The Spring Festival is approaching, and many sci-fi fans are looking forward to "The Wandering Earth 2" to continue its glory and hit the ceiling of domestic sci-fi movies.
However, "Wandering" has not arrived, "Three-Body Problem" went first, and on January 15, the long-awaited drama version of "Three-Body Problem" finally landed on CCTV eight sets and officially started broadcasting.
Before the broadcast of "The Three-Body Problem", everyone's mood was expectant but apprehensive.
Looking forward to it, it is because this drama is adapted from China's most famous and influential science fiction novel of the same name.
In 2006, an engineer named Liu Cixin, because of his love of science fiction, took advantage of his spare time to create a novel called "The Three-Body Problem" based on the framework of a star system composed of three irregularly moving stars.
As soon as this novel came out, it attracted the attention of the majority of science fiction lovers because of its wild imagination and strict sense of logic, and it was a hit.
In the following ten years, the influence and popularity of "The Three-Body Problem" has become more and more popular, not only won many domestic science fiction awards, but also went abroad, and in 2015, won the "Hugo Award" known as the Nobel Prize in science fiction.
In 2022, "The Three-Body Problem" was selected as one of the "Top Ten National IP of the Year" together with the ice pier and Sanxingdui ruins.
Such a well-known work is remade into a TV series, which naturally attracts people's attention.
But at the same time, people who love "The Three-Body Problem" are inevitably worried, because the original book is good, which does not mean that the remake of the series is also good.
And just last month, the anime "Three-Body Problem" also just started, but the broadcast effect was shocking, with a score of only 4.6, far lower than the 9.6 rating of the original work.
Therefore, many people are worried about whether the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" will follow in the footsteps of the anime version.
However, "The Three-Body Problem" was broadcast on CCTV Eight sets, which made everyone's hearts fall to the ground.
As soon as it was broadcast, "The Three-Body Problem" won a number of firsts.
The first is the first rating, the start time of "Three-Body Problem" is more than nine o'clock in the evening, post-prime time, coinciding with the shutdown tide of the audience, the ratings of this time period in the past were below 1%, but the premiere rating of "Three-Body Problem" was as high as 1.24%, nearly twice that of the second place.
At the same time, "The Three-Body Problem" also won many lists representing Internet popularity such as Maoyan and Lighthouse.
It has ranked first in Tencent Video's popularity for two consecutive days, and its broadcast results are quite eye-catching.
How did the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" rewrite the ceiling of domestic sci-fi dramas and get out of the curse of remaking the street? And listen to Tomato-kun slowly.
First, lead the audience into the play in the way of "suspense film"
For the vast majority of audiences, what is more acceptable is the work with a down-to-earth plot.
The reason why "The Three-Body Problem" can retain the audience is because it cleverly hides its "sci-fi film" attributes in the first few episodes and appears in front of everyone as a suspense drama.
At the beginning of the series, there is a suicide case, and the deceased is a physicist named Yang Dong.
Suicides are rare, but the physicist's death has attracted great attention from the police, and even the military has intervened in the investigation.
Because this is not just a simple case of personal suicide, but a serial suicide of a physicist.
In recent years, dozens of internationally renowned physicists around the world have committed suicide, all with similar last words: "Physics does not exist!" ”
What exactly triggered the suicidal behavior of physicists? Why do they say such incomprehensible things as "physics doesn't exist?"
Through an investigation of the dead, the military finally set its sights on an association of scientists called the "Science Boundary."
Because most of the scientists who died had contact with this association before their deaths, and soon after contact, they all chose to end their lives.
Having found the crux, the military began to look for a "wrench" to pry open this association, and finally found Wang Miao, an expert in nanoscience.
Wang Miao was invited by the military to attend a secret meeting, at which she learned that the physics community was facing unprecedented turmoil, physicists were taking the initiative to die one by one, and Yang Dong, who had just committed suicide, had brief contact with her 10 months ago.
In a dialogue with Wang Miao, the military learned the purpose of the scientific boundary.
This organization has a "shooter and farmer" theory.
The shooter theory says that a shooter accurately hits the bullseye on ten targets 10 centimeters apart, and physicists are villains living on targets, one day, a physicist will find these 10 holes, and each hole is separated by 10 centimeters, and a shooter's action becomes the physical law of the Lilliputian world.
The farmer theory imagines humans as a pack of turkeys. Farmers come to feed their turkeys at ten o'clock every day, and one day, physicists among turkeys claim to have discovered a pattern: food comes to the world at ten o'clock every day.
Both theories are revealing that the so-called physics of human beings may only be a misreading from a low-latitude perspective, and these laws may not really exist, but are only caused by the behavior of high-latitude organisms.
In other words, the "scientific boundary" is questioning the truth of science and challenging the existence of physical laws.
The military suspects that the theory of the scientific boundary disturbed the minds of those physicists, made their outlook on life shaken, and finally chose to commit suicide because of their lack of determination, hoping that Wang Miao could infiltrate the scientific boundary instead of the military to find out.
Wang Miao refused at first, but soon changed his decision because he met Yang Dong's fiancé Ding Yi, who explained Yang Dong's true cause of death for Wang Miao.
It happened 10 months ago, when Yang Dong had just undergone a failed experiment, and the results of several experiments were very different from the theory.
Originally, she thought that this was just an ordinary failed experiment, after all, the experiment had the possibility of error, and then something happened that shattered her worldview.
It turned out that not long after Yang Dong submitted the experimental report, her supervisor committed suicide, leaving behind the last words: "Physics does not exist!" ”
Yang Dong was puzzled by her mentor's death until she saw her mentor's relics in the hands of the police, a report identical to the report of her failed experiment, but the date of this report was earlier than her experiment.
Experimental failures are often random, and you can replicate 10,000 successful experiments, but it is difficult to repeat the second failed experiment.
This means that these errors are not accidental, but that there are unknown laws, a set of laws that can subvert physics that humans have been building for hundreds of years.
At this moment, Yang Dong finally knew the reason for her mentor's suicide, because her own worldview also collapsed - physics did not exist.
After listening to Ding Yi's story, Wang Miao felt incredible, and at the same time realized the importance of the situation: scientific boundaries are not just shaking people's hearts through theory, they have mastered other physical laws that are unknown.
Are the "shooters and farmers" gods created by trickery? Or is there a real person, a real thing?
Does physics really not exist?
Why can the scientific boundary predict failed experimental data?
The fog makes people feel that they are watching a suspense drama, and it is the kind of suspense drama that can't guess the ending.
Hiding sci-fi first and leading the audience into the game in the form of suspense, "The Three-Body Problem" can be said to put down its body and attract the audience in a more down-to-earth form.
There is no doubt that it succeeded, at least Tomato-kun was successfully brought to the plot while watching the play, following to think, to hypothesize, to find out the real culprit that caused the physicists to commit suicide.
Second, the sci-fi factor flashed in it, and the height was reduced to surprise
Although "The Three-Body Problem" looks a lot like a suspense drama at first glance, the drama party has not forgotten that its essence is a science fiction drama.
While using the physicist's serial suicide case as the introduction, the director intersperses a dimly colored picture from time to time through flashbacks.
The woman in the picture is wearing a twisted braid and a large cotton jacket, her face is facing the sky, and the newsletter book says 1979.
In this story, there are no lines, no one else, only a picture of a woman operating alone in front of some ancient instrument.
I saw that the woman obtained a piece of code paper, put it into the decoder to decode, and four pinyin were displayed on the instrument: "Don't answer!" ”
It turned out to be an astronomical science station responsible for detecting signals from outer space. And this girl, Ye Wenjie, is an astronomer.
In the garbled code for many years, such four words suddenly appeared, which means that human beings have discovered alien civilizations!
But in the face of the warning on the screen, Ye Wenjie did not heed, her eyes were heavy, and tears flashed in her eyes. She secretly hid the codesheet, quietly turned the transmitter behind everyone's back, pressed the signal button, and sent a signal towards the endless sky that humans could not hear.
At the same time, she said in her heart: "Our civilization is collapsing and needs your arrival!" ”
It turned out that Ye Wenjie had experienced an unbearable experience, her father died tragically, and she herself was framed. The sad encounter caused her to lose faith in human civilization, believing that only alien civilization could save humanity.
And all this is the fuse that induces the whole story.
The drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" can be said to perfectly restore this part, while unfolding from the perspective of a suspense drama, it also hides the seeds of science fiction, quietly waiting for it to take root and break the ground.
Many audiences' evaluations of the drama version have the words "respect the original" and "highly restored".
In fact, this is also the secret of the success of the novel remake, the success of the original book is that its narrative logic and story core have been recognized by everyone.
And many screenwriters make changes in vain when adapting, destroying the structure of the work, and naturally losing everyone's love.
This is also an important reason why the drama version continues to receive praise.
Third, the 5 powerful actors are impressive and bring "The Three-Body Problem" to life
"Three-Body Problem" as the largest sci-fi IP in China, the project has attracted much attention as soon as it was launched, in addition to worrying that it will be changed by magic, the audience is most concerned about casting.
Science fiction films are different from other films, and there are high requirements for the imagination of actors, because there are many shoots that need to be completed by imagination.
And "The Three-Body Problem" is not only a work that only pursues visual impact, but also a big thinking about the rise and fall of human beings, which also requires the actors' performances to have depth.
Fortunately, the casting of "The Three-Body Problem" was ultimately satisfactory to the audience.
Yu Hewei, Zhang Luyi, Chen Jin, Wang Ziwen, Li Xiaoran, Lin Yongjian, Kou Zhenhai... They are all familiar and trusted actors.
Among the characters who have appeared so far, there are 5 actors whose performances are impressive.
The first one is Yu Hewei.
Yu Hewei's drama is so wide that he doesn't need Tomato Jun to say much, this time, Yu Hewei's performance is still eye-catching, because he is playing a bit of a "ruffian" criminal police officer Shi Qiang this time.
Shi Qiang, this person, and a group of colleagues came to invite Wang Miao, others are like policemen, talking to him, standing lazily, and not forgetting to take a cigarette in his mouth.
But Shi Qiang's ability to work is absolutely undoubted, and the military cannot convince Wang Miao, he can.
In the face of the uncooperative Wang Miao, Shi Qiang first used the radical method, saying that if he entered the scientific boundary, he would definitely commit suicide; Then slapped a candy to see that Wang Miao was interesting to Yang Dong, and took the initiative to invite him to Yang Dong's funeral.
He was also very funny, Wang Miao couldn't stand his temptation, agreed to participate in Yang Dong's funeral, and after arguing and pulled down his son to pull his car door, Shi Qiang said: "Is this my car?" You just drag. ”
Just when Wang Miao was about to pull the door of the car next to him, Shi Qiang took out the car key and pressed it to unlock it, which was still the car that Wang Miao had just dragged.
A scene, which was relaxed and interesting by Yu Hewei, adjusted the rhythm of the entire drama.
The character of Shi Qiang, with the slippery body of the old criminal policeman, hangs a child but is not annoying, and under the interpretation of Yu Hewei, you will even think that this person will definitely be able to do great things in the future.
As soon as Yu Hewei stood in front of the camera, it made people feel that this was a small person, and his acting skills were really amazing.
The second place is Zhang Luyi.
Zhang Luyi plays physicist Wang Miao.
When watching the play, the deepest impression of this character on me was "stay".
The "stay" here refers to the feeling of being dedicated to scientific research and having no distractions exclusive to top researchers.
The moment he saw Wang Miao, Tomato Jun knew that this character was standing, and he was the deep-rooted image of scientists in the hearts of the general public.
Zhang Luyi has a scene in the play, which is to argue with Shi Qiang whether he will commit suicide.
In this performance, Zhang Luyi's eyes are firm, his tone is always calm, obviously arguing, but you can feel that this is a person who is calm and has a strong sense of faith, which is particularly compatible with Wang Miao's personality.
Zhang Lu played Wang Miao, which can be said to be integrated with the role.
The third place is Wang Ziwen.
After "Ode to Joy", Wang Ziwen gave the impression of being eccentric, including in variety shows, her personality is also very assertive and lives very wantonly.
But in "The Three-Body Problem", Wang Ziwen subverts himself.
She performed Ye Wenjie's depression, grief, and even a little resentment, even if she did not introduce the cause and effect, you can guess that she has undergone great changes and can experience her pain.
Whenever the camera moves to Ye Wenjie, she gives the audience the feeling that there is no light in her eyes, and she is a person who stands by the abyss and looks down, and may jump down at any time.
Such Ye Wenjie can completely subvert the earth's civilization.
The fourth place is Lin Yongjian.
Lin Yongjian's image of men pretending to be women is deeply rooted in people's hearts, and many people are worried that they will appear when they learn that Lin Yongjian is going to star in "The Three-Body Problem".
But after the episode aired, it turned out to be completely unfounded.
Chang Weisi, played by Lin Yongjian, has the majesty of a soldier.
In particular, he said to Wang Miao that the entire history of mankind can develop safely and unexpectedly to today, everything is accidental, lucky, and now that the accident has ended, it gives people a feeling of vain feelings of big people, and there is also a kind of silent spirit of the building collapsing in front of it.
This kind of Lin Yongjian is relatively unfamiliar to everyone, but it is absolutely wonderful.
The fifth place is Li Xiaoran.
Li Xiaoran has always been a temperamental beauty, and this time she has brought her cold temperament to the extreme.
Li Xiaoran plays a member of the scientific boundary this time, which can also be said to be the organizer, and it is she who destroys the faith of many physicists little by little.
There is a scene of Li Xiaoran meditating on the glass in the play, which is full of mystery.
And when she and other scientists speak, she always holds her head high and her expression is cold, such a person is the easiest to break the psychological defense of others.
It is fitting that Li Xiaoran plays Shen Yufei.
End
Science fiction dramas, for Chinese audiences, are still strange, and we watch more fantasy dramas based on costumes.
In fact, science fiction dramas are more difficult to shoot than fantasy dramas, and people's examination of parallel universes and three-body worlds is much stricter, and if the logic cannot be self-consistent, it will be branded by the audience as "this drama is very fake".
This is also one of the reasons why science fiction dramas have declined for a long time.
The appearance of "The Three-Body Problem" can be said to let people see the dawn of science fiction dramas, on the one hand, it proves to people that the level of special effects of domestic dramas has reached the same height as movies, on the other hand, it is also a test of the audience's acceptance of science fiction dramas.
I hope this drama can be a victory, because only in this way will we have more opportunities to see more and better sci-fi dramas.
(Movie Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Office: Yangjing)