Netflix Series «Three Body Problem» Credit: Netflix
Netflix, we have a problem — a three body problem. The streamer has just released the trailer for its film adaptation of Liu Cixin's 2008 intellectual sci-fi novel about aliens, video games, a stolen identity, and the long shadow of a dark 20th century in China.
That's a lot for the audience. to sort it out, and the ads suggest that the series from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will not be for the faint of heart. Fasten your seat belts to go from zero to levels of incomprehensibility in End 2001: A Space Odyssey in just a few seconds.
The action begins, as in the novel, with a scene from Mao's Cultural Revolution in which academics and those in power are denounced as members of the bourgeoisie and hidden capitalists.
“We kids are afraid of the dark,” a voice-over says as we scroll through a series of vivid but seemingly unrelated images. The words «I can still see», smeared with blood and surrounded by mathematical notation (also in blood). A woman with a sword walks through a lava-covered landscape. Ancient warriors rose into the sky with a tractor beam.
What is it? Readers of the novel and its sequels will pick up threads from the promo. But those who prefer their sci-fi with lightsabers and cute green aliens may be less than thrilled. As with the book, it looks like speculative fiction with a steep learning curve. You will have to sit still and fully focus on this, otherwise you will be in a turmoil before the «skip credits» notification appears.
On the one hand, you have to admire Netflix, Benioff, and Weiss for boldly reaching a dead end — if only the rest of the entertainment industry were as willing to bring a difficult genre to the screen. Still, it's worth wondering if the adaptation, which stars Jess Hong and Benedict Wong alongside Game of Thrones veterans John Bradley and Liam Cunningham, is a sign of panic in a business desperate for the next franchise ripe for milking.
At the end of the day, we suffer from the great fire of IS. The Flash fails, suggesting that the next chapter of the DC Cinematic Universe might not get off to a great start. Big new Disney + Secret Invasion received average reviews, with critics accusing it of lacking traditional fun.
Even the «old reliable» ones don't work. Star Wars failed with a third season of The Mandalorian that everyone didn't like, especially The Mandalorian fans. And that old Middle-earth magic failed to resonate with Amazon's devastating prequel Rings of Power, which left Tolkien fans with «we hate this forever» feelings.
Netflix was ahead in the hunt for new franchises. It was decided to force the harsh fantasy saga of The Witcher, despite the departure of Henry Cavill from the role of the monster hunter of the same name (Luke Hemsworth inherited his male bun). Along with the Three-Body Challenge, 2024 will also feature a playable adaptation of the cult cartoon Avatar: The Elementalist. In addition, the adaptation of the popular anime One-Piece is expected at the end of August.
Clutches? Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Image Credit & Copyright: Evan Agostini.
Of these large fluctuations, the three-body problem is undoubtedly the most risky. An accusation that has often been leveled against David Benioff and D.B. Weiss as Game of Thrones limped through its disastrous recent seasons was that the show management duo were seasoned adapters who lacked the road. Since George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire saga hadn't been completed, D&D were forced to put together their own conclusion to this epic tale of scantily clad, overly sexy kings, queens, and dragons. And heavens, what a mess they've made of it.
In the end, it seemed like a blunder at every turn. «Red Weddings» and heartbreaking beheadings gave way to creaky dialogue and endless shots of Emilia Clarke trying to pretend she was going crazy, but she didn't feel it at all. Benioff and Weiss were accused of being enthusiasts out of control, trying to rival Martin's ferocious and prolific imagination.
Another complaint, which grew louder as Game of Thrones drew to a close, was that the couple were too fond of female nudity and gratuitous sex scenes to the point of creepiness. What seemed daring and transgressive in 2011, by 2019 began to seem rude, exploitative — insipid at best and sleazy at worst (there was a belated attempt to correct course with a token amount of fully naked men).
Four years after the Game of Thrones finale, in their second collaboration with Netflix in a $200 million deal, Benioff and Weiss seem to have found the perfect way to neutralize their critics (their first Netflix project, Sandra Oh's Campus Satire was canceled after only one season). Once again, they will film a fantastic saga with a cult audience and breathtaking scenery.
Familiar faces: 'Three Body Challenge' to star in 'Game of Thrones'' John Bradley Photo: Netflix
The difference is that Liu Cixin's trilogy The Three-Body Problem is very much finished and cleaned up. This means that Benioff and Weiss will be spared a repeat of the scenario in which they had to stay up all night contemplating how to make sure Jon Snow doesn't become the king of Westeros.
Oh, and there is almost no sex in the Chinese writer's novel — or even characters who are very interested in sex. So there won't be any pressure on Benioff and Weiss to insert pointless episodes when young actresses get out of the bath at all.
And yet, on the other hand, the three-body problem seems like a strange — even shocking — aberration for Benioff and Weiss. In Game of Thrones, they were perfect for a hardcore low-brow fantasy environment — at home, in a universe full of betrayal, naked slackers, and people who say the S-word.
Tsyxing's novels are completely different. — anti-Game of Thrones, if you will. First, this is science fiction, not Martin's dark fantasy. And the books that deal with the struggle between humanity and a race of amoeba-like aliens trying to leave their doomed planet are extremely intelligent.
Indeed, if Cixin has any predecessors, it is not Martin, but such clever science fiction writers as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. As with these writers and their work, The Three-Body Challenge and its sequels The Dark Forest and Death's End are rife with mind-blowing grandiose concepts, but don't worry too much about characters, dialogue, or action. These are qualities that tend to be highly regarded on television.
The plot of Cyxin is almost as difficult to describe as the plot of A Song of Fire and Ice. In the original 2008 novel, first published in English in 2014, the story unfolds between scientists unraveling a conspiracy in the present day and a young engineer's struggles in the years following China's bloody Cultural Revolution in the sixties and seventies.
The conspiracy is global in nature and is centered around an alien race, the Trisolarians, who are about to invade Earth. In their own world, Trisolaris, three suns. As the suns move across the sky, the weather appears to randomly switch between stable and chaotic eras (during the latter, Trisolarians shed all moisture and go into hibernation). They see Earth as the solution to their problems: a planet with one sun and a stable environment.
There is no need to panic about the Trisolarians. Anyway, not yet. They have gone to our solar system, but will not reach it for another 450 years, which means they will arrive just in time for the publication of The Winds of Winter, George R. R. Martin's next novel, A Song of Ice and Fire.
A complicating factor is that scientists aware of the invasion are divided into two camps. There are those who want to help aliens solve their «three body problem» with three suns and thus stay put on the other side of the galaxy. And those who want to help the Trisolarians destroy humanity. The logic is that the people who caused such damage to the environment deserve extinction.
This brings us back to the post-cultural revolution section of the novel and the astrophysicist heroine Ye Wenjie. With her life torn apart by the anarchy of the revolution, she ends up working on a secret Chinese initiative to disable American spy satellites. By reflecting radio waves from the sun, she communicates with the Trisolarians, warning them of the Earth's existence. Thus begins a conspiracy that the mild-mannered nanotechnology professor Wang Miao stumbled upon in our day.
Three-Body Problem Author Qixing Liu in 2018 year. Photo: Markus Wissmann/Alamy Stock Photo
The science fiction components become more pronounced as later novels skip the centuries. Space battles take place between the various factions of Earth and with the Trisolarians, who have finally reached their destination. As a result, Benioff and Weiss won't have to put forward their own ending to the story. Alternate timelines, jumping back and forth between Miao in the present and Wenjie in the past, will allow them to repeat their favorite Game of Thrones strategy of transitioning between different characters as a bonus.
On top of that, a successful adaptation of these famous sci-fi novels will give Benioff and Weiss the right to brag about Star Wars and Lucasfilm, which they parted ways with after agreeing to oversee a new Jedi trilogy. Last year, the split was formalized as a mutual decision. But rumors swirled that Lucasfilm's corporate overlords at Disney were horrified by the backlash against Game of Thrones' gruesome ending. There were rumors that they didn't trust Benioff and Weiss with the keys to their Super Star Dreadnought.
D&D will no doubt feel justified if The Three Body Problem gives Netflix an edge over HBO's Game of Thrones Network. Three years ago, it was announced that Benioff and Weiss, along with HBO, were to produce an original series about an alternate history of the United States, where the South never lost the Civil War, and slavery continues to this day.
However, backlash on Twitter forced HBO to quietly cancel plans for Confederate (at one point the hashtag #NoConfederate was #1 in the US and #2 globally). Shortly thereafter, Benioff and Weiss announced their deal with Disney and then a $200 million Netflix exclusive production. Sticking it to HBO could very well be on their «to-do» list.
Baffling: Emilia Clarke in Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Photo: HBO
Of course, no matter how successful their new project is, doubts about the writing talents of Benioff and Weiss will continue. In the last two seasons of Game of Thrones, they have proven pathetic in creating new storylines. Perhaps they recognized that their true calling was to be translators, not independent creators?
Fans of Cixing's novels will have their own questions. For example: are the duo who created the concept of “sex position” capable of leading a slow Kubrick odyssey on the screen?
The three-body problem is, after all, and in many ways, a backtracking. In A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin aimed to bring Tolkien-style high-fiction kicking and screaming into the real world. The Golden Prince Jaime was involved in an incestuous relationship with his twin; the brave king Robert defeated his enemies only to become a fat lecher; the noble Lord of Winterfell, Ned Stark, apparently fathered an illegitimate child. If hobbits existed in Martin's universe, they would probably be sex-obsessed foot fetishists.
Cixin, by contrast, is completely faithful to the erudite science fiction of past decades. Indeed, if Benioff and Weiss had wanted to adapt a strong, gripping saga with an Asian setting, they could not have looked beyond the work of English translator Lin Ken Liu. Set in swords and sorcery that reimagined medieval China, his Dandelion Dynasty trilogy is filled with battle, betrayal and forbidden love.
A popular film based on the story of Tsyxin «The Wandering Earth». Credit: Netflix
It suits Benioff and Weiss better. The challenge they face in solving the three-body problem is to bring emotion into a rather dry text.
«Like Isaac Asimov, Liu is far more interested in science than character development, and all of his heroes and villains are subtly written,» according to an Onion AV Club analysis of Cixin's English translation. “Liu constantly tells rather than shows when it comes to his characters’ motivations… The novel also provides physics-based scientific explanations, often in large and pedantic dumps of text as characters discuss or experiment with technology… The result is a book that offers a unique a look at science fiction, but not very interesting to read.”
This will not be the first time Cixin's work has been shown on screen. The 2019 adaptation of his short story The Wandering Earth was a huge success in the film's native China. But his portrayal of obedient functionaries saving the planet after it was knocked out of orbit did not resonate with international audiences—of the film's $700 million worldwide, China made $693 million.
But perhaps Benioff and Weiss see opportunity where others only see pitfalls. The Three-Body Problem and its sequels have a century-old plot and breathtaking scenery. And yet, in the cracks of history, there is room for human drama.
So the duo will apparently be able to include as much nudity and shocking violence as they wish (Netflix could bet on that). Balancing between epic and intimate, sexy and soulful will be difficult. But if they can manage the three-body challenge, Benioff and Weiss could be on their way to solving the most intractable puzzle of all: proving to their detractors that there is life after Game of Thrones.
The Three-Body Problem Coming to Netflix in January 2024
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