It has been a year since the TV series "Three-Body Problem" was launched, and Douban 8 at the end of the show1 point, has climbed to 87, ranked second in the list of highest-rated Chinese dramas on Douban in 2023. On February 10 this year, the first day of the Lunar New Year, it will log on to the new ** platform of the American film and television giant NBC Universal (NBC Universal) and broadcast it online, becoming one of the few domestic dramas that can log on to the new ** platform of mainstream TV stations in the United States.
If it is said that starting from "The Wandering Earth", Chinese science fiction films officially set sail, then "The Three-Body Problem" is the starting point of the era of Chinese science fiction dramas. In the past year, Yang Lei, the director of "Three-Body Problem", received at least one sci-fi TV series script, and "Three-Body Problem 2: Dark Forest" also began preparation. In the opinion of him, a "hardcore three-body fan", the second part of course has difficulties, but it is easier than "starting from scratch".
Three-Body Problem" director Yang Lei Photo provided by the interviewee.
The following is Yang Lei's self-statement:
Science fiction is just a coat
Last year I took a lot of classes, science, history, philosophy, aesthetics, ......A lot of the content is not directly related to the shooting itself, but they will help me understand the world more deeply, and think from perspectives that I may not have thought of before, which will invisibly affect my creation, after all, "The Three-Body Problem" is not a simple film and television work, I hope that when I shoot the second part, I can express it more calmly.
For example, in June, I studied ancient Greek and Roman history in one go. Of course, this is only enough time to understand the surface, but at least it makes my view of history more complete, and if I want to understand today's world civilization, I can't avoid Western history. The underlying logic of Westerners speaking and doing things is buried deep in their philosophy and history.
Not long ago, there was a philosophy class that woke me up in particular. The teacher said that our Chinese philosophy is different from Western philosophy, and Western philosophy has one of the deepest characteristics - duality, which is the basis for them to think about all issues, duality is clear good and bad, black and white. So if you look at their popular film and television works, no matter how they change the form, they are basically good guys beating bad guys. This is the underlying logic of Western dualism, the state of Western cognition, and the way we Chinese think.
What is the underlying logic of Chinese philosophy? It is yin and yang, and although yin and yang are opposites, they are a kind of unity and can be mutualized. At this time, look at the "Three-Body Problem" series, do you say Ye Wenjie is a good person or a bad person? Look at Cheng Xin and Vader again, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? It's hard to judge with dualistic thinking, and even three-body people and protons, can they be said to be bad? They are just a race that is trying their best to survive in the universe. Therefore, the book "The Three-Body Problem" can have so many fans all over the world, and it must have its own very thick underlying philosophy in it. Not only philosophy, but also sociology, anthropology, psychology ...... in the book
I think this is one of the points that solve the problem - when making science fiction works, you can't just focus on science fiction itself. Asimov wrote the entire history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire with "The Base", so the West enshrined him on the altar, and the power of this work is not in the form of science fiction, but in what exactly the author wants to write.
Some people say that 2023 is the first year of Chinese science fiction dramas, probably influenced by the "Three-Body Problem" TV series. Half of them come and say, "This story is a wasteland," and others say, "I'm going to make cyberpunk," "I'm going to make a space opera," and "I'm going to make a time travel," like "Dark" (a German sci-fi drama produced by Netflix)......."Now everyone is quite familiar with these sci-fi concepts, in fact, you can do whatever genre you want, it's not that important, what I'm most concerned about is, what is the core? Science fiction is just the "coat" of the story, it is not the goal, so, wearing this coat, what do you want to express? If you can't say it, you just know that you want to do science fiction, then you can't talk about it that day.
In the 60s of the last century, there was a period of economic depression in the West, and the unemployment rate of young people was very high, and they expressed their hearts in a naked way with great dissatisfaction, and punk culture was born. After that, science fiction writers began to reflect on highly mechanical civilizations, creating the genre of science fiction literature "cyberpunk". "Space Opera" is a space race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 50s of the last century, which inspired writers' imagination of space travel and space adventure. It can be said that every science fiction concept created by Westerners is closely related to their social and cultural life at that time, they have a core to express, and for Western readers and audiences, they have a sense of cultural identity with these concepts from the heart.
We can certainly borrow their sci-fi concepts, but what are they intended to express? Think about it. To be honest, I think it is difficult for these Western science fiction concepts to be grafted on the Chinese cultural soil, because there is no similar science fiction feeling in our history and culture.
In fact, before "The Three-Body Problem", there were science fiction dramas in China, but they were not "seen" by everyone, so many viewers will think that "The Three-Body Problem" is the first Chinese science fiction drama. "The Three-Body Problem" can be successful, or because the story itself has the cultural background of Chinese themselves, more than a dozen thought experiments original by Da Liu, describing our own worldview and values, I think science fiction landing in China, must be combined with China's own culture. Our "Three-Body Problem" TV series can be accepted by everyone, probably because we choose to be completely loyal to the original work and shoot it in a realistic way, which can be regarded as creating our own science fiction drama creation ideas.
The first work photo of the Three-Body Problem is provided by the interviewee.
"Three-Body Problem 2: Dark Forest".
Last year, I read the "Three-Body Problem" trilogy, which totals more than 900,000 words, from beginning to end, pondering how to visualize the words in the book as I read it. Many people asked me how I planned to shoot the second part, and like the first part, I shot it according to the book. I think such a great work will be remade countless times in the future, and we, as first-time photographers, still try to maintain the original flavor of the book.
The protagonist Luo Ji in the second part will see the world after 205 years of crisis, everyone may think that this is difficult to film, in fact, the second part is very clear in terms of text performance, it is very conflicting, and the science fiction elements are also richer, and the chain of suspicion, the dark forest ......The philosophical issues discussed are more acute, these are all points that will touch people's hearts, and the rest is that our main creative team will use the collective wisdom to present the content of the book with reasonable money.
At present, the part that needs a lot of discussion from our main creative team is how to represent the technological level of the book in 2010. When Da Liu wrote "Three-Body Problem 2: Dark Forest", 2010 was still in the future, and he had a lot of bold science fantasy. For example, the construction of space elevators has already begun, such as Zhang Beihai, who shot five scientists in space with meteorite bullets. Today, the future depicted by Da Liu has become our past, and we now know that not to mention 2010, even in 2024, human technology has not yet reached that level. So, to what extent is the underlying logic of human science in 2010 in the play? It's about every aspect of the film, and even what the phones people use look like. We must combine it with the real year 2010, but we can't completely copy the reality in history, and we still have to think a lot about how to grasp this degree.
Compared with the reality that has already happened, the construction of the future scene after more than 200 years is actually not very difficult, after all, everyone has experienced it.
Twenty or thirty years of baptism in the future of Western science fiction film and television, has basically formed a set of future science fiction aesthetic system accepted by the audience, we don't need to subvert it, there are also a lot of descriptions of the future in the book, we don't have to invent it ourselves. We are on the existing aesthetic system, and it is okay to graft and continue for "Three-Body Problem 2", but the investment has become larger, which is undoubtedly a thing.
When we were filming the first part, we did most of the 2007 Beijing scenes in Hengdian, which was quite cost-effective. In the second part, the original city has been buried in the desert, and if you want to shoot Beijing, you probably have to go to the northwest to find a place, and you really can't save money.
At present, we are still discussing the script, and we hope to start preparations for the closure by the end of this year. The first part took years from the establishment of the group, filming to the later stage, and it is estimated that it will take so long for the second part with strong conflict and big opening and closing, and it needs to be very well prepared, and the filming of "Three-Body Problem" is to endure loneliness. From the director's point of view, I feel that the most difficult is "Three-Body Problem 3: Death Eternal". To be honest, I know how to shoot the battle in Constantinople at the beginning, but the infinite details of the four-dimensional space in the book, the moment when the two-way foil comes into contact with the three-dimensional universe, make the latter collapse into the two-dimensional world, ......I haven't figured out how to shoot yet.
Human beings are spiders living in the web of their own cognition, and we know how big the web is, and we cannot imagine the world beyond the "web". What is a four-dimensional, five-dimensional, or even eleven-dimensional space? Words can describe it in any way, but when it comes to visualization, I think it's almost impossible to do it as a three-dimensional creature. Maybe one day when the technology advances when we start shooting, many problems will be solved, and then we can think about it.