Masochistic Watch

To be fair -- and because I'm slightly masochistic when it comes to SF -- I watched Three-Body, the Chinese 30-episode version of Netflix's 3 Body Problem that I so disliked. I preferred the Chinese version, as it seemed to have less finger wagging and more story (I found out later it's also more faithful to the book.) The gender of one of the main characters was flipped, and there were a lot more characters in this one. It still proved rather disheartening. It's also very slow and doesn't get to the point as quickly.

I have a problem with much of the technology in both versions, and they're basically the same, so I had to sit through that. One particularly unpleasant scene in the Netflix version reminded me stronghly of a horror movie on a boat (Ghost Ship, if anyone cares) and I came away thinking that it was not really original. The scene was repeated in the Chinese series with everything practically identical, so it must be from the book. Finally there's a scene with a police officer shooting a nuclear device that is so beyond what would actually happen if that were done that I cringed a bit. Okay, that's all my gripes.

On the upside, the special effects were more interesting and involved in this one. You get a true sense of the antagonist, but also why they got there. There's one character who annoyed me from the start (the cop) and ended up being my favorite of the entire cast. I also found it startling that they basically criticized so much of the communist movement in China during its fledgling years; I never would have thought they'd get this past the censors.

I'm on the fence as to if I want to recommend this story in any form to anyone, but I'm glad I got another perpective on it. If you don't mind all the gripes and the depressing aspects, it's available to watch on Viki.com.

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