Three Body Problem (Netflix)

[Blue Jam]

Adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel starring Benedict Wong and Aaron Paul. Drops tomorrow:

Not read the book and probably need to rectify that. Those of you who have: High hopes?

[touchingcloth]

High hopes: loved the books.

Low hopes: they seemed unfilmable, and it sounds like they have made some pretty fundamental character changes.

I'll definitely be watching, though.

[touchingcloth]

To be more specific on the unfilmability aspect, the books take largely over hundreds of years, with some bits taking part over thousands. There are bits involving suspended animation and whatnot, but even so I don't think any of the characters from the start of the first book are still there by the end of the third, and there are many characters who are introduced in one book and don't feature in the next.

People have talked about the books in Shelf Abuse and they have split opinion. I'm a fan, but others have criticised the weak dialogue and characters, and unless the visuals are absolutely killer that's the sort of thing that a TV series will live and die on. I've never watched or read Game of Throne so I don't know if the writers/creators are more the visual kind or characters and dialogue kind. If the latter then they might be able to adapt the book to overcome those shortcomings, but it feels like one of those things that will be a faithful adaptation but crap TV, or good TV but not faithful to the source material.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Where did the other thread go?

[touchingcloth]

Where did the other thread go?

I made an ill-advised Limmy joke in the title, which I think got it shitcanned. My OP was much the same as in this thread, and the only comment otherwise was about my Limmy joke, so nothing's been lost.

My thread had the correct title with "3" instead of "Three", though. Harrumph.

[Zero Gravitas]

I don't recall the bird thing from the book, Is this just a communists kill sparrows jab they couldn't resist?

[Barry Admin]

I made an ill-advised Limmy joke in the title, which I think got it shitcanned. My OP was much the same as in this thread, and the only comment otherwise was about my Limmy joke, so nothing's been lost.

My thread had the correct title with "3" instead of "Three", though. Harrumph.

I started getting reports popping up about racism, saw the names you quoted, and binned it.

[OpenMikeKnight]

Errol

[mjwilson]

I don't recall the bird thing from the book, Is this just a communists kill sparrows jab they couldn't resist?

It's in the book.

[Blue Jam]

Dunno why I thought Aaron Paul was in this, think it was just praised by him or summat, but onto episode 2 now and

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ADE!

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[Blue Jam]

OH MY FUCKING GOD

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THE ACTOR KEVIN ELDON!!!

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[burst_arm]

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Three excellent familiar faces in episode 3 too

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[burst_arm]

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It's actually just the two familiar faces as I've realised it's a Peter Serafinowicz lookalike -  John Dagleish . Reece and Mark were brilliant though.

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[Alberon]

I was one of those who absolutely could not get on with the book despite it being the sort of thing I'd generally like.

What I said four years ago.

Spoiler alert

And it's fucking awful! The story reads like something out of a bad potboiler from the 50s. Characterisation is basically nonexistent. Only one character has anything like an original personality and he's not one of the main characters. Maybe it's the fault of the translator, but praise for this does feel like the Emperor's New Clothes. I'm all for different voices from all over the world in SF but this particular one doesn't seem able to write.

Yeah, while stilted, the opening sequence is the strongest. When it reaches the modern day it goes off a cliff.

The main character in the modern day section has a wife and son who are barely mentioned let alone seen. And it's not like he's estranged from them, he's still living with them!

I'd love to know what someone fluent in both Chinese and English thinks of the original and the translation

[close]

Maybe the issue is the translation. I love the Hard SF genre in general so this should have been right for me. Maybe the adaptation will get around this issue, though my other worry is Benioff and Weiss who were great at adapting GRRM's books, but the second they deviated from then (as with the stuff in Dorne) or went beyond the published novels it all turned to slurry.

I'll be interested to see how the TV series is received.

[Blue Jam]

I've heard a lot about the books being boring and the prose not being great but I always wondered if that was a translation issue. It always put me off reading them but maybe I'll get the first one on me Kindle now, if only so I can make more sense of the series.

[touchingcloth]

I've started watching the first episode - loving Benedict so far, and the names popping up in this thread are very CaB-adjacent. Which Ade is in it? Edmondson?

I agree with Alberton that there might be translation issues, but disagree on enjoyment as I loved the books.

The characters are weak, but as I mentioned upthread some of them are only there briefly because the plot then skips forwards in time massively. And characters are one of the easiest things to improve in a screenplay while keeping the plot the same - they've mixed genders and turned single characters into multiple from what I can see so far, and the story up to this point hasn't deviated from the novel's basic plot.

You'll spoil the plot if you read too far ahead of the series, I reckon, so it's almost worth watching in Ute entirety before reading or vice versa.

I'm sure they'll have removed some of the more problematic elements from the TV version, such as the man who

Spoiler alert

gets all of the money and resources in the world and uses it to buy and imprison his perfect woman

[close]

and the other man who

Spoiler alert

is just as much of an incel, and uses his money to buy a woman who is barely aware of him a star

[close]

.

[mjwilson]

I've heard a lot about the books being boring and the prose not being great but I always wondered if that was a translation issue. It always put me off reading them but maybe I'll get the first one on me Kindle now, if only so I can make more sense of the series.

I think even people who like the books tend to say "well the characterisation isn't great, and the dialogue isn't great, and the characters aren't that amazing", it's more of an ideas book.

Also might be worth noting that the second book has a different translator, and a different style as a result.

[touchingcloth]

I think even people who like the books tend to say "well the characterisation isn't great, and the dialogue isn't great, and the characters aren't that amazing", it's more of an ideas book.

This is my take on it. I like books about human spaceflight where the characters and dialogue are often rubbish, but the nuts and bolts of it are fascinating. It was a bit like reading history in that regard, where it was specifically the events that were interesting, and Austen in space it definitely wasn't.

[Zero Gravitas]

I think there was also a point when it was weirdly viewed as some kind of historical and cultural insight, like you didn't need to read a book on the Warring States period you could just take in these alien simulation allegory passages, like this was distilled and digestible format for understanding an alien menace and their inscrutable philosophies.

I've said before on here that I think they're awful books - at least in translation - but I'm pretty sure they're just awful books. Granted awful books with some variously weird and fascinating ideas in them, but still awful, the characterization, dialog, and most of the plotting is mechanical and stilted.

The Netflix series inherits most of these problems, mostly because having people react to the required event and dialog set pieces they've stuck so closely too is in an inhuman proposition.

A very weird choice content-wise to make a series out of doubly so when we actually get to the wallfacer eras - on that note, is Jovan Adepo going to [memory and character-mappings hazy here] be put into hibernation for a century and then pop out to live in a pleasure dome with a Jess Hong lookalike? Brave move if so.

At least has a little charm.

[touchingcloth]

Everything I know about solar and particle physics comes from those books.

[touchingcloth]

is Jovan Adepo going to [memory and character-mappings hazy here] be put into hibernation for a century and then pop out to live in a pleasure dome with a Jess Hong lookalike? Brave move if so.

I think this conflates the two problematic bits I spoilered above.

The Adepo character (Saul Durand in the series, Luo Ji in the books) doesn't appear until the second book, and the lookalike is of the Ye Wenjie character.

The Jess Hong character is the one who attracts a different incel - the Alex Sharpe character - later in the books story.

In the books it's the (male) character who has been adapted into the one played by Eliza Gonzales who plays the video game rather than the Jess Hong one.

The nonlinear plot and the character swaps are really going to fuck with me in this series.

[Dex Sawash]

nonlinear plot and the character swaps

I'm out

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Errol

Is there a thing such as two body problem?

[Blue Jam]

On episode 3 now. Love the details of Jack Rooney's apartment, especially the

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Gervais-esque blow-up of the Cigar Afficionado cover

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and the

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expensive-looking rendering of the Man United crest EDIT: It's the Man City crest, following point still stands

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which is presumably to advertise what a c*nt he is :)

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"I was always too much of a hard science snob. Still am."

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Heheheh cheeky... loving this.

[Blue Jam]

Spoiler alert

"I just never thought I could get bored of nudity"

[close]

from the mouth of a Game of Thrones actor. Oh this is a delight.

[touchingcloth]

Is that the character's surname in the books or is that another sly pointer?

What's it a pointer to? That character isn't in the books at all, I think the pub/funeral gang is made up in place of a single character in the book so that the telly version can have a group dynamic.

[Blue Jam]

Jack Rooney is like one of those great total arsehole characters in Black Mirror, the ones Charlie Brooker is particularly great at writing

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but he really didn't deserve to be bumped off for his perfectly reasonable suspicions, nor for his perfectly reasonable decision to fuck off down the pub.

[close]

Love the way

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"The Lord"

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sounds like the ship's computer in Dark Star as well. And has the same mentality as

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Bomb 20.

[close]

Absolutely loving this.

[touchingcloth]

Ah yes, there are shades of Black Mirror in this so far.

The Wikipedia page's "cast and characters" section is (currently) free of spoilers, if you're interested in seeing how the series characters map to the books. Finding out which of the books their equivalents appear in is a different matter, though...

[touchingcloth]

As a lad from Wythenshawe, I enjoyed seeing the lad from Wythenshawe punch Tom More in the face.

[WhoMe]

Right, well, this is fucking great so far I have to say (5 eps in).