The biggest entertainment event last week was undoubtedly the launch of this series.
Netflix Version: Three-Body Problem Season 1
3 Body Problem Season 1
On the same day as its launch, Tencent's "Three-Body Problem" released a cut-out version, and "Domestic Three-Body Problem" ranked first in the hot search.
The spit has reached its peak.
From the characters, the plot, and even the special effects that I thought American dramas were good at.
The ratings are also intriguing.
Douban 6.7.
It is lower than IMDb's 7.8 and 76% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes.
$150 million investment, "Game of Thrones" team, such a result is lower than we expected.
But did Netflix fail miserably this adaptation?
Take a look at the results:
A brief summary of the results of the adaptation:
This is a victory for Netflix.
But for fans of "The Three-Body Problem", this is not a victory for "The Three-Body Problem".
For non-fans of "The Three-Body Problem", it is also an easy-to-eat afternoon tea.
Today's article, for the time being, will not explore the fundamental difference between the concept of the Netflix version and the original work, why it can't get the real excitement of Chinese netizens.
Let's first analyze the plot.
What's the difference with the Tencent version?
What are the advantages and disadvantages?
In fact, when they choose their own audience, they are already destined to look like the finished product:
One for a domestic audience with book fans as the core.
One is to introduce a story to Netflix users around the world.
01
A straight-thinking game
The two "Three-Body Problem" dramas are opened at one point, giving people the impression that they are two extremes.
One is slow, the other is fast.
One is false, the other is real.
Tencent's version of "The Three-Body Problem" restores the setting to Beijing around 2008.
From Wang Miao's perspective, he slowly gets in touch with the mysterious death of a physicist and the concept of "turkey and farmer".
It also contains flashbacks to Yang Dong's goddess-like gaze, an explanation of his own family environment, and so on.
Probably in the fifth episode, just after the countdown and cosmic microwave background radiation, Ye Wenjie probably only showed one or two sides.
The first episode of Netflix's "Three-Body Problem" explained Ye Wenjie's three memories of the betrayal;
The suicide line of the physicist led by Shi Qiang has an empirical thriller drama style;
It's not completely skipped the original book, it inserts two character clues in the first episode:
At the funeral of Ye Vera (Yang Dong in the original book), Evans, the number two person in the ETO organization, was present.
And the one who directly ordered Shi Qiang was not General Chang Weisi, but the representative of the iron-blooded leader of the earth in the third department, Vader.
It's like a puzzle game with all kinds of small threads hidden, and you don't have time to experience the NPC's situation and emotions for too long before you have to move on to the next round.
From Cosmic Flickering, Three-Body Game Clearance, ETO Offline Gathering, Guzheng Project, Face Wall Plan, and Ladder Plan, the interpretation of each level does not exceed two episodes.
can only be said to be worthy of Netflix, and "Three-Body Problem" also makes people find a sense of rhythm of "Squid Game".
But such a hurricane, as well as many big scenes and the unique settings of the original book, cannot be fully rolled out, so that the urgent atmosphere cannot be conveyed to the audience's hearts.
For example, the first important plot point, "The universe twinkles for you".
Tencent's version of "The Three-Body Problem" is hindered by investment costs, and uses a large number of night scenes and 3K glasses special effects to show cosmic radiation.
There was also a dizzy state full of cyberpunk painting style before, to set off Wang Miao's psychology of being impacted by the countdown at that time.
This method is clumsy, but it also shows that it is forceful.
And Netflix's "Three-Body Problem", the entire sky dome only adds an inverted layer, which literally "flashes" to the world.
In terms of scene special effects, the Netflix version will focus on the refinement of some visual wonders.
For example, the direct display of the dehydration and immersion of the Trisolarans puts the strange horror of alien life forms in place.
However, the rest of the large-scale scenes have not formed a certain style and aesthetics.
The human column computer and three-day volley in the three-body game have a sense of over-the-top travel;
Although the special effects of Tomoko's unfolding and ladder plan are well presented, the audience is also used to seeing big scenes, and they don't feel particularly amazing.
For example, the shock of showing the human train computer.
Tencent's "Three-Body Problem" in order to have a sense of national epic in the CG game world, uses chimes + poetic lyrics as background music.
And Netflix's "Three-Body Problem" quickly explained this scene, and changed Qin Shi Huang to Kublai Khan, who was more well-known abroad.
In fact, it doesn't matter if it is Qin Shi Huang or Kublai Khan, because in the original book this is originally a simulation scene in the game.
But the gap between expectations is:
Why has "The Three-Body Problem" not been adapted for a long time?
The difficulty is in the special effects.
The overly "hard" sci-fi setting and grand scenes in the original work are a hurdle for domestic sci-fi that has been weak for a long time.
So one of the hopes of the original party is: why don't you ask for another master?
I hope that Hollywood or American dramas can reproduce the scenes of the original book.
But in the current Netflix version, the special effects have been improved, but there is no leapfrog upgrade, and even in order to make the audience understand, it has been simplified a lot.
This is friendly to foreign audiences, or domestic audiences who have not read the original book.
But what book lovers want is not simple, they want grandiose, complex, and difficult.
The divergence between the two is that they have been going in different directions from the beginning.
02
The expansion of Cheng Xin
The threshold is low, the expression is straight, and the level is fast.
In such an environment, the motives and labels carried by the characters cannot be more distinct.
The biggest modification of Netflix's "Three-Body Problem" is not just the integration of the centuries-old timeline of the original book into London in 2024.
It also extracted several main characters from the original work, re-pinched them, and became the Oxford alumni reunion of the story.
Wang Miao corresponds to the heroine Xiao Ao: she is also the narrative task of cosmic flickering, nano research, and Guzheng Project;
And Cheng Jin, who was born from Cheng Xin, took the main line of Wang Miao's exploration of the three-body game and the discovery of the laws of the three-body world;
Saul, who is based on Luo Ji's character, paddled for a whole season, and after confirming the prodigal son and avoiding the character, he finally accepted the order in the face of the wall plan;
Will continues to take the route of decadence and single arrow, but it also paves the way for his work, family environment, and the struggle of confession or not;
Raj, who is of Indian origin, is Cheng Jin's fiancé, but his naval identity also shows that he uses Zhang Beihai as the prototype of his character.
Netflix's "Three-Body Problem" is a more typical adaptation of "The Three-Body Problem", which adds more life-like connections to these physicists.
Including the flying leaves criticized by netizens, dating P, chatting in bars, and interfering in a marriage and love relationship, Cheng Jin and Raj were thrown into a multicultural family gathering.
These details are also displayed in order to be closer to the real life of European and American audiences:
Oxford is also afraid of peer pressure at class reunions.
Your brain has to fly into outer space, and you have to deal with siblings sharing the house your mother left for you.
They are trying to explain more concretely how all human beings should choose when they encounter difficulties, and how can these choices be credible in terms of more universal individual emotions.
There is nothing wrong with such a strategy.
It's like the hugely successful "The Wandering Earth".
Liu Qi, Duoduo, Grandpa, and Liu Peiqiang are all characters that did not exist at all in the original book.
Father and son conflicts, escaping from the dungeon, making dumplings for the New Year, these plots are also absent.
Not to mention the net-like "seaweed shake".
Why add these "very unsci-fi", marketable and cheesy plots?
It is to make science fiction films not only have empty concepts, but also to shorten the distance with the audience.
Originally, the dungeon was a very distant thing, and a bag of dumplings gave you a sense of life.
Therefore, the plot of Netflix's "Three-Body Problem" is also understandable.
After the adaptation, the characters are more connected.
For example, Jack, one of the five merchants who seems to have nothing to do with the main story, provided a source of funding for Yun Tianming's Star Project (a fortuitous gift in the original work).
also accompanied Cheng Jin on the three-body adventure, which increased the sense of entertainment and interactivity.
In the end, his death also became one of the guilty motives for Cheng Jin's insistence on cooperating with Vader and staining his hands with blood.
There is nothing wrong with making up some pre-history and establishing realistic relationships for the weaker characters in the original work (such as Cheng Xin).
However, under the routine and typed style of Netflix's "Three-Body Problem", in popular Internet vernacular, the "granularity" of these characters is all aligned.
All the pain of their choices seems to have condensed into a common humanitarian and moral dilemma - that is, the button that Cheng Xin could not press in the original "Three-Body Problem 3".
This is especially evidenced by the adaptation of the Guzheng Project.
Tencent's "Three-Body Problem" is also more objective in showing the plight of indiscriminate killing of innocents, Wang Miao's reaction is "not for", hidden but on the verge of collapse;
And Netflix's "Three-Body Problem" is even more inciting:
When the disaster struck the second Red Bank base, the camera was more to children.
The nanofilaments neatly cut through the small paper figures and small school bags with obvious meanings.
It makes people struggle more with this massacre.
It also makes the conflict between Xiao Ao and Raj more intense (I'm really afraid that if there is a next season, Xiao Ao and Raj also have a relationship line).
Everyone in the series needs to accept the cruelty of "this is war", but Netflix's shooting method is more brutal and performative.
But watching all the IMDb scores, this episode has far more ratings than the others, proving that the strategy based on "Cheng Xin" values has indeed hit their audience.
For the creator of Netflix, he can understand Cheng Xin's individual humanity and spread universal love, but he can't understand the core of Ye Wenjie, the soul of the first part of "The Three-Body Problem".
The secularization of her is the main reason for the discomfort of many original fans.
03
Ye Wenjie's "fall"
If in other aspects, the Tencent version and the Netflix version have their own wins and losses, then the role of Ye Wenjie is mostly one-sided Wang Ziwen/Chen Jin.
Even, Sir personally thinks that Tencent on Douban is 2 points higher than the Netflix version, and at least 1 point is due to Ye Wenjie's adaptation.
The Netflix version of Ye Wenjie, two typical adaptations are overwhelming, one is "hate" and the other is "desire".
Netflix is indeed better than being able to deal with Ye Wenjie's hatred of human beings openly.
Including the Tencent version, which only has a close-up, a bucket of ice water used to force his daughter to report the father of academic poisonous weeds, including the sentence "no one repents" that has never been directly said.
This kind of bright hatred has continued to the Netflix version of the elderly Ye Wenjie, with seven emotions on the face and frequent fucks.
She can belong to "Oliver Kitteridge" or "Three Billboards", but she does not belong to a special individual like Ye Wenjie.
If you look at the big narrative of the three parts, Ye Wenjie, the "biggest ball rape" who opened the "Pandora's Box", undoubtedly carries a huge hatred on his body.
But this character, as the spiritual pillar and commander of all ETO organizations, also has a cold fraternity in her.
Her observation and deep experience of the world are no less than Cheng Xin's.
She was not simply let down, in the original work, she personally cut the rope of Yang Weining's survival, and was given the warm redemption of the world by the villagers of Qijiatun, and finally was pushed into the abyss of the three-body problem of faith because of "no one repented".
Because of these repeated pulls, there is this single line that Nemesis can't say:
I lit the fire
But you can't control it
is different from the original Evans and Pan Han, as extreme animal protectors, who have pure hatred for human beings.
Ye Wenjie's personality is complex, and her status in the organization is also higher than theirs.
And the Netflix version uses the form of "sex" to pull her into Evans's same ideology, making the character fall into the simple logic of "revenge" in secularization.
On the other hand, Chen Jin adopted a minimalist way to interpret Ye Wenjie, and gently said "Eliminate human tyranny, the world belongs to the three-body problem" has a religious power.
(And Netflix's Ye Wenjie, to be honest, is the most infectious and tied with the Venerable Deputy in "Around".) ）
Netflix Ye Wenjie's shaping is stronger in the later stage than in the early stage.
The series restores her to an ordinary mother, snuggling up with the killer girl like a mother and daughter to watch the sunset at the dying moment.
Calm and warm.
But it's hard to say the phrase "this is the sunset of mankind".
Netflix's "Three-Body Problem" dares to show cruelty and show the fanatical blind obedience of the people.
But it still runs counter to the subversion of various values in the original work, falling into the most universal individual emotions and humanitarian fraternity, and cutting off the sense of epic.
The series repeatedly mentions the analogy of Oppenheimer, Einstein, and the nuclear bomb button, but its values have not gone further than "Oppenheimer".
The New Yorker once described it as "a mainstream entertainment work that takes audiences into an innovative speculative corridor."
It can only be said that the road is clear enough, but the purpose is no longer what it used to be.
Sir remembered a debate that Liu Cixin had thrown out when he watched "The Three-Body Problem" in the past:
"When a fish lands, it's no longer a fish. So after human beings have landed in the universe, can they return to their original 'people'?"
Regardless of the answer, his question expands our thinking beyond the ground beneath our feet, and even beyond the solar system.
This is also the reason why the "Three-Body Problem", which was born out of nowhere, will always attract new book fans, and every adaptation can cause heated discussions.
Because he transcends the "gravitational pull that makes everything crash to the ground" and allows his thoughts to fly to infinity.
Although, in both versions of the adaptation, we can see traces of "gravity" pulling.
Tencent version, many things are hindered by the environment and the boldness of the adaptation, and can only be traced through some dense stream of consciousness, and there is no chain at the critical time, but it also does not take a step forward.
The Netflix version is highly typed and over-catered to universal values, and the talent and aura are framed.
Outside the series, the public's evaluation of the three-body problem seems to have formed a greater gravitational force.
Each work seems to be able to turn into dumplings that are spurned because of a drop of vinegar.
And in everyone's heart, there seems to be a version of "Zuo Zongtang Chicken".
However, Sir still hopes that it, as the most out-of-the-circle cultural IP of the year, can still break through and extend outward.
Just like in "Three-Body Problem 3", even if the button is final.
The Space Fleet is still a spark that breaks through Earth's brutal gravitational pull.
Continuously, bringing hope and civilization from an epoch.
Again to the next.
The picture in this article comes from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: It's Tu Yile
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