China’s grand, gloomy sci-fi is going global
economist.com
economist.com
Translating monumental works like The Wandering Earth or even the full trilogy of the Three-Body Problem to the screen is already a tremendously challenging undertaking. Adding on top of that institutional problems within the Chinese film industry, the desire to cash in and popularize these works with spectacular but superficial treatments (e.g. "The Wandering Earth" movie), and the heightened level of censorship that movies must undergo, and I don't have much hope for film adaptations of these books.
The best Chinese/Chinese-American production I've seen of late is the "Good Hunting" episode of "Love, Death & Robots" on Netflix, based on the short story of the same name by Ken Liu. Although the story is in part anti-colonial, I seriously doubt the story would have survived intact and be as well made if it were made in the Mainland. ("Good Hunting": http://strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2012/special-issue-hu...)
The Three-Body Problem Is a pretty good book at times and could translate well with a big budget. Looking forward to seeing it.
Though personally I don't see how certain parts (like the VR sequences) would translate to screen.
A TV adaptation of Chinese sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem is in development https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700675/chinese-science-...
In my memory, it's an epic, big, huge and vast story, and Cool. But it's just that, cool and empty. The story itself I think is targeting high schoolers, so the storyline does not run very deep and logical. And it's very hard to build an inspiring story on such shallow background.
I'm expecting this movie at the same level with something like The Avengers: A fine movie, but in the end, nothing new. No new thinking, no enlightenment, you'll probably learn nothing from it if you're already a Scifi fan. Good for time killing, not a good for sink yourself in.
However, Scifi in China is really a dead desert, the level of success Liu has reached as a Chinese scifi author could inspire other authors to create better stories in the future. Maybe himself could write some better stories when he's world view got deeper[0].
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war...
You mean, the Chinese adopted Marvel's not-so-stealthy glorification of the American military complex (Capitan America, iron Man, Wolverine,....)
But even if you don't remember that, I can't fathom anyone seeing his origin story as somehow pro military. It's quite critical of the military.
He continues to have nightmares about what was done to him. This is why he stabs Rogue, who really should have died from it and only didn't because she is able to "borrow" his powers to heal herself. She was trying to wake him up from a nightmare.
And his ongoing hatred of the military and the people who did that to him shows up as plot points in various stories. So it isn't simply his backstory I the past. This is part of the ongoing storyline.
So how anyone can say "He was in the military once -- check his origin story" as evidence that his story is highly pro military is beyond me.
After all, he's Captain America perennially wrapped in red, white and blue. How'd you interpret a captain China wrapped in the communist party red, replete with the sickle, backed by the might of the People's army, saving the world from tyranny?
That is, American pop culture does not challenge the foundation of the American society: individualism and the American dream. In that respect (in its support of the underpinnings of its home society) it is really similar to Chinese pop culture ...
There is nuance, that may be more apparent to Americans themselves. In these movies, Americans are never all bad. Because even if there are American villains, the answer is always the presence of American heroes.
Even though the films are great, they come pretty close to state propaganda. Only the quality is much better, because unlike other authoritarian projects from other countries, Americans actually believe their propaganda.
It's so effective that so many countries across the world are trying to copy it, my own country included. But we have a long long way to go in terms of quality.
I mean, these are American movies.
How often are the heroes in Indian movies not Indian, as opposed to American? The heroes are almost always local.
It's also cool to see sf ideas of "mega" engineering.