The tone: In mainland China in 1996, a young physicist watches as her father is beaten to death in a wrestling session during the Cultural Revolution. In the London of 2024, a surly intelligence officer named Clarence (Benedict Wong) investigates the mysterious deaths of prominent figures in the scientific community, including the mentor of five brilliant Oxford-educated minds.
Along the way, Clarence and “The Oxford Five” will reveal the layers of intrigue that surround these deaths, both in the present and in the past, all of them linked to a mysterious virtual reality game, an anti-human movement that lives in a itinerant. cargo ship in international waters and a fateful message sent to the cosmos in the 1970s. Before long, a scientific mystery will turn into a centuries-long arms race to prepare for a possible alien invasion four centuries from now, a humanity that It is not well equipped to fight.
I have 97 problems, but the basis is not one: It must be recognized that writers David Benioff and DB Weiss are no strangers to adapting dense and difficult genre literature to the small screen; they are responsible for game of Thrones, after all. On the other hand, they are also those responsible for the last season of game of Thrones, so some skepticism is more than justified. This goes double for your adaptation, co-hosted by Terror: infamy Executive producer Alexander Woo of Cixin Liu's trilogy of science fiction novels, a dizzying mix of literary ideas that seems even more unadaptable at the moment than Frank Herbert's. Dune.
To that end, D&D and Woo have twisted and mangled the square peg of Liu's novel within the constraints of a big-budget prestige drama, in ways that work wonderfully at times and aggravate at others. For one thing, he's much more interested in the scientific concepts he's exploring (quantum particles that can see everything and communicate with each other instantaneously across the cosmos, the practical applications of sending a human envoy into space) than the people exploring them. There are flashes of For all humanityinterstellar ambition here, albeit with a 400-year countdown on humanity's aerospace advancement.
Lost in translation: Netflix threw a lot of money at the screen for 3 Body problem, and even in its relatively domestic climates (many scenes take place in apartments, hospital rooms, or offices), the spectacle looks impressive. The third episode, directed by e-wall and John Carterby Andrew Stanton, is a dazzling dive into the virtual reality game that the Oxford Five (particularly Jess Hong's determined Jin Cheng and John Bradley's sardonic billionaire Jack Rooney) explore as a vital clue and daring mid-game gambit. season (you'll know it when you see it) is horrifying in every way.
Aside from that, it's a largely loquacious science fiction story in the classical mould, asking questions essential to the human condition: given our destructive nature, do we deserve to live? What is life like when our days are literally numbered? Is it worth fighting for a future that we will surely never see?
3 Body Problem (Netflix)
thanks to our partners at consequence.net
