Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/09/please-lord-let-3-body-problem-be-good.html
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I’m really hopeful - even if it’s imperfect, it’s going to be fun to see how they visualize some of the concepts. Also, Benedict Wong as Da Shi is just good casting!
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Maybe not every book we like must become some kind of video experience. This compulsion to adapt stuff is really irritating, as it leads to a) books being written with adaptation in mind, often distorting the storyline and b) a lot of bad adaptations of good stories.
Why can’t a book just stay a book?
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The Chinese YT version was epic and will be very hard to beat.
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The LOTR vs. The Hobbit is a pretty stark example of a good vs. a bad adaptation. If you say Gandalf, I’ll probably think of Ian McClellan. If you say the Hobbit, I’m going to remember the book, not the screening of a video game walkthrough that I went to a movie theater for.
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Agreed. Not every book we like must be adapted to film. That said, haven’t we been adapting books to film ever since we started recording film? Adaptations and the concessions necessary for those adaptations are nothing new. It seems to me that people, for whatever reason, have gotten more precious about the source material.
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Yeah, there are a few books that I’ve thought would be interesting as movies/shows because of the change in medium and what that would bring to the work, but far more often… I’ve certainly read books that immediately struck me as obvious backdoor attempts to write movie scripts - I noticed one of them actually got made into a movie, and ironically they changed quite a bit.
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Still angry at Nosferatu’s butchering of Bram Stoker’s novel!
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True, but you could substitute almost any imaginable character for “Da Shi” in that sentence and it would still be accurate.
- A bulldog in the live-action Lady and the Tramp remake.
- A Skeksis general in Dark Crystal.
- A talking panda in the kinda weird 2006 short film Hallo Panda
The historical roles or magical characters that he’s best known for are nowhere near the strangest parts that he’s played. That guy has range.
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The books do stay books, though. I certainly understand the problem of writing things with adaptations in mind, but otherwise the original is still there and the movie or video game or whatever is just bringing it to another audience.
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i know absolutely nothing about this, but i’m excited for it. also, if it’s any comfort, Polygon is rapturous over this:
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If you never saw the Tencent version I created a fan-edit which cut the (too long) 22h show down to 6h. (So now 3 episodes of 2h each.)
THREE BODY DISEMBIGGENED
Did that so some friends of mine (who never read the book) could watch it. Still a bit of a challenge to watch 6h total of captioned video, but I think Tencent did a great job adapting the material.
Still hope Netflix pulls it off too, as an English version is really the only way to broaden the audience.
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The Chinese version was wonderfully nerdy. I look forward to see how they compare.
I liked Shadow of a Vampire.
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Yeah, I guess…
but this is one of my very favorite movies.
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Foundation is really good and in no way deserves to be grouped with Rings of Power.
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A lot of SF describes things that would be awesome to see on the big screen. Much of it was written before CGI was even a pipe dream.
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I love it, too, but will never forgive my BF for feeding me magic mushrooms and sticking me in front of it.
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Amen! The Foundation TV series is way better than the books. I read through them all again to refresh before the series started.
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