Between its expanded, more ethnically diverse cast and its more advanced take on virtual reality gaming, the new Netflix 3 Body problem The series develops in a very different way from the book it is adapting. Cixin Liu's novel is so dense and based on internal dialogue that it was thought not to be adaptable to the screen. Changes are almost always necessary when translating stories as complex as 3 Body problemIt is in all media (and in this case, also in languages). But when I recently spoke with executive producers David Benioff, DB Weiss and Alexander Woo before 3 Body problemAt the premiere, they said that while they always knew their story had to be different, as they began to reimagine the narrative beats, they realized “there would have to be a back-and-forth” between the show and Liu's book.
In Liu's book, a very small number of brilliant Chinese physicists are left to their own devices to discover why scientists around the world are committing suicide and what is causing the world's particle accelerators to malfunction inexplicably. Although the book's characters begin working in isolation, the arrival of a mysterious virtual reality game gradually brings them into each other's orbits. And as they get closer, the terrifying truth of what the entire world is facing becomes all too clear.
The Netflix show tells a largely similar story, but its comparatively larger cast of main characters comes together much more quickly than its book analogues, to the point that you can't spend much time watching them think through problems on their own. Liu used the characters' inner thoughts to help readers understand the book's more abstract ideas about technology and how societies could be organized differently, with more attention to the destinies of future generations.
Internal dialogue doesn't always make for the most interesting viewing experiences, and one of Benioff, Weiss, and Woo's biggest challenges when they start breaking scripts 3 Body problem It was discovering the best way to take advantage of those scenes from the book so that they would serve for good television. In many cases, the answer ended up being to simply do things completely differently.
“Some things work really well on the page because I'm inside this guy's head and I know exactly what he's thinking,” Benioff said. “But then when I take that scene off the page and put it on the screen, I have no way of understanding what he's thinking. I need to find another way to get to his mind and his motivations, besides just putting them down in writing on the page.”
Liu used characters like Wang Miao, a professor haunted by visions of a glowing countdown that only he can see, to explore the feelings of fear and confusion that would grip people when faced with a threat like the one found in the center of his novel. Netflix 3 Body problem recasts Wang into five different characters whose shared friendships are a big part of what makes them start solving problems together from basically the first episode. Interpersonal relationships were also part of Liu's story, although to a much lesser extent. But Woo explained that the decision to split Wang's character was also motivated by the desire to give viewers an emotional foothold to hold on to.
“In the case of these books, the main characters often don't cross paths,” Woo noted. “They have their own independent stories and sometimes they just disappear and never come back. But from all our experience adapting books to television, the only thing we feel is at the heart of any great series that bothers you is the characters. “That's what makes you want to watch the next episode and make sure you count down the days until next season.”
Woo reasoned that it was important to have all the players on the chess board “because that's what's going to drive us throughout” the series as it becomes more and more science fiction and fantasy. 3 Body problem does.
“And when all those crazy things happen, you become emotionally invested through them,” Woo said. “So instead of just seeing a bunch of amazing effects, which there are a lot of, you also understand them from an emotional point of view.”
Because Netflix 3 Body problem spends so much time developing its characters and their dynamics that it seems almost as if the show's real story, one that reaches far into the future and beyond planet Earth, has only just begun at the end of the first season. Netflix has not yet announced whether it plans to renew 3 Body problem for more seasons that would delve into Liu's life Remembrance of Earth's past trilogy. But Benioff says he and his collaborators are ready if that happens: “We want to spend the next five or six years of our lives working to bring them to the screen. “It’s a pretty strong feeling.”
