Netflix's Three Body Problem: An Extremely In-Depth Review

Sorry this review is so late, and so fiendishly long. I didn't mean to yap for an entire hour, but, uh, I guess I just had a lot to say.

00:00 Spoiler-Free Thoughts
03:29 Ye Wenjie
09:55 Sponsor
11:25 General Thoughts on Other Characters
14:31 Auggie Salazar
16:12 Jin Cheng and Will Downing
19:28 Da Shi
21:51 Saul Durand
23:47 Thomas Wade
25:11 The Video Game is Better Now?
31:00 "Physics is Broken"
34:14 The Trouble with Sophons
40:14 Judgement Day (aka Operation Guzheng)
42:44 Other Random Critiques
44:35 Critiquing Other People's Critiques
50:44 Speculation (SPOILERS!)
53:26 Closing Thoughts

Music:
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

[atheistsquid]

The scientist suicides in the book weren't about the experimental results not matching theories, it was about them not being consistent. Doing the experiment over and over gave completely random results every time. It made it look like causality isn't real. It made the very idea of science seem wrong.

[WorldConquerer]

“…comes from string theory and so probably has no basis in real science.”

BRUTAL

[amirhamza]

I vastly prefer the Tencent version, but man, the decision to bring up the Death's End section to straighten out the timeline and its setup and the foreshadowings that came with it have been really well done. I think they've overdone a lot of the character related stuff but Will's part was absolutely phenomenal imo. Best depiction of the "You're special to me and I know I'm not that special to you but that doesn't make you any less special to me and I'd do anything for you but won't express my feelings cause I think you'll be happier that way" feeling I've ever seen on screen

[michaelnewsham]

The "universe winking" is great in that later scene when Saul is talking to Ye Wenjie and explains that even though people all over the world saw it, it had to be an illusion, one of the first hints that humans are not helpless in the face of the Trisolarians.

[Wrijvingsloos]

I thought the suicides were because other Scientist were seeing countdowns, or things like that too. That kind of psychological horror would do awful things to people

[jessehughes]

Short Form over here sponsoring your first long-form video? That's rich. Congrats, my dude.

[edumazieri]

The "physics is broken" part, I agree with you that their actions might have been a bit exaggerated, but it's not just "because experiments are giving random results" - The Turkey story that is in the books and adapted in the Tencent version actually gives some insight into that: The reason for their despair was the possibility that there is NO WAY to understand what is actually going on in the universe. They felt like they were like those turkeys, that even the best of turkey science could never predict that they're actually just being bred for slaughter. It does make sense for a passionate scientist to feel some level of despair at that prospect. In fact it's one of the most memorable things about the book for me.
The adaptations' straight up just muder a bunch of scientist is way less imaginative and boring... and also probably wouldn't work very well, science is a huge collaborative effort, they would have to murder a LOT more people for generations, hurting their chances of achieving their desired state of conquest.

[jeffbachman]

So in an interview the creators said they're doind just the three books. They dont have any intention of doing the fourth and they said Netflix doesn’t even own the rights to that one anyway. Another interesting tidbit they dropped was they said under the contract they signed with the three body rights holders they were "only allowed " to do the Chinese parts in the past and modern day had to take place somewhere else. Apparently the Chinese rights holders wanted another version to be set more in the west

[shApYT]

TV Show runners just don't have the balls to respect the viewers' intellect.

[alphaxneo]

As someone who has neither read the original book nor the Chinese live action adaptation, I went into this show without any expectations. Some of it I liked, some of it just seemed kinda off or rushed. However some things really stood out to me, and by far the best (and most heartbreaking) was the exceptional writing and acting around Will/Jin:
They both play it so genuine, I was legit sobbing in that one episode. I also think they truly thought about how Will would feel as his condition worsens. As someone who is chronically ill with a condition that may or may not at some point in my life deteriorate my body rapidly without warning, I resonated a lot with Will and his musings about his life and decisions. Heart wrenching, but in a good way. But then, the scene that truly broke me was the one where Jin asks for the seeds to be included, subsequently seeing it all fall apart and (presumably) being told that those seeds were the crucial tipping point. And to her it's not only a failure to succeed in a mission, it was a failure towards her last tether to Will. Honestly, superb writing that just twists the knife so well.

As for Auggie's scene, I can see your point that this one went too far the other way with the kids. But at the same time I think it was a good example of how, even when trying to persuade ourselves that we're doing it for the right reasons, we can cause harm to whom we least expect and that more often than not "the enemy" is not one homogenous group of bad people and I think it solidifies Auggie's conviction to repent in any way she can. To which I gotta say that another scene that I just LOVED was her publishing her work and basically make the patent obsolete. Gating stuff behind patents that disproportionally hit marginalized people/areas has long been an issue and for her to just rip it away and make it accessible to everyone? Just beautiful.

On a lighter and pettier note, I honestly enjoyed the scene with Auggie and Jin at the bar at the start. I know how many say it's more tell than show, that it gives off the image of scientist superior - you are a pleb - but at the same time, I've seen so many women (myself included) just minding their own business wanting to chat, just to be interrupted for no reason and therefore getting rebuffed like that, gave me joy :')

[DoctorBoson]

To echo a couple other comments, the "physics is broken" thing goes deeper than random results. (To an extent, randomness is expected in quantum physics anyways so it's not like that's a new thing.) Not that the show does a good job of portraying the nuances there—I had the same gut reaction of "new physics? Scientists would eat this up"—but on reflection I don't think the *concept* is unreasonable.

The issue isn't that the understanding of physics was broken, it's that the *process* of science was being broken. Sure, you get weird results on an experiment, publish a paper... Now what? There's no way to achieve peer review because nothing is replicable (because it's being sabotaged). You have a flood of nonsense papers that are never used for anything, because they can't be. There's no underlying law or pattern to identify, so any attempts lead to running in circles. Lack of progress and meaningful outcomes leads to defunding, eventually, for the entire field—particle accelerators ain't cheap.

In the face of that species of obsolescence, I can absolutely see utter despair overtake an alarming number of scientists.

I don't know that it singularly kills all the top scientists—that may be a projection of Eastern honor and work culture to the rest of the world—but the morale hit would certainly be meaningful at the least. Other methods could also make up the difference too (countdown vision to undermine self-confidence, or just straight up murder as you said).

[oscarnilsson]

I think the random results is way more demoralizing than you make it out to be. At first I'm sure the scientists were excited to discover what was going on but you cannot fit any model to random noise so eventually they would lose hope in the field. I agree that it being like an epidemic felt very exaggerated but it's pretty devastating to have your entire field of study disappear after investing a good part of your life into it.

[squamish]

I appreciated that someone actually looked like they were dying of pancreatic cancer, instead of romantically dying of cancer like all the suspiciously health-looking people in the "dying teenager" movies of the last ten years or so.

[nabilahalshari]

I think the non-Western, and especially Chinese criticism of the portrayal of the past plotline is fair. Yes, the Cultural Revolution is bad but the Netflix version basically took out all nuance of the years following that. In the book Ye Wenjie only confronts her father's killers around 20 years later, after she sent the signal and when the Cultural Revolution is over and is relegated to the annals of history. There's a more profound sense of hopelessness not just from Ye but from the Red Guards as well who eventually had to realize their ideals were useless and now are left behind. In the Netflix version it doesn't seem 5 years had even passed, and when the Red Guard girl said "no one repents" it's like she did it out of spite and she's evil but in the book "no one repents" is more about how nothing matters. That's my reading anyway.

[TheChronozoan]

I haven't yet started the video, but I have to say I am overjoyed to see more long-form content on your channel! Not that I don't enjoy all of your content, but long form is my favorite. Alright let's

[ivy]

I think the problem for us non western viewers is that this a story written from a Chinese perspective and have all of the nuances and traditions of the characters ripped out and pasted to London is a really lazy way to adapt a novel from another culture. Fellow youtuber AvenueX did a really well deep dive into a Chinese perspective of the Netflix three body problem why it wasn't well received within China. I really didn't like how they race swapped important characters to westerners in a age when we lack good Asian representations. Netflix turned Ye Wenjie from this nuanced but strong willed women into this angry and spiteful villain, turned Da shi from this down to earth cunning cop to this random bodyguard with no personality, and race swapped positive Chinese characters like Luoji and Zhangbeihai. It just feels incredibly disrespectful as they turned this beloved Chinese epic into a generic hollywood popcornflix. I think there is a clash in values between western audiences and the Chinese perspective of the original trilogy that the screen writers unfortunately didn't try to bridge.

[Foxtrot]

You couldn’t be more wrong about the Netflix shows depiction of the nano fibre scene if you tried. The scene is the first glimpse of the dark Forrest. Wade decides that this group of life forms pose a credible threat to the very existence of his species, and decides they must go. They must be attacked ruthlessly, without the opportunity to even comprehend retribution Nevermind attempt it. We get to see him coldly observing his choice from a monitor, miles away, and we also get to see the brutal consequences. When you decide a population must be destroyed, that entails the innocents too. That is the conscious and logical decision Wade makes. The ship is demolished destroyed by an invisible predator with a hyper futuristic weapon beyond the prey’s understanding, irregardless of the innocent lives snuffed out. All that matters is the survival of civilisation. This directly foreshadows the fate of literally all of humanity. Wade is Singer. The Dark Forrest does not care about the banal and casual brutality. Describing this scene as “too extreme” shows a profound misunderstanding of the source text.

[Multilipstik]

41:45 I do have to say that I think that’s the point of that scene. We’re put in Auggies place, she doesn’t really know what’s on that ship either. She’s just letting military use her equipment. And then she gets into those ruins and personally experiences how her choice killed hundreds of innocent children. It’s supposed to be unexpected and gory.

[jahipalmer]

It also seems like they are having Auggie take on some of the characteristics (and role) of AA from Death's End. We'll have to wait til later seasons to see for sure but I think that is what they're doing.

[PedroTricking]

31:40 It's not that all of physics is wrong, it's not just that physics is "broken", it's that physics does not exist. It's not that the results haven't been figured out, it's that they can't be figured out.