David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby Zusuchan » Wed Sep 02, 2020 7:00 am

The Three-Body Problem trilogy-also known as Remembrance of Earths Past-is being adapted as a Netflix original series, with the infamous Benioff and Weiss team and then Alexander Woo (known primarily as a writer of True Blood) on as writers. The showrunners are not mentioned, so it's most likely all three of them. They're also executive producing with Rian Johnson, Ram Bergman, Lin Qi and Bernadette Caulfield among others. The original author Liu Cixin is also on as ''consulting producer''.

This is interesting, as the trilogy is rather deep and grapples with various philosophical/sociological questions and Cixin is also on-board to help. Benioff and Weiss are, on the other hand, not very skilled, even when it comes to adapting pre-existing material, and it's entirely possible we're looking at yet another substandard adaptation that is unable to adequately address and discuss the themes of the original and quite possibly forgets about the existence of some of them. Cixin helping gives me some confidence, but I'm not entirely sure.

Thoughts? Reactions? Does anyone even care?

Source: https://media.netflix.com/en/company-bl ... nal-series
If you want something more unbiased, there's this: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live- ... or-netflix

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Re: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby Derantor » Wed Sep 02, 2020 7:20 pm

I don't know the source material, but Benioff, Weiss and Rian Johnson are three names that don't inspire confidence, whatever the subject matter may be. To their credit, Benioff and Weiss did alright as long as they had Martin's book, but still. "Deep" and those three people don't exactly rhyme very well, so I wouldn't get my hopes up. But I'm known to be a pessimist, so make of that what you will.
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Re: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby Zusuchan » Thu Sep 03, 2020 5:45 am

I'm one of those who really likes The Last Jedi, so Rian Johnson isn't a name I immediately attach to ''disappointment''. He's also directed the greatest episode of Breaking Bad, along with Looper and Knives Out, which are pretty great, too. But even if Johnson was famous for being constantly disappointing, then that still wouldn't hold a candle on the potential quality of this new series, since he's only an executive producer-Benioff, Weiss and Woo are those ultimately responsible for making the show great.

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Re: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Fri Sep 04, 2020 5:09 am

^ I remember certain friends of mine (who hated The Last Jedi) actually being disappointed to find out he directed Looper, a movie they liked! It's like they wanted to hate on somebody so bad that they're upset when they find out they liked his work all along, keeping them from having such a simple attitude about it.

Star Wars fans are the worst, but In love them anyway...  SPOILER: Show
These are friends of mine who only like Star Wars for its universe and the movies themselves; they're not that interested in the greater filmmaking landscape that surrounds those movies. They're the type to have watched all of the canon SW movies, the Zahn SW books, played all of the good video games, and then be shocked when I tell them that there's a Star Wars Holiday Special or a Turkish bootleg of the film or something like that. I'm slowly working on them, introducing them to the grander arena of film as a whole, introducing them to films that inspired Star Wars, and all that fun stuff. IOt's fun watching them see recognizable things in a non-Star Wars movie and realize that hose two characters from The Hidden Fortress are basically C-3PO and R2-D2.

Anywho, I'm not thrilled about David Benioff or D.B. Weiss being on the project. I know it might sound hypocritical so go on about "how Rian Johnson is actually pretty good," and then dunk on other artists who've also been involved in less-than-stellar visual media, but Benioff/Weiss really don't have an impressive filmography before GoT, so I'm less than enthused about their involvement.

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Re: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby Zusuchan » Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:14 am

To Benioff's credit, he did write 25th Hour, but the greatness of that film has a lot more to do with Spike Lee's direction and Edward Norton's central performance, I must admit. Benioff and Weiss ultimately seem like people who could be capable of doing something good, but are too lazy to do so. They haven't even written original ideas asides from their own novels-it's all adaptations where the best parts come from the originals and their constant inability to understand or even care about themes is something that has brought their work down.

I remember certain friends of mine (who hated The Last Jedi) actually being disappointed to find out he directed Looper, a movie they liked! It's like they wanted to hate on somebody so bad that they're upset when they find out they liked his work all along, keeping them from having such a simple attitude about it.


There seems to be an interesting logic for most Star Wars fans which basically consists of ''if you made bad Star Wars content, then you've always made bad content''. Some of Reddit's Rian Johnson hate is just insane. Not to mention how they basically love Dave Filoni, completely ignoring how dreadfully horrible the first Clone Wars movie was and that the first two seasons of Clone Wars were basically filler. It's like some people can't fathom that there are artists who do great stuff and then something a bit more disappointing. (Incidentally, the majority of SW fans tend to be strange-I love how the prequels are now considered by some people to be ''spacekino'' despite their insane amount of problems while saying that the sequels have good moments story-wise is considered by some to be blasphemy).

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Re: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sat Sep 05, 2020 7:59 am

See, lately I've been of the opinion that Star Wars (1977) had no business being as mainstream as it was, so it's not surprising when SW things slip into the awkwardly niche territory. Like, this is a film franchise where everyone's favorite scene for a while was the one where everyone was wearing Party City costumes in a cave-looking bar of some kind. This wasn't meant to be seen as "good" by a mainstream audience. If anything Disney's worst decisions for SW was trying to keep it as mainstream and as accessible as possible. Audiences are supposed to be weirded out by random nonsense in these movies, not feeling like they're returning to the same old toy box over and over again.

But I digress. I can't wait to see what Rian Johnson does with this.

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Re: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby Gendo'sPapa » Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:23 pm

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm one of the crazy people out there whose view of GAME OF THRONES is that the first four seasons were never as great as everyone hyped them up to be and the last four seasons were certainly never as bad as everyone claims they are. The show was flawed from the beginning and those flaws carried throughout the show and just became more pronounced when they had to stop expanding the universe and had to start brining everything to a close. I'm not going to say the last seasons were flawless but they are still really good filmmaking, spectacle and the endings are all deserved and also likely where the books are going in the end. GOT was always going to be difficult to adapt because George R.R. Martin's process has been to basically just kept expanding and expanding the universe of the books with new cities, characters and storylines and not focus on bringing the narratives together.

I don't know this series of books but the simple fact the story has been written and is complete should make the adaptation process a hell of a lot different than it would be adapting a series of novels still in development.

And also as stated earlier in the thread, Benioff is actually a really good writer. His three books are all really great (Spike Lee's perfect film is like 100% verbatim the book even down to the "Fuck You Montage") and his feature film scripts have been pretty uniformly excellent before rewrites and production changes turn them into something else (they went through so many rewrites no one actually knows who wrote X-Men Origins: Wolverine or Gemini Man).

Cautiously optimistic. At the very least having the GOT writers involved means Netflix will likely have to match GOT levels of production.

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Re: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo adapting The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin for Netflix

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Postby Zusuchan » Sun Sep 06, 2020 5:17 am

FreakyFilmFan4ever:
Star Wars is basically a medieval fantasy film in a sci-fi setting influenced thematically by mythology and aesthetically by Flash Gordon serials and the like. It was really strange and niche when it came out and you're right that it being mainstream is actually interesting. In regards to Disney's treatment of the franchise, they do that with most about anything: they make it a lot more widely accessible and commercial while still retaining some of the things that people loved about the originals so as to not entirely alienate the core fandom. And, of course, plenty of nostalgia so that people would think of the new content as better than they are. Nostalgia has proven to be a key factor in Disney's recent movie strategy and it plagues even some of their best new franchise films-and it works, most horribly.

Gendo's Papa:
I agree that GoT at its best was already a lot less than people were making it out to be and that Benioff has proven himself to be a potentially good writer, but the fact that GoT even at its best spent some questionable time on Podrick's hyper-sex powers and Theon's excessive torture instead of properly setting up the Red Wedding is something that I think shows that he either understands storytelling less than he thinks he does or just doesn't care. As a fan of ASOIAF, it's even easier to see just how much questionable choices the show had. And the problems I personally have with the show's ending don't stem from disliking them-I agree that ASOIAF is going to have a similar ending (there's so much differences plot-wise between the two that the exact same ending is out of reach), but my problems are that they didn't once again properly set anything up. The majority of the foreshadowing (or the part which is actually good foreshadowing) comes from the books, while the rest is either ham-fisted or doesn't exist.

That said, ending GoT was always going to a mammoth task and the fact that it ended as well as it did is already something of an accomplishment. But the best parts of the last two seasons were already largely the works of people other than the writers, such as the actors, directors, costume designers, Djawadi etc. The fact that the writers didn't even really bother with doing something just a little bit better than what they had is sad.

In the end, I too am cautiously optimistic about this new series, but largely because of Cixin's involvement and simple hope.


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