{"id":611947,"date":"2024-03-09T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/3-body-problem-review-netflixs-ambitious-sci-fi-adaptation-is-more-serviceable-than-dazzling\/"},"modified":"2024-03-09T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T06:00:00","slug":"3-body-problem-review-netflixs-ambitious-sci-fi-adaptation-is-more-serviceable-than-dazzling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/3-body-problem-review-netflixs-ambitious-sci-fi-adaptation-is-more-serviceable-than-dazzling\/","title":{"rendered":"#\u20183 Body Problem\u2019 Review: Netflix\u2019s Ambitious Sci-Fi Adaptation Is More Serviceable Than Dazzling"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a37a6ed1c0fe\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a37a6ed1c0fe\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/3-body-problem-review-netflixs-ambitious-sci-fi-adaptation-is-more-serviceable-than-dazzling\/#3_Body_Problem\" >3 Body Problem<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Publicity materials for Netflix\u2019s new sci-fi drama <em>3 Body Problem<\/em> refer to Benedict Wong\u2018s character, a slightly rough-around-the-edges investigator with cross-jurisdictional concerns, as \u201cDa Shi.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    It\u2019s a nod to Liu Cixin\u2019s novel of roughly the same title, in which the delightfully uncouth Shi Quiang is referred to as Da Shi (\u201cBig Shi\u201d) as a term of endearment. But nobody who hasn\u2019t read the book will know why Wong\u2019s character is being described that way, since he\u2019s now a British-born character less mythically named \u201cClarence.\u201d The character in the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a> is perfectly entertaining, but he doesn\u2019t stand out iconoclastically in even a similar way. He\u2019s flatter, less surprising and <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>ly a lot more conventional.<\/p>\n<div class=\"review-summary-card\">\n<div class=\" lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column@mobile-max lrv-u-padding-a-125 u-background-color-honey-light \">\n<div class=\"lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column u-width-275@tablet u-border-b-1@mobile-max u-border-r-1@tablet u-border-dotted lrv-u-margin-r-150 lrv-u-padding-r-150 lrv-u-margin-r-00@mobile-max lrv-u-padding-r-00@mobile-max lrv-u-padding-b-125@mobile-max lrv-u-margin-b-075@mobile-max\">\n<h3 id=\"title-of-a-story\" class=\"c-title  lrv-u-font-family-primary u-font-size-34 u-font-size-38@desktop-xl lrv-u-line-height-small lrv-u-margin-b-125 \"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"3_Body_Problem\"><\/span>\n<p>                    3 Body Problem      <\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>                    <span class=\"lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase lrv-u-font-family-accent lrv-u-font-weight-bold lrv-u-color-brand-primary lrv-u-font-size-16 lrv-u-display-block\">The Bottom Line<\/span><br \/>\n                    <span class=\"c-span  u-font-size-22@tablet u-font-style-italic lrv-u-font-family-secondary\"><\/p>\n<p>    Errs on the side of accessibility.<br \/>\n    <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>                            <strong>Airdate: <\/strong>Thursday, March 21 (Netflix)<br \/><strong>Cast: <\/strong>Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza Gonz\u00e1lez, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, Benedict Wong, and Jonathan Pryce<br \/><strong>Creators: <\/strong>David Benioff, D. B. Weiss and Alexander Woo<br \/>\n            <span><br \/>\n                                            <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    David Benioff, D. B. Weiss and Alexander Woo\u2018s adaptation of <em>3 Body Problem<\/em> knows that it should aspire to be Da Shi. It\u2019s based on a literary series with a unique cultural context and built around some dazzlingly complex ideas. In order to reach the widest possible Netflix audience, that cultural context has been completely universalized and most of the biggest ideas, which remain too frequently as vestigial references, have been sanded down to purposeless traces of coolness instead of integral elements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    I think there\u2019s an exact middle ground of viewers who want their sci-fi to have spectacle but not too much grandeur, and to have <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/sciencee\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"5\" title=\"Science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">science<\/a> but not too much rigor, that will feel well-serviced by <em>3 Body Problem<\/em>. Fun but not fun enough and smart but not smart enough, these first eight episodes may aspire to be \u201cDa Shi,\u201d but what they tend to be is \u201cClarence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    The series begins in 1966 in Beijing as Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng), a budding astrophysicist, watches her scholar father stand humiliating and horrifying public trial for the sin of teaching \u201cthe counter-revolutionary Big Bang theory.\u201d She\u2019s shuffled off to a re-education rural work camp, where she\u2019s introduced to Rachel Carson\u2019s <em>Silent Spring<\/em> and the idea that \u201cin nature, nothing exists alone.\u201d This notion of human connectivity is also taboo and will be relevant later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Cut to present-day London. Scientists at research\u2019s bleeding edge are killing themselves around the globe, producing a trail of bodies and cryptic leads pursued by the largely mystique-free Clarence (Wong).<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Five former classmates from Oxford reunite to make sense of this global puzzle. Once, all five showed tremendous promise. Jin (Jess Hong) is a theoretical physicist at the vanguard of the field. Once the smartest in the group, Saul (Jovan Adepo) has stagnated and remains a research assistant, more interested in getting high and getting laid. Will (Alex Sharp) hit a plateau and now teaches physics to high schoolers. Auggie (Eiza Gonz\u00e1lez) left physics behind and she\u2019s now a nanotech pioneer, developing little things that can cut slightly larger things into smaller parts. And Jack (John Bradley) started a snack food brand and got rich.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Seemingly out of nowhere, Auggie begins having problems with her eyes. Specifically, she begins to see an unexplained countdown covering half of her field of vision, like a critic with an anti-piracy watermark on a high-profile screener.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Where did the countdown come from? What is it counting down to? What does it have to do with Ye Wenjie and a mountaintop observatory in China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution? What does it have to do with Clarence and his shady employer Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) or the even shadier and more mysterious billionaire Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce)? And how is it related to a shiny virtual reality helmet that seems to play only one very confusing <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a> set in a desert realm with three suns?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    The short and VERY oblique answer is: Something very bad is coming, something that threatens all of humanity, very different from what Rachel Carson warned readers about, but an existential crisis nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    But that \u201csomething bad\u201d is a long way off, which puts <em>3 Body Problem<\/em>, book and series, in a thought-experiment genre alongside sci-fi works like Isaac Asimov\u2019s <em>Foundation<\/em> franchise, books and series. It isn\u2019t as simple as sending oil drillers onto an asteroid or sending Randy Quaid to a UFO with a computer virus. The question is partially \u201cWhat do we do now?\u201d But it\u2019s much more \u201cHow do you get humanity to care about a threat that won\u2019t impact them or their children or their children\u2019s children?\u201d How do you get humans to think on behalf of the multi-generational span of humanity rather than exclusively in terms of a limited lifespan?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Weiss &amp; Benioff (<em>Game of Thrones<\/em>) and Woo (<em>The Terror: Infamy<\/em>) are in a tough place. Take away the teetering conceptual pieces of the book and there\u2019s little that\u2019s distinctive about <em>3 Body Problem<\/em> as a science fiction brand. Overplay the conceptual pieces of the book and you\u2019ve limited your audience to people who understand the three-body problem in orbital mechanics. Without any doubt, favoring accessibility over fidelity was the correct choice, but the traces of the distinctive elements become a bit like a hamburger that costs $100 because it comes with a piece of gold leaf on top. What did the gold leaf add to the hamburger? It lets you charge $100.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    The effort is sometimes fairly admirable. I\u2019d point to the third episode, written by Woo and directed by Andrew Stanton, as the best example of <em>3 Body Problem<\/em> enthusiastically locking onto fascinating notions and visualizing them as well as I could imagine. This is the episode that goes the deepest into the world of the virtual reality game \u2014 full of historical personages, epic puzzles and dehydrated bodies \u2014 and lays the stakes out for the real world as well. More frequently, though, I\u2019m guessing that television-only viewers are going to find the game and a lot of the footnote-y traces of the book to be either perplexing or purposeless. I truly don\u2019t know how it could have been done better, but when a season reaches its brainy peak shortly before the half-way point, there\u2019s a lot of increasingly perfunctory plotting to go.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    The same problem impacts <em>3 Body Problem<\/em> in terms of spectacle. It\u2019s a generally handsome show and the aspects like the period scenes in China are impeccable in costume and production design (if extremely superficial in ideological terms). But this was meant to be a HUGE show for Netflix and it only sometimes looks huge. The ocular countdown, which needs to be a captivating and terrifying conceit, simply isn\u2019t. The first episode ends with an unnatural natural phenomenon that leaves everybody in the show agog, but I guarantee no viewers will be agog (or probably understand). The series\u2019 biggest set piece, which takes place near the Panama Canal, is amusing more for its gore than its large-scale execution (plus it\u2019s in the service of a piece of strategy that makes no sense at all) and it comes in the fifth episode, leaving the rest of the season as a bit of an anti-climax.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    The series isn\u2019t devoid of good stuff. It\u2019s just flat, with decorative touches, which extends to the characterizations and acting. Nobody in the ensemble is bad, but very few performances are memorable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Really, the most entertaining version of the series is Wong and Cunningham being gruff together. I could watch hours of that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    The Oxford Five too often feel like exactly what they are: one character from a book split into five characters to add a diversity of perspective, sharing a single character\u2019s worth of plot between them. Bradley is a source of badly needed humor. Hong, as close as the season comes to a real hero, is earnest and emotionally grounded. Adepo is perhaps too earnest, never exactly playing the burnout that the character is written as, which makes it much harder to see what should be a powerful arc in the season\u2019s homestretch. Gonz\u00e1lez deserves credit for allowing herself to be the butt of the season\u2019s funniest and harshest joke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    As the older version of the Ye Wenjie character, Rosalind Chao has a somber concern that\u2019s both reassuring and unsettling, while I loved the wild-eyed energy that Marlo Kelly brings to Tatiana, a zealot with an unclear agenda. And I don\u2019t know who had the close personal relationship with Pryce that convinced him to add his gravitas in a role that fails to materialize as anything sufficiently complex to be worth his presence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n    Or maybe he, like Da Shi\/Clarence, is another representative of what <em>3 Body Problem<\/em> does both right and wrong. Because it\u2019s never bad to have Jonathan Pryce in your TV series, but having Jonathan Pryce teases you with the promise of getting value out of Jonathan Pryce. Just like having hints of all these meaningful ideas and images teases you with the promise of getting value out of them, instead of something merely OK.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-reviews\/3-body-problem-review-netflix-1235847073\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Publicity materials for Netflix\u2019s new sci-fi drama 3 Body Problem refer to Benedict Wong\u2018s character, a slightly rough-around-the-edges investigator with cross-jurisdictional concerns, as \u201cDa Shi.\u201d It\u2019s a nod to Liu Cixin\u2019s novel of roughly the same title, in which the delightfully uncouth Shi Quiang is referred to as Da Shi (\u201cBig Shi\u201d) as a term&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":611948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/3BP_102_Unit_07248RC-H-2024.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[137715,23873,75621,62771,62772,149170,107740,93076,62773],"class_list":["post-611947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-3-body-problem","tag-alexander-woo","tag-benedict-wong","tag-d-b-weiss","tag-david-benioff","tag-eiza-gonzalez","tag-jovan-adepo","tag-liam-cunningham","tag-the-three-body-problem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}