Três Corpos

The only good thing about the Netflix adaptation is that it led me to discover this series. I read the books not long ago and thought that there weren't any adaptations. Those three books became one of my favorite science fiction sagas ever. So I was eager to watch the netflix adaptation, but alas, it was a massive disappointment. Now, I stumbled on this adaptation and watched it, and this is how you do a adaptation. 30 episodes that respect the viewers intelligence, doesn't rush, takes its time building scenes and plot points. Has no unnecessary melodrama and unfunny "funny" moments. Doesn't waste the viewers time, but doesn't butcher anything from the source material either.

The characters are all good and believable. No academics that act more like teens and dress and look like models. No dumbed down science or boring exposition.

The only cons, which are small cons, yhat i hve is that sometimes the special effects look too fake, the camera angles sometimes look like low budget, and the soudn design sometimes is too digital, but all those things happen so sapringly that it's more like nitpicking.

This is one of the best adaptations i've ever seen, and it's because it respects the source material, just like the 4 first seasons of GOT, when the show was good, and it respects the viewers intelligence, not trying to preach or educate. Instead, leaving the viewer to form its own opinions amd conclusions. I recommend this show and the boooks to everyone that likes scifi. You can read the book first or watch the show first. It's not gonna make much of a difference, that how good of an adaptation it is.

I have not read the trilogy. I learned about this series from my research after watching the netflix adaptation. I found the netflix series entertaining and well produced but I could tell it was drawing from source material more complex than what was presented. Thus my research to find out more about Liu Cixin. I was planning to start reading the trilogy (and I will) but saw this Chinese production.

So, I am pretty nerdy and I love more expository, detailed sc-fi. The flashy stuff is fun but give me some complex ideas to chew on and I am in heaven (think Mindwalk, Jacobs Ladder, Stalker). The Chinese production, Three-Body, has that in spades, maybe even too much. For me this series really drew out the existential crisis of the impending arrival of an more advanced extraterrestrial civilization. The motives of the various chacters are well developed as are the philosophical and scientific concepts. I found the acting and screenwriting mostly well done. The production quality was ok, though uneven (especially the soundtrack). I personally found the insights into modern Chinese culture quite fascinating as well.

I did find the subtitles to be poorly executed, often flashing too briefly to read easily. One episode had the subtitles out sync which obviously made for a tough watch. The pacing is uneven but really improves in the final 10 episodes (out of 30).

Overall I have really enjoyed the series. There is enough intellectual stuff to keep me engaged and the production is pretty good but not perfect. I look forward to reading the trilogy and then watching the series again.

The casting is great and really fits my imagination when I read the novel (except that Shi Qiang needs to be a little more muscular). The story was beyond imagination, really epic, and it's not about one single country or one single culture, you can see every nation, every race united together when facing danger. The TV series tried to make everything the same as the book. One star was deducted because the pacing of story telling, all the flashbacks and neon lights scenes are a bit annoying and confusing, when not everyone knows the background of the story. Although the novel itself was arranged in this way, I think there should be some adaptations when you making it a TV series.

This could be better than the netflix version, as it is a more faithful adaptation, but that's not always the most important thing and this show suffers with some pretty bad pacing issues because they are using dialogue directly from the book in some scenes and it seems as if they aren't leaving out a single page aside from chronologically shuffling a few things about. Not necessarily out of order overall, but out of order of how they are presented in the books.

There's a ton of exposition in the books that could actually be shortened in the show because you are actually able to show more of the things that the book had to tell you. They don't go this route. They show AND tell everything. It makes for some unnecessarily long scenes. This shouldn't have been more than 15 or 16 episodes max. I have a hard time believing that I would have liked this if I had not already read the novel.

I just finished watching the 30 episodes of Three Body by Tencent. Loved it immensely. The main actors are fabulous. The production values are excellent. And, the story hews to the book very well.

Many will observe that the pace of the story seems slow at times, though I found it to be more of a zen experience in those episodes. In the end the series delivers the goods.

There are some a few odd quirks in the version released for English subtitle readers. The most odd is the occasional sudden insertion of completely out-of-context music, overwriting dialog and all other story sound. I've read that some copyright issues were being covered up, but boy did they do a sloppy job. A shame given how much work went into the production.

I particularly gained insight into the people of modern day China. It was revelatory to see how similar their daily lives are like mine/ours in the West. Even their views on politics and life were quite liberal and enlightened.

Highly recommend!