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Netflix Review: 3 Body Problem

pgjacksonpgjackson Posts: 18,975 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

No doubt that if you watch Netflix you have heard about this new mind-blowing sci-fi show 3 Body Problem. It has been getting a ton of press lately and NetFlix is really pushing it as the next great show. It's produced by the makers of Game of Thrones, so immediately it had may attention. It even stars Samwell Tarley, Sir Davos the Onion Knight, and The High Sceptor actors. Anyway, I gave it a shot.

Spoiler alert: It starts off interestingly enough….a Chinese physicist makes contact with aliens in the 1960s. The alien says stop broadcasting or we will get you. The scientist continues and today now it hits the fan. The aliens are from a planet that is in chaos and have to find elsewhere to live. They are able to communicate with Earth through a helmet video game and have established a supercomputer device that can control and watch everything happening on Earth. However, the catch is the aliens won't arrive for 400 years. Everyone on Earth is in panic mode now trying to figure out what is going on, is this real, and what to do defend the planet.

It's all pretty nonsense. The reviews have all been positive, pushing it as some intellectually advanced program and if you don't like it that means you don't understand the physics behind it. To me, it's another lame attempt to be smart and edgy, with a cast of moody, smarmy 20-something super-intellectuals who mostly mope about, whine, and generally act entitled and lazy.

One scene that is particularly absurd, disturbing, and just unnecessary is when they destroy a tanker ship that has been outfitted as a floating city for a community of people who follow the alien orders and have direct contact with the aliens. They decide they need to access the ship to get data on alien contact. They decide they don't want to board the ship or send in a military unit because there are thousands of civilian men, women and children living on the ship and there could be bloodshed. So, the plan then is to use a new nanotechnology than can slice through any material. They set up basically a giant cheese slicer in the Panama Canal to cut the ship as it pass through. And it works perfectly….slices the ship into hundreds of thin strips, and horrifically murders every man, woman, and child on board as well as leaves a massive wreckage in the canal. Miraculously, they find the storage device in this mess and the story continues as if nothing happened. No moral, politial, or ethical ramifications for murdering thousands in plain view and shredding an oiltanker in the Panama Canal. the story just goes on to the next scene. This is where the show lost me.

Anyway, I watched all 8 episodes hoping it would get better, but it doesn't. Mostly just ridiculous situations answered with overly convenient solutions that bare to semblance to reality (like launching a frozen human brain at the approaching alien armada and hoping to intercept them in about 100 years….). Yeah, it's sci-fi….but this show so far is just nonsensical.

Huge disappointment from the GoT folks.

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Comments

  • donniemdonniem Posts: 7,126 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Thanks, PG. You've saved me from potentially wasting a little to a lot of time watching this. I think I'd rather watch Walker, Texas Ranger re-runs.

  • lifelongdawglifelongdawg Posts: 27 ✭✭✭ Junior

    As you alluded to, I think it targets a younger intellectual demographic (particularly science folk). As a millennial biologist I have enjoyed the first few episodes. However, I'd think of Chuck Norris reruns as a waste of time, so to each his own.

  • pgjacksonpgjackson Posts: 18,975 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    They are trying to market this show as intellectually stimulating….which it really isn't. Just another space alien show, but not as well thought out, logical, and interesting. I mean, I don't get the launching the frozen brain at the alien armada plot line. And within a few days they have a whole launch rocket built, a massive custom-made, nano-tech solar sail, and nuclear bombs strategically placed along the route for propulsion…come on. Pure silliness.

  • swilkerson7317swilkerson7317 Posts: 2,905 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Anybody watch Master's of the Air on Apple TV. I realize most dont have Apple TV but man was it fantastic.

    I know you are a former Marine @pgjackson so thought it might be right up your alley.

    Maxwell AFB had a private screening of the last two episodes. Apple made it available to them before it aired. Had a couple of Tuskegee Airmen there to talk about the show.

    Was a great series and highly recommend to anyone into historical period pieces. Which I really enjoy. Make a movie about a super hero flying around in a cape saving the world. Im not interested. Make a movie or series about B-17 pilots during WWII. Im interested big time.

  • donniemdonniem Posts: 7,126 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Me too. I love historical shows, especially WWII, since that was my dad's war. Shows about flight are most interesting to me - my dad was a P-51 pilot back in his day - shot down 3 Messerschmitts before he was shot down. Spent 14 months in a POW camp before the war ended. He had some great stories, although he never seemed that eager to share many.

  • swilkerson7317swilkerson7317 Posts: 2,905 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Since that is the case you would really enjoy this show. It's based on historical figures from the time.

    10 guys on each B-17 and most of them didn't make it. Yet they still went when asked. That is what a hero looks like to me. Not some idiot in a cape lol.

  • pgjacksonpgjackson Posts: 18,975 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Bomber pilots were nuts! Little known football connection….Tom Landry was a 30-mission B-17 pilot in WWII before playing football at Texas. Right out of HS, straight to piloting bombers over Germany with 30 combat missions. A real hero.

  • pgjacksonpgjackson Posts: 18,975 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    I'll look for it! I love a good history show, especially anything about combat and/or airplanes. My dad was a P-3 pilot during Vietnam before he became a doctor. My grandfather was a Navy Senior Chief engine mechanic during WWII. He claims to have worked with Pappy Boyington in the Pacific. He died before I joined the Marines and I never to got to ask him about that. I did 20 years in Marine Aircraft Maintenance. Aviation is in my blood.

  • donniemdonniem Posts: 7,126 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Interesting. My dad was also an excellent mechanic - after the war he worked for the Navy as a civilian mechanic on whatever jets were assigned to the Alameda Naval Air Station. He could fix just about anything and opened up a gas station where he, very unsuccessfully, tried to teach me about mechanical things. I might as well have had 10 thumbs when it came to that kind of stuff.

    One of his more amazing feats, at least to me, was when he retired from fixing jets for the Navy, with only a HS education, he somehow figured out how to use surveying tools and the math associated with surveying and put in an irrigation system on the back half of his property - not sure if that was called a transit or not, but the acreage was level and the water flowed perfectly down the rows of veggies/fruit trees he subsequently planted.

    I. too, love a good history show more than just about anything.

  • swilkerson7317swilkerson7317 Posts: 2,905 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    I'll look for it! I love a good history show, especially anything about combat and/or airplanes.

    This checks those boxes. The scenes of the bombing runs over Germany are intense. They dont sugar coat it either.

  • TNDawg71TNDawg71 Posts: 2,228 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    I enjoyed the season, it's different and not cookie cutter. Obviously it's far-fetched at times, but I think if you like sci-fi I'd give it a chance.

  • Michael_ScarnMichael_Scarn Posts: 1,606 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate
    edited April 10

    I could barely get through the first episode. Bailed on it and won't return.

    If you're looking for something that has a well crafted story and brilliant casting then look no further than The Gentlemen, on Netflix. Outstanding! Ripley is creepy, but the cinematography is incredible. It's also on Netflix.

  • pgjacksonpgjackson Posts: 18,975 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    I had such high hopes because it's produced by the GoT people, and I love GoT. This this seems to be written by some smarmy college kids who took an Astrophysics 101 class and think they are uber-smart now. The only thing saving the show is Sir Davos. He is really good.

    I've seen the ads for The Gentlemen. I'll check it out. I'm binge-watching Vikings again right now. I have discovered that watching Netflix with subtitles helps a lot. Much easier to follow the story. So many whispered lines and hard to understand accents.

  • how2fishhow2fish Posts: 3,903 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    The Gentlemen was very good and just read that there will be a second season. Masters of the Air was very good , I have to hand it to Hanks and Spielberg they do the WW11 shows to great effect. One of my best friends father flew 25 missions as a door gunner in the same outfit as the Memphis Belle. He was a great guy and a father figure to me, but he would never talk about the war. He moved to Atlanta after the war and ran a dealerships garage for 30 years, He and his surviving crewmembers had a annual fishing trip to PC every year and that's how I got hooked on deep sea fishing. Two of my younger uncles were mud Marines in the first and 4th Marines between the two of them they were in nearly all of the major island campaigns. My mothers oldest brother served on a "jeep carrier" and was at Okinawa during the kamikaze attacks. He came home at 23 with completely white hair. My oldest uncle was in the Army part of the D day invasion and was given a battle field commission in France, he was killed in Germany at the very end of the war and I only ever knew of him by family stories and the letters he sent home to my grandparents and family. Watching the Pacific and Band of Brothers , and Masters of the Air has given me a greater understanding of what those men endured .

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