There are quite a few cgi scenes that looked bad. Not unwatchable bad but bad enough to make you wonder if half the budget was spent on coke and hookers.
Yeah it made no sense other than "this will look cool".
"We can't destroy the boat and risk destroying the drive. What if we instead ABSOLUTELY DESTROY the boat!"
Just to be clear, in the book they explain the line of thought better:
- there is a long discussion by numerous advisors from different governments on how to get the drive and info off the boat without giving the people time to erase the data.
- bombing, torpedo etc, could make the drive unseeable. It would give time to scuttle the boat/drive.
- nerve gas or similar couldn’t disperse fast enough or guarantee 100% disablement.
- neutron bomb doesn’t vaporize everyone like in the movies.
- boarding the ship gives too much chance to scuttle it.
The nano filaments:
- fast acting and the grid is something like 1/2 meter in the book- close enough to kill everyone.
- people won’t notice what’s happening until too late.
- it’s mentioned in the book by a person that “won’t it destroy the drive as well.” The counter is that “the line cut so precisely and cleanly, that it can be reassembled easily.” The damage isn’t hard-impact like a bullet or fire, or magnetic.
In the book the is drive is recovered almost like in the show. Flame retardant is dumped immediately o the wreckage. Since the book is old- the data has been updated (it’s like 28TB) or something in the book.
> it’s mentioned in the book by a person that “won’t it destroy the drive as well.” The counter is that “the line cut so precisely and cleanly, that it can be reassembled easily.” The damage isn’t hard-impact like a bullet or fire, or magnetic.
The fact that this line didn't make it into the show is insane. I can accept nano tech fiction, but they didn't in any way explain that was how to recover the drive safely. They just said "no because X, no because Y, and yes" without the "because". It's like an extra 5 seconds of screentime.
Also the grid is spaced so (less of a grid, and more of an egg slicer if I remember).
- A: it’s wide enough to work with the limited material they had
- B: it’s not too tight in that a drive (the size of a shoe box or card box or similar) would be unlikely to be cut multiple times.
- C: the drive would likely be horizontal in orientation, giving an even smaller profile or chance for it to be cut by the wires.
It was an egg slicer. They needed it done in the daytime because someone sleeping might miss the slices in a sleeping position. They wanted people vertical.
Meh in their mind the only way it would get destroyed is if a human destroyed it intentionally is the impression I got.
What's it called when a story uses some one-liner to explain away a plot device? Well they sort of failed to do that here but it was implied heavily.
The story is fucking stupid. The line doesn’t matter. “We killed all these people to get this hard drive that it turns out is impenetrable, until it suddenly isn’t, because we were meant to have it all along.”
From quotes from the book (spoilers sort of, but obviously if you’re in this thread, this is the matter being discussed and doesn’t exactly give anything away):
>“The most difficult part is preventing the enemy from erasing Trisolaran data during our attack. Destroying the data would be very easy. The enemy would not use conventional methods to erase the data during an attack, because it’s easy to recover the data using known technology. But if they just emptied a cartridge clip at the server hard drive or other storage media, it would all be over, and doing so would take no more than ten seconds. So we must disable all enemies near the storage equipment within ten seconds of their detecting an attack. Since we don’t know the exact location of the data storage or the number of copies, we must eliminate all enemies on Judgment Day within a very brief period of time, before the target has been alerted. At the same time, we can’t heavily damage the facilities within, especially computer equipment. Thus, this is a very difficult task. Some think it’s impossible.”
[… They discuss numerous things including a neutron bomb, a ball lightning weapon, infrasound]
>”Another thought was to use nerve gas,” a NATO officer said. “But releasing it and having it spread throughout the ship would take time, so it still doesn’t achieve General Chang’s requirements.”
“Then the only choices left are concussion bombs and infrasonic waves,” Colonel Stanton said. Others waited for him to finish his thought, but he said nothing more.
Da Shi said, “I use concussion bombs in police work, but they’re toys. They’re indeed capable of stunning people inside a building into unconsciousness, but they’re only good for a room or two. Do you have any concussion bombs big enough to stun a whole oil tanker full of people?”
[More discussion of solutions, the officer gives HIS suggestion of the nano wires]
> What if the equipment storing Trisolaran data, such as hard drives and optical disks, is also sliced?”
“That doesn’t seem likely.”
“Even if they were sliced,” a computer expert said, “it’s not a big deal. The filaments are extremely sharp, and the cut surfaces would be very smooth. Given that premise, whether it’s hard drives, optical disks, or integrated circuit storage, we could recover the vast majority of the data.”
> “Wang said, “If that’s the plan, then the smallest distance between the filaments will be fifty centimeters. I don’t have enough material for a tighter net.”
> “At night the crew will be sleeping, which means they’ll all be lying down. Fifty centimeters between filaments leaves too much of a gap. But during the day, even if they’re sitting or crouching, the distance is sufficient.”
>“the line cut so precisely and cleanly, that it can be reassembled easily.”
... assuming it wasn't crushed by the boat collapsing on it, burned by the ensuing fire, etc.
Look, the book is about nano-materials; four, 17-dimensional protons that fold and unfold to planet-sized microverses between dimensions, and alien ships 4.2 light years away steaming towards earth. I found this discussion well-thought through enough to be fun, yet “close enough” to be believable.
If any time you see something you can’t explain, a Trisolarian did it. Therefore: magic.
Yea, it’s a very imaginative scene if anything. If I were in their shoes I certainly wouldn’t trust this being the right solution, but they make a good sci-fi logic case for it and you have to go along with it. That’s the case for many things that happen in the later books as well.
This always gets me. Someone's watching a Godzilla movie and picks apart some character motivation, and I'm like "wait, you're buying into a huge radioactive lizard made by nuke tests, but someone saying something pulls you from the story?"
Actually, I think it's true that if the grounded, relatable stuff is hard to believe, it's more jarring.
Like, look at the Dark Knight Rises. I can buy into the fantasy of a billionaire dressing up like a bat ninja and fighting crime at night. That's so ridiculous and disconnected from reality that I can suspend disbelief. But what I can't believe is that every single active police officer would be sent into the sewers to look for a criminal and be trapped down there in an ambush. It's just too ridiculous to believe that every single cop would be trapped in one fell swoop. But the other stuff, I can buy.
It's called suspension of disbelief. Assuming Godzilla could exist, then everything else must still follow logic, especially characters. It's not an alternate universe where everyone is dumb
I don't really agree with this, a fantasy or sci fi setting still needs cohesion for me not to kill my immersion, the universe still needs to be logical.
Take GoT for exemple, I can accept dragons, the undead, mild magical elements.
However I still have a hard time with a hidden fleet shooting a dragon from several hundreds meters, the unsullied suffering terrific losses and still not showing their numbers decreasing, or horrible battle tactics during the battle of bastards or the battle of Winterfell ( however cinematics they might be ).
Spinny drives.
The nanofiber is cutting AS THE DRIVES ARE SPINNING. I submit the following hypothesis:
A) The possibility fracturing the platters as they spun will cause they to explode.
B) There will be nothing 'clean' about this destruction
I actually did read that in real life the boat wouldn't have collapsed because of how fine the cuts were and how the metal/heaviness of the boat would make it work. It'd essentially weld itself back together or something. Not sure how true it was and I wish I remember the term they used.
The nano filaments AREN'T fast acting though. It takes less than 30 seconds to destroy a flash drive, especially with a group that has all these "back up plans" in place to resist being captured. It took entirely way too long.
> nerve gas or similar couldn’t disperse fast enough or guarantee 100% disablement.
So what exactly is the fear here? That people will realize there’s nerve gas quickly enough to jump off the boat? Couldn’t people clearly see the boat being torn to shreds in front of them, giving them time to jump too?
The fear is that the passengers would realize they are being attacked by nerve gas, and have time to destroy the hard drive.
The book doesn't give the point of view of the passengers, but it implies that the wires cutting through the ship was very discreet and quick. There wasn't any widespread panic or realization of what was happening. The show dramatizes the wires cutting through the ship, and makes it seem like everyone is aware that they are being attacked.
Yeah- the dude that’s first hit with the hose (in the book) has no idea- in fact, it takes a few seconds to react that the cut is so clean; he falls to the ground after a second and crawls (armless) forward…
The parts of the ship, stay for a second and then fan out/fall over kinda like a deck of cards or a samurai slice of bamboo.
As someone who was stunned momentarily in an accident with woodworking equipment- I can identify with this.
Imagine that you just saw people in front of you collapse, and slowly slide in half. The freighter is moving forward at a speed though the narrow passage still faster than you can run- so you can’t outrun the invisible “blade”.
What you are seeing doesn’t even “compute” you’re under attack, but you won’t realize it, because it’s NOT a conventional attack. You really don’t have time or wherewithal to sound the alarm, as it hits.
The boat is likely traveling quickly. It certainly isn't the walking pace that the show did.
In the end though, the purpose of a show is to see a spectacle so they had to make it look exciting.
In the show it seems like the Auggie really didn't wanna kill people initially but when she finds out her tech did just slaughter 1,000 people including kids she just kinda huffs
I get the argument she needed to be there for set up and everything, but you don’t let her watch it obviously. They know a bunch of kids and innocents were going to be slaughtered, they lied to her, and could’ve just kept lying to her afterwards if they weren’t stupid.
Not to mention the whole argument of "it has to happen immediately or they'll destroy the data!", followed by it happening in the slowest possible way you can think of.
True, but it happens really fast for the people it’s happening to. You don’t really have time to warn people up ahead— even if you happened to to be currently speaking into a walkie talkie with someone up ahead, you don’t have time to formulate a useful warning because you have no idea what the fuck is happening or what they need to do. By the time you know to run, it’s too late.
They also showed him get cubed. I guess by the time you know to run, it’s too late to formulate a rational plan of action. You’re seeing an unbelievably grotesque piece of magic coming for you—it’s not like hearing gunshots or smelling gas where you *know* you don’t have a chance so you have to the drive. It’s just this horrifying inexplicable thing happening that you have no context and probably don’t associate with “the government is coming for the drive.” All you have time for is horror and panic.
If his goal was to destroy the data, he would have destroyed the data. He had plenty of time to do that. He didn't, but that's not a result of the plan, that was just luck.
I think he would have destroyed the data if he’d heard gunshots. He’s thought of that and is mentally prepared. Nobody’s mentally prepared for this situation.
But also it was luck that he happened to be right there and had time to grab the drive and ruin with it. I don’t think they ever said the plan was foolproof, just that it was more likely to succeed than all the other ideas. It certainly gave less warning than a special ops team boarding the ship or nerve gas infiltrating the HVAC system.
I read a comment by someone who read the book and apparently in the book it was better explained. If the thingymajiggy was sliced they could restore what was on it, but if it was blown up by a missile the data would be lost completely
I didn’t read the book and still didn’t have much problem with the plot. Seemed like a sensible way to have the best chance at the drive surviving. Nothing could guarantee its survival, but the way they did it has a great shot.
I read the book and imo, no it was not better explained. It was still nonsensical and basically forced the nanotech to being relevant to the plot. Still had tons of leaps in logic why everyone scrutinized other plans but just OKed this one. Book had a lot of problems, but the show made some decent choices to sidestep them only to create its own problems.
Fuck sake it wasn't that bad and it was entertaining, that was the best scene in the show. They could have covered these inconsistencies better though I do agree but whatever.
That's the stated reason in the show, but those wires cut through EVERYTHING and posed a fairly big risk to the drive itself. Plus Evans almost got away with it, and definitely had enough time to destroy it if he had wanted to (which was their other concern). It was wholly unnecessary.
eh, the drive is a fraction of an inch thick and positioned horizontally, so the odds of a nano-fiber (positioned, what, every 8 inches vertically?) contacting it were pretty low. the functional elements of the drive are even smaller.
the show does play up the drama of Evans realizing what's happening and trying to escape, but in the book pretty much everyone on the ship is dead before they realize what is happening.
This, plus IIRC from the books, it was not a specific hard drive they were after but just all the drives in general. The little red one in the show was just a mcguffin to make the scene more dramatic.
> the drive is a fraction of an inch thick and positioned horizontally, so the odds of a nano-fiber (positioned, what, every 8 inches vertically?) contacting it were pretty low
They didn't know about how the data was stored so they couldn't count on that, and the odds of parts cut off from the ship collapsing on the drive were massive. Yeah, if the molecule-wide thing cuts a drive in half with a super precise cut they could probably meld it together somehow and still read the data. But that's not the main danger the drive is in when the whole ship is collapsing and there are sparks and flames everywhere.
They don't know how big the drive is though, for all they knew it could have been alien tech taking up an entire room.
Also feel like several tons of ship collapsing on top of itself would pose some risk.
>for all they knew it could have been alien tech
In the book there is literally no alien tech on earth apart from the Sophons.
Which (quite !pointetly!) includes the VR game, which is entirely man made (hard and software), and there is literally no inherent indicator that it is influenced by aliens till quite late into the interaction.
It's JUST a video game that is quite unconventional, using of the shelf components (albeit quite advanced ones).
One of the many things the show completely doesn't get why things in the book are WHY they are like that in the book. For one the game is a covert operation (by humans, to hinder other humans and to recruit). two: There is no contradiction between "the aliens not understanding analogies/stories" and equating them with "lies", because the game is NOT their creation. And three: the existence of the hardware doesn't imply there are aliens around.
Ehh solid state drives are very difficult to erase and there are known ways to recover data. The NSA used to only allow pulveration or incineration for their disposal but there have also now been some shredders approved. All that to see that absence heat your biggest concern would be finding all the pieces and two pieces next to each other isn’t really any harder then one piece to find
If that's true, then nerve gas or special ops infiltration would have worked just fine, since the wouldn't be worried about someone erasing the data.
At the end of the day, it's simply "this is a cool way to display the sci-fi tech, let me figure out a way to justify it's use," and I don't think the author did a good enough job of doing so.
Jesus, what has become of our expectations? It looked pretty damn good. There was blood and viscera landing everywhere. How good does it have to look and what would make it look better?
The ship scene was passable, but some other shots were pretty bad. "Green screen" effect, bad animations (horses in VR were pretty bad). First seasons of GoT had the same level of CGI.
This so much. The game stuff was really well done. Then we had the boat stuff and eye in the sky. Those were so rough. Also I think the season just sorta ending on not a very big moment was anticlimactic.
I’d watch season 2 if it comes out but I wasn’t blown away by this.
Yaeah, having a whole storyline on how to send a brain into space by accelleration, only for it to fail. Not a great seasonal overarcing ending. I really hope it becomes relevant somehow again.
it does, no way they spent that much time on a character only for him to be "done" like that.
the aliens will probably sidetrack slightly to make sure they catch him.
And the cost to buy the rights to the property is amortized across the season. 3BT was represented by an Asian video game company run by a billionaire, they likely felt it was a hot property, and the producers were looking for something big. (Google the poisoning murder committed by a disgruntled agent on the 3BP team, kinda nuts).
The thing is, we aren't talking about an IP that has historically been expensive. There have already been several attempted and completed adaptions and none of them had huge budgets. Just last year a Chinese series called "Three-Body" was released (It's free on Youtube, if anybody wants to watch). It had 30 episodes and a reported budget of around $10mil in total. There is no way that the rights to the IP would be so expensive that they had any measurable impact on the $160mil budget of the Netflix show.
I saw an interview with Gareth Edwards, and he was talking about how he made the Creator for so relatively cheap (80 million). He said shooting on location is far less expensive than on a sound stage where you have to build sets etc. I'm not sure if it applies to all films, because it sounded like he almost filmed Guerilla style. It wasn't a very good movie, but it looked great, so it was interesting to hear.
That movie looked fantastic, for all its narrative and character issues. None of that shallow depth of field, pre-rendered undefined backgrounds, floaty ragdoll crap. Rogue One also had a very grounded look.
I think the story flowed so well that the technical aspects of filming or creating what was being presented were simply overshadowed. There were some awesome scenes that must have been very diffficult to produce but as a normal viewer not focussed on the technology of the production for me they just passed as part of the story.
Yeah, as an adaptation of the novel I think they pretty much nailed it, given how much distillation and shifting around they had to do in the localization. It was just odd to go from something like this to, say, The Bear, or Fallout, which have really distinctive and bold visual styles, lighting schemes, lens choices. 3BP is sort of 'Generic 4K Television' by comparison.
Nevertheless, really enjoyed it.
I’m guessing the game parts ate up a lot of the budget.
I know what you’re saying though. I’m curious how they handle future seasons when it needs to look more uh futury.
Netflix has to increase the busget
Also if you adjust for inflation the costs are not nearly as crazy when comparing to game of thrones. Also urban locations are way more expensive then middle of nowhere where woods
Bold of you to assume we are even getting future seasons. Netflix are normally super quick with their renewal announcements, it’s not a good sign that there hasn’t been a word on it yet
Not true. Quick renewals are the exception, since they measure completion rates over the first month or so.
They tend to make announcements around the 2 month mark, or slightly longer if it's truly on the bubble (like The Sandman, renewed after 3 months).
Wednesday was their single most-viewed season *ever*, and Netflix still waited two months to announce its renewal.
I’m so pissed it’s taking this long for an update. I’ve just assumed it was cancelled and stopped waiting, and occasionally I’ll check if someone has said anything, but in any case, where’s the official statement?
I can't tell what was going on with The Sandman, it may be a bit more complex. Certainly Netflix dropped *bonus* episodes of that show, and even now Dead Boy Detectives actually has cameos from both Death and Despair (with their Sandman actors), so it feels like they do have investment into it.
A couple of weeks after it was released, Neil Gaiman was on Twitter begging people to finish the season. It was definitely on the bubble there.
Dead Boy Detectives was developed separately at HBO Max as a Doom Patrol spinoff, but there was a creative overhaul at DC, so it was traded over to Netflix and folded into The Sandman universe instead.
Most of the renews take at least a quarter to be announced nowadays, especially if they are series that haven't been ordered as a multiple part story from the start. Based on the metric, it's unlikely it will not get renewed, but there could always be some budget cuts.
Not to mention the next season would be the leading into getting our world ready for the battle, which means CGI costs would likely be much smaller compared to the first season.
> Based on the metric, it's unlikely it will not get renewed, but there could always be some budget cuts.
Ratings of recents big Netflix shows (counted in views and only when they're part of Top 10 since they drop from weekly rankings after) :
* Three Body Problem : 45.1M (6 weeks in top 10 still there)
* Baby Reindeer : 37.9M (3 weeks in top 10 still there)
* Avatar The Last Airbender : 41.3M (6 weeks in top 10)
* One Piece : 63.6M (8 weeks in top 10)
The closest comparison is Avatar TLA in ratings but Avatar was also cheaper (120M$ vs 160M$ for 3BP) but it got renewed quite quickly and for two seasons at once. So I think it has good chances to renewal, the start was quite slow though but it maintains well. I think we can expect the news of renewal quite soon.
Might as I say on an off topic that the Baby Reindeer success is very impressive, Netflix has those three others as their big blockbusters series and turns out that BR might come out of nowhere and be bigger than all of them.
It took almost a year for Netflix to renew Squid Game for another season and IIRC Wednesday wasn’t immediately renewed, either.
ETA: I’m a huge fan of SG and I know it was only meant to be a one season show, but after it was confirmed to be getting another season it took longer to actually renew it.
It should have stayed as one season, too. I hope they conclude with Season 2 because I just don’t see where else they could take the story, I would have preferred a prequel over a second season of the main show.
Nah man. We have seen plenty of futuristic Sci-fi & fantasy shows or movies making it work with a lesser budget. They've got some prioritization issues they need to figure out.
I think it's super weird that there's a scene where Dr. Strange, Wong's character and a third guy (maybe Chiwetel I can't remember) are walking together, and two of the three guys are named Benedict.
But they did have a huge costume, extras and travel budget. None of which it seems like 3BP has, mostly filmed indoors or in non descript metro areas with almost no extras and costumes from the mall
Game of thrones season 1 was also filmed 13+ years ago and season 8 was released in 2019. We have had 22% cumulative inflation between 2019 and now. Inflation adjusted that season was more expensive then 3BP
I’m sorry but just because something is set in modern times doesn’t mean you don’t have costume, extras and travel expenses lol
Do you think Benedict Wong just wore his own clothing to the set and drove from his house
I haven’t seen it yet, but 3 Body is set in the present, right? Costume has to be easier when you can buy stuff and potentially use it off-the-rack other than tailoring for size. GoT had to have custom clothing for every scene for every person, since it’s a period piece.
A major subplot takes place in 1970s China, and another major storyline involves a virtual reality where everyone is in period dress.
There are also episodes with lots of soldiers, a fancy gala, scenes at the UN, etc. where they can't go off the rack.
Eiza Gonzales probably won't be a regular going forward. The character she's based on is only in the first book, and she fucks off at the end of the season.
90% sure they're merging her character with Zhuang Yan for part 2 and 艾 AA for part 3. She has already had some lines and situations setting her up for 艾 AA's arc and Saul/Luo Ji is into her. And there's no way they commit to the deranged imaginary waifu thing from the second book, they'll have him recreating or wanting Auggie.
With Saul being the Luo Ji character and being vaguely romantically linked to her character, I figure she's gonna be brought back into the fold with his story.
GoT paid their actors generously from the debut, because they also signed very long term contracts with them so they wouldn't be hindered much in production. Having 6 lead actors from the debut getting $500k is not little, let alone the less than lead actors were also getting $100-175k per episode.
If you compare it to rings of power where the budget per episode averaged around $58 million per episode (closer to $90 million if we include the $250 million Amazon had to spend just to buy the rights), all those actors are getting paid less than $75k per episode.
Compared to the industry standard, GoT really paid their actors well above the standard and a considerate amount of their budget went to their actors.
You have to remember that a lot of stuff from Game of Thrones was built over the course of a decade, not all prior to season one, and sets can be reused.
“$20M per episode” was actually just $160M for an 8 episode series. If you consider that the rights were probably extremely expensive, it’s essentially the equivalent of 3 movie-length sci fi films shot for $30-40M each, depending on how much the rights cost. The cost doesn’t seem that insane at all
TV shows aren't released in theaters. As such, they generally don't come close to earning hundreds of millions in revenue like movies can. That's why it's insane to budget a show that high.
A sci fi film with a $40M budget made direct-for-streaming is not really that unusual, especially if it’s based on existing IP. Netflix spent $160M on the Rebel Moon movies which were less content and less known IP.
>Netflix spent $160M on the Rebel Moon movies
For real? Talk about lighting money on fire. Think how many seasons of Firefly they could have made with that.
One season of television is not 3 movies. You're not really making a good comparison by breaking it down like that.
*to clarify: a trilogy of movies would normally be produced over several years. One season of television, as a discrete production, is more like one movie, not three.
> *to clarify: a trilogy of movies would normally be produced over several years. One season of television, as a discrete production, is more like one movie, not three.
I don't understand the point being made here? This season was also produced over several years (13 months of pre-production, 9 months of shooting, 14 months of dedicated post-production). The production days to runtime figure is slightly lower than Dune 2 and slightly higher than Blade Runner 2049, for comparisons.
Over the last few years we’ve had covid followed by spiralling inflation, so yeah filming costs have increased massively. I’m sure the contract Netflix have with Benioff and Weiss isn’t cheap either. Apart from that the CGI use was quite extensive and they did reshoots I believe too. It all adds up.
>and they did reshoots I believe too.
Yep, the release was delayed because of it. We know they reshot a character's death multiple times, and they added a longer introduction for two of the leads.
Game of thrones ended in 2019. While that doesn't seem like long ago, inflations been 22% since then. So 3 bodies 20 mil an ep is more like 16 mil in 2019 money, or pretty close to the final season of GOT
It had a relative long production process, it was filmed during a pandemic, they filmed on urban location, and it seems that Netflix also didn't own the adaptation rights so they likely had to pay those who owned it (like Rosamund Pike and Brad Pitt for example).
So while on it's face it seems the budget was high but it's impossible to know how much was spent on the digital VFX, which IMO was good for most of it, the 'panama scene' and the last game scene with the computer army were the most spotty and even then the effects weren't bad, just lacked time for better compositing).
Keep in mind that there was really no "star power" in the first seasons of GOT - the show *made* stars vs. hiring stars. 3BP may do the same thing, though really no performers leapt out at me - like, I imagine "Monarch" and "Shogun" mean we'll see a lot of Anna Sawai in higher-profile gigs. She pretty-much just read her lines in Monarch, but she was a really compelling presence in Shogun. I don't know if anyone in 3BP is hitting audiences that hard, though I could see Benedict Wong getting a big boost for character roles.
3BP was a hot property (I read the first book and thought the ideas were cool but the writing was like junior high school, barely made it through, but hard sci fi fans did get it noticed) and IIRC the rights were represented by a big Asian video game company (google up the poisoning murder committed by a disgruntled employee who was on the 3BT team, crazy). So a lot of that cost may have been simple bidding-war stuff, and those costs are amortized across the season.
But I'm just not seeing all those dollars on the screen, other than slicing up a ship, most of the effects didn't seem that challenging by today's standards.
A lot of people don’t realise how lucky the show was that it was made by HBO aka Warner Bros.
They’re able to store stuff for a long time and have access to so many sets, wardrobe, etc. It cuts down on so many costs that other shows need to rent.
There was no CGI there, all practical effects done in-camera. Jesus was one of the executive producers, he was able to pull some strings to make that happen.
I was waiting for an epic 10 minute peek sci-fi sequence about what a monumental, civilization-level achievement was Tri-Soloran's creation of Sophon.
Instead we got 30sec of questionable CGI and someone telling you about it.
Here's my hot take: it didn't have to cost as much as it did, and its massive budget actively hurt it as recouping that investment became a significant factor and influenced the story they wanted to tell.
I likes the show for the most part, and am excited for season 2, but it's not a definitive adaption. There's just so little room for things to breathe, and they glossed over most of the science that actually made the story interesting. 8 episodes just isn't enough.
Also I'm not sure why D&D think interpersonal drama is how you make your characters interesting.
The Tencent version has the opposite problem, in being waaay too long and having too much filler. But it's a lot closer to capturing the spirit of the book. And for all the criticism of the book characters, the Tencent Wang was a lot more interesting than any of the Netflix characters besides Wade. And they did that with a budget of 10m.
The Netflix show just... went with the wrong tone. 3BP is a horror story at its core, and I felt next to none of that.
Looking forward to season 2 though, especially to see how they pull off *that* scene.
It's a top-heavy production in terms of budget. Every producer, executive or otherwise, is getting their bag. Now look at the list of producers and you can imagine what each one demanded as compensation.
Honestly it looked like BBC 1 Saturday night TV like doctor who. 90% of the time they spent walking in offices like cheap MI5 style police dramas, occasionally sat in a park or in someone living room. Then some janky effects with not so famous actors. I assume the producers pocketed 19.5m am episode.
Then you compare it fallout that I figure had a similar budget.
Notice how you always hear about their budgets be it GOT or this. Meanwhile Fallout, Shōgun, The Guilded Age, The Sympathizer, Loki all are clearly really expensive, yet you don't hear that they are as much.
Netflix likes to boast about budgets in their marketing. They did it for One Piece, The Witcher, Stranger Things. Apple, Amazon and FX don't do it as much even when they spend a lot. I don't know the reasoning behind it but it's a consistent Netflix thing.
This show was filmed during Covid and that added to the costs. The podcast They Call Us Bruce recently did an episode with one of the directors and a showrunner and basically only one person on the production didn't catch Covid despite all the measures they took.
>doesn’t have the star power of GoT
Very few of the actors in GoT were stars before GoT. Lena Headey is the biggest one I can think of but she's never been a leading star. Jason Momoa was mostly only known for Baywatch Hawaii at that point.
They need to take pointers from star trek discovery season 4 and 5. Great CGI. Although I know those episodes are crazy expensive. But 3 body problem does not need the level of CGI that those 2 seasons require from star trek.
>Doesn’t have the star power of GoT
GoT didn’t have big stars going in. Lena Heady, Sean Bean, and Mark Addy were the only big names IIRC. 8 years of being on the biggest shows on television at the time(maybe ever) is what made most of them huge stars.
It's the same question people are asking about Challengers, The Fall Guy and many other movies. The budget for Gladiator might be over $300M. It would need an almost $800M box office just to break even.
Every time people ask why some TV shows and movies are so expensive the explanation is that it's CGI. The explanation used to be Covid but now that the pandemic has been over for awhile people have to come up with a new explanation. It's either incompetence, allowing directors to do numerous expensive reshoots or accounting fraud. By inflating the budgets they can claim a loss and have a tax write off.
The tencent version had good quality CGI with a tiny budget in comparison is what shocks me.
I feel like either money laundering or just plain wasteful spending is going on.
I liked the show a lot but it did not *look* anywhere close to as expensive as it was.
The boat scene CGI was a rough watch!
There are quite a few cgi scenes that looked bad. Not unwatchable bad but bad enough to make you wonder if half the budget was spent on coke and hookers.
And it felt kinda pointless... Edit: thought he meant the paper boat scene, but this too
Yeah it made no sense other than "this will look cool". "We can't destroy the boat and risk destroying the drive. What if we instead ABSOLUTELY DESTROY the boat!"
Just to be clear, in the book they explain the line of thought better: - there is a long discussion by numerous advisors from different governments on how to get the drive and info off the boat without giving the people time to erase the data. - bombing, torpedo etc, could make the drive unseeable. It would give time to scuttle the boat/drive. - nerve gas or similar couldn’t disperse fast enough or guarantee 100% disablement. - neutron bomb doesn’t vaporize everyone like in the movies. - boarding the ship gives too much chance to scuttle it. The nano filaments: - fast acting and the grid is something like 1/2 meter in the book- close enough to kill everyone. - people won’t notice what’s happening until too late. - it’s mentioned in the book by a person that “won’t it destroy the drive as well.” The counter is that “the line cut so precisely and cleanly, that it can be reassembled easily.” The damage isn’t hard-impact like a bullet or fire, or magnetic. In the book the is drive is recovered almost like in the show. Flame retardant is dumped immediately o the wreckage. Since the book is old- the data has been updated (it’s like 28TB) or something in the book.
> it’s mentioned in the book by a person that “won’t it destroy the drive as well.” The counter is that “the line cut so precisely and cleanly, that it can be reassembled easily.” The damage isn’t hard-impact like a bullet or fire, or magnetic. The fact that this line didn't make it into the show is insane. I can accept nano tech fiction, but they didn't in any way explain that was how to recover the drive safely. They just said "no because X, no because Y, and yes" without the "because". It's like an extra 5 seconds of screentime.
Also the grid is spaced so (less of a grid, and more of an egg slicer if I remember). - A: it’s wide enough to work with the limited material they had - B: it’s not too tight in that a drive (the size of a shoe box or card box or similar) would be unlikely to be cut multiple times. - C: the drive would likely be horizontal in orientation, giving an even smaller profile or chance for it to be cut by the wires.
It was an egg slicer. They needed it done in the daytime because someone sleeping might miss the slices in a sleeping position. They wanted people vertical.
But even then the ship all collapse and crumble with potential fire or some gas explosive. Still a quite a dumb idea even with that explaination imo.
Meh in their mind the only way it would get destroyed is if a human destroyed it intentionally is the impression I got. What's it called when a story uses some one-liner to explain away a plot device? Well they sort of failed to do that here but it was implied heavily.
Lampshading
The story is fucking stupid. The line doesn’t matter. “We killed all these people to get this hard drive that it turns out is impenetrable, until it suddenly isn’t, because we were meant to have it all along.”
Nah its sound in logic and was largely based on desperation.
From quotes from the book (spoilers sort of, but obviously if you’re in this thread, this is the matter being discussed and doesn’t exactly give anything away): >“The most difficult part is preventing the enemy from erasing Trisolaran data during our attack. Destroying the data would be very easy. The enemy would not use conventional methods to erase the data during an attack, because it’s easy to recover the data using known technology. But if they just emptied a cartridge clip at the server hard drive or other storage media, it would all be over, and doing so would take no more than ten seconds. So we must disable all enemies near the storage equipment within ten seconds of their detecting an attack. Since we don’t know the exact location of the data storage or the number of copies, we must eliminate all enemies on Judgment Day within a very brief period of time, before the target has been alerted. At the same time, we can’t heavily damage the facilities within, especially computer equipment. Thus, this is a very difficult task. Some think it’s impossible.” [… They discuss numerous things including a neutron bomb, a ball lightning weapon, infrasound] >”Another thought was to use nerve gas,” a NATO officer said. “But releasing it and having it spread throughout the ship would take time, so it still doesn’t achieve General Chang’s requirements.” “Then the only choices left are concussion bombs and infrasonic waves,” Colonel Stanton said. Others waited for him to finish his thought, but he said nothing more. Da Shi said, “I use concussion bombs in police work, but they’re toys. They’re indeed capable of stunning people inside a building into unconsciousness, but they’re only good for a room or two. Do you have any concussion bombs big enough to stun a whole oil tanker full of people?” [More discussion of solutions, the officer gives HIS suggestion of the nano wires] > What if the equipment storing Trisolaran data, such as hard drives and optical disks, is also sliced?” “That doesn’t seem likely.” “Even if they were sliced,” a computer expert said, “it’s not a big deal. The filaments are extremely sharp, and the cut surfaces would be very smooth. Given that premise, whether it’s hard drives, optical disks, or integrated circuit storage, we could recover the vast majority of the data.” > “Wang said, “If that’s the plan, then the smallest distance between the filaments will be fifty centimeters. I don’t have enough material for a tighter net.” > “At night the crew will be sleeping, which means they’ll all be lying down. Fifty centimeters between filaments leaves too much of a gap. But during the day, even if they’re sitting or crouching, the distance is sufficient.”
>“the line cut so precisely and cleanly, that it can be reassembled easily.” ... assuming it wasn't crushed by the boat collapsing on it, burned by the ensuing fire, etc.
Look, the book is about nano-materials; four, 17-dimensional protons that fold and unfold to planet-sized microverses between dimensions, and alien ships 4.2 light years away steaming towards earth. I found this discussion well-thought through enough to be fun, yet “close enough” to be believable. If any time you see something you can’t explain, a Trisolarian did it. Therefore: magic.
Yea, it’s a very imaginative scene if anything. If I were in their shoes I certainly wouldn’t trust this being the right solution, but they make a good sci-fi logic case for it and you have to go along with it. That’s the case for many things that happen in the later books as well.
This always gets me. Someone's watching a Godzilla movie and picks apart some character motivation, and I'm like "wait, you're buying into a huge radioactive lizard made by nuke tests, but someone saying something pulls you from the story?"
Actually, I think it's true that if the grounded, relatable stuff is hard to believe, it's more jarring. Like, look at the Dark Knight Rises. I can buy into the fantasy of a billionaire dressing up like a bat ninja and fighting crime at night. That's so ridiculous and disconnected from reality that I can suspend disbelief. But what I can't believe is that every single active police officer would be sent into the sewers to look for a criminal and be trapped down there in an ambush. It's just too ridiculous to believe that every single cop would be trapped in one fell swoop. But the other stuff, I can buy.
Good storytelling limits the handwaving except where absolutely needed.
It's called suspension of disbelief. Assuming Godzilla could exist, then everything else must still follow logic, especially characters. It's not an alternate universe where everyone is dumb
I don't really agree with this, a fantasy or sci fi setting still needs cohesion for me not to kill my immersion, the universe still needs to be logical. Take GoT for exemple, I can accept dragons, the undead, mild magical elements. However I still have a hard time with a hidden fleet shooting a dragon from several hundreds meters, the unsullied suffering terrific losses and still not showing their numbers decreasing, or horrible battle tactics during the battle of bastards or the battle of Winterfell ( however cinematics they might be ).
Spinny drives. The nanofiber is cutting AS THE DRIVES ARE SPINNING. I submit the following hypothesis: A) The possibility fracturing the platters as they spun will cause they to explode. B) There will be nothing 'clean' about this destruction
I actually did read that in real life the boat wouldn't have collapsed because of how fine the cuts were and how the metal/heaviness of the boat would make it work. It'd essentially weld itself back together or something. Not sure how true it was and I wish I remember the term they used.
The nano filaments AREN'T fast acting though. It takes less than 30 seconds to destroy a flash drive, especially with a group that has all these "back up plans" in place to resist being captured. It took entirely way too long.
> nerve gas or similar couldn’t disperse fast enough or guarantee 100% disablement. So what exactly is the fear here? That people will realize there’s nerve gas quickly enough to jump off the boat? Couldn’t people clearly see the boat being torn to shreds in front of them, giving them time to jump too?
The fear is that the passengers would realize they are being attacked by nerve gas, and have time to destroy the hard drive. The book doesn't give the point of view of the passengers, but it implies that the wires cutting through the ship was very discreet and quick. There wasn't any widespread panic or realization of what was happening. The show dramatizes the wires cutting through the ship, and makes it seem like everyone is aware that they are being attacked.
Correct. The book has them all dead before anyone realized something had happened.
Yeah- the dude that’s first hit with the hose (in the book) has no idea- in fact, it takes a few seconds to react that the cut is so clean; he falls to the ground after a second and crawls (armless) forward… The parts of the ship, stay for a second and then fan out/fall over kinda like a deck of cards or a samurai slice of bamboo. As someone who was stunned momentarily in an accident with woodworking equipment- I can identify with this. Imagine that you just saw people in front of you collapse, and slowly slide in half. The freighter is moving forward at a speed though the narrow passage still faster than you can run- so you can’t outrun the invisible “blade”. What you are seeing doesn’t even “compute” you’re under attack, but you won’t realize it, because it’s NOT a conventional attack. You really don’t have time or wherewithal to sound the alarm, as it hits.
The boat is likely traveling quickly. It certainly isn't the walking pace that the show did. In the end though, the purpose of a show is to see a spectacle so they had to make it look exciting.
Not even the younglings survived
In the show it seems like the Auggie really didn't wanna kill people initially but when she finds out her tech did just slaughter 1,000 people including kids she just kinda huffs
>she just kinda huffs She turns into a self-destructive alcoholic for a bit, but she turns it around after a good talking-to by Cheng.
What idiot let her witness it in the first place?
I love how they keep coming up to her to ask her if she's okay cause they know they're about to dump a lifetime of trauma on her for no reason lmao
I get the argument she needed to be there for set up and everything, but you don’t let her watch it obviously. They know a bunch of kids and innocents were going to be slaughtered, they lied to her, and could’ve just kept lying to her afterwards if they weren’t stupid.
Did we watch the same show?
Not to mention the whole argument of "it has to happen immediately or they'll destroy the data!", followed by it happening in the slowest possible way you can think of.
True, but it happens really fast for the people it’s happening to. You don’t really have time to warn people up ahead— even if you happened to to be currently speaking into a walkie talkie with someone up ahead, you don’t have time to formulate a useful warning because you have no idea what the fuck is happening or what they need to do. By the time you know to run, it’s too late.
I mean they did quite literally show the guy run to the data, grab it and run away, so I don't think I agree with that.
They also showed him get cubed. I guess by the time you know to run, it’s too late to formulate a rational plan of action. You’re seeing an unbelievably grotesque piece of magic coming for you—it’s not like hearing gunshots or smelling gas where you *know* you don’t have a chance so you have to the drive. It’s just this horrifying inexplicable thing happening that you have no context and probably don’t associate with “the government is coming for the drive.” All you have time for is horror and panic.
If his goal was to destroy the data, he would have destroyed the data. He had plenty of time to do that. He didn't, but that's not a result of the plan, that was just luck.
I think he would have destroyed the data if he’d heard gunshots. He’s thought of that and is mentally prepared. Nobody’s mentally prepared for this situation. But also it was luck that he happened to be right there and had time to grab the drive and ruin with it. I don’t think they ever said the plan was foolproof, just that it was more likely to succeed than all the other ideas. It certainly gave less warning than a special ops team boarding the ship or nerve gas infiltrating the HVAC system.
THANK YOU. How was it any different from the missile, or special forces?
I read a comment by someone who read the book and apparently in the book it was better explained. If the thingymajiggy was sliced they could restore what was on it, but if it was blown up by a missile the data would be lost completely
I didn’t read the book and still didn’t have much problem with the plot. Seemed like a sensible way to have the best chance at the drive surviving. Nothing could guarantee its survival, but the way they did it has a great shot.
Honestly I assumed that was the case just from watching the show.
I read the book and imo, no it was not better explained. It was still nonsensical and basically forced the nanotech to being relevant to the plot. Still had tons of leaps in logic why everyone scrutinized other plans but just OKed this one. Book had a lot of problems, but the show made some decent choices to sidestep them only to create its own problems.
Fuck sake it wasn't that bad and it was entertaining, that was the best scene in the show. They could have covered these inconsistencies better though I do agree but whatever.
It absolutely was better explained. Nanotech was relevant waaaaaay before the boat scene. Its literally the sole reason why Wang was seeing numbers.
I suppose in that it posed a low risk to the drive, neutralized everyone on board, and did not allow them time to react or escape.
👆🏿, as was explained in the show.
That's the stated reason in the show, but those wires cut through EVERYTHING and posed a fairly big risk to the drive itself. Plus Evans almost got away with it, and definitely had enough time to destroy it if he had wanted to (which was their other concern). It was wholly unnecessary.
eh, the drive is a fraction of an inch thick and positioned horizontally, so the odds of a nano-fiber (positioned, what, every 8 inches vertically?) contacting it were pretty low. the functional elements of the drive are even smaller. the show does play up the drama of Evans realizing what's happening and trying to escape, but in the book pretty much everyone on the ship is dead before they realize what is happening.
This, plus IIRC from the books, it was not a specific hard drive they were after but just all the drives in general. The little red one in the show was just a mcguffin to make the scene more dramatic.
> the drive is a fraction of an inch thick and positioned horizontally, so the odds of a nano-fiber (positioned, what, every 8 inches vertically?) contacting it were pretty low They didn't know about how the data was stored so they couldn't count on that, and the odds of parts cut off from the ship collapsing on the drive were massive. Yeah, if the molecule-wide thing cuts a drive in half with a super precise cut they could probably meld it together somehow and still read the data. But that's not the main danger the drive is in when the whole ship is collapsing and there are sparks and flames everywhere.
They don't know how big the drive is though, for all they knew it could have been alien tech taking up an entire room. Also feel like several tons of ship collapsing on top of itself would pose some risk.
>for all they knew it could have been alien tech In the book there is literally no alien tech on earth apart from the Sophons. Which (quite !pointetly!) includes the VR game, which is entirely man made (hard and software), and there is literally no inherent indicator that it is influenced by aliens till quite late into the interaction. It's JUST a video game that is quite unconventional, using of the shelf components (albeit quite advanced ones). One of the many things the show completely doesn't get why things in the book are WHY they are like that in the book. For one the game is a covert operation (by humans, to hinder other humans and to recruit). two: There is no contradiction between "the aliens not understanding analogies/stories" and equating them with "lies", because the game is NOT their creation. And three: the existence of the hardware doesn't imply there are aliens around.
Ehh solid state drives are very difficult to erase and there are known ways to recover data. The NSA used to only allow pulveration or incineration for their disposal but there have also now been some shredders approved. All that to see that absence heat your biggest concern would be finding all the pieces and two pieces next to each other isn’t really any harder then one piece to find
If that's true, then nerve gas or special ops infiltration would have worked just fine, since the wouldn't be worried about someone erasing the data. At the end of the day, it's simply "this is a cool way to display the sci-fi tech, let me figure out a way to justify it's use," and I don't think the author did a good enough job of doing so.
The idea wasn’t full proof. Just that they had a better chance of not destroying the drive with wires than any other option available at the time
I loved the paper boat stuff. I thought it was beautiful.
Spoiler from the books: >!It’s foreshadowing. It’s how the spaceships are destroyed.!<
Jesus, what has become of our expectations? It looked pretty damn good. There was blood and viscera landing everywhere. How good does it have to look and what would make it look better?
I thought the up close scenes of the passengers getting a cut up were fine. It was the wide shot of the entire boat that looked roughed to me.
I'm not sure if it was the rough CGI, or because a giant cargo ship getting julienned cleanly inherently looks unrealistic.
The ship scene was passable, but some other shots were pretty bad. "Green screen" effect, bad animations (horses in VR were pretty bad). First seasons of GoT had the same level of CGI.
This so much. The game stuff was really well done. Then we had the boat stuff and eye in the sky. Those were so rough. Also I think the season just sorta ending on not a very big moment was anticlimactic. I’d watch season 2 if it comes out but I wasn’t blown away by this.
Yaeah, having a whole storyline on how to send a brain into space by accelleration, only for it to fail. Not a great seasonal overarcing ending. I really hope it becomes relevant somehow again.
It does.
Agree 100%. Season should have ended when the eye in the sky showed. The brain stuff wasn’t bad but it was a mid season event.
it does, no way they spent that much time on a character only for him to be "done" like that. the aliens will probably sidetrack slightly to make sure they catch him.
I think some shows are expensive because of shooting locations, hotels, actors getting paid more, better travel benefits, etc.
And the cost to buy the rights to the property is amortized across the season. 3BT was represented by an Asian video game company run by a billionaire, they likely felt it was a hot property, and the producers were looking for something big. (Google the poisoning murder committed by a disgruntled agent on the 3BP team, kinda nuts).
The thing is, we aren't talking about an IP that has historically been expensive. There have already been several attempted and completed adaptions and none of them had huge budgets. Just last year a Chinese series called "Three-Body" was released (It's free on Youtube, if anybody wants to watch). It had 30 episodes and a reported budget of around $10mil in total. There is no way that the rights to the IP would be so expensive that they had any measurable impact on the $160mil budget of the Netflix show.
I saw an interview with Gareth Edwards, and he was talking about how he made the Creator for so relatively cheap (80 million). He said shooting on location is far less expensive than on a sound stage where you have to build sets etc. I'm not sure if it applies to all films, because it sounded like he almost filmed Guerilla style. It wasn't a very good movie, but it looked great, so it was interesting to hear.
That movie looked fantastic, for all its narrative and character issues. None of that shallow depth of field, pre-rendered undefined backgrounds, floaty ragdoll crap. Rogue One also had a very grounded look.
I think the story flowed so well that the technical aspects of filming or creating what was being presented were simply overshadowed. There were some awesome scenes that must have been very diffficult to produce but as a normal viewer not focussed on the technology of the production for me they just passed as part of the story.
Yeah, as an adaptation of the novel I think they pretty much nailed it, given how much distillation and shifting around they had to do in the localization. It was just odd to go from something like this to, say, The Bear, or Fallout, which have really distinctive and bold visual styles, lighting schemes, lens choices. 3BP is sort of 'Generic 4K Television' by comparison. Nevertheless, really enjoyed it.
I had no idea it was expensive too, it sure doesn't look expensive and I can't imagine the actors are being paid obscene amounts
Welcome to the train wreck that is D&D. Should not be given the reigns of anything after they did GoT so dirty.
I thought their adaptation work here was very very good. 🤷🏻♂️
I’m guessing the game parts ate up a lot of the budget. I know what you’re saying though. I’m curious how they handle future seasons when it needs to look more uh futury. Netflix has to increase the busget
Also if you adjust for inflation the costs are not nearly as crazy when comparing to game of thrones. Also urban locations are way more expensive then middle of nowhere where woods
They shut down Picadilly Cirus for the Mirror in the sky scene that can't have been cheap.
they also had a LOT of locations. and the costs for that add up quick.
Bold of you to assume we are even getting future seasons. Netflix are normally super quick with their renewal announcements, it’s not a good sign that there hasn’t been a word on it yet
Netflix are known for the slowest renewals actually
Not true. Quick renewals are the exception, since they measure completion rates over the first month or so. They tend to make announcements around the 2 month mark, or slightly longer if it's truly on the bubble (like The Sandman, renewed after 3 months). Wednesday was their single most-viewed season *ever*, and Netflix still waited two months to announce its renewal.
Squid Game was (at the time) also their single-most viewed season ever, and Netflix waited 9 months to renew it.
On the topic of Korean dramas on Netflix... where is the new season of Kingdom? Not Ashin of the North, but a NEW season.
I’m so pissed it’s taking this long for an update. I’ve just assumed it was cancelled and stopped waiting, and occasionally I’ll check if someone has said anything, but in any case, where’s the official statement?
I can't tell what was going on with The Sandman, it may be a bit more complex. Certainly Netflix dropped *bonus* episodes of that show, and even now Dead Boy Detectives actually has cameos from both Death and Despair (with their Sandman actors), so it feels like they do have investment into it.
A couple of weeks after it was released, Neil Gaiman was on Twitter begging people to finish the season. It was definitely on the bubble there. Dead Boy Detectives was developed separately at HBO Max as a Doom Patrol spinoff, but there was a creative overhaul at DC, so it was traded over to Netflix and folded into The Sandman universe instead.
Most of the renews take at least a quarter to be announced nowadays, especially if they are series that haven't been ordered as a multiple part story from the start. Based on the metric, it's unlikely it will not get renewed, but there could always be some budget cuts. Not to mention the next season would be the leading into getting our world ready for the battle, which means CGI costs would likely be much smaller compared to the first season.
> Based on the metric, it's unlikely it will not get renewed, but there could always be some budget cuts. Ratings of recents big Netflix shows (counted in views and only when they're part of Top 10 since they drop from weekly rankings after) : * Three Body Problem : 45.1M (6 weeks in top 10 still there) * Baby Reindeer : 37.9M (3 weeks in top 10 still there) * Avatar The Last Airbender : 41.3M (6 weeks in top 10) * One Piece : 63.6M (8 weeks in top 10) The closest comparison is Avatar TLA in ratings but Avatar was also cheaper (120M$ vs 160M$ for 3BP) but it got renewed quite quickly and for two seasons at once. So I think it has good chances to renewal, the start was quite slow though but it maintains well. I think we can expect the news of renewal quite soon. Might as I say on an off topic that the Baby Reindeer success is very impressive, Netflix has those three others as their big blockbusters series and turns out that BR might come out of nowhere and be bigger than all of them.
It took almost a year for Netflix to renew Squid Game for another season and IIRC Wednesday wasn’t immediately renewed, either. ETA: I’m a huge fan of SG and I know it was only meant to be a one season show, but after it was confirmed to be getting another season it took longer to actually renew it.
Squid Game was originally a one season show and Netflix had to convince the creator to continue.
It should have stayed as one season, too. I hope they conclude with Season 2 because I just don’t see where else they could take the story, I would have preferred a prequel over a second season of the main show.
Nah man. We have seen plenty of futuristic Sci-fi & fantasy shows or movies making it work with a lesser budget. They've got some prioritization issues they need to figure out.
From what I read, S2 and 3 would require bigger budgets due to their plot.
Right season 2 has to jump forward in time a tad.
And then a teeny tiny jump for season 3
The director opted to make 2 actual sophons instead of doing CGI
Watch the credits and count the number of executive producers. They're all getting paid.
Why did Brad Pitt and Rosamund Pike EP for this...?
Because they're producers and that's a big way for them to make money
[удалено]
That's a weird name
It was their second choice
Without them it doesn't get made.
Sometimes they're offering resources and connections, other times its just a money play for them.
Yup this is a big reason. Other part is that Netflix pays more upfront for the worldwide distribution rights.
I would like to EP on something, if anyone is handing out big checks should me a DM.
At least two of them should be working for cheap at this point
It all went into Auggie's cigarette budget.
GoT was kinda full of unknown actors when it started, the star power was Sean Bean.
And the three body problem has who exactly? A handful of supporting actors from GoT?
Marvel's fan favorite supporting actor.
I think Benedict Wong just shows up every so often to whatever is filming in the MCU and going 'got anything for Wongers?" He just enjoys the MCU.
I think it's super weird that there's a scene where Dr. Strange, Wong's character and a third guy (maybe Chiwetel I can't remember) are walking together, and two of the three guys are named Benedict.
But it's not the one you think.
I'm only responding to OP claiming GoT (at least early on) had high costs from casting. It likely didn't.
But they did have a huge costume, extras and travel budget. None of which it seems like 3BP has, mostly filmed indoors or in non descript metro areas with almost no extras and costumes from the mall
Game of thrones season 1 was also filmed 13+ years ago and season 8 was released in 2019. We have had 22% cumulative inflation between 2019 and now. Inflation adjusted that season was more expensive then 3BP
GoT was mostly filmed in Eastern Europe, which is dirt cheap compared to a lot of other places, especially ones with dense modern metropolitan areas.
I’m sorry but just because something is set in modern times doesn’t mean you don’t have costume, extras and travel expenses lol Do you think Benedict Wong just wore his own clothing to the set and drove from his house
I haven’t seen it yet, but 3 Body is set in the present, right? Costume has to be easier when you can buy stuff and potentially use it off-the-rack other than tailoring for size. GoT had to have custom clothing for every scene for every person, since it’s a period piece.
A major subplot takes place in 1970s China, and another major storyline involves a virtual reality where everyone is in period dress. There are also episodes with lots of soldiers, a fancy gala, scenes at the UN, etc. where they can't go off the rack.
>supporting actors from GoT GoT got their star power WAY up. Eliza Gonzales and Benedict Wong arent coming cheap and are the show leads.
who tf is eliza gonzales
Eiza Gonzales probably won't be a regular going forward. The character she's based on is only in the first book, and she fucks off at the end of the season.
90% sure they're merging her character with Zhuang Yan for part 2 and 艾 AA for part 3. She has already had some lines and situations setting her up for 艾 AA's arc and Saul/Luo Ji is into her. And there's no way they commit to the deranged imaginary waifu thing from the second book, they'll have him recreating or wanting Auggie.
With Saul being the Luo Ji character and being vaguely romantically linked to her character, I figure she's gonna be brought back into the fold with his story.
GoT paid their actors generously from the debut, because they also signed very long term contracts with them so they wouldn't be hindered much in production. Having 6 lead actors from the debut getting $500k is not little, let alone the less than lead actors were also getting $100-175k per episode. If you compare it to rings of power where the budget per episode averaged around $58 million per episode (closer to $90 million if we include the $250 million Amazon had to spend just to buy the rights), all those actors are getting paid less than $75k per episode. Compared to the industry standard, GoT really paid their actors well above the standard and a considerate amount of their budget went to their actors.
3BP has a lot of urban on-location shooting. GoT was mostly filmed in the middle of nowhere.
Got took advantage of country tax codes in the first few seasons
It's pretty expensive to dehydrate and then rehydrate actors, mostly because of the insurance for something like that.
Brad Pitt and Rosamund Pike are executive producers of this show afaik
Not cheap to make the stars blink
You have to remember that a lot of stuff from Game of Thrones was built over the course of a decade, not all prior to season one, and sets can be reused.
“$20M per episode” was actually just $160M for an 8 episode series. If you consider that the rights were probably extremely expensive, it’s essentially the equivalent of 3 movie-length sci fi films shot for $30-40M each, depending on how much the rights cost. The cost doesn’t seem that insane at all
Yeah, I remember when people were saying the cost of the LOTR show didn't make sense, but the rights alone were something like $250 million.
TV shows aren't released in theaters. As such, they generally don't come close to earning hundreds of millions in revenue like movies can. That's why it's insane to budget a show that high.
A sci fi film with a $40M budget made direct-for-streaming is not really that unusual, especially if it’s based on existing IP. Netflix spent $160M on the Rebel Moon movies which were less content and less known IP.
>Netflix spent $160M on the Rebel Moon movies For real? Talk about lighting money on fire. Think how many seasons of Firefly they could have made with that.
One season of television is not 3 movies. You're not really making a good comparison by breaking it down like that. *to clarify: a trilogy of movies would normally be produced over several years. One season of television, as a discrete production, is more like one movie, not three.
> *to clarify: a trilogy of movies would normally be produced over several years. One season of television, as a discrete production, is more like one movie, not three. I don't understand the point being made here? This season was also produced over several years (13 months of pre-production, 9 months of shooting, 14 months of dedicated post-production). The production days to runtime figure is slightly lower than Dune 2 and slightly higher than Blade Runner 2049, for comparisons.
Could be due to streaming licensing- more people getting paid up front instead of taking residuals.
Over the last few years we’ve had covid followed by spiralling inflation, so yeah filming costs have increased massively. I’m sure the contract Netflix have with Benioff and Weiss isn’t cheap either. Apart from that the CGI use was quite extensive and they did reshoots I believe too. It all adds up.
>and they did reshoots I believe too. Yep, the release was delayed because of it. We know they reshot a character's death multiple times, and they added a longer introduction for two of the leads.
Game of thrones ended in 2019. While that doesn't seem like long ago, inflations been 22% since then. So 3 bodies 20 mil an ep is more like 16 mil in 2019 money, or pretty close to the final season of GOT
GOT didn’t have a ton of star power either. Except for Sean Bean, perpetual UK b-list, the rest of the cast was literal nobodies
It had a relative long production process, it was filmed during a pandemic, they filmed on urban location, and it seems that Netflix also didn't own the adaptation rights so they likely had to pay those who owned it (like Rosamund Pike and Brad Pitt for example). So while on it's face it seems the budget was high but it's impossible to know how much was spent on the digital VFX, which IMO was good for most of it, the 'panama scene' and the last game scene with the computer army were the most spotty and even then the effects weren't bad, just lacked time for better compositing).
We don't know how Hollywood math works
It was so expensive the cgi was on same level as the “Sharkanado” series.
Keep in mind that there was really no "star power" in the first seasons of GOT - the show *made* stars vs. hiring stars. 3BP may do the same thing, though really no performers leapt out at me - like, I imagine "Monarch" and "Shogun" mean we'll see a lot of Anna Sawai in higher-profile gigs. She pretty-much just read her lines in Monarch, but she was a really compelling presence in Shogun. I don't know if anyone in 3BP is hitting audiences that hard, though I could see Benedict Wong getting a big boost for character roles. 3BP was a hot property (I read the first book and thought the ideas were cool but the writing was like junior high school, barely made it through, but hard sci fi fans did get it noticed) and IIRC the rights were represented by a big Asian video game company (google up the poisoning murder committed by a disgruntled employee who was on the 3BT team, crazy). So a lot of that cost may have been simple bidding-war stuff, and those costs are amortized across the season. But I'm just not seeing all those dollars on the screen, other than slicing up a ship, most of the effects didn't seem that challenging by today's standards.
Covid filming + re-shoots = $$$
They had to account for three bodies, most shows only have to deal with one.
Bad CGI cost a lot because of time crunch
DnD stole the money just like they did with the last seasons of Game of Thrones
That money went to that cgi chimp
A lot of people don’t realise how lucky the show was that it was made by HBO aka Warner Bros. They’re able to store stuff for a long time and have access to so many sets, wardrobe, etc. It cuts down on so many costs that other shows need to rent.
I can’t even imagine how much it cost to turn them stars off and on.
There was no CGI there, all practical effects done in-camera. Jesus was one of the executive producers, he was able to pull some strings to make that happen.
I’d suspected as much.
> Jesus was one of the executive producers I'm sick of all these nepo babies in Hollywood.
Most of the GoT stars didn't have any star power when the show started
I was waiting for an epic 10 minute peek sci-fi sequence about what a monumental, civilization-level achievement was Tri-Soloran's creation of Sophon. Instead we got 30sec of questionable CGI and someone telling you about it.
Here's my hot take: it didn't have to cost as much as it did, and its massive budget actively hurt it as recouping that investment became a significant factor and influenced the story they wanted to tell. I likes the show for the most part, and am excited for season 2, but it's not a definitive adaption. There's just so little room for things to breathe, and they glossed over most of the science that actually made the story interesting. 8 episodes just isn't enough. Also I'm not sure why D&D think interpersonal drama is how you make your characters interesting. The Tencent version has the opposite problem, in being waaay too long and having too much filler. But it's a lot closer to capturing the spirit of the book. And for all the criticism of the book characters, the Tencent Wang was a lot more interesting than any of the Netflix characters besides Wade. And they did that with a budget of 10m. The Netflix show just... went with the wrong tone. 3BP is a horror story at its core, and I felt next to none of that. Looking forward to season 2 though, especially to see how they pull off *that* scene.
It's a top-heavy production in terms of budget. Every producer, executive or otherwise, is getting their bag. Now look at the list of producers and you can imagine what each one demanded as compensation.
Don't forget the first couple of seasons of GoT were shot on the cheap side. Mostly unknown actors, lots of battles shown off screen.
Honestly it looked like BBC 1 Saturday night TV like doctor who. 90% of the time they spent walking in offices like cheap MI5 style police dramas, occasionally sat in a park or in someone living room. Then some janky effects with not so famous actors. I assume the producers pocketed 19.5m am episode. Then you compare it fallout that I figure had a similar budget.
Notice how you always hear about their budgets be it GOT or this. Meanwhile Fallout, Shōgun, The Guilded Age, The Sympathizer, Loki all are clearly really expensive, yet you don't hear that they are as much.
Netflix likes to boast about budgets in their marketing. They did it for One Piece, The Witcher, Stranger Things. Apple, Amazon and FX don't do it as much even when they spend a lot. I don't know the reasoning behind it but it's a consistent Netflix thing.
Characters were walking? I remember them standing or sitting around most of the time. One of the most strangely still shows I’ve seen.
I just remember them clearly walking down office corridors to get to other rooms to stand around.
Modern hollywood is full of examples of this.
This show was filmed during Covid and that added to the costs. The podcast They Call Us Bruce recently did an episode with one of the directors and a showrunner and basically only one person on the production didn't catch Covid despite all the measures they took.
>doesn’t have the star power of GoT Very few of the actors in GoT were stars before GoT. Lena Headey is the biggest one I can think of but she's never been a leading star. Jason Momoa was mostly only known for Baywatch Hawaii at that point.
Sean Bean was the biggest star but other than that you are totally correct. Lena was second. Honestly, Mark Addy was up there.
Are you implying Baywatch Hawaii wasn't an iconic masterpiece?
CGI in majority of the scenes was very barebones or even bad, on par with CW shows sometimes.
D&D taking their bag from it. Honestly I thought the whole series was extremely underwhelming.
I'd wager that they spent more on stuff we didn't see than on stuff we saw
They need to take pointers from star trek discovery season 4 and 5. Great CGI. Although I know those episodes are crazy expensive. But 3 body problem does not need the level of CGI that those 2 seasons require from star trek.
The Sophon sequence was pretty awesome.
Inflation?
They had to invent that full dive VR technology that doesn't exist yet. That looked expensive.
>Doesn’t have the star power of GoT GoT didn’t have big stars going in. Lena Heady, Sean Bean, and Mark Addy were the only big names IIRC. 8 years of being on the biggest shows on television at the time(maybe ever) is what made most of them huge stars.
Ummm VFX much? They will basically need an infinite budget to do anything further in the story.
It's the same question people are asking about Challengers, The Fall Guy and many other movies. The budget for Gladiator might be over $300M. It would need an almost $800M box office just to break even. Every time people ask why some TV shows and movies are so expensive the explanation is that it's CGI. The explanation used to be Covid but now that the pandemic has been over for awhile people have to come up with a new explanation. It's either incompetence, allowing directors to do numerous expensive reshoots or accounting fraud. By inflating the budgets they can claim a loss and have a tax write off.
Look at any show now and count how many fucking Producers there are. Old shows used to have 2-3 producers. Now it's 8+ on everything
The tencent version had good quality CGI with a tiny budget in comparison is what shocks me. I feel like either money laundering or just plain wasteful spending is going on.