The drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" can be described as full of arrangement.
First appeared in CCTV's 2023 big drama list, and then was put into the ranks to be broadcast in January by Penguin Video.
Then it was airborne and fixed, and eight sets of CCTV were logged on the day of the southern small Chinese New Year's Eve.
On the day of the broadcast, it directly parachuted into the third place in the national ratings, and firmly locked the top three positions for several days.
The popularity is even more "scary", and on the first day, it directly rushed to the top of the list of popular dramas on Maoyan's entire network, and it was the first for 6 consecutive days.
The momentum is fierce, and there is a faint potential for a New Year's hit.
The word of mouth, which everyone was worried about, also stabilized in the early stage.
Douban opened with a score of 8.0, which did not take long to rise to 8.1 points, and currently gets the highest score of domestic science fiction dramas in 2023.
In the comment area, there were many voices of satisfaction from the original party.
"The original fan breathed a sigh of relief and finally got something to eat."
"It turns out that as long as you shoot according to the original, it will look good!!!"
Some also praised CCTV's vision of drama selection:
"Being able to see this kind of drama on CCTV is worthy of five-star encouragement."
After the fifth episode was launched, it attracted netizens to shout "directly seal the gods".
Even the People's Daily issued an article endorsing the play, "focusing on the main pulse of science fiction works" and "firmly grabbing the audience's attention from the beginning".
So, why can the drama version be popular in ratings and popularity, so that mainstream media publicity is popular?
Today, let's find out.
01、
Into the play
The plot, characters, and special effects are the three mountains to be turned over on the road to the adaptation of the drama version.
This also makes many people worry that the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" will hit the streets like the animated version.
But judging from word of mouth, popularity, and ratings, it obviously delivered an answer that far exceeded expectations.
When the animated version of "The Three-Body Problem" was broadcast, many passers-by were dissuaded.
Because this version of the plot line is drastic, it starts directly from the epilogue of the first part.
Without the foreshadowing of the previous plot and characters, it is actually obscure for audiences who have not seen the original work.
In contrast, the drama version made honestly from the first film is obviously much better.
Moreover, the drama version integrates suspenseful reasoning into science fiction stories very well, which is addictive to watch.
The opening of the first episode is very similar to the beginning of a general suspenseful reasoning story: a body is found.
The deceased was a well-known physicist named Yang Dong, and after preliminary judgment by the forensic doctor, she committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.
So, why did Yang Dong commit suicide?
Before her death, what did she mean by the phrase "physics does not exist"?
Without making the audience wait too much, the series solved the suspense and threw out the next suspense.
Through the words of police officer Shi Qiang (played by Yu Hewei), we know that such a case is not the first case.
In just two years, several top scientists have committed suicide one after another, all of them related to a mysterious organization called Scientific Frontiers.
Obviously, there must be a secret hidden behind this.
The police attach great importance to this, and even the joint operations center representing the military is involved in the investigation.
Shi Qiang is the police officer named by General Chang Weisi (played by Lin Yongjian) of the war center to investigate the suicide of scientists.
After Yang Dong committed suicide, Wang Miao (played by Zhang Luyi), a nanoscientist who had contact with the boundaries of science, became a breakthrough to clear the fog.
Wang Miao was invited by the military to the Joint Operations Center, where she learned that the scientific community was facing unprecedented turmoil.
Scientists around the world committed suicide one after another, including Yang Dong, whom he had met.
Through Shi Qiang and Yang Dong's fiancé Ding Yi, Wang Miao learned the reason for her suicide.
Ten months ago, Yang Dong's particle physics experiments failed several times.
Before her experimental report came out, Shen Yufei (Li Xiaoran), a member of the scientific boundary, had already obtained exactly the same data.
This is obviously impossible, but current physics cannot explain such a phenomenon.
Yang Dong's mentor chose to commit suicide because he could not accept such a fact.
Later, Yang Dong was in the mentor's relic and saw the report that the time was earlier than her experiment and the data was the same, and the worldview also collapsed.
After leaving his last words that "physics does not exist", he ended his life.
When the plot gets here, it is already foggy.
Why was Shen Yufei able to predict the data of the experiment?
What secrets does this organization hide?
And, why are they exploring the hypotheses of "farmer" and "shooter"?
Under the suspense, it attracts the audience and the people in the bureau to enter the sci-fi world, peel off the cocoon together, and find the truth.
And as Wang Miao took the initiative to blend into the scientific boundary, the truth behind it also surfaced one by one.
02，
respect
Film and television adaptation, the biggest criticism is to change the original work beyond recognition.
This time, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" respects the original.
Whether it is the storyline or key lines, or the scene props, it has achieved a very high degree of restoration, almost a 1:1 restoration of the original work.
First of all, the story line basically follows the first part of the original book:
unfolds with the mystery of Wang Miao and Shi Qiang's investigation of the suicides of scientists;
At the same time, interjecting the "ten years of turmoil" from Ye Wenjie's perspective;
After Wang Miao entered the three-body game, she gradually revealed the beginning and truth of the three-body civilization's invasion of the earth.
Main plot, one no less; The key lines are also restored a lot.
For example, the famous terrier "tilapia kills", the classic dialogue between Chang Weisi and Wang Miao.
"The whole human world was accidental, and now this luck is over, be mentally prepared."
Secondly, some sci-fi brain holes are highly restored through special effects.
For example, the universe flickers.
After seeing the countdown, Wang Miao, under the guidance of Shen Yufei, went to the radio astronomy observation base to observe the twinkling of the universe.
After wearing 3K glasses, he saw the overall fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation.
Also, the "dehydration soak" of the three-body game.
We know that when the chaotic era comes, the trisolarans will dehydrate and turn themselves into a thin human skin, rolled into a "chrysalis".
In the Hengji era, they would go down the slide like "dumplings", soaked in water and revived.
Finally, it is a high degree of restoration of various scenes from the original work.
In order to pursue the most realistic effect, the drama version was filmed in many places, involving a total of more than 200 scenes.
In addition to the interior of the Red Bank base and the operations center, many exterior scenes were real shots.
Even the Particle Collision Center and the National Center for Nanoscience are real scientific sites.
In addition, the big scene of the three-body game has also been restored.
For example, when Wang Miao first started the game, she was in a wasteland at dawn.
With a loud bang, two peaks floated from afar.
It was not until in front of the eyes that these two hanging boulders, revealed their true faces, the "three-body body".
Also, the human column computer that breaks through the imagination, just the teaser scene is very spectacular.
The big scene is polished and restored as much as possible, and the small details that are easy to ignore can also feel the sincerity of the main creator.
For example, in 2007, Shi Qiang used a Nokia mobile phone and played a game of Snake.
The cartoon that was playing on the TV was "The Legend of the Seven Heroes of the Rainbow Cat and Blue Rabbit", which was on fire at that time.
When Wang Miao was on the verge of collapse by the ghost countdown, "Zhizi Road" appeared on the street sign.
Even the empty shots that pass by are rigorous to the extreme.
On the basis of respecting the original work, the drama version has also achieved a proper adaptation, which is surprising.
The most obvious place is the treatment of the role of Wang Miao.
Originally, he had a strong tool man's attributes, but he was adapted in the fifth episode to be more pyrotechnic and humane.
Regardless of the countdown to restart the experiment and the original plot of popular science physics at her daughter's school, Wang Miao's character was suddenly enriched.
From a tool man to such a vivid protagonist, this adaptation is perfect!
This episode's transformation of Wang Miao's psychology is portrayed successfully, and Shi Qiang's beginning to gain his trust is also very natural in the plot.
03，
The charm of the 4 actors is amplified in this drama
Casting has always been the most concerned issue in the film and television adaptation of "The Three-Body Problem".
When the cast of the drama version first came out, there were actually many such voices as "not close to the face" and "good play".
But after the drama version was launched, there were many fewer such voices, thanks to the wonderful interpretations of some acting powers.
Their presentation of the characters is very interesting.
For example, Wang Miao played by Zhang Luyi.
In the play, Wang Miao's setting is a physicist responsible for studying nanomaterials.
As the protagonist of the first part, this character is more like a guide, and many people directly say that it is a "humanoid camera".
In appearance, Zhang Luyi and Wang Miao are particularly suitable, and after wearing glasses, they have the posture of a Sven reader.
In terms of interpretation, his interpretation of Wang Miao is also in place.
The serious eyes are in line with the intellectuals in the original work.
In the fifth episode, after Wang Miao witnesses the "flickering of the universe", he collapses in despair when the existing scientific knowledge cannot explain this phenomenon.
Here, Zhang Lu showed Wang Miao's mentality vividly.
The second is Shi Qiang, a criminal police officer played by Yu Hewei.
This is a character that many book fans like, a coarse and thin, maverick, and very wise criminal policeman.
Before the broadcast, many people were not very satisfied with the casting of the drama version.
The reason is that I feel that Yu Hewei's image does not conform to the Shi Qiang in the original work, who is "five big and three thick, with a horizontal face and a rough voice".
But after the broadcast, it was all really fragrant.
Yu Hewei grasped the core of the character thick and thin, and the spirit was resolute, and played a character who was not like himself.
The character gags are energetic, making people feel ruffled but not annoying.
For example, when Wang Miao wanted to open his car door, she deliberately said, "Is it my car, you just drag?" ”
As a result, when Wang Miao was ready to walk away, she opened the lock again.
There is also a thin side of the character.
In a serious meeting, only he was sitting on a chair, but he could observe Wang Miao paying attention to Yang Dong.
In the fifth episode, Wang Miao's scene was enlightened, and Yu Hewei even showed the great wisdom and foolishness of Shi Qiang's character to the fullest.
In the play, he and Zhang Luyi's opponents are full of sparks, which is quite interesting, bringing a touch of relaxed atmosphere to the plot.
The third place, the elderly Ye Wenjie played by Chen Jin.
Chen Jin has played many roles in the circle in recent years.
For example, Su Mingyu's mother, who prefers sons to women in "It's All Good", and the well-behaved lord of Pingning County in "Do You Know", she can always produce a sense of depression until she drives people crazy.
This time, it is only fitting that she is suitable for the elderly Ye Wenjie.
In the trailer, the sentence "To eliminate the tyranny of human beings, the earth belongs to the three bodies", there is the smell of the commander behind the earth rebellion organization.
Looking at the kind and easy-going grandma next door, the elegant aging intellectual.
But at the funeral of his daughter, there was no sadness on his face.
This is also where Chen Jin is powerful, with thunder in his chest but his face is like a flat lake.
The fourth place, the young Ye Wenjie played by Wang Ziwen.
When it comes to Wang Ziwen, the first thing that comes to mind is Qu Xiaoxiao in "Ode to Joy".
Playing Ye Wenjie this time is a big challenge for her, who has played many ghost horse and elf roles.
Before the broadcast, many people did not have great expectations for her version of Ye Wenjie.
But judging from the effect presented, Wang Ziwen not only did not mess up, but acted very well.
Her eye play in it is very in place, full of despair and helplessness for human beings and the world, which is very in line with Ye Wenjie's state of mind.
Ye Wenjie's sense of vulnerability and brokenness was also performed by her.
This crying scene is explosive, infectious, and shocking.
In addition, Shen Yufei, played by Li Xiaoran, and Chang Weisi, played by Lin Yongjian, have also been recognized by many netizens.
The only thing that everyone is not very satisfied with should be Ding Yi played by Wang Chuanjun.
The genius academician of the original work, under his interpretation, became an unambitious artist.
"The Three-Body Problem" is the pinnacle of Chinese science fiction literature, and it is difficult to put it on the screen, and it is even more difficult to shoot well.
At present, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" in the animated version allows people to see the new possibilities of domestic science fiction, which is undoubtedly a good thing.
Whether the follow-up episodes will continue to make efforts or go high and low, just wait for the episodes to be revealed step by step.
Bluestone Films | Mei Liqing
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