Forget the naysayers. This show is amazing and *is* a faithful adaptation of the book. It is impossible to adapt a work from 1 medium into another without making changes to account for the strictures of the medium. Even with just translating a work from 1 language to another requires changes by the translator. Any 1st year foreign language student can tell you that word literal translations are nonsensical. What is important is do you convey the intent and meaning of the original, and the Netflix series DOES do that.
Adaptation is permissible, of course it is. It's impossible to adapt literary works into film and television without making changes. However, what's important is to ensure that the essence remains the same, just like transitioning from Marvel comics to Marvel movies. The stories may differ, but the characters' superpowers and personalities cannot undergo significant alterations. For instance, in the growth of Spider-Man and his abilities, you can't give Spider-Man powers similar to Doctor Strange's, or adapt it like "The Lord of the Rings," retaining the charm of each character from the original while eliminating some irrelevant storylines. Unfortunately, Netflix's adaptation falls short of satisfaction; it abandons some crucial settings, making the plot unreasonable and greatly diminishing the charm of the original work. It may leave viewers feeling that a science fiction story, which has been highly regarded by Chinese science fiction enthusiasts, is actually boring and superficial.
2nd Brit reactor I've watched that seems to have no idea about the Cultural Revolution. Do they not teach the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, Mao's Little Red Books and the rest of the horrors of the Chinese Communist Party rule in UK schools? Somewhere between 40-80 million died under Mao's reign alone. Not your fault if they dont covert in Uk schools...but hard for us "Yanks" to fathom as its definitely covered multiple times in our schooling since the death toll rivals some of the worst wars/crimes in history. Hysterical to see CCP bots on here in the comments still trying to cover it up.
Chinese Cultural Revolution - a period of very dark history in China in the 60s. Please look up the basics of it, so you have some historical appreciation of the background. Not even know what the Chinese Cultural Revolution was, is like not knowing what the Holocaust or American Revolution was.
The opening scene depicts a real event in Chinese history known as the "Cultural Revolution," which took place from 1966 to 1976. At that time, in order to eradicate the capitalist class, people were encouraged to indiscriminately denounce each other without regard for truth or falsehood, leading to the public condemnation and torment of individuals without just cause or those possessing significant assets. This led to the deaths of millions of people in China, constituting a highly brutal massacre.
The key point there is that young people (middle/high schoolers) were basically told to go balls out "lord of the flies" on their mentors and teachers. The worst part is that Mao started the whole thing gutting his country's academic system to cover for his monumental screw-up "great leap forward" famine.
If you plead, you will be released or be sentenced to other punishment. Like the first one dragged away in the show. But the scholars, teachers are the ones who are mostly unwilling to do so. Many of them committed suicide to get away or to prove their innocence, to accuse the violence. And many of them were beaten to death because they refused to admit their ‘sins’. As for the guy beaten to death is because he changed his class and taught his students about the big bang theory which supports the existence of God. That behavior is strictly forbidden at that time. That’s basically the first part of the show.
Well, yes. Of course there were actual moles among them but most people are innocent. It was a massive historical retrogradation for China in pretty much everything. All the schools shut down, college students were forced to drop their expertise and went back to farm, not to mention the terror. The main criticism towards Mao until nowadays.
@@OGforlifethe Big Bang theory does not support the existence of God. It also does not disprove it, which is what the professor answered. He was killed because he refused to give a definitive answer to a question that is unanswerable.
A lot of people are forgetting this is a western adaptation of Three Body Problem. If they adapted the book faithfully, i fear a lot will be droned out by the amount of details on science in the books. It's enjoyable but not will not leave you starstruck like the books will.
watched this series blind. I feel like it builds up and the little details make more sense thefurther you are in the series. i'm no genius. in fact physics kicked my butt in school but i still appreciated this.
A commentator quite rightly pointed out that this opening scene is similar to the Arya/Ned Stark scene in Game of Thrones, S1. Both shows produced by David Benioff and D B Weiss
@@squashua16I am a big fan of the books and the faithful Chinese adaptation. At first this show was "okay" or "so-so" but by episode 4 I was definitely engaged having accepted that the Netflix version was doing something unique with it. Curious to see where it will go... they definitely have some glaring flaws and first season issues (highly inconsistent quality CGI... goes from "woah pretty" to "Matrix sequels bad").
I know youtube has ridiculous copyright rules but dear god please decrease the transparency. other channels are uploading with no transparency. it's like I'm watching a ghost the whole time
The Cultural Revolution did happen in China back then. It was tragic as you can see, with extreme socialists rebelling against the capitalist and the intellectuals. That's also why she had to read the book secretly, since she will probably be executed in front of the public for "thinking too much". The scene couldn't be more realistic im afraid. Here in Taiwan we all learn about it in history class.
That's some hard propaganda that you believe right there if you think the cultural revolution was a revolution against intellectuals lmao. Meanwhile the imperialsits were literally fascists that had killed anyone and everyone they wanted, and plunged the country into extreme poverty and technological regress. China wasn't even industrialized because of the imperialist faction who were capitalist and fascist depending on the time. Instead preferring to rule over literal feudalist state with the help of their western allies like Britain that flooded the country with opium costing the lives of generations, controlling their exports and imports and even cutting off Taiwan
@@TheNerdyverse-DannyReacts It was an expose on the effects of a chemical called DDT that was used as a broad spectrum insecticide in agriculture and to stop malaria wherever in the world it was present. The book is widely seen as starting the environmental movement and leading to the banning of DDT. The title refers to the possibility of a spring without the sound of chirping birds as the chemical was causing severe harm to a number of bird populations since it tended to be concentrated as it moved up the food chain. It is controversial however, because many have criticized it for bad methodology as well as sensationalism. DDT had been responsible for the total elimination of Malaria in North America and Europe. It was being used to do the same in Africa when it was banned prior to the job being complete.
Bro, I have to say that Netflix has significantly accelerated the pace of this story. In the book, the story begins with scientists encountering strange phenomena in their respective laboratories, leading to doubts about science itself, especially among some theoretical physicists. However, the countdown appearing before them is almost a supernatural phenomenon. The flickering of the universe is not something you can see by simply looking up with the naked eye; it is the flickering generated by cosmic background radiation, which requires observation through satellites or special glasses. The script adaptation by Netflix severely undermines the mystery of the story itself. Cosmic background radiation is the residual energy left in the universe from the Big Bang. It cannot flicker regularly according to Morse code created by humans. The appearance of this phenomenon instills a great fear in those who believe in science, a fear of supernatural forces. This series fails to convey this feeling.
@@TheNerdyverse-DannyReacts The story of it goes too slow, and add lots of useless storyline for 30 episodes. So the pace of Chinese version is even slower than that of the book. And because of the cencership of Chinese government, Ye's background has been deleted lots of scenes. You can't see the death of his father, and you can't know clearly why the superior reject aiming the sun. Besides, the CGI of it is not as good as Netflix's. But the story of it is more justice to the book.
I admit that the original book tells too many stories about modern China, which may be tiring for non-Chinese readers like you, but one thing to understand is that these events collectively prompted Ye Wenjie, a Chinese woman, to make the decision to press the button. She wanted to invite an extraterrestrial civilization to transform Earth. However, four light-years is too far away, and aliens won't suddenly arrive. Yet, through certain means, extraterrestrial civilizations have made contact with some people on Earth. As for the gaming helmet and its contents, they represent the past history of the Three-Body world by adopting important characters from human history, to select and organize members to join the organization. The present countdown, the irregular collision results in the particle collider, and the flicker of the universe should be very terrifying, but unfortunately, Netflix's version hastily skips over these contents.@@TheNerdyverse-DannyReacts
The Netflix adaptation moves the existential dread from only scientists to all of humanity. This isn't really as large of a departure as you make it out. The dread is the same. Just moved to a grandeur scale. And yes sped up a but. But that is fine. A lot of changes were made to adapt the atory to the medium. Changes have to be made when translating a work from one medium to another. Just like when translating from one language to another. The translator must make changes. Word literal translations of literary works are nonsensical. This would also be the same for the equivalent of a world literal translation of a book to film. The author himself was consulted on and approved of every change that was made before production began.
Brother, the Cultural Revolution was an event in modern Chinese history during which many crazy things happened. It's normal if you don't know much about it. Just understand that it was a very crazy time.
There are significant parallels to the events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and what is happening in modern times in the book. The most obvious being the deaths of scientists/intellectuals.
@@TheNerdyverse-DannyReacts If you've never read Red Scarf Girl, it's a decent story taking face in the same time. Many people are required to read it in school.
Nobody should only review the first episode. They should at least view two. The pilot has a lot of character introduction and exposition that isn't in the other episodes. The first episode is much slower than the rest of the series.
I CANNOT stand the fact that they did that random "lets make out" like it was a bad 90's flick where the male and female protagonists just spontaneously hook up at the end.
Bro the tencent version is terrible. They didn't bother actually adapting it for TV. This is something different, and it's got much better storytelling than the tencent version
@@sg-te9pu think you might be. Why would I want to watch the tencent version when I have the books? They did nothing to improve or change the story, and it just drags as a tv adaptation. They completely fucked the pacing. It's actively bad.
I have not read the books, and I have seen both the Tencent and Netflix adaptations; therefore, I can only compare the two shows. Everyone praises Tencent for sticking close to the source material, but I heard book readers say otherwise, and I enjoy the Tencent version. I like how it takes time to unveil the mysteries of how all the events come together. The Tencent ends after the Judgement Day episode after 30 of them. Netflix flies through the first book in only five episodes where the Judgement Day ship was featured, and the last three episodes have elements of the second and even of the third novels. However, I like that Netflix did not repeat and hit our heads repeatedly with some themes and elements. They gave us just enough and moved us along the narrative arc. Overall, Netflix has a lot of impactful moments, especially the Judgement Day episode and the Will Downer episode. While Tencent gave us the reason behind Ye Wenjie’s decision in a long-winded stretch over the series and also spent a reasonable amount of time with the countdown for Wang Miao, who’s been race and gender-swapped for Agustina “Auggie” Salazar in the Netflix’z take. While Wang Miao almost goes crazy, Auggie stays calm and relaxed and tries to be collected, plus she has friends, whereas Wang Miao has his wife, child, and Da Shi, the detective. Netflix threw money into the production while Tencent utilized what they had to make the scene that needed it to count. I appreciate that with the VR game, Tencent uses contemporary technology while Netflix provided alien tech into the mix, and it made sense from where the source is coming from. Both shows have their merits and strengths, and I can’t wait for the next season for both shows.
I'm watching this version and the Chinese version on Amazon Prime it has 30 episodes and I'm on episode 28 It's Outstanding, ❤ Netflix has 8 episodes to tell this incredible story . Not impressed with Netflix version at all 😕
This is a very stupid position. Why should any American be expected to know about the Cultural Revolution? That's an insane expectation. He's also said to other commenters he'll look into it, so clearly he's not stupid or in favor of ignorance, yet your first instinct is to be a piece of shit. You're not smart or a good person if this is the way you react to anybody not knowing something you know. Also, you don't fucking know half the shit I do, because everybody has a different set of knowledge no matter how smart you try to be. I'd bet a fair sum of money I know more about contemporary American history, vocal biology and singing, music history, history of computing, sociology, civics, political science, philosophy, and law than most people. Yknow what that makes me? Interested in those things, dimwit. I am not smarter than anybody who doesn't have that knowledge base, except perhaps you.
Bro you've gotta tone it down like 20% at least. I get that you're trying to play it up for the reaction but you're coming off as a simpleton perpetually confused and scared by the most mundane and obvious things.
There are a number of ways to provide constructive criticism without being rude or patronising or both (much like myself). Not sure why you would address someone as a ‘simpleton perpetually confused’ when you don’t know that person.
@@chasspeed I've watched the first three episodes so far, and I say this as someone who loves the books- there is genuinely not one thing I dislike. There are amazing characters that I already love and connect with, and it FEELS like 3 body problem. I can't believe people saying it's bad are sincere, they can only be saying it because they WANT it to be bad
