February 7, 2023 issue | Total Issue 3140
It's a difficult thing to evaluate the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem".
In the coordinates of domestic TV series, "Three-Body Problem" is a real "wall-breaker". Before it, no drama had received so much praise for its nested game world; In the past decade, no drama has been able to significantly pry the expressive limits of ten years of turmoil like "The Three-Body Problem", even if it is only metaphorical; Space epics and cosmic-scale human reflections have found a way to imagine landing and speculative development for the first time in domestic dramas.
But from the perspective of adaptation, the "nano-level" restoration novel, the biggest medal awarded to the audience to the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem", is both a safety rope for creation and a limiter.
Completely faithful to the original work, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" can present the advantages of the novel to the extreme - for example, the counterpoint architecture of the three-body world and the process of human civilization, the imagination of technology and "miracles" such as cosmic flickering, proton unfolding, nano flying blades, and space elevators. Completely faithful to the original work, it also allows the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" to inherit some of the shortcomings of the novel - for example, the imbalance of the structure of time and space, the relatively thin character shaping, and the left-right struggle between physical science and plot promotion.
To objectively evaluate "The Three-Body Problem", it is necessary to see not only the series' interpretation of the magnificent cosmic imagination and sci-fi scenes in the novel, but also the more hidden but equally important effort of the adaptation of "The Three-Body Problem" - the transformation of the novel's shortcomings.
Three Times: 2007, The Game and the Red Bank
Novels rely on time to weave narratives, while films rely more on space to arrange narratives. In film and television adaptations, the time and space transition from text to images has always been a top priority. This is especially true of the adaptation of The Three-Body Problem.
Liu Cixin has built multiple time and space in the novel, and the real time and space in 2007, the game world and the Red Bank base in the 70s are the three main time and space. In addition, there are some fragmented space-time implanted through the insertion of documents and materials. Among the three main time and space, Liu Cixin obviously prefers the mysterious Red Bank base and the treacherous game world, while the real time and space of 2007 is not only short, but also quite blurred.
In the series, we can see the efforts made by the creation in terms of time and space balance, integration and aesthetic unity.
Equilibrium is the equilibrium of the proportions of three space-times. The drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" obviously increases the proportion of real time and space, and spends a lot of thought on scene construction. A combat headquarters converted from a modern art museum, which is a good balance between science fiction and just the sense of obsolescence, gives the audience the first visual anchor. The aesthetics of digital giants in the time and space of the "Three-Body Problem" game and the imagination of the wonders of the Red Bank Base are like "black holes" that attract creators to sweat. But imagine that without the successful extradition of real time and space, it will be difficult for the audience to enter the sci-fi system of the three-body problem.
Integration is the integration of fragmented space-time. For example, the chapters "Monitor" and "Zhizi" near the end of the novel "Three-Body Problem" are the three-body world imagined by Ye Wenjie based on the three-body data intercepted by the guzheng operation. It is neither the true face of the three-body world, nor is it a three-body world built in the game world to facilitate the understanding of human players.
In the episode, the main creator integrated this fragmented time and space into the game world. It's much easier than getting the audience to accept another visual aesthetic and concept of space-time. Ye Wenjie, as the first person to dialogue with the three-body civilization, entered the three-body game for the first time at this time. This shock of perception also paints a slightly ironic fateful stroke on this character.
Finally, there is the aesthetic unity of the three spatiotemporal spaces. This unity is not the unity of visual style. 2007, the game and the Red Bank, the three space-time in terms of style, belong to realistic cyberpunk, digital giant aesthetics and Cold War violent aesthetics, respectively. But the three have the same instrumental thinking in the relationship between space and people, and they are all environmental obliteration. Video installations that often appear in the streets and alleys in real time and space, such as the pyramids, human computers, trimaran fleets, huge antennas in the Red Bank base and elevators deep underground.
Three characters: Wang Miao, Da Shi, Wei Cheng
The protagonists of Liu Cixin's novels are often not people, but magnificent science fiction. This approach often leads his novels to be instrumentalized.
"The Three-Body Problem" is no exception, the so-called protagonist Wang Miao in the entire novel only provides a point of view to enter the story, and some chapters are devoted to building the world or recalling the past of the Red Bank, and readers will almost forget Wang Miao, the character who threaded the needle. The character of Da Shi is even easier to ignore, leaving only a few vague labels such as big waist, wisdom and rough temper. Reading throughout, only Ye Wenjie's character arc is the most complete and charming.
In the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem", through the relay interpretation of Wang Ziwen and Chen Jin, Ye Wenjie's tragic life has been fully restored. But what made greater efforts in the adaptation of "The Three-Body Problem" was to make the two positive characters Wang Miao and Dashi really become cute protagonists, and also let Wei become a group of marginal supporting roles on the screen.
The three-dimensional transformation of the character Wang Miao was completed in the first five episodes, that is, the countdown plot unit. This unit is cleverly designed, which not only shows the collapse of Wang Miao's faith under the double blow of the scientific frontier farmer and shooter theory, and the countdown and the flickering of the universe, but also writes about the process of re-establishing his faith with the help of Shi Qiang's worldly wisdom that "when evil is at home, there must be ghosts".
Among them, there are both visual spectacle and character growth, as well as the establishment of friendship and trust between him and Shi Qiang. When Shi Qiang deleted Wang Miao's "nano instigation" from his mobile phone address book and Wang Miao confidently went to teach at her daughter's school, it was also a time when the selected hero was established and set off.
The success of Dashi is largely due to Hewei's interpretation and the design of many interactive details. His essential dramatic functions, first, are to act as a police follow-up trail and promote the investigation of the three-body organization; The second is to serve as a stand-in for the audience, from the many complex scientific knowledge and supernatural phenomena in the play, to summarize a simple and easy-to-understand conclusion.
Yu Hewei's performance brought this old river and lake to life. The stewed restaurant meeting he organized gave the science fiction story a friendly and mundane smell. His ridicule of his assistant "ten formations" and his "pampering and skinning" of General Chang Weisi also opened up a rare emotional breath in this heavy story.
Finally, there are the surrounding characters. The surrounding characters in the novel "The Three-Body Problem" are basically labeled, such as Pan Han, the core member of the Yin Advent faction, Evans, who is paranoid to madness, Shen Yufei, who is extremely calm, and Wei Cheng, a humanoid computer... But in the play, each character tries to draw circles on top of the labels.
Among them, Wei Cheng, who traced the entire history of his research on the three-body problem in Shandong dialect, is one of the more successful three-dimensional. In front of the body of his wife Shen Yufei, he continued to act on the white T-shirt he was wearing, convincingly acting the state of the genius maniac on the line, and also allowing the audience to see the tragedy of being a three-body "fuel man".
Conclusion: Speculative development and video essay
Finally, I also want to talk about the presentation of speculative views and hardcore science in the novel in "The Three-Body Problem".
Liu Cixin may not be a well-written and skilled novelist. But his thoughts are undoubtedly quiet and deep, about the universe, time, life, individuals, existence... His novels often contain large passages of monologue-like speculative point of view.
For example, when Ye Wenjie recalled the past of the Red Bank Base to Wang Miao, there was this statement:
"The exploration of alien civilizations is a very special discipline, which has a great impact on researchers' outlook on life... Sometimes after the night shift, looking up at the night sky, feeling that the stars are like a glowing desert, I myself am a poor child abandoned in the desert... I have that feeling: life on earth is really an accident in the universe, the universe is an empty palace, and human beings are the only little ants in this palace. This thought made me have a very contradictory mentality for the rest of my life: sometimes I feel that life is really precious, and everything is as heavy as Mount Tarzan; Sometimes I feel that people are so small that they are not worth mentioning. Anyway, the days pass day by day in this strange feeling, and before you know it, people are old..."
This period of life value speculation is very difficult to visualize. The drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" uses a very wonderful cross-montage of the old Ye Wenjie and the young Ye Wenjie to present. This is an expression of shattering the mountain of language and reinventing it into a mountain of audio-visual, and the sense of loneliness and fatalism in the image is frightening.
In the presentation of hardcore popular science knowledge, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" also has quite a wonderful treatment. Proton unfolding and cosmic scintillation principle explanation are all quite wonderful passages. However, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" does fall into PPT-style graphical thinking in the presentation of some bridges, much like the explanation rhythm of video papers, but it seems to be worried that the audience will lose patience and bring it by at a very fast speed, leaving the impression of invalid information output.
In general, pioneering ambitions and landing capabilities like "The Three-Body Problem" are very rare for Chinese TV dramas. The drama of the show's problems of one kind or another is not enough to diminish the shine of this attempt in a bit.
【Text/Tin Snare Drum】