Netflix's adaptation of The 3-Body Problem changes several narrative coordinates and characters, for a different and international scope, while remaining faithful to the heart of Cixin Liu's book.
After years of waiting, The 3-body problem (read the review) is finally available for streaming on Netflix. A first season with an ambitious production system developed by David Benioff and DB Weisswhich already with Game of Thrones they had accustomed us to an epic and impressive scale of transposition. Replacing a fantasy world with a science fiction one, the authors – together with Alexander Woo – have adapted one of the most seminal genre novels of the new millennium for The Colossus of Hastings, considered the game changer of oriental sci-fi literaturemore precisely Chinese, thanks to the writer's intuitions Cixin Liu.
Not an easy task, transpose The 3-body problem in a television series with an international scope, at least at home, last year, a transposition entirely set in Chinese territory just like the original work has already aired. Benioff & Weiss, however supervised by Liu, wanted something that was the sum of the writer's entire work, thus modifying many narrative coordinates and different protagonists to create a faithful and monumental show in its own way. The substantial differences are therefore varied, but it is above all in the management of the timing of the story, in the connection between the various parts of what is known as the Memory of Earth's Past saga, that the showrunners and production made the biggest changes. Let's discover them together. (WARNING, SPOILERS TO FOLLOW)
The Costa Rossa project
The story of The 3-body problem begins in 1966, in the midst of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The protagonist is Ye Wenjie, a young astrophysicist who is captured by the military and sent to an isolated radar research base known as Costa Rossa. Here she very soon discovers the true identity of the project: communicating with extra-terrestrial life forms. Of the entire Netflix transposition, net of small changes, Ye's narrative line is almost identical to the first novel of the trilogy, which is the only one where he appears. However, his arc develops over sixty years of history, touching on the 70s (when he met Mike Evans) and the 80s, which are fundamental in the development of the plot. In the novel, however, once he decides to respond to the pacifist San-Ti, effectively condemning the Earth to a future invasion, Ye is forced to kill the two colleagues Ye Wining – who also becomes her first husband – and Lei Zhicheng to keep the secret, a step completely deleted in the series. Furthermore, in the present of the narrative there is no mystery related to the character's true identityno shocking revelations.
The 3-Body Problem: Liam Cunningham and Benedict Wong know there's life out there
The currents of the ETO
The secret organization led by billionaire Mike Evans and Ye Wining and which acts as a Fifth Column for extra-terrestrials does not have its own specific name, but in the novel it is referred to as the Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO). Even in this case, the series keeps the essential elements of the story intact, but does not delve deeply into the structure of the organization, leaving it to appear unitary and without cracks, when in reality it is very different. It should be underlined that the ETO only has a central role at the beginning of the Memory of the Earth's Past trilogy and that the structure of the Netflix transposition is a summation of Cixin Liu's entire work, so cuts and modifications were inevitable.
In context, in the novel, within the ETO they clash three different schools of thought: that of the Adventists led by Evans himself, dedicated to the total destruction of humanity at the hands of the San-Ti; that of the Redemptionists led by Shen Yufei (character not transposed into the series), interested in solving the three-body problem that afflicts the home planet of the San-Ti and help them survive “at home”; that of the Survivors, which instead attempts to ensure a future of coexistence and collaboration for their descendants after the invasion. The term San-Ti is also the Latin alphabet according to the pinyin transcription system of “three bodies”, which is the original name of the species that in the novels translated into Italian it is instead called Trisolariana. The series has in fact maintained its own terminology.
Crossroads and transformations of the protagonists
As mentioned, Benioff & Weiss & Woo's adaptation of The Three Body Problem it works as a revisited summa in a different medium than the entire literary trilogy, which means that it changes and anticipates many different narrative elements, also changing the setting. Liu's work develops almost entirely in Chinese territory, while the show is mostly set in England. Above all, the first and major protagonist of the trilogy in the present timeline is nanotechnology scientist Wang Miao, who in the show is replaced by Auggie Salazar (Eiza Gonzalez), a woman and Hispanic. Work and development are then similar, especially in the most crucial passages of the story, but it is in the way in which the showrunners have chosen to introduce the other protagonists that there is a radical transformation of Liu's narrative system. In essence, the authors have ensured that even the future protagonists of the trilogy present in the second book, The matter of the cosmosand in the third, In the fourth dimension, they knew each other, they discussed each other and they were even old friends. This is how the mysterious Professor Luo Ji becomes Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), l'astrofisica Cheng Xin si trasforma in Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) e engineer Yun Tianming becomes Will Downing (Alex Sharp).
Luo Ji is the protagonist of the second novel, while Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming of the third, which is indicative of the intersection of many different narrative lines in a single solution. Beyond this union for medium needs, it must be underlined respect for the roles and characteristics of the characters. Da Shi (Benedict Wong) in the novels is Shin Qiang, a cunning detective who has nothing to do with secret agencies or mysterious characters. In this regard, indeed, Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) is actually anticipated by the third book. Among the main protagonists, the only one who doesn't exist and is unpublished is Jack Rooney (John Bradley), introduced to exploit a literary narrative dynamic that was not developed at all around Yun (Will in the series), namely the question of the huge inheritance received. And even the murderer Tatiana (Marlo Kelly), in truth, is an invention of the authors.