The 3 body problem Adapts the UnAdapted
3 Body Problem Zeros Out on a Young Astrophysicist Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Its Impact on Tomorrow’s World
As a former agent of both MI5 and Scotland Yard, Clarence is no stranger to shadowy plots. He is far out of his depth in theoretical physics and materials engineering. A scientist named Jin Cheng is struggling to make sense of what’s happening to her peers as she tries to figure out what is going wrong in many of her experiments. The panic of the present day pushes Jin to reconnect with her four best college friends, and the dynamic of the reunited “Oxford Five” inches closer to revealing a world-ending threat.
The show taking a moment to spell out plot points in scenes focused on the Oxford Five feels clumsy and I think that is what happens when the Oxford Five are all based on a single character. This isn’t the case when 3 Body Problem focuses its attention to the past and zeroes out on the life of Ye Wenjie, a promising young astrophysicist whose entire world is upended by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Ye’s experiences as a survivor of the Revolution and her choices that she makes, all of which are informed by it, have a huge impact on the future of a worldwide scale.
That hasn’t stopped streamers from trying, and last year, Tencent debuted its own live-action, episodic take on Liu’s book. Netflix spent a fortune putting 3 Body Problem in the hands of executive producers David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo. The adaptation is very different from the book in a number of ways. Sometimes a good one works as an introductory course to the larger ideas of the later books and other times it is a great one.
It is all about physics. Liu’s novels are beloved in China and have a smaller but similarly dedicated following among English-language readers, but they are hard science fiction—heavy on concept, light on character. In the books, there are multidimensional structures collapsing in on themselves, a computer made of millions of soldiers, and diamond-cutting soldiers, but it’s not easy to film them.
Before the book’s story in present-day China really gets going, Liu spends quite a bit of time in the past in order to give you a better grasp of the Cultural Revolution, the Maoist movement to purge society of capitalists and intellectuals. The reversal of horrifying policies by the Party sets China on a path to become a global superpower. And as the book moves into the present, that historical context helps you appreciate why a sudden and sustained spike in inexplicable scientist suicides would prompt the government to deploy counter-terrorism operatives to investigate.
Making characters fumble in the darkness on their way to solving the puzzle of Three-Body was one of the many ways Liu mirrored, on a microscopic level, the book’s larger ideas about the power of collaborative efforts versus the control that comes from individual decision-making. But because the show’s Oxford Five are all friends (and former lovers in some instances) who quickly begin working together, relationships drive the plot forward more than its existential puzzle. Auggie, a character who is haunted by visions of a glowing countdown that seems to be sear onto her retinas, will get an extra level of drama thanks to these changes. There is power in looking at complicated problems with a variety of unique viewpoints, according to the idea that Wang has been split into five different characters.
The story of Ye is a powerful one that affects the present in many ways. The show isn’t willing to linger in it. Rather than consider the political and personal effects of the Revolution, the series commits to being a thinky but easily digestible chronicle of the world readying itself for war. An older version of Ye (Rosalind Chao) sticks around as 3 Body Problem to watch events unfold with a knowing solemnity.
For showrunners David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo, adapting The Three-Body Problem for the screen presented a unique challenge. Woo was a writer on HBO’s True Blood, but Benioff and Weiss are best known for Game of Thrones. An adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire, Thrones became a once-in-a-decade television phenomenon, but didn’t quite stick the landing—in some corners of the internet the names Benioff and Weiss are on a level with Joffrey Baratheon.
Amit Katwala: You decided that this was something you wanted to work on, after talking about how you read novels simultaneously. What really attracted you to Three-Body Problem as something to adapt?
David Benioff: We might have three different answers. I really want to see this, because of the many scenes I read in the books. There are many scenes that are enjoyable to read, while also being very intimidating for writers and producers because of how they are going to show multiple dimensions on screen. How is that going to work? I literally can’t visualize some of the things that are described in the book. The only other time I’ve had that experience is with George Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.
D. B. Weiss: Something that you’re going to devote this much of your life to, it has to haunt you. It has to be something that when you put it down and walk away it still stays in your mind. I read the books while I walk or take my children to school and then I think about them when I get home. I was always thinking about them.
