336 Adaptation
While "The Three-Body Problem 2" movie is selling like hotcakes, the peripheral products of the film are also being sold at the same time, and the most important part of these sales is naturally the novel "The Three-Body Problem 2."
This novel also started selling after the movie was released. Thanks to the movie's popularity, it became extremely popular. When people read the novel, they can't help but admire that the story is excellent, and adapting it into a movie is a very wise choice.
However, only the crew who actually participated knew how troublesome the adaptation process of this movie was.
A movie can attract enough audiences because its plot is attractive enough. If half of the movie's characters are popular because of the actors' performances, then the remaining half must be the writing of the script.
Not all good novels can be adapted into screenplays. After all, movies and books are different mediums.
And this script makes people feel very good after watching the movie, which obviously has a lot to do with the script.
The story of "The Three-Body Problem" is an adapted script. The original author is Chinese, and the story is also a novel. Downey knows all these things. Few people would notice how much effort it takes to adapt a movie script from a novel to a screenplay, but Downey had read the novel carefully before, and he knew very well how many changes had been made to the script.
The workload of adapting the story of this movie itself is huge.
Compared with the first part of "The Three-Body Problem," the second part's story is far less compact than the first part.
Compared with the first part, where the story revolves around the deceased from beginning to end, with several clues spiraling together and then spreading branches and leaves, forming the climax, the storytelling of the second novel is actually much worse.
This novel is difficult to adapt: although its quality is not low as a science fiction work, the weak plot makes it have significant shortcomings.
The first "Three-Body Problem" novel can be carried out from beginning to end with the plot of a detective drama. However, the plot was too scattered in the second part, making adapting difficult.
The four scattered Wallfacers, the Chinese general, the United Nations, and the lives of ordinary people on Earth constantly appear among them; these aspects are equivalent to dividing a story into six or seven branches - for a novel, this kind of writing is slightly scattered, let alone turning it into a movie.
It is precisely because there are too many troubles in fully displaying the novel's original plot that Levi also has to make some changes.
He deleted some redundant things, such as combining the Chinese general and his descendants into one person, omitting future history, briefly mentioning the project to monitor the Trisolarans, and weakening some of the more prominent technologies in the original plot.
Even if many branches have been cut, the movie still has many scientific elements. Although it is a science fiction movie, many parts of the movie are fantasy technologies. However, in this movie, whenever it involves existing technology, it still takes a lot of scientific and technological knowledge into consideration.
Movies are different from novels. In novels, this technological knowledge can be imagined and described as much as you want, but in movies, the space is limited, so naturally, one can only pick out the more important ones.
Although these things cannot be said to be unimportant, they deviate far from the core main line. So Levi naturally just passed by.
Doing so does not affect the scientific pursuit of the film. After the movie was released, many people praised the scenes of silent space and unprecedented weightlessness.
In the movie, theoretical physics is elevated to the level of the most important human science, and at the same time, the mission of saving mankind is handed over to the social sciences.
Such an approach also made those scholars full of praise.
Of course, in addition to this, he also changed some things that had to be changed because of the adaptation of the first film.
For example, in the first part, the movie already said that the Trisolarans completely gave up on their planet, which could be destroyed at any time, and wanted to immigrate as a whole to go to Earth.
At the same time, the first part also said that the Trisolaran people's technology has not detected other planets that can be immigrated.
Therefore, in the second part, the bargaining chip used by the sociologist to negotiate with the Trisolaran people naturally becomes the safety of the solar system. After all, this is the only choice for the Trisolaran people.
Of course, another thing is that in the novel, Susanna revealed the information to the sociologist, but in the movie, it was changed to Susanna's daughter - after all, in the first film, he had already changed some of the character's image.
Then, he added some plots, such as expanding the death of Rey Diaz into a political conspiracy and Hines's wife being a Wallbreaker into something that he already knew about, to strengthen the ideological conflict in the movie.
This intensification of contradictions seems to be a scolding of human society. However, this approach also makes people gradually accept the idea that there are inherent suspicions and disputes between people.
Because of this, the sociologist's ideas will be quickly accepted by the audience in the end.
If humans have always been united, believe in each other, and are harmonious, united, and friendly, then this theory lacks a foundation.
The mutual suspicion between people, especially the mutual suspicion and selfishness before the end of the world, is a profound human nature, and this selfishness is the same when it extends to the universe.
Levi's deletions and modifications were mainly aimed at connecting the stories together. Although Liu's original work is very good, it lacks a clear enough main line, which is a big problem.
After Levi changed it, he highlighted the various suspicions and contradictions in the novel and then, through the protagonist, raised it from the contradictions in the small environment of the contradictions of the people on Earth to the contradictions in the universe.
It can be said that it uses the main idea to tie the movie together.
In fact, if we take it seriously, the dark forest theory in "Three-Body Problem 2" is just a hypothetical theory after all. Liu's research on social sciences is not particularly in-depth, and this theory also has many shortcomings.
If the focus of film portrayal becomes the theory of portrayal, then no matter how good the film is, the film's theory is also difficult to hold up. If the final core theory of a big production is questioned, then the overall style of the movie will be low.
However, Levi changed its focus to the excavation of human nature before the end by echoing the previous ones, and the depth of the film naturally changed.
Some of these changes are simple. Some are not easy.
For example, the sociologist is asked to smile as the Wallfacer in the final stage of the movie. In order to echo him, this smile must be strengthened in the previous stage.
In order to move the scene of direct dialogue between the sociologist and Trisolarans to the United Nations headquarters to make this declaration even more exciting, the Wallfacers before him also had to fall here one after another.
These changes are equivalent to strengthening the seriality of stories and reducing the scientific content of some stories. The movie is more beautiful through this method.
The production method of science fiction movies is destined to undergo heavy commercialization. Only then can it be made well. It's impossible without thinking about how to make money.
Being able to take into account different sciences at the same time and also have a good plot, only screenwriters who have been hosting such professional TV series for many years can combine these elements organically.
And after putting it together, you have to write it very rhythmically.
The plots of some movies are very enjoyable, but after the enjoyment is over, there seems to be nothing left. Watching these movies for the first time felt very enjoyable, but after watching them for the second time, it felt a bit boring. In a movie like this, the fight scenes might be beautiful. The action scenes may be amazing, but a movie that cannot stand up to repeated viewings is not a classic.
Movies inferior to this one are those where you can predict the plot just by watching. Even worse are those films where the story becomes obvious from the start, and people already know the plot by the end.
The quality of a movie's narrative determines whether it is good to watch. This is also a very critical issue.
There is another kind of movie that always makes people feel very depressed from start to finish. The feeling of depression keeps getting stronger and thicker, and it is not until the last moment that this depression is released.
Of course, some of the more ridiculous movies are just suppressed from the beginning to the end, without even the stage of catharsis... Such movies generally have good reviews but rarely have a good box office. After all, not many people will particularly like the depressing atmosphere after watching a movie.
But this movie handles this aspect very well.
The story of the movie itself can be said to be quite depressing.
From beginning to end, the movie tells the story of a human being struggling to survive in an oppressed environment. Humans have almost never succeeded in this process, and several plans have failed.
Human beings themselves are still killing each other in this process.
Even under the alien army's pressure, there are still a lot of issues on Earth. Traitors emerge, countries plot against each other, and different cultures still hate each other — it stands to reason that this story is a rather dark one.
If the filming is true to the situation in the novel, the entire movie will be very depressing until the last moment. Humans continue to fail, suffer heavy losses, and despair. They don't even have the strength to struggle and only come back at the last moment.
Although the final comeback can give people a lot of pleasure, as a movie audience, are we willing to endure more than two hours of depression? This in itself is a big problem.
After all, a movie is not a novel. It needs to rely on its own scenes to grasp the audience's emotions.
When watching this story in the movie, people at least don't have such a depressing feeling.
The pace of the movie has always been well-controlled. After a plan that is too dark, there will always be some laughable moments. After a failure that is too painful, there will always be some new hope for people to look forward to.
These methods make the movie look very good and rhythmic.
Light and shadow are intertwined, and people's moods are constantly changing. Only in this way can the movie perform well.
If it had remained dark, the main tone of the movie would not be so lovable. In this way, even if the character has bright spots, he can only become a good actor in people's hearts rather than a popular idol.
However, a movie has pictures, actors, and twists and turns in the plot, coupled with new broadcast methods, giving the audience a completely different viewing experience. The combination of these things makes it possible for this movie to have a good box office.
Of course, Levi's ambitions extend beyond the box office.
*****
Thanks and kudos for my patreons
Marcelo Maia
Britanna
Mandy G
Oluwatimileyin Olayemi
Herylle Ian Gloria
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