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PORTSIDE CULTURE

EVERYONE’S HOOKED ON NETFLIX’S 3 BODY PROBLEM  
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Eileen Jones
April 1, 2024
Jacobin [[link removed]]

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_ Based on Cixin Liu’s megapopular sci-fi novels, 3 Body Problem is
an engrossing spectacle about alien invasion. It’s a welcome
21st-century twist on the old War of the Worlds premise. _

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The new Netflix series _3 Body Problem_ based on Chinese sci-fi
novelist Cixin Liu’s _Remembrance of Earth’s Past _trilogy
is among the most-watched
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internationally. Predictably, it’s reviled by many fans
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Liu’s books. It certainly doesn’t help that there’s a longer
Chinese adaptation that came out last year available on Peacock.
Chinese viewers complain about the shallow Hollywood treatment, the
shift in setting from China to the UK, and the anti-Chinese bias they
see in this new version, which has “globalized” both the
characters and the narrative. Fans of the books lament the loss of the
in-depth treatment of physics and the many changes made to the
original.

I’ve never read the books and went into the new eight-episode first
season cold, not knowing any of the context. I found it slick and
populated by too many pretty TV-actor types, but nevertheless
engrossing and highly bingeable. Ignorance may be bliss when
watching _3 Body Problem._ It should be noted that the series has a
great asset with the hulking, phlegmatic, pockmarked, nonpretty actor
Benedict Wong as a central investigative figure. I love that guy.

Adapted from Liu’s novels by _Game of Thrones_ creative team David
Benioff and D. B. Weiss, along with Alexander Woo (_The Terror:
Infamy_), the series concerns a complex doomsday scenario. Particle
acceleration experiments generated at top scientific research centers
around the world are suddenly producing nonsensical results that seem
to invalidate ten years’ worth of data. Centers are shutting down,
and many scientists are committing suicide or dying in mysterious
circumstances. And Wong’s character, intelligence detective Clarence
“Da” Shi, is assigned to figure out what’s going on by Thomas
Wade (Liam Cunningham), a ruthless spymaster working for an unnamed
government agency.

Flashbacks relate these contemporary mysteries to incidents in the
Cultural Revolution in 1966 China, when young Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng)
witnesses the brutal death of her physicist father after he’s
denounced by her mother during a struggle session. He won’t recant
his counterrevolutionary stance on the big bang theory — which the
revolutionaries claim gives support to the existence of God — and is
beaten to death by fanatical young Maoists.

Trained by her father, Wenjie is identified as a likely candidate for
clandestine scientific experiments being conducted by the government
in a hilltop fortress overlooking the prison where she’s held. It
becomes Wenjie’s job to monitor the attempts to contact alien life
via a giant signal-sending apparatus aimed at the heavens, technology
that reflects rival efforts in other industrialized nations. But
Wenjie is brilliant enough to come up with a way of augmenting the
signal’s strength, and she gets a reply. She’s alone in the lab
and seems to have reached a similarly isolated alien — a
self-described pacifist. The alien sends her an ominous message
warning her not to reply or otherwise communicate again, for the sake
of human survival.

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Still from 3 Body Problem. (Netflix)

By now fully convinced that humanity is incapable of saving itself
from its cruelest excesses, Wenjie makes the fateful decision to
respond anyway. The result of her decision is a series of alien-driven
attacks on scientists carried out both by fanatical agents on Earth
who have embraced the aliens as our new gods as well as an
extraterrestrial probe called a Sophon, a quantum computer folded down
to the size of a single proton able to sabotage our planet’s
science. Computer game headsets that are far too technologically
advanced to be Earth-made are being sent to top scientists, plunging
them into confounding hyperreal games set in ancient kingdoms, each
with three suns (referring to the three-body problem of the title).
Gameplay centers on a limited number of chances to save the kingdoms
before they collapse into destructive chaos.

Warnings from a far superior power are also sent, including an image
of a time-coded countdown to some unknown but terrifying deadline that
seems to burn in the retina of one scientist. An unlikely “angel of
the Lord” figure, a vaguely hippieish looking young woman, appears
to various scientists speaking in evangelical terms of the coming
apocalypse and the possibility of being saved, but she’s never
captured on any image-making device aimed at her. The general public
is alerted to some monstrous challenge to earthly power and
understanding when the entire firmament of stars in the night sky
blinks on and off several times, “winking” at humanity.

It’s a terrific premise, in short, and there are so many eye-popping
VFX spectacles to go with it, that it makes the _War of the
Worlds_ scenario seem fresh again.

The weakest link in the narrative chain is probably the group of
characters known as the “Oxford 5” from their days as university
prodigies and friends who were expected to set the world of science on
fire. Of them, two are still up-and-comers: dedicated physicist Jin
Cheng (Jess Hong) and high-minded Auggie Salazar (Eiza González),
whose cutting-edge experiments in nanofibers have placed her at the
top of her field.

Still considered promising as a research assistant, Auggie’s friend
Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo) has become an increasingly cynical pothead.
Kindly Will Downing (Alex Sharp) has accepted what he considers his
intellectual limitations and receded into teaching, but his overall
lack of confidence has also prevented him from connecting with Jin,
his secret long-term love. And finally, high-living Jack Rooney (John
Bradley) has bailed out on science altogether in order to become a
snack-food entrepreneur, which has made him rich.

So much of the series’ personal drama, romance, and comic relief are
generated through them, who together are something of an amalgamation
of characters from the source books. It’s a sensible adaptation
move, it seems, but sometimes the formulaic quality of the way
they’re deployed gets irritating. All those YA plot devices
concerning who’s hooking up and who’s on the outs with whom have
to be endured.

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Still from 3 Body Problem. (Netflix)

Still, there are some good uses of the characters, especially in terms
of arguing various premises regarding the possible fate of humanity
if, in fact, the aliens really do land on Earth in four-hundred years,
based on the calculations of how far they have to travel. (Though
really, the aliens are shown to have so much power over hapless
earthlings already, do they really need to physically land here in a
spaceship?)

“Why don’t we all just relax and do a jay because we’re all
gonna be dead by then?” asks Saul, rejecting arguments that we must
martial all our forces to defend the territory for our descendants.

This makes for some entertaining scenes when, for mysterious reasons,
he’s appointed by the United Nations to be one of three
“Wallfacers,” charged with thinking of a way to fight the aliens
that can’t be detected by their omnipresent surveillance. The theory
is the aliens can’t read thoughts, so Wallfacers are to think of a
plan and then get blind obedience once they move into action. Saul
quite sensibly refuses to be a Wallfacer, only to find that he’s
landed with handlers who follow him everywhere, agreeing with whatever
he says but refusing to leave his side so as to be ready when he
starts issuing humanity-saving orders.

Late in the series, one of the Oxford 5 volunteers to have his brain
rocketed to the alien fleet. The hope is that the aliens will be
unable to resist using advanced tech to resurrect him in order to
learn more about humans — the idea being once that happens, he can
somehow send intel on the fleet back to Earth. But even willing to
make that sacrifice, the volunteer refuses to sign a loyalty oath to
humanity against the aliens, because “What if they’re better than
we are?”

This is certainly a burning question — really, how could they be
worse? But from what the characters are gleaning about alien traits
and tendencies, the Earth could very well be swapping one ruthless
kill-crazy gang of apex predators for another. Regardless, it seems
pretty clear, based on the reception of the series so far, that huge
numbers of us are already hooked and will be tuning in to the
inevitable second season to find out.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of
the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.

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