With the new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, the Game of Thrones makers have finally played to their strengths again and created a breathtaking genre story full of twists and exciting science fiction concepts.
But one thing cannot be denied. Anyone who was hoping for a detailed adaptation of Cixin Liu’s Trisolaris novels or the first volume The Three Suns was disappointed with radical cuts. And that’s mainly due to an annoying Netflix problem: The series length.
3 Body Problem: A Netflix problem strikes again
The numerous changes and cuts compared to the original book are easy to explain. There’s just no time leftto illuminate scientific theories, philosophical mind games and storylines in different eras in great detail.
Because 3 Body Problem only consists of eight episodes. And that’s exactly what keeps the Netflix series from being truly outstanding for me. It’s a general problem that has increasingly annoyed me as a series fan in recent years. And it’s not even Netflix’s fault.
Netflix
I wish we had more time
The great boom in steaming series led to ever shorter seasons over time. While Netflix series were once usually around 13 episodes long, eight episodes seem to be the new gold standard. There are many reasons for that. Among other things, more series can be produced in a shorter time with the same effort. Exploding series budgets, such as the $160 million for 3 Body Problem, are another factor.
More and more streaming services have been clinging to this number lately – and Netflix is particularly noticeable. As a constant binger of far too many series, I naturally welcome shorter series. But are eight episodes really the ideal length for all serial stories? My answer is: no.
Not all stories are suitable for eight-episode seasons. As viewers, we are often confronted with material that drags on forever and that could have been told much better and more compactly. With 3 Body Problem the opposite is the case. A very complex and extensive template is adapted here, which actually requires a lot more space.
For 3 Body Problem, 8 episodes are simply not enough
The fact that 3 Body Problem didn’t turn into a soporific physics lecture with endless whiteboard explanations is a blessing. For example, different scientific hypotheses are formulated and discussed in detail in the template. I understand that a mega-budget mainstream series has to meet different demands. I can therefore get over this simplification in many places.
What I can’t get over less: As a fan of the template, I was shocked at how much was cut. The series rushes through the plot of the novel The Three Suns. After just five episodes, this is almost completely over. The great elementary events remain, but the important nuances of history have been lost.
Hear more about the strengths and weaknesses of 3 Body Problem in the podcast:
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A drastic example would be Mike Evans’ (Jonathan Pryce) organization, which even has a specific name in the book (Earth Trisolaris Organization, ETO for short). In contrast to the Netflix version, the ETO in the original is much more than just a homogenous mass of people who welcome the arrival of the San-Ti (in the book: Trisolarians). There are even three different factions of alien sympathizers with different motivations.
There are the Adventists led by Mike Evans who welcome the destruction of humanity in order to save the planet. Opposite them are the religiously inspired saviors who try to solve the insoluble three-body problem and save the planet of the San-Ti. And then there are the survivors who are in thrall to the aliens in the hope that their descendants will be spared after the invasion 400 years from now.
Due to the limited running time of only eight episodes, entire storylines had to be deleted or extremely streamlined and rearranged for the series adaptation. Too often 3 Body Problem seems to me like a compromise that has lost some of the depth of the original. And A few more episodes could have easily fixed that.
Not every template can be squeezed into 8 episodes: One Piece and Avatar are also affected by the Netflix problem
Within a year 3 body problem is now already the third Netflix adaptation of a huge originalwhich has to be broken down to the bare essentials in order to keep the season short.
The live-action film adaptations Avatar: The Last Airbender and One Piece were able to entertain me very well as stand-alone series. But in a direct comparison with the originals, they also made it clear that the typical Netflix format of eight episodes can be a problem.
In comparison to the 20-episode animated original, Avatar fans had to forego numerous subplots that would have explored the characters and narrative world of the fantasy series in even more detail. An even greater compromise awaited One Piece fans in the Netflix live-action series, which rushes through 53 anime episodes in eight episodes.
Both series became huge successes for Netflix and were each quickly renewed. However, that doesn’t change the fact that they could have been even better as adaptations with a little more breathing room, i.e. more episodes.
There is another way: The second 3 Body Problem adaptation suffers from the opposite problem
What a 3 Body Problem adaptation with more than eight episodes would look like? There is even a concrete example of this. Even before the Netflix series, a Chinese film adaptation, Three Body, was released at the beginning of 2023. Their running time was almost four times longer!
Tencent Video
Three Body was the first series adaptation of the 3 Suns
The Chinese series is 30 episodes long and, despite some censorship, sticks extremely closely to the original. I watched both adaptations. And they couldn’t be more different in their tone.
For Netflix, the showrunners rely on visually stunning spectacle in which one twist follows the next. Three Body, on the other hand, captures the feeling of the novel more authentically: the plot is long-winded, cerebral, sometimes downright exhausting and at the same time extremely fascinating in its complexity of topics. The story of Ye Wenjie’s experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution alone is as comprehensive as a complete Netflix season.
The atmosphere of Three Body’s mystery story can best be compared to the German Netflix series Dark. However, the opposite effect to the Netflix version is also evident: the Chinese implementation is With 30 episodes, it’s far too long and tedious. An ideal episode length for Cixin Liu’s sci-fi work has not yet been found in any adaptation.
I don’t have too much hope that Netflix could skip a few more episodes for a possible second season. Because with a view to the sequel to the novel The Dark Forest, the story will be even more effects-laden in the future – and therefore more expensive. Like the three-body problem, this Netflix problem cannot be solved.