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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone compared the Netflix 3 body problem to tencent's?

The Tencent version is overly long and drawn out, has mediocre visual effects and production, censors key parts from the book, has bad english-speaking actors, but has decent writing and is interesting to watch.

The Netflix version has awful writing for the scientist protagonists, dumbs down or omits parts of the book (the audience is too stupid to learn what the CMB is for instance, and barely any time is spent in the vr game), zips through the story real fast because they decided to cram all of the first book and part of the sequel into 8 episodes for some reason, but has great visual effects.

I found the VR parts in the books mostly just annoying, so my take is that the series has quite enough VR time.

Haven’t read the books or watched the tencent version, but main complaint with the netflix version was that it seemed kind of slow.

It was good, but I felt a movie could have covered most of the first season.

The Netflix one is trash. The Tencent one is fairly close to the book.

Downside is there is definetly some "rah-rah" nationalism and the pacing isn't the greatest, but all in all I'd say the Tencent one is a pretty strong adaption.

If an abridged version of the Tencent adaption was bought by Netflix it would have done very well.

> The Tencent one is fairly close to the book.

Not really? It both overexplains simple concepts (e.g. the billiard table scene) and underexplains important concepts.

The Netflix show just has awful writing, and only cares about visuals. My favorite example of bad writing is the very last scene, where three characters are having a conversation, then one of them suddenly gets up and says "let me show you something". So they drive for (seemingly) hours, apparently in perfect silence, only to get out of the car, look over a field, and deliver a handful of pithy lines, followed immediately by "okay let's go back". (For book readers: this is the "bugs vs. humans speech").

Anyway, they're both ephemeral garbage. I guess 3BP will be like Dune, where it takes decades for a decent adaptation to show up.

As a big fan of the books, I preferred the Netflix adaptation to the Tencent one.

TL;DR If you want see people act out the book, watch the Tencent version. If you're open to a new and interesting take on the story told in the book, watch the Netflix version.

It very much depends on what you consider a good adaptation. Netflix is a much more open adaptation of the story. They create some new characters, move most of the action out of China, move some scenes from the later books into the first seasons and generally streamline the story. The Tencent version is basically a scene by scene retelling of the book with hardly anything added or omitted.

Personally I preferred the Netflix version (full disclosure, I did a lot of skipping in the Tencent version). It told a new version of the same story in a slightly different way, sticking close to the important themes and beats while still offered something new and interesting along the way.

The Tencent version offered nothing interesting over what the book offered. If I have 30 hours to spare I'd rather re-read the books than watch the Tencent adaptation.

The only real casualty of reimagining the story in England is the Zhang Behai character. Works so much better as a political officer from a communist military.

AvenueX on YT had a pretty good comparison and review for both. TL;DW the Netflix one fails to use its budget for anything, and instead tries to appeal to its audience (or at least who Netflix thinks is their audience) with sex scenes, romance and dumbed down concepts. She also comments a bit about how Netflix politically charged it (which is an unfortunate thing to hapoen to Three-Body). I was personally a great enjoyer of the TC 三体 since I liked the calmer pacing (I feel it is mostly the western audience who have a problem with it).

> sex scenes

There are no sex scenes in the Netflix show. You've been lied to.

Yeah, I had to do a double take at that... Or maybe we both somehow missed an episode. I will say it has the americana filling of violence/gore though (if gore is the right word for the boat scenes).

Ah, sorry I wrote the above pretty late. I misphrased the review, romantic/sexual drama would fit better!

I felt that the amount and type of "romantic/sexual drama" in the show wasn't that different from what we got in the later books, and on the whole done a lot better.

If you like movies with "calmer pacing", try watching American movies, but ones that are more than 30 years old, especially stuff from the 70s or earlier. It's mind-blowing watching those and seeing how different they are from modern Hollywood movies. An old Hitchcock movie, for instance, was considered a thriller when it was new, but modern Americans would probably be bored watching it because the pacing is much slower than the latest Marvel movie.

I don’t know if I’m alone here, but I feel like the only sci-fi I like is really more like science realism.

Like I really loved the Martian and Project Hail Mary.

I’m also a really big fan of Tolkien. I couldn’t get into Game of Thrones though. I also didn’t really like Orson Scott cards works, except for Ender’s Game.. once he started world-building I got bored.

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