Recently, Netflix announced that it would adapt Liu Cixin's novel "The Three-Body Problem" trilogy into a drama, with the two main creators of "Game of Thrones" personally taking charge, and Liu Cixin himself will also serve as an advisor. The news of
also made many science fiction fans happy: The universe of "Three-Body Problem" has really become this time!
The success of "The Wandering Earth" last year allowed countless science fiction fans to see the possibility of Chinese people making the "Three-Body Problem" movie by themselves, but the subsequent release of "Shanghai Fortress" proves that we are really thinking too much. In terms of science fiction, the gap between us and the United States is still too big.
Liu Cixin himself once made it clear that "The Three-Body Problem" will not be handed over to Hollywood to shoot . The reason he gave was that "Hollywood's values do not match "The Three-Body Problem" .
But this time, Liu Cixin could not escape the "true fragrance law". He commented that the creator of Netflix drama "has lofty beliefs" . He hopes that the "three-body fan" around the world can rediscover this story on Netflix.
Pi Ge is full of emotion. It is not easy for Liu Cixin to get to where she is today step by step. The story behind this has to start 20 years ago.
01. The darkest moment of Chinese science fiction
Many people say that 2019 is the first year of science fiction in China. In fact, it is not the case. Chinese science fiction began in the early stages of reform and opening up, flourished in the early 1990s, but it quickly slumped before the arrival of the millennium.
1982's "Dead Light on the Coral Island" is the earliest science fiction film in China. The explosion of mushroom cloud makes people feel the vigorous vitality of Chinese science fiction.
Later, excellent science fiction films such as "Pili Beibei", "The Disappearance of the Atmosphere", Huang Jianxin's "Pioneer Trilogy" and "Crazy Rabbit" are blooming, either calling for environmental protection, exploring philosophy, absurdity, or full of childlike fun. No matter which style it is, it makes people feel endless aftertaste.
But after 1999, Chinese science fiction ushered in the darkest moment . In the nearly 20 years since
, no decent science fiction film was born again. Even if Stephen Chow filmed the so-called science fiction film "Yangtze River 7" in 2007, his old partner Ng Mengda laughed at it as "pseudoscience fiction".
Even in the darkest moments, some people are still writing hard, waiting for a gorgeous bloom in 20 years.
02. The "engineer" who is fishing at work
This person is an engineer from a power plant in Shanxi and is not very good-looking.
His neighbor posted a post to recall that in the late 1990s, this guy always pushed an old-fashioned "28" to and from get off work, timid and you wouldn't look at him when you walked on the street.
At work, he is also a typical person who is not doing his job properly. He always uses his spare time to write. Many years later, he was sorted into "black materials" by netizens.
In 1999, Liu Cixin's two science fiction works "Whale Song" and "The End of Microscopic" were published in "Science Fiction World". He then won the special prize of the Chinese Science Fiction Galaxy Award. "Science Fiction World" sent 2,000 yuan of manuscript fees to his unit. The electrician took the huge sum of money to hide from his leader and colleagues and secretly invited other award-winning authors to have a hot pot.
His award-winning work is called "The Wandering Earth", and he is Liu Cixin.
After winning the award of "The Wandering Earth", Liu Cixin ushered in the peak of her creation. From 2002 to 2005, he won the China Galaxy Award for his works such as "The Dao of the Morning", "The Cannon of the Earth", and "Supporting Humanity". Before he knew it, he had climbed to the top of the pyramid of Chinese science fiction.
In 2006, Liu Cixin began to create "The Three-Body Problem", which is the culmination of Liu's work and the highest peak of Chinese science fiction so far.
There are three volumes in "Three-Body Problem", consisting of "Three-Body Problem", "Three-Body Problem II·Dark Forest", and "Three-Body Problem III·Eternal Life of Death". They were published in 2006, 2008 and 2011 respectively, and were translated into English in 2014, and were praised on Amazon.
In 2015, Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award at the World Science Fiction Conference for the first part of "The Three-Body Problem", which is the first time in Asia, which also marks that China has become one of the world's science fiction powers.
Yan Feng, professor of the Department of Literature at Fudan University, commented: "After reading "The Three-Body Problem", I have no doubt that this person has single-handedly promoted Chinese science fiction literature to a world-class level."
The four words "
" summarize Liu Cixin's status in the Chinese science fiction world: One person, one country!
03, The Three-Body Problem movie plans to go bankrupt
In 2009, the American science fiction film "Avatar" was released in the mainland. After the movie was over, Pige pessimistically felt that the gap between China and the United States is the gap between the Himalayas and the Mariana Trench.
Here, the Kashen and "Avatar" have slashed a box office of 2.7 billion US dollars worldwide. In 2009, Liu Cixin sold the film and television adaptation rights of "Three-Body Problem" to director Zhang Fanfan for a bargaining price of 100,000 yuan.
Is Liu Cixin crazy? No, this number was already astronomical in the science fiction circle at that time.
The episode held "Three-Body Problem" in your hands for a whole whole year. Seeing that the adaptation period was approaching, I rushed to the shelves and asked Feng Shaofeng and Zhang Jingchu to start filming "Three-Body Problem". The early filming was completed in August 2015, and the film was scheduled to be released in July 2016, leaving less than one year for the later period.
"The Wandering Earth", which is much smaller than "The Three-Body Problem", has been produced for more than a year. This rush-made "The Three-Body Problem" movie can also imagine what quality it will be with your toes.
Later, under pressure from multiple parties, the production team canceled the release plan for the movie "Three-Body Problem".
In early August 2020, Tencent revealed at its annual press conference that it will shoot the TV series "Three-Body Problem" . While releasing the concept poster, it also officially announced the starring lineup: Yu Hewei, Zhang Luyi, Wang Ziwen, Li Xiaoran , etc. Although they are all big names, as of now, only media reports that the series has started filming in June this year, and it is impossible to know how the filming progress is.
is quite joking. When the genuine version is nowhere to be seen, a copycat version of "Three Breaks: Return of Mars" that appeared in 2016, was first released.
After being criticized by netizens, this video may have been self-aware of being unreasonable, or perhaps in order to avoid risks, it took the initiative to remove the word "Three Breaks" in the poster. Now, looking at Douban again, the title of the film is "Return of Mars".
04. "The Wandering Earth" became popular
At the beginning of 2019, "The Wandering Earth" became popular.
Before the Spring Festival, this movie was not favored because family-friendly movies are the favorites of the Spring Festival. This kind of hard science fiction works have limited audiences, let alone labeling them as domestic.
But as a result, "The Wandering Earth" came from behind and became a hit.
No need to say how popular this film is, to give the simplest example, in March of that year, Cameron came to China to promote the new science fiction work "Alita", and Liu Cixin was invited to participate. When the two talked, the three words of Ka God were inseparable from his admiration for "The Three-Body Problem".
Liu Cixin has been an electrician 20 years ago to now chatting and laughing with Cameron, all of this is written by him one by one.
56-year-old Liu Cixin sat there, looking back at the past with affectionate eyes, her eyes full of shadows when she was in her 30s.
That year, "Titanic" was popular in the mainland, and Cameron became the god of card. The little electrician never thought that one day he could sit with him and chat.
That year, the electrician was always walking alone on the way off work with his bicycle. Outsiders seemed to him as an alien, but there was a dark forest in his heart, and the stars were surging in his eyes!
Everything back then was a dream, and now Netflix is going to realize it one by one!
05. A stone from another mountain can be used to polish jade
Of course, the novel "Three-Body Problem" will still be criticized by many people for being filmed by Americans.
For example, Netflix's market is mainly in the United States. Will the protagonist become white people, will the theme become the usual "love&peace" of Americans? Some people even worry that the "Three-Body Problem" series will also be swallowed up by Americans, causing "the loss of state-owned assets"?
In Pi Ge's opinion, such worries are really redundant. Just as Liu himself said, "The Three-Body Problem" is a story that transcends time, country, culture, and race. It is a story that prompts us to consider the fate of all mankind. In this dimension, it would be too petty to fight for whether the protagonist is Chinese or American.
Over the years, we have always emphasized "cultural output" , hoping that foreigners will come to China to study, but they will not buy it at all.
Results A video of Li Ziqi immediately captured the hearts of foreigners, and a game video of "Black Myth: Wukong" triggered a collective orgasm in the United States on YouTube.
Pi Ge understood that the real "cultural output" is not a crazy spending money or a cramming force, but a "silent" penetration.
The Three-Body Body is the best cultural output . No matter whether the protagonist is a white face or a yellow face, as long as Netflix can shoot high-quality dramas, it is to give us Chinese people a face. Perhaps the "Three-Body Body Universe" can compete with the American "Marvel Universe" and "DC Universe" in the future!
"The Three-Body Problem" was handed over to Netfei for filming. You said it was a regret, but I said it was a kind of luck.
We are looking forward to it, and we hope that the "Three-Body Problem" we can see in a few years is an epic masterpiece comparable to "Game of Thrones"!
text/Pipi Movie Editorial Department: Yiji
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