New Show, Old Tricks - 3 Body Problem
This month at last saw the release of 3 Body Problem, Netflix’s new science fiction show about a future where we know four-hundred years in advance that an alien race is on its way to conquer us and take our planet for their own. The series is the first English-language adaptation of a book series by the same name from Chinese author Cixin Liu, and it is also the first major project that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have worked on to completion since the cultural Titanic of Game of Thrones finished sinking. The book series is widely regarded as some of the greatest contemporary sci-fi you can get your hands on, and this title is only further cemented by the fact that the first book has a quote on the front cover from Barack Obama, who pretended to read it some years ago. I’m a huge fan of the books myself, having read all three back-to-back a while ago, and as such I was actually quite excited for the release of this show. Big books, big names, big budget (I’d assumed). What could go wrong?
It's important to establish the context of the creation of this show, and the main aspect of this adaptation that I would like to focus on first of all is the fact that this is a story which is, by its nature, very difficult to adapt. The books take place over hundreds of years and for the entire first entry it’s quite rare for Liu to stick with one character for long. Characters die of old age, are murdered, or simply become irrelevant to the rest of the story, and for that reason it isn’t really the easiest book series to get into, despite the dividends it pays later on. For D.B and Weiss’ TV series, they got around this problem of vacant characterisation by choosing to create a group of heroes, or villains depending on perspective, who are all friends from university that knew each other before everything kicked off. This friendship group consists of Saul, Jin, Auggie, Will, and Jack (played by Game of Thrones favourite(?) John Bradley). Besides Jack, all of the other characters are played by relatively unknown actors, a gamble similar to that which paid off with the Stark family of actors in GoT. They’re five young geniuses who are dragged into this web of intrigue and violence kicking and whining, and who must, essentially, help decide the fate of the planet. This condensation of the book’s loose thread of unconnected heroes and villains is something that I must begrudgingly admit is a great framework for an adaptation into TV. From a pragmatic standpoint, it makes more sense to have these people all be friends than to jump between five completely different viewpoints every episode, and it doesn’t annoy me as much as similar ‘magical friendships’ in franchises such as Star Wars, where the same two families are the only important people to follow for five decades. As such I must commend the showrunners of 3 Body Problem for figuring out a sensible structure for the show. It just would have been great if they’d filled that structure with...something good. Or anything. Anything at all.
Everyone who has seen Game of Thrones knows by now that the weakness of D.B and Weiss lies in what they do once the material runs dry. It’s the main reason GoT went out with a hilarious whimper, but it’s also the main reason why I was hopeful for this show. All three books are already completed, we’re in the clear! My dreams are safe! Humanity is safe!
Unfortunately, what I had failed to account for is the gaping dialogue hole that the books leave for any potential adaptors. Like I say, those five main characters in the show simply do not exist in the books, which means that all of their interactions, and their emotions, and their friendships, are entirely free for the show’s writers to decide upon. And I’m not convinced that the show’s writers have ever had friends. Or emotions. Or even interactions. The dialogue in the moments between plot-advancing science talk is stilted, cringe, and, I have to say, incredibly Doctor Who. The characters moan and complain and cry about their situations, and that would be fine, except it’s never really clear why they’re complaining. For example, at one point, Auggie is extremely reluctant to join a mission which she morally disagrees with, but changes her mind and joins after some light persuasion from Will, only to change her mind again, completely unprompted, and angrily leave after she’s already fulfilled her use for the plot. It’s an absurdity that results in you hating a couple of the characters, and it reminds me of when people hated Skylar White in Breaking Bad for trying to pull the handbrake on Walt’s hijinks, except that at least in that show she was correct to do so. These characters on the other hand are pathetic for the sake of being pathetic – their role transparently devised to provide some kind of pushback against the obviously-correct decisions of the real movers and shakers of the show. I understand that a TV show about a group of people agreeing constantly and working efficiently to tackle an impending threat of extinction might, on the surface, seem less appealing to a Netflix crowd, but nothing is less appealing than constantly swallowing nonsensical bullshit.
John Bradley as Jack Rooney
One of the most disappointing aspects of the dialogue in 3 Body Problem is that it often shows glimmers of truly inspired writing. The two veteran actors in the show, Liam Cunningham and Benedict Wong (playing a sweary intelligence chief and a sweary-plus-rugged-plus-Northern intelligence officer, respectively), are allowed to flex their comedic muscles to fantastic effect regularly, something that I’m sure the younger actors were quite jealous of. In fact, the group of young scientists often feel like they’re rehearsing first drafts of a student short film, and after reading today that one of the key introductive scenes for Auggie and Jin was literally written in one day, I’m beginning to believe that that is more or less what happened. The character archetypes we have in the group are: likes science and weed (Saul), likes science and alcohol (Auggie), likes science but is sad (Will), likes science more than anything (Jin), and likes science and food (Jack). It feels lazy, and it makes me feel genuinely quite sympathetic for the poor actors who probably thought this show would launch them into stardom the same way Game of Thrones did for…Kit Harrington? No…Maisie Williams? Uhhhh…John Bradley!
Alright, maybe they should have seen this coming.
For all its faults with regards to character and dialogue, there are some bright spots in the series. Episode five contains one of the coolest action set-pieces I’ve ever seen on TV and they perfectly recreated how I had always imagined it in my head, and as the credits rolled, I did wonder if this was going to be the turning point of the show. But now that I’ve finished the whole season, it’s very clear to see in retrospect that the tentpole ideas of the book (blinking stars, the devastating use of nano fibre blades, nuclear sails) were simply seen by the writers as checkpoints for the story to get to, with very little care taken for the way in which they were arrived at. In interviews about the possibility of a second season, D.B. and Weiss talk about how the ideas in the second and third book just keep expanding and becoming wilder and wilder, and while this is true, I get the feeling that this is what they’re reliant on: the promise that something crazy might be just around the corner. It’s a familiar feeling when it comes to them as showrunners, as the entire last two seasons of GoT were essentially propelled by the idea that, whatever the final battle looks like, it is sure to be insane to watch. But in the end, that wasn’t something they ever really delivered on, so I feel like audiences now might be a bit savvier to this trick, and much less likely to go along for the ride.
On the question of whether or not this show deserves a second season, my answer is: fuck it, why not? It’s not my money. But if we continue down this road, with these same drivers, I really hope that they’ve learned a lesson from the lukewarm response this first outing has prompted. And above all else I hope that Netflix actually throws some money at them, because visually a lot of this first season was incredibly, needlessly ugly, and when you’re crafting an entirely new world - a world involving inter-dimensional gun fights and space battles and fairy tales - it would help if it didn’t look like shit.