After a long time, the American version of "The Three-Body Problem" finally has new news.
Recently, actress Aisa Gonzalez revealed in an interview that the Netflix version of "The Three-Body Problem" has begun filming, and she will complete ten months of continuous shooting in the crew. In addition to her, Benedit Wang, Zhou Caiqin, John Bradley, Liam Cunningham, John Edpo and others will also participate.
The series will be created by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, together with "Polar Evil" Season 2 operator Alexander Wu, Liu Cixin and English translator Liu Yukun as the consultant producers, and Hong Kong director Zeng Guoxiang will direct the first episode, setting the tone for the whole series.
These news show that the long-rumored "Three-Body Problem" is really not far from the audience.
In November last year, the "Three-Body Problem" prepared by Penguin Pictures was also announced. There must be comparison between the two sides of the same body. On the one hand, there is the domestic version of "Three-Body Problem" in the all-Chinese team, and on the other hand, there is the Netflix version of "Three-Body Problem" dominated by foreign actors. The contrast between the two will accompany the new "Three-Body Problem" every step from filming to broadcasting.
The two "Three-Body Problem" have their own dilemmas
Two years ago, when Netflix and the copyright holders of "Three-Body" jointly announced that they would make Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin's novel "Three-Body Problem" into an American drama, the audience's concern was that as an American drama that was not launched in China, "Three-Body" would inevitably give priority to European and American audiences, and the actors would need to use a lot of English dialogue.
Based on this, Hollywood's Chinese actors are the first choice, but "Three-Body" is such a science fiction work with many characters and complex stories, are Hollywood's Chinese actors enough?
Judging from the cast announced today, the franchised actors are more diverse than initially thought. In the cast announced by Netflix, almost all Western faces were adopted. The only two Chinese faces are Benedict Wang, who has played Master Wang in movies such as "Doctor Strange" and "The Avengers", and Zhou Caiqin, who played Jia Mu in Li Shaohong's version of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and there are no native Chinese actors in the whole drama.
Therefore, although the director has set the director Zeng Guoxiang in Hong Kong, China, he still can't stop the worries of the fans of the original: he is going to become a foreigner again to save the world? As a Chinese novel, the drama version does not have a local Chinese actor, can it still be called "Three-Body"?
Relatively speaking, this is also the advantage of Tencent's version of "Three-Body". The all-China class lineup composed of Zhang Luyi, Yu Hewei, Chen Jin, Wang Ziwen, Lin Yongjian, Li Xiaoran and other actors is obviously more in line with the imagination of the original fans for the novel characters than the Netflix version.
Judging from the first trailer of "Three-Body Problem" released by it, lines such as "Your life belongs to an accident", "The whole universe will flicker for you", "The world belongs to the three-body", etc., are quite faithful to the original.
On the other hand, the biggest concern of the audience for the film and television of "The Three-Body Problem" has always been that the science fiction scenes are grand and not easy to shoot. "The Wandering Earth" has been a work more than three years ago, and domestic science fiction films have still been absent in the past three years.
In terms of TV dramas, domestic science fiction dramas have not yet had successful precedents, which undoubtedly brings huge pressure to Tencent's version of "Three-Body Problem". In the trailer for "The Three-Body Problem", the "full-perspective sensing game" is presented through character silhouettes, sci-fi lighting and photography, and there is no more intuitive display. Therefore, many fans of the original work still have reservations about the special effects screen.
Of course, at present, in the absence of a film, it is obviously unrealistic to infer which party will definitely get better results in ratings and word of mouth.
What kind of "Three-Body Problem" does the audience want to see?
Putting aside the gap between the two in terms of cast, special effects technology and funding, the controversy over the roots of the two versions of "Three-Body" is actually a dispute over how to adapt the epic science fiction IP, and the controversy over whether the science fiction movie story base or the visual effects standard.
In the story of "Three-Body Problem", the science fiction worldview full of special period struggle philosophy and speculative meaning, such as "dark forest", "chain of suspicion", and "dimensionality reduction strike", is difficult to discuss without ideology and cultural background.
Ye Wenjie, the soul character in the novel, has experienced the death of his father, so he has some hostility towards the people around him. Growing up, she went to work at the Red Bank base, where she was exposed to the latest astronomical techniques. By chance, she observed the presence of other life forms in the universe and pressed the mysterious button symbolizing Pandora's Box, inadvertently teleporting Earth coordinates to the Trisolaran. So, the Trisolarans made an expedition to Earth.
In the end, Chinese elements are an indispensable foundation for the story of the Three-Body Problem. In 2019, when the stage play of "Three-Body II: Dark Forest" premiered, Liu Cixin said in response to the question of "Why "Three-Body" cannot be handed over to Hollywood": "Hollywood science fiction films, the story and background can be complex and twisty, but the theme cannot be complicated, it must be black and white. The Three-Body Problem violates this fundamental principle. ”
This dilemma is quite similar to last year's "Dune" because of its serious core encounter with Chinese audiences "set wonderful" and "all sleep" polarized evaluation.
As a work with a grand worldview, the relationship between the characters in Dune is intertwined, and the story is full of bizarre religious rituals, intrigues and tricks, and a huge number of details of life. Some people describe it as "a story of the struggle of the ancient feudal lords of Europe into space, full of power struggles".
The existence of these elements makes the viewing threshold of "Dune" become very high, and the majority of audiences who are not familiar with the original work and realistic background of "Dune" naturally feel dull.
Behind these controversies, it proves that the cultural differences between China and the United States are real. If you want to do the "Three-Body" episode that truly restores the original work, or european and American audiences want to understand the special meaning in the background of the "Three-Body Problem" story, it will not be much lower than the threshold for domestic audiences to watch the "Dune" movie.
In this case, whether it is better to restore the original work, or to emphasize the visual effects to better harvest the audience, no one can be sure. We have to wait for both versions of "The Three-Body Problem" to meet with the audience before making a conclusion.
Earlier, there was news that Tencent's version of "Three-Body" may meet with the audience this year, and the Netflix version will most likely be completed early next year.
Since Liu Cixin signed out the adaptation rights of "Three-Body" in 2009, the road to filming and television of "Three-Body" has gone through 13 years. Regardless of the final effect, for domestic science fiction, this is a milestone step and worthy of our expectations.
【Text/Pomegranate】