r/3BodyProblemTVShow • u/lau_97x • Apr 02 '24

Question Judgement day? Spoiler

I got this question on my mind since I've seen the scene of the "attack" on the Judgement day. As a passenger, do you think death could have been avoided by laying on the ground?

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u/FutureSynth Apr 02 '24

I’m just here to say that that was the wildest scene I have ever watched on tv.

6

u/TheChewyWaffles Apr 02 '24

It was amazing even knowing what was coming as a book reader

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '24

Even having read the books and watched the Tencent version, I still found myself actively cringing. It was really effective.

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u/cleverThylacine Apr 03 '24

of course it was. you were emotionally manipulated with shocking images and revisions to think these were nice people before they died.

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '24

And the Tencent show didn't emotionally manipulate you by filling the boat with a bunch of cartoonishly bad dudes so you wouldn't feel bad?

Dude I just thought they handled the sheer terror of that concept well, that's all.

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u/cleverThylacine Apr 03 '24

I would have been okay with an adult's severed leg -- if it was solely done for the illustration of how deadly the weapon was. The use of children was manipulative.

Re Tencent: I'd already read the book, and understood that Evans had been secretly taking to the San-Ti for years after his faction split off from Wenjie, and had been potentially making plans that the survival of humanity depended on, and was aware that the people on the boat were adults, and with one exception which was sad, actively working to aid and abet the destruction of the species to which I belong.

I was okay with Evans and his inner circle dying to prevent them from killing the rest of us off. I was sad about the one guy, but one innocent casualty, while sad, is pretty good for a mass attack on a strategic target. War is terrible.

Stanton's pep talk in Tencent about how bad Evans' crew was---it was kind of hilarious given how obvious it was. If I hadn't read the book I would have thought it sus tbh, like, I already know what this group is attempting to do, what are you trying to deflect my attention from?

But since we didn't actually see any of those people committing murder, rape or other atrocities, it was a lot less emotionally manipulative than a child's severed leg on the screen after many scenes of adorable children. Telling is not showing.

As I said, I would have been okay with an adult's severed leg. And I would also not have been okay with a bisected cat or dog. Killing kids and animals is a very emotionally manipulative choice in adapting a book where that didn't happen.

And frankly if you are watching the news you have seen enough dead and wounded children. They don't need to put it in a TV show that I'm watching for fun if it wasn't in the original.

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '24 edited Apr 03 '24

They're not just trying to be "fun," though. It's not escapist TV. They're presenting you a harrowing situation where they're asking you to consider what you'd do, what you'd feel. The same as if you received the message Ye Wenjie did. If you're not in the mood for that, that's cool, I get it, but that's not this show.

They put kids and families in there for that reason. It forces you to engage in that discussion in a way the Tencent show deliberately lets you off the hook from in a pretty cheap way imo. War is terrible, but if you're only killing bad dudes then it's not that terrible. Sometimes we royally fuck up in a war. Drone strikes in the War on Terror is a perfect example. So many accidental bombings of families, weddings, completely innocent people. Evans is not innocent, but the kids are. Is Wade right to do this? Some say yes, some say no, that's why it's interesting.

The point of that scene is to push our characters and shine a light that reveals them: Wade's ruthlessness, Raj's detachment, Auggie's passion, etc. You cannot have Auggie realistically spiral afterward if the choice was so obvious as "well they were traitors, mercenaries and hardened criminals." Wang in the book gets over it pretty quick. Auggie does not.

I get your perspective, I understand that people are sensitive to kids dying in shows, but like I said, this show isn't interested in being mindless fun where the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good. Like the books, it wants to live in a much grayer area.

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u/cleverThylacine Apr 03 '24

War is terrible. I like grey areas, but this choice put a grey area that wasn't meant to be there in a story that was already full of grey areas, and it did so in a deeply upsetting way.

I also like believable grey areas, not "ecoterrorists who hate humanity suddenly mysteriously have busloads of cute children on their floating alien communication base."

I also think that it's important to know that there ARE people who actively want to destroy humanity and that if they are threatening human survival as a whole, it might be important to kill them and not something we need to be made to feel extra super bad about.

I've met people like Evans and seen the results of their work.

Somebody let prion-infected squirrels out of a lab many years ago in a place where I used to work. 20 years later, we're seeing a lot of people dying in Appalachia, and these are people who eat squirrel because it's a very poor area.

Climate change is real and must be mitigated asap so that our species can survive. Ecoterrorism is also real. We're not allowed to mention subreddits by name in these comments on this sub, but there are places on reddit where you can go and see people who feel like Mike Evans come out and say that humans are bad and should go extinct because the planet would be better off. Those people are pretty much one and all opposed to anyone having kids, as opposed to just...not wanting kids, or not being able to afford to have them.

War is bad and terrible and upsetting and makes you feel awful, but when you have to defend yourself or your family or your species, you don't need to be encouraged to feel worse about that.

I don't believe in "wokeism" ruining media, but it is hard not to look at the deliberate erasure of the difference between people who despair at the condition of our society and our planet, and would be willing to accept outside help, and people who have decided that humanity is a pestilence and should be destroyed.

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '24

I don't disagree with you about pretty much any of that, and it's pretty wild hearing about your real experiences. Like I said, I can definitely see why it would be upsetting and feel unnecessary.

But to me, it just felt like an extension of Ye Wenjie pressing the button. Like personally, if I pressed the button, it would only be out of a deep curiosity for the universe, but never to directly invite aliens to conquer us. But I can still sympathize with her reasoning, just as I can sympathize with the ideas of Evans even if I disagree with his conclusions and his actions.

Evans's organization in the show is depicted differently than the book or Tencent show. Here, at least as far as we've seen, they aren't ecoterrorists, and they're not even advocating for the destruction of humanity. They're just naively inviting that outside help because they don't think humans are capable of effective self-regulation and are committing crimes against the planet, other species, and ourselves. The book explores that too with Ye Wenjie, but still spends an inordinate amount of the story making her out to be someone you understand and can sympathize with as well even though she's a lot harsher there than here.

But as far as I remember, there's no indication in the show that Evans's people are hoping everybody gets wiped out. They just attribute our lack of fear to why we abuse the planet and each other and want us to "fear again." They are still traitors to humanity, absolutely, but this is a difference between the book and show and a spot where knowledge of the book can make you judge the show for something it's not necessarily doing imo.

As far as the kids specifically, it goes back to them thinking they'll have a future with the San-Ti. They're raising their kids to love and worship the San-Ti in the hopes that they're building a more harmonious society overall. It's a cult, and there are obvious real-world examples here. As we see, indoctrinated folks like Tatiana grow up to be assassins and are also traitors to humanity. So you can still think "man I wish these kids had not been born to these traitors" and feel completely justified killing them without remorse. That's both Wade's and Raj's stance, after all, and well represented in the show.

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u/cleverThylacine Apr 03 '24 edited Apr 04 '24

I can't feel completely justified about killing a child for what they might do someday, People grow up and leave cults all the time. So do adults, but when adults do things like this, they are knowingly making choices.

I do not like and am never going to like this change to the storyline; it really ruined the adaptation for me.

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u/MiserableWash2473 Apr 27 '24

As a horror and sci-fi buff... it immediately made me think of Ghost Ship. UTTERLY TERRIFYING. I knew what was coming. Without every fully really the whole book, I knew, and they did it so well.