A lot of Chinese viewers wish Netflix had stripped China out of ‘3 Body Problem’
SINGAPORE—Netflix’s newest high-powered sci-fi drama, “3 Body Problem," is one of the biggest cultural events to come out of China in years. After watching it, many in China say they wish the producers of the show had taken their country out of it entirely. “3 Body Problem" is the long-awaited adaptation of a critically acclaimed series of science-fiction novels by Chinese writer Liu Cixin.
The project was helmed by “Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with “True Blood" writer Alexander Woo. The show has topped the streaming giant’s U.S.
rankings since it was released. For China, which has seen its cultural appeal in the West wane amid the country’s increasing inward turn and geopolitical tensions, the release of the show’s first season on Thursday was a closely watched moment for millions of Chinese sci-fi fans. It is one of the most expensive shows Netflix has ever produced, with a sprawling cast and glittering special effects that brought total costs to roughly $20 million an episode.
Hashtags associated with the show have garnered some 2.3 billion views on Weibo, a Chinese social-media platform similar to X, since its release Thursday. The popular film and music review site Douban and question-and-answer site Zhihu were flooded with tens of thousands of user reviews. Chinese viewers generally praised the production value and storytelling of the Netflix adaptation.
But many also lamented changes Benioff, Weiss and Woo made to the original story, arguing they rendered the country that produced the source material in a one-dimensional, almost entirely negative way. The story starts with Ye Wenjie, a young physicist. In the opening scene of the Netflix version, she watches as her father, a
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