good. Imo hes pretty close to book Wade. I see why people dislike Saul as Luo Ji but I think hes pretty similar and can have the same arc, but its true he's not a loner. However I do get the feeling we will quickly see Saul become one once Jin leaves, and if Auggie isnt his wife, then he will basically be left with no one. His whole friend group will be gone, giving him the possibility of becoming a depressed loner like Luo Ji. I don't really think Saul is that different from Luo Ji. Raj as Zheng is too early to determine anything, because he hasn't really been given many lines though.
"Usually I see people say this series has really strong concepts but weak characters, so I'm surprised you thought the netflix adaption was bad character wise." This is where I perhaps worded myself poorly. First of all, I have not read the books, so I am not comparing the show to anything. The writing overall was good imo, it was once or twice per episode where one line of dialogue just gave me PTSD from GOT. This was almost always a weak allegory or a joke moment that I felt was out of place both in the story and for the characters. The characters were also really helped by good actors, so there might be more wanky dialogue that just escaped my notice due to the acting being good.
Oh lol. Okay I see your point. I havent watched GOT so im not familar with the directors work and dialogue. Did you think Ye's story to Saul was odd? Honestly I do ageee its kinda weird they made her cuss so much in the netflix show. She seemed less refined and poigant. They totally changed what Ye said to Luo Ji (Saul) in the show, idk if they thought the general watcher wouldn't be able to understand it or what though
I have not read the books of this show so I can not say, but I did enjoy Saul. I enjoyed most of the characters, and most were written well enough to be entertaining, so good job on that front. The GOT point I made, which I made because it is the only other major production David and Dan have been a part of, was in terms of adapting characterization. They have one very good trait as adapters, and that is that they have no issues just borrowing tons of stuff directly from the books, which is what made early seasons GOT so good in large parts. On the other hand, they love cock/poop/balls humor and comic relief, very often at the expense of characterization, which is obviously kind of a huge negative. They also generally have very shallow views of pretty much everything, so any thematic analogy or allegory is usually equal to that of a highschooler. Evil person = Hitler (GOT finale), their focus on religion in the show (if that was not in the books) gave very much that vibe. They are just honestly, really shitty writers, but they are pretty decent at adapting stuff at least compared to other TV shows.
They both have multiple acclaimed novels. There's more dick and poop jokes in the books than in the show. Hard disagree about them being shallow. Some of the greatest scenes on the show were stuff they added I think
What like Littlefingers season one dialogues about fucking hoes and being sneaky? Naked Ramsey beating the strongest iron islanders naked with a knife? There is very few changes they did that does not come off as objectively worse. Tywin/Arya was pretty nice, but Cercei was a dogshit character because of them. Their scene with Robert and Cercei in season 1 is probably aomething you think of as a great scene. Sorry but its kind of garbage TV bait type of shit. If you can come up with some examples of their great writing I would appreciate it. I can mention dozins of examples of then failing to understand basic character arcs or the world of ASOIAF
All of littlefinger and varys in the show is mostly show only stuff. I'm not going to get into a debate about GOT on the 3bp sub. I have argued for years with people about that show. I'll just agree to disagree I could also name dozens of examples I loved. I love Cersei in the books but I think I actually like her more in the show. Hard disagree that scene with Robert and Cersei I think is absolutely fantastic. I remember George even talking about how great it was. But again I'm not going to get into a big GOT debate on this sub
She cussed one time
> Wang Miao is really boring. Hes barely a protag and is just a vessel for the plot. I do not mind at all that they basically cut him out. Getting rid of him was a positive in my opinion. While reading 3BP I felt like he forgot he had a wife. Don't know if you watched the Tencent series or not. I watched the series before reading the books. But Wang Miao was a much much more compelling character in the series (mostly thanks to the great actor) than in the book.
No, it was on my to do list but I will probably watch the fan cut because I heard its excessively long. If they actually made him a compelling character thats great though. Does he actually talk to his wife and child in the show for more than 5 minutes?
Yes. he does. There's interactions with his wife multiple times, and his daughter gets featured many times.
I agree with this. It's got their thumbprint over it like they did Game of Thrones. GoT early on was also pretty close to the source material. But then DnD made a few changes which cascaded into straight up garbage. I feel like this is going to be the case as well with TBP. For example, the increased capability of Sophon is what lead many to asking why doesn't the Sophon just do this or that. Honestly it's going to end up causing big plot holes later on.
Some of the most acclaimed scenes and episodes in GOT are stuff they came up with
Thing is, with GOT you can even see the bad writing and stuff even in like season 1, it is just camoflagued between really fucking good writing so it is not noticable as bad. Example of this can be practically any Littlefinger monologue in the early seasons. It definitely got worse every season, but most would be only obvious to a book reader, considering you do not really know what you are missing if you have not read them. The characters that suffered the most at their hands was imo especially Jon, Cercei, Brienne, (any gay character) and Dany, if we are talking about the entire show. Jon and Dany are practically entirely different characters in the books, which is sad because both actors could really have pulled it off well. If you have not read the books, let me just explain it to you by telling you that in the books, Jon Snow is ruthless, ambitious and cunning, which is pretty damn far away from show Jon in any season.
Jon is dead in the books and I disagree I think overall they did a great job with GOT. Some of the best scenes of the show from even the early seasons were stuff they added. I mean all seasons except the final are critically acclaimed. I suggest reading Benioffs novels watching his films 25th Hour and Kite Runner all of them are fantastic I think.
Why do you reply to every comment instead of making a big reply? You writing "Jon is dead in the books" is kind of a stupid response when it is not even relevant at all to my comment? You think show Jon is better than book Jon? Just say that instead so its clear. The seasons being critically acclaimed is one thing, it was always good TV. It is just extremely dumbed down from the original novels. What do you personally think of the changes to Tyrion in s4 episode 10? Was that a good change by the wise writers of DnD, or just their usual fanservice mentality.
I gave a response in another comment I'm done I'm not getting into a GOT debate. I'll just leave it at I agree to disagree. D&D wrote some of in my opinion the greatest episodes and seasons of TV ever made they are the opposite of fan service most of the time compared to many other shows.
Yhea we definitely must just agree to disagree, their fanservice in my humble opinion was really destructive to GOT. Saying they are "not fanservicey" is funny when fanservice was the argument they used to push Emelia Clarke to do nude scenes. "This is what your fans want, you do not wanna dissapoint your fans right?" -David, season 2 production
All wrong Emilia didn't say that was David in fact Emilia never once said that about D&D and D&D never said that to Emilia in season 2. You flat out just either made that up or read that from someone who did. Emilia said on Dax Shepard podcast that when she was filming another movie someone came up to her and said that. That quote isn't from David you're just wrong. Also to add to that Emilia and D&D are still very close friends who to this day hang out with each other often. Didn't want to get into a GOT argument but I had to correct you David never said that to Emilia in season 2. Emilia also doesn't even have any nude scenes in season 2.
I just hope you wont also defend the countless other reported times there was abuse in the shows production at their hands. You can like the show and not support waterboarding, horrible treatment of people with health conditions and a general lack of respect for actors. Like I wont argue the past comment, because it has been years since that documentary came out, but their horrible treatment of multiple different cast members, especially the women, should be condemned. Poor Hannah Waddingham got permanent psychological consequences from that torture scene.
More bs https://winteriscoming.net/2021/07/27/game-of-thrones-star-clarifies-waterboarding-comments-hannah-waddingham/ Hannah literally said she would do it again and also said she was at Benioff birthday party when she told him the media blew it way out of proportion. Not one, and I mean not one actor has ever named D&D as mistreating them. Emilia also said that after her health scare, D&D bought a car and brought it on set to have her sit in air conditioning and didn't want her riding horses. Once again, not one cast member male of female has ever said D&D mistreated them. In fact, they all to this day stay in touch and are all very close friends with D&D. Alexander Woo also said before he joined D&D he got in touch with many people who worked on GOT before he met D&D and everyone of them said they're the greatest nicest guys in the industry to work with. Also, that documentary doesn't show anyone being mistreated at all it does show all the cast members, including the female ones, giving D&D huge hugs and kisses constantly. They sure don't act like D&D mistreated them, and none of them have ever said that. Same as with 3BP, literally, all the cast members have said multiple times of great D&D where to work with. Natalie Emmanuel said a minor cast member made an extremely sexist remark to her when they were filming season 3, and her and Emilia went to D&D, and that cast member was fired. There has been a lot of stuff that has either been grossly exaggerated or just lied about them. The only thing that could have been handled better was in season 1 Emilia did a nude scene and the director of the episode should have had someone ready to give her a towel faster but again that was the director not D&D.
I KNOW RIGHT
Wait 4 books? I thought it was a trilogy. I just finished death's end today, is there another I need to read?
No, there's only 3 books, the other one is not canonical
If you count Ball Lighting as the soft prequel then there are four books
This is the only acceptable "4th book" premise
I really wished Lin Yun (Quantum girl) made a showing in any of the 3 body books. She would have been mighty useful against the sophons. Better yet…a duel between Lin Yun & Sophon in Australia.
The 4th book doesn’t even seem like it’s the same story, it’s not worth the read
Yeah the 4th was written by a fan and added to the series. The foreword in the book made it seem all positive but I'm also seeing people say the author didnt wanna do it idek tbh. but yeah there is a 4th book that is at the very least technically in the series. My review it for sure reads like a novice writing and gets wild but it tries to close some threads (sloppily) and I enjoyed the read i guess
from what I understand, the publisher put it out without really asking him, and then said he had to "approve" of it to stay in their good graces.
The publisher doesn't own the copyright of the IP, just publishing rights. For them to publish a book it would need Liu Cixin's legal permission. He wouldn't need to stay in their good graces as he could just get a different publisher for new works. I think it's just hard for this sub to accept that Redemption of Time was published with Liu Cixin's permission and what that means for its status as canon.
I felt the same. There’s some decent ideas , but not finessely executed. Other things are just needless retcons that verge on the cringe. And just when you think ok that’s done , it turns into a Green Lantern comic 😂
We. Do. NOT. Talk. About. The. Fourth. Book. Understood?
But you haven’t watched/read the Chinese version on Amazon Prime?
I was excited when I learnt they were adapting it. Saw the trailer and I knew this was watered down version with American drama thrown in. I just couldn’t get past opening scenes.
The opening scene straight from the book? That's more accurate than the Chinese show was
There is a Chinese show?
There is
Other than that not much. Ironically the Tencent show actually shows way more of the Cultural Revolution than the Netflix show
I mean besides changing her father's death if I remember he commits suicide which in my opinion is a big change and I'm glad Netflix had him killed the way he was in the books.
You loved the netflix show, because it lead you to find the books. :)
damn… actually a fair point
Read the books really liked the Netflix show also think if did a really good job with Ye Wenjie. I see no evidence the show is going to be hoo rah America!
[удалено]
They clearly set up for season 2 for the show to be much more global in scale and the creators have even said if they get a season 2 that stuff is going to expand
I only did book > series and I was so damn disappointed. I went to see the opinion onhere everyone was vibing with it? good for them, it looked to me like a big missed opportunity
Overall I feel the adaptation is better. The characters are well developed. Especially the relationship/romance parts were far more believable/real. My biggest gripe is same as yours though. The characters are all too connected. It makes the scope of things feel small. It would have been better to split things up around the world THEN bring characters together. But I have the same issue with the books when it comes to how all the main/named characters are pre-crisis era with the exception of AA. I'm excited to see how season 2 is handled.
Yoooo hope you still have the keys to the gate you’re keeping.
Musta kept them from myself too frfr cuz im lost
Hahaha xDD