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‘The 3 Body Problem’ episode one
Ed Miller/Netflix
Netflix’s New Acclaimed Sci-Fi Epic 3 Body problem is drawing some heated reactions from viewers in China, while its opening scene is drawing praise among some conservatives in the United States.
The big-budget adaptation of Liu Cixin’s 2008 Hugo Award-winning novel tells the story of humanity preparing for an alien invasion. The opening of the show is set in 1966 and shows a session fighting the Chinese Cultural Revolution at a Beijing university, where a physics professor is brutally beaten by Red Guards for his refusal to conform to the government’s beliefs before a crowd. who boos him.
It’s a sequence that’s crucial to the story and direct from the novel, but wasn’t depicted in Tencent’s 30-episode Chinese adaptation of the book that was released on streaming last year. (The Chinese Communist Party has been accused of trying to erase the Cultural Revolution and its atrocities from history and pop culture.) The scene was also buried halfway through the Chinese version of the novel, but was moved to the beginning of the book for the English. version – with the blessing of the author.
The scene has received strong reactions on social media in China, where some have managed to find ways to watch the show illicitly (Netflix is not distributed in China). Some conservatives in the United States are also focusing on this scene, calling it a rare example of Hollywood showing what happens when collectivist ideologies are taken too far.
In China, the show was trending on social media on Friday despite its lack of official accessibility. according to Reuters. “The first scene left me speechless,” wrote one user on Weibo. “Although I had anticipated this, the scene still surprised me.” According to CNN, the show has sparked “nationalist anger” in China, with some accusing its depictions of the Red Guard as Hollywood deliberately trying to make the country look bad. Others criticized the “politically correct” changes to the story, as the Netflix version features a more diverse international cast and centers the story in London (the novel is set in China). The tag “Chinese version wins” was also reportedly trending, referring to the Tencent version.
Some conservatives in the United States are advertising the opening scene of X, where an elderly professor refuses to accede to the demands of young revolutionaries to change his way of thinking. A sample of the reactions includes: “A understand what the left is doingI suggest you watch the premiere of the Netflix series. 3 Body problem. The scenario of the Cultural Revolution demonstrates what is happening. Learn history or you will be doomed”; “I just saw the Netflix opening scene 3 Body problem represents a lynching of the Chinese cultural revolution, and is a frightening reminder of where Woke is taking us: there is no freedom of speech or thought, to follow the party line or be eliminated, or even to think about counter-revolution”; and the opening scene It perfectly represents our current ant-human cult. Apply anything to that opening scene, COVID, the climate cult, transfuckwittism, etc. Conservatives also criticize the show overall for some of the same “woke” casting moves that have upset some viewers in China.
David Benioff, who is the co-showrunner of 3 Body problem alongside Dan Weiss and Alexander Woo, was asked about the progressive authoritarian vibe in the opening scene during a visit to the show in 2022. At the time, the production community had recently emerged from an extended shutdown due to COVID-19.
“This is not a comment on cancel culture,” he said. hollywood reporter (in an unpublished quote). “But we tend to move in cycles in terms of human history, and we are going through a certain period of the cycle right now. There are many very significant differences between the current era and the Cultural Revolution. But there are also some similarities. It was never something where we thought, ‘We should do this show because we want to make a comment on that.’ But it is interesting that the parallels exist and are difficult to ignore.”
3 Body problem Actress Rosalind Chao, who plays the adult version of Ye Wenjie on the show, spoke with THR on the Cultural Revolution scenes and the show’s adaptive changes: “I think it’s important to have an international version of the story. Narrow-mindedness drives me a little crazy. Am I okay to say that? I love that this has been made more international for a broader audience. I’ll probably get blacklisted more in China for saying this, but I have a cousin who was isolated and lived with pigs for 10 years (in China). He is now in the United States and I only found out about this at Thanksgiving, when he didn’t want to eat ham. They don’t talk about (the Revolution). He’s too entrenched to not discuss it, although it’s a big part of the story and the fact that it can be told here in a way that also encompasses the sci-fi genre is kind of exciting. “It’s important for people to understand world history and what makes people the way they are.”
Co-showrunner Woo recently said The New York Times about the scene: “It’s a part of history that isn’t written about much in fiction, much less filmed, and my family lived it, as did the family of Derek Tsang, who directed the first two episodes. We give him a lot of credit for bringing this to life, because he knew that maybe it had never been filmed with this clinical eye. He went to great lengths to make every detail as realistic as possible. I showed it to my mother and you could see a chill come over her and she said, ‘That’s real.’ “This is what really happened.” And she added: ‘Why would you show something like that? Why do you make people experience something so terrible? But that’s how we knew we had done our job.”
Netflix 3 Body problem It is considered a big change for the streamer. The clever drama reportedly cost more than $20 million per episode, making it Netflix’s most expensive first-season show. The reviews have been very varied, but some reviews They have been absolutely superlative. and some viewers praise the show as one of the best science fiction shows they have ever seen. The story is generally considered quite progressive (one of the book’s early proponents was Barack Obama) and its account of how humanity faces an existential threat is considered by many to be a perfect allegory for the climate change crisis (a comparison that also gets a nod in the show).
Even some on Chinese social media are hyping up the Netflix adaptation (including the opening scene, noting that it’s faithful to the story). As one viewer in China quoted by CNN said: “Why do some people always need to turn a cultural product into an enemy? Our version can be good, theirs can be great too. Why do we always have to fight about it?
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