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Netflix’s Sci-Fi Series '3 Body Problem' to Film Seasons 2 & 3 Back-To-Back (movieweb.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I guess that depends why you liked the books.

For my part, I had issues with both the show and the books, but very different issues.

Cixin Liu, in my opinion, exhibits all the best and worst elements of Isaac Asimov. His books are big on themes and complex scientific and philosophical ideas, but lack even the most basic elements of character and story structure. These are elements that lend themselves well to short form fiction and poorly to longer narratives, which is why I love the robot stories, but really don't care for Foundation all that much.

The series swings too hard in the other direction, IMO, downplaying the big ideas in favour of much more focus on characters and structure. In doing so it often demands that we spend a lot of time focusing on ordinary human drama when - in my experience - we really want to be focusing on the really cool scifi shit that's going on. Granted, this wouldn't be a problem if the characters were more interesting, but I found most of them fairly dull and unlikeable, even if they are at least more fleshed out than in the original books. The structural changes are also a mixed bag, with a lot of elements being presented in a more chronological order, with the unfortunate result that it becomes quite unclear what the point of a lot of this stuff is actually meant to be. Liu's narrative is less constrained by a need for strict chronology and this gives him more ability to put events together in context.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Thank you, this is very aligned with how I have been thinking of the books. It's really interesting to me, because the "Cixin Liu can't write characters" critique is legitimate, but I honestly didn't notice it that much while reading and more heard about it from others after.

I think the reason why is that I am very sensitive to "lazy" plot and character conflict - e.g., a character makes a stupid irrational decision and we spend 200 pages resolving it. That is not a trope that Cixin Liu ever engages in - his characters may make decisions I disagree with (like the misanthropic decision to respond to the alien signal that underlies the entire trilogy), but they are always coherent and not "cheap" plot devices.

So in fact, the Cixin Liu style of "character" creation, where characters are basically stand-ins for different pluralistic archetypal motives and "model" humans rather than believable humans with their own dramatic arcs, I actually strongly prefer, because it not only doesn't impede the sci-fi ideas, but elevates them.

So yeah...It actually sounds like I'd hate the show! The characters are the part I care about the least, and sounds like are spent more time/attention on, whereas the ideas sound like they're deemphasized.