Netflix making an adaptation of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, which is one of the best sci-fi books I’ve read so far. It’ll be released in 2024 and I’m kinda hyped after that teaser.
I’m cautiously optimistic after that teaser. Never expected it to be as China-focused as the books, but it seems like they’re keeping some of the core elements like the Cultural Revolution connection.
D&D rightfully get a ton of flak for how Game of Thrones ended, but the first several seasons of that show were amazing and I’m curious to see how they’ll do when they’re adapting a work that is completely finished and has a solid ending. They will know from the get-go which elements of the story end up being critical and which can be adjusted to make for a better adaptation.
No clue how they’ll portray some of the stuff in book 3 visually, though.
What a coincidence, I picked up the first book this weekend and started it. Netflix adaptions don’t make me very optimistic but we’ll see.
Nice, that will allow my girlfriend to know the story despite the fact that she won’t read the books! But the last time we watched a series based on novels that I liked, it was The Witcher which was… disappointing.
I’m excited too. I literally just started on the books yesterday after I’d started to watch Three Body on prime video but that one got pulled suddenly? Dunno what the deal is on that.
It’s on youtube in full (with subs, legitly, from Tencent) if you want to keep watching it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMX26aiIvX5rFSYPXtcqda3tWd6pGVD5Q
For anyone who doesn’t know, there’s a Chinese Tencent adaptation (wikipedia) which originally aired January 2023, is not the same as the Netflix adaptation which is not yet released.
The Tencent adaptation is 30 episodes and currently available in full in 1080p in 4K! with english subtitles from Tencent on their yt page, here’s youtube and invidious links to the playlists:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMX26aiIvX5oCR4bBg2j0W4KKgjYtYBfv (as shared by misericordiae above)
https://y.com.sb/search?q=PLMX26aiIvX5oCR4bBg2j0W4KKgjYtYBfv
I’m about halfway through the Tencent adaptation and I think its accurate to the source material and accurately capturing the mood well, however:
- The buddy cop guy was added for exposition which is lazy writing
- The pacing is really slow which sometimes works really well and other times drags out scenes with no benefit. I’d say this could have been compressed into 22 episodes without losing any content or creating pacing issues while still leaving plenty of time for scenes that were meaningfully slow. Just needs an editor to cut it down a bit. Oh well!
I think I only recommend it if you’re a fan of the book because its not disappointing from that perspective really, but maybe the Netflix version will be comparably faithful while being structured a bit differently or having better storytelling. I look forward to comparing them.
