Anything and everything to do with Liu Cixin's award winning book 'The Three-Body Problem', and the 'Remembrance of Earth’s Past' trilogy.
Final Edit: I didn’t realize the topic would be so controversial with good points made on all sides. Ultimately, it comes down to the show, although featuring a diverse and international cast and is a step up from the book in that regard, not representing my personal experience in the American and European academia. I am not angry, just disappointed. Take of that what you will and carry on with the discussion!
I am a PhD student at a certain Institute of Technology in the US and have done research internships in Europe, and although I appreciate the attempts at diversity in the show I think it missed chance to be representative of the real diversity in academia.
I am originally from China and when I was reading the books as a teenager, I always thought they can include more non-Chinese characters, so I am into the idea of having non-Chinese characters for the show (I still really hate how the show made Chinese heroes non-Chinese but kept the villains Chinese, but that would be a separate discussion).
What I really don’t like, as someone who is in the STEM academia, is that it is really unrealistic for all the protagonists in the show to speak perfect British English. Many of my peers in STEM academia are international (46% at my current Institution), and a lot of them speak English with an accent that would face xenophobia (so not just your fancy British or French accents) — be it Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Nigerian, etc. The show would’ve been a perfect setting to showcase how scientists of different nationalities work together, both casually (like irl) and against an alien invasion.
Instead, the show erased the presence of international scholars (sure Auggie has a work visa, but it is unlikely that someone like her would face the same kind of xenophobia that most international scholars do irl, and Ye is not particularly a positive representation either). Even Oppenheimer, set in the 1940s, has a much better and more realistic representation of the diversity in academia(bad example, see u/kojied’s comment), and felt more relatable for me even when none of the characters are Chinese.
They could’ve easily made Cheng Xin a Chinese international student, when people already like to complain there’re too many of us irl. Exploring her interaction with Ye would be extremely interesting since they would have left China for different reasons at different times, and would likely have different views on China and the world. Not doing this is a classic example of Hollywood writers trying to shoehorn diversity but actually paints a less diverse picture than irl (another example is in Queen’s Gambit, they said Nona Gaprindashvili never faced men, when she is a real Grandmaster who is still alive have have beaten male Grandmasters. She sued Netflix, btw).
Edit: A positive example is the Big Bang Theory - it was a popular show that appealed to a broader audience 10 years ago with Raj in it. That is all I ask. (another bad example, I haven’t watched enough shows to have a good one in mind)
One thing I've noticed from this sub is how many non-native English speakers don't notice or care that there are different native English accents. Jin Cheng has a very strong New Zealand accent. And I guess Saul and Auggie's North American accents don't count?
In the UK you're more likely to find a lot of Europeans in the lab due to EU agreements so the lack of Czech and Germans is a bit off.
right the lack of Germans in science is immediately noticeable and you’re right in the sense that I am bad at distinguishing native English accents
You thought Raj was a good example of an ethnic character? The dude was a walking "India is an overpopulated third world backwater" joke.
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Raj's Indian accent is immaculate.
It's like if a gun toting bigot with a country accent was used to represent USA
So... accurate?
Yes it is accurate as many people are just like that but it also generalizes(is that a word) everyone in a negative light including people who hate that it is accurate
Yes and no. Stereotypes can be accurate, otherwise they would not have become stereotypes.
The important thing is always context. Using stereotypes can be racist or otherwise seen as negative. Or it can be just funny. Depends.
welp that kinda IS a huge swath of the past and current US.
Maybe 20 years ago, yeah.
I’m not going to reply to the content of this comment specifically, but I’m saddened to see a comment like this, on a post like this, on a subreddit about a book like this.
I’d hate to be the sort of person who is like this commenter.
that was 10 years ago so I would expect that they can do it better now if they had a character like that but on second thought that was again a bad example (sorry I haven’t watched enough shows to have a genuinely good example
I didn't get that far. I got as far as, "did you talk to your neurologist?"
Yes.
"What did he say"
She*
Rolled my eyes so hard along with such masterful lines as "I don't have belief, I'm a scientist" (approximation)
I painfully stuck it out to the point they had the ENTIRE FRIGGEN NIGHT SKY blip off and on rather than the background cosmic radiation like in the book and I nearly lost my lunch.
When they said it was by the show runners of GoT I was interested but then I realized they meant the season 8 show runners.
I couldn't bring myself to watch another episode. Tried the Chinese version which I might watch but at this point I'm thinking I'll stick to the books. Like I don't care about creative decisions made to the story but I didn't see any here. Just the ham-fisted fisher-price-ified attempt to appeal to western sensibilities.
Please watch the whole thing. You're not wrong but better to understand the entire slop they made. Especially if there will be a season 2.
I don't know if I can. I want to for the sake of the visuals but the changes were just so hard to swallow. The principal characters are a friend clique from college? Like how does that make sense? Why are they all attractive young people? Benedict Wong as Da Shi is just poor casting for the character as well (in my opinion).
Weird how people can have such varying opinions of the same thing.
I loved wong and thought he played his character supremely well and was an excellent cast choice.
If it matters, I didnt read the books, only watched the show. (I do plan to get the books and read them now, but only discovered this series because of netflix)
also I was caught it the moment trying to reach the “you have to appeal to a broader audience” folks, so I am sorry that I wasn’t thinking right
Having worked in similar environments albeit starting in the UK where I was born, I can't say I agree. The main group have a variety of accents that reflects the actor's origin aren't perfect British English. But it's also a show, one that is quite concept heavy and leads speaking clearly is important to the target audience. That they have all seemingly lived in an English speaking environment for a while also explains that.
It's certainly true that only Auggie speaks English as a second language (or grew up in a non-english speaking country) but it is implied that she has been in the UK for a while to be CSO of a well backed startup. My colleagues who have joined my institute from places like China have noticeably improved their English over time and I'm not even based in the UK where they would be surrounded by English even outside of work. I think you could criticise that all the other leads come from English speaking countries like the US and Cheng is Chinese-New Zealander but that still a fair bit of diversity (the 2 white British leads are more supporting players than POV characters) and again understandability > academic representation for a show.
As for Ye, her backstory is an important part of the character and tied to Chinese history so her nationality wasn't changed. Older Ye has also been living in an English speaking country for quite a while and is highly educated. I know parents of English friends with Chinese origins who have retained a strong accent but some that haven't 🤷. Mike Evans stays American for a similar reason, he's a trust fund baby and hippe, both things tied to American history.
The show presents plenty of diversity of birthplace, ethnic background & values, but it's there to tell a story with a lot to get across to an audience and actors with a worse command of English harms that goal.
I guess I am not as sensitive to people speaking British English with foreign accents, nor can I distinguish British vs New Zealand English, so I will take your words. I was going to say Everything Everywhere All At Once featured a balance between understandability and authenticity, but it probably appeals to a smaller audience than I realize. For me personally though, I would like Cheng Xin be portrayed more like Evelyn from EEAAO from an identity perspective.
Oh yea Ye should def remained Chinese and the Cultural Revolution was portrayed pretty accurately. I am only saying it would’ve been nicer to have a positive/neutral character remained Chinese so it wouldn’t just be “China bad and created the villain” (again not denying bad things that have come out of China).
Also I think I personally speak English with a very subtle accent (and I am not even sure if it’s a Chinese accent or just my own weird thing), so I am not saying “international representation = broken English”. So you have noted, just ppl speaking “non perfect” English should be good enough, never minding some idiot online not noticing it and complaining about “not enough diversity”.
Yeah I can see that by having both Da Shi and Cheng being 'western' raised the series unintentionally (probably) doesn't have any good/neutral Chinese representation. Hopefully that's something they add in future seasons.
Auggie forgetting the word puppets in Ep.5 was a nice little moment of 2nd language problems for me though I'm convinced that came from the actor on set and wasn't intentionally written. I think unless you're in academia you don't realise that most of the papers you read are probably by someone writing in their 2nd or 3rd language, so I'm not sure the show's writers would have experienced that and made it a part of the series.
On academic representation the most realistic thing for me was that of the 5, only 2 stayed in academia, and one of those 2 is the path of least resistance unfulfilled potential guy. That and the ones who went out to start businesses were much more successful.
This thread just full of people standing in front of a gate.
Netflix isn't meant to be perfect representation of the source in many ways but they did what they could to bring the mainstream over as imperfect as it seems. And they're successful.
You're not alone. I think Ys the majority criticism here. They wanted to interconnect all the main characters but it was too much. Even the headquarters is in UK
Same issue in the book as you said. In the book it happens again with the pre-crisis Vs post crisis character (non-existent.)
It's a tv show. Sci Fi. It won't be like the books, because if it will be then we need like 10 seasons untill the universe is dead
Wait what Chinese villains were there besides Ye Wenjie? And her motivation was understandable so she wasn’t an unsympathetic villain. I saw mike Evan’s and Tatiana as the biggest human villains
Yeah I don’t get this. And it’s not like Ye Wenjie acted alone. She had an American billionaire bankrolling the entire operation. If anything “Americans” are the villains (even though this is an unreasonable read of the situation).
My wife is a Pacific Islander born and raised academic of Chinese - Indian ethnicity who speaks perfect English with 0 accent and was raised catholic. We were actually joking that if she was in a movie people would complain that it's "shoehorned" diversity. We were very surprised that someone similar was represented in a show. But yeah we would still agree with most of your points.
haha I relate personally in a sense that I don’t have a “traditional Chinese accent” - I can speak some German and always found Russian accent funny so they kinda get mixed in with my weird accent. I think without seeing my face and name, my normal spoken English would really confuse people if they try to pin point that 5% accent of mine. But it’s like I want to see a more “typical” representation of my minority group even when I am a “minority” of my minority group
I agree with you. Some things we can do is try to figure out what was going through the show runners brains when making these decisions.
It's absurd that the only important people in the world all know each other from school, but doing this let's there be a shorthand established in their relationships. The season is only 8 episodes.
That doesn't excuse the lack of actual international casting, but maybe that's a middle finger to the isolationist CCP?
It would be stupid to make non-optimal casting choices solely to piss off an isolationist and nationalist government, and if they were trying to do that, they should have someone from Taiwan (Taiwanese scientists are also quite common in academia)
It's just a show buddy. Hollywood did not have a good track record of diversity back then and certainly not going to do it now. Other factor come into play as well, like actors are mostly from UK so it's easier for actor management and hiring. There is a practical movie business and all that
Just chill and enjoy the story. Speaking as a chinese as well
Wow are you saying that Netflix cut corners to appeal to a broader audience?
I don't think they tried to appeal to a broader audience.
They tried to appeal to US and UK audience, and ignored the much wider potential audience that they might have had by depicting the international response we saw in the books from a different angle. Instead of an explicitly international response seen through the eyes of a Chinese scientist in China, we see a response led by a mysteriously powerful Dubliner doing stuff in London.
Instead of an international response from the perspective of a massive economic and scientific power like China, we see a provincial response from a tiny transphobic island that still has a king. It was a weird choice that shrinks the scope of the problem and humanity's response to it.
How is it a provincial response in the Netflix version? It’s stated over and over and over that’s it’s a fully international, global coalition. Just cause an Irish guy in London is one of the leaders? Also what does the king of England have to do with this? He has absolutely zero influence on UK politics, science, etc
If you read between the lines it's fairly obvious there's a bunch of Chinese people complaining about lack of Chinese people in Key roles - they know Netflix's version is the only one people talk / care about and are upset there's not more 'china' in it - this is not about diversity at all, just saltiness
I am german and i also think the scale of the show feels very narrow and bad compared to the scale of the books. The focus on only western locations and mostly only western characters that are mostly the same age and so on is pure shit
Oh yeah I’d definitely gotten that impression over the last few weeks. There was that good article posted a little why ago basically saying how many in China consider Netflix’s adaption as quite insulting to China, whereas it was really just adapted for a mostly US/UK audience and we don’t think of it as an insult at all (at least I don’t - hasn’t changed my impression of China, which I won’t comment on here 😬)
The point is, the entire PDC and its multinational representatives are distilled into one dude.
We're told it's a big coalition, but that's mostly an excuse to have everyone he meets have to listen to him.
Rather than being this huge mystery affecting a very broad community of scientists in the book, it's about how a group of friends who all went to college on Terf island met back up on Terf Island when their other college friend died by suicide. It shrinks scope of the inciting mystery and makes a tiny provincial kingdom the focus of global significance. There were things they could have done to avoid this, and it's kind of weird that they didn't.
Like, it's still a good show. There are just a lot of missed opportunities to add to the work they were adapting.
I mean it’s clear that it is a big coalition..? The Wallfacer episode takes care of that. I actually don’t love the Irish guy myself, they certainly recycled some game of thrones characters…
Ah I see - you mean you would have preferred if it took place across more countries and cities instead of mainly taking place in 1 country? I guess that would have been cool - tbh it didn’t feel like the show had a massive budget to me, which is surprising, maybe Netflix got too greedy
Yes, one dude is the face of the PDC because it's a television show. The audience doesn't need to follow 35 different people to understand that the role of the organization is to coordinate Earth's response to the alien threat. Every scene invested in Liam Cunningham only makes the Thomas Wade character stronger.
You're bringing in a lot of your own politics and that's clearly affecting your perception of the show and source material, tbh.
The PDC is barely even a thing yet in the show. It only just got formed. Wade is the director of the Strategic Intelligence Agency, not the PDC. Panama was an SIA operation. The PDC gets formed afterward because the San-Ti reveals themselves to the world. We see the UN and we see Wade's team, which clearly features people from other countries, but we haven't had much time with either.
The books get way overhyped for having multinational representation. It's led by Chinese characters, takes place primarily in China with only a handful of scenes elsewhere, and the majority of the cast from other countries, especially early on, are just there to disagree then eventually fall in line with General Chang Weisi.
Give the show time. We literally just got to the Wallfacer plotline which is where the books actually start having more multinational representation, and we've already seen they're going with a Chinese general as one Wallfacer and a Kurdish (I forget what her profession was) for the other.
I don’t even think they appealed to the US audience. The US is almost 50/50 in terms of white/non-white, but the cast was way whiter than it needed to be. Especially considering that we already have enough stories told from a white perspective and this isn’t one of them
Yeah, for real. The story got popular enough to bother spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the adaptation with very few white characters. The adaptation barely reflects the diversity of its own setting.
Like, I get that the terms of the deal didn't let them set it in China. We already have a very good Chinese adaptation of the story. But this was an opportunity to tell a truly international story in a city where that could still be possible, and they chose to fumble the ball.
Again, it's a good show. They still missed something crucial and it's a shame they did.
Huh? Auggie is Mexican, Saul is a Black American, Jin is Chinese born but New Zealand raised, Raj is the son of Indian immigrants, Da Shi is likely born in London but of Chinese descent, Ye Wenjie is Chinese.
Like, Will is white but dies, gets his brain shipped off, Jack is white but dies, murdered. I guess Wade and Evans are also white, sure, but both of those characters are meant to be.
What diversity are they missing?
Truly incredible how Hollywood still struggles to tell a story just with minorities. It’ll change though, with increased representation in directing, script writing, acting, etc.
Just to be clear I’m not against movies with white people in it. I just think there could be more movies which accurately represent the world we live in, without ostracizing the majority of the world’s population.
Sad to see people in a community about a story which predominantly takes place in China downvoting comments expressing more representation.
Oppenheimer appealed to a bigger audience without cutting corners tho
Seriously? Oppenheimer (like any other Nolan movie) had basically no women. That's half the population. Even ignoring that, it cut many corners.
Here are some of the top scientific figures involved in the Manhattan Project, including women: J. Robert Oppenheimer (Scientific Director) Enrico Fermi Leo Szilard Ernest Lawrence Hans Bethe Arthur Compton Glenn Seaborg Rudolf Peierls Otto Frisch Emilio Segrè Felix Bloch Eugene Wigner James Chadwick Niels Bohr Edward Teller Klaus Fuchs Harold Urey Luis Alvarez John von Neumann George Kistiakowsky Seth Neddermeyer Robert Serber Victor Weisskopf Rudolf Brill Leona Woods Marshall Libby (one of the few women physicists on the project) Maria Goeppert Mayer (theoretical physicist, later a Nobel laureate) Lilli Hornig (chemist who worked on plutonium purification) Stanisław Ulam Isidor Isaac Rabi Willis Lamb Emil Konopinski C. J. Mackenzie Philip Abelson Walter Zinn Samuel Goudsmit Herbert L. Anderson Bernard Waldman David Bohm George Placzek Chien-Shiung Wu (physicist who helped develop the process for separating uranium isotopes) Joan Hinton (physicist who worked on the uranium enrichment process) Joseph W. Kennedy Charles Allen Thomas Norman Hilberry Alvin Weinberg Louis Slotin Philip Morrison Robert R. Wilson George Weil
While this list includes 49 scientists, it is by no means exhaustive. Several women, such as Leona Woods Marshall Libby, Maria Goeppert Mayer, Lilli Hornig, Chien-Shiung Wu, and Joan Hinton, made valuable contributions to the Manhattan Project, even though they were a small minority among the thousands of people involved.
Thanks, not sure what this is for though? My criticism was about the movie, not the historical project.
Wu Chien-Shiung would be cool to see on a screen! Many say she was robbed of a Nobel prize, and students called her “Dragon Lady” because she was from China (ROC)
sure it’s not a perfect example of diversity as it erases women and poc scientists/workers on the project but I meant it like ideally one could’ve combined the kinds of diversity the show currently has and the international feel of Oppenheimer (I have high and unrealistic expectations, I know, but what is the internet if not a place to complain
I didn't get an especially international feel from Oppenheimer. They name dropped the European scientists who were historically significant to the story but then the second half was just American politics and the international significance of the story was pushed aside.
What does that movie have to do with anything
just that the show wouldn’t have lost the broader audience even if it had included an international scholar as a protagonist
Thanks for articulating this. It's one reason I groaned when I heard Netflix got the rights to this show. They will do anything in their power to make a show accessible, and Netflix is illegal in Mainland China so they have little market incentive to show a more international story.
The cast in the book is weird, one main character in each book, with little overlap, so having more characters and continuation was a good thing I think. But like you say the average Post Doc does not speak standard English, and they don't know each other from Undergraduate. I understand that the incentive to have a group that are familiar with each other, they want to engage the audience immediately, but there's a lot less friction when you have these familiar people together. Drama is created through the human heart being at war with itself, and the show just feels quite placid.
I think one of the best scenes was Cheng Xin meeting Raj's family, there was a lot of tension, warmth and ambiguity there, and that came from a collision of different worlds. That type of interaction could have been mined really effectively and feels like a missed opportunity. Lui Cixin said something similar last week; them all knowing each other made the world seem small.
He also said he liked the character work and the Chinese show to me feels even smaller
The main characters don't all have "perfect British English" accents.
Jin's character (and actor) is from New Zealand and sounds like it.
Saul's character is from the United States (the actor was born in the UK but grew up in the US) and sounds like it.
Auggie's character (and actor) is from Mexico but has a slight Mexican accent.
Jack and Will are from the UK.
TBH, this seems like another "why didn't they make all the characters Chinese" post.
why didn't they? the books are still great regardless of the sinocentricity. no need to answer, BTW; we all know why.
Eh the books are unrealistically Chinese tbh. They barely acknowledge the existence of humans outside China, US, and Europe. Which itself is an interesting reflection of the modern Chinese worldview.
To be fair, there’s a decent amount of Japan and Australia. But, yeah, Africa and the Indian subcontinent are almost entirely absent
SEA and MENA are missing too. The parts of humanity not in the book make up like 2/3 of the current human population.
TBF, it's what media representation is like in most countries with a mostly homogenous population.
countries like the US with heavy influence on pop culture are held to a higher standard--as they should be.
Sure but then why include US and Europe but exclude SouthEast Asia, Middle East and India?
The US obviously isn’t being held to a higher standard, hence the casting of the Netflix series
Sure I guess I just didn’t pick it up, but just because I am Chinese doesn’t mean I am in the“MORE Chinese” mode - I am just saying they can make Cheng slightly ‘more’ Chinese, add a German/Indian/Iranian scientist in the gang or as someone they’d work with.
Also I think I see more “Britishness” or “Mexicaness” from British and Mexicans in my American institution — obviously they don’t make being British/Mexican their whole personality and their accents don’t have to be strong, but their nationality would come up a bit more than one would think in casual conversations.
Much better, insular societies have a poor grasp on the global human mentality. For obvious reasons.
小瘤能不能别丢人了？
I don't know why everybody is so upset at the casting. It's not perfect, but there is an actual Chinese version to watch on another streaming service.
wade and evans were the only human villains to me, both american.
it’s like I have different triggers - some things an American finds offensive I would find perfectly fine (white people celebrating a Chinese holiday, for one), and things I find non optimal that Americans would feel perfectly acceptable
They don't all have British accents
Yeah I have to say I agree. I did like some changes they made but their accents were sometimes jarring. Will and Jack were fine as native citizens, but I think Jin and Saul being new immigrants would've been a lot more interesting.
Auggie is the only one who feels like she has a connection to her heritage, even if its rather last minute.
They all used their normal accents in real life
I just hate that they changed the characters and the setting. I hate it.
Didn't mind it at all
Xenophobic and anti China. That’s the basic tone.
If Netflix made a movie adaptation of the bible, it would start with Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus, and Joseph Smith all being best friends living in NYC. Suddenly the lights go out, there’s a scream, and come back on and jesus is crucified right there in Noah’s studio apartment.
been beating this drum most of my adult life on an empty stage. sad reality is that the mainstream, mostly western audience either doesn't care or it also fits their trope of diversity.
Strongly agree. And I’d add the weird American Middle Class Morality Play pandering to the flyover states with the truncating of the PLO’s agenda to godless devils = bad guys. Come on people. Is no one else seeing this???
As to the international cast. This is absurd. It’s a Chinese book written by a Chinese author. When The Idea of You or more relevant here Dark Matter was being adapted no one said you know what, let’s make this cast more inclusive of native Chinese people or native Indian people.
One of the themes in Liu’s work is humanity eventually working together, common enemy, etc. Even the notoriously circumspect and courteous Liu said the change from “all humanity” to this one group of college pals from this one class seemed a bit forced in an interview.
OP, you are far more diplomatic than I have wanted to be. I’m glad you posted this. (Just for anyone curious, I’m American, half mayflower white, half Hispanic, fairly privileged with no axe to grind other than a tired disgust with the relentless and increasingly boring anglocentrism that tips its hand in the cringiest possible way when it tries its hardest to be woke…)
It’s Netflix… they’re not even focused on the sci-fi or science of the show
OK bro
I think a lot of people don’t realize how globalized science is. Whenever I would do work or write a paper or talk about recent discoveries in the field 100% of the time at least one person who wasn’t from my country is mentioned if not more. I’ve met plenty of foreigners visiting to do tests in my field from all around the globe. I get they wanted to make the show more “global” but making most all the main characters British isn’t doing that.
Most of the main cast isn't British they from different countries.
I honestly can’t contemplate worrying about any of this when the Netflix show was one of the worst, possibly the worst thing I’ve seen so far this year. I started fast forwarding about halfway through the season and then just decided to skip entire episodes and see the end. Unspeakably bad. Glad I didn’t waste more time on it than I already had.