The Three Body Problem trailer for the new Netflix adaptation is out. I must say I am very skeptical of this one. This being one of my favorite books I have my doubts that they will do it justice. I'm sure it will be visually interesting and everything, but that's not really the point. Especially not for book 1.
I recently watched both the Tencent live adaptation as well as the animated adaptation of The Dark Forest and sometimes I feel like these books were better left on paper. The live show wasn't bad or anything it just has a different feel to it on screen that's hard to understand.
Warning: please refrain from posting book spoilers in this thread. General discussion is fine.
I'm very weary. The books where very China centric, understandable being written by a Chineese author, and fear a white washing.
Also, even though I loved the books, there was something... odd about them. I'm not sure if it was something lost in translation, or just that some of it felt. IDK over simplified, childish? I think it's a combination of all of them, and I really wonder what they'll have to do to make a TV Show from that source material to have mass appeal here in the west.
Agree about the odd quality. It feels like a plot driven rather than character driven book - the characters are there because the plot demands it. I never ended up liking any of the characters. They all felt robotic, cold, in their way of thinking and in the dialogue, or it felt like someone writing a historical account and putting words in their mouths that’s roughly what they said but not actually what they said. Maybe this is a result of the translation, but the translator I believe was also Chinese, and the non dialogue portions had pretty good prose.
That is a very common feeling when Americans consume Chinese media. It was first brought to my attention in an Asian studies course in 2006. In "the east" there is much less focus on the individuals that participate in the story, there are no heroes, no fated people, it's society that drives the story.
I've since started looking at Western media with a bit more scrutiny, and sometimes the Deus ex machina surrounding the lead characters is laughable.
I had a really hard time with the first book and eventually gave up--quite a rare thing with me. I felt like the translation wasn't working for me, but that's a hard thing to judge without actually finishing the book.