3 Body Problem Review: Existential Dread Never Looked This Good

The bigger and grander that science-fiction novels are, the more difficult they can become to adapt. When you pack your story full of dense concepts and distant worlds, it can be too much for mainstream audiences to follow along with, and they tune out instead.

However, "3 Body Problem," based on the novel of the same name by Liu Cixin and brought to Netflix by the controversial directing team behind "Game of Thrones," manages to neatly sidestep this problem. It combines engaging and often intimate character moments with rich philosophical quandaries about our place in the universe. Are we alone, or are we sharing the vastness of space with other sentient life forms? And if there are others out there, especially if they already have the technology for interstellar communication, is it safe for us to be on their radar? Despite these scintillating questions, "3 Body Problem" is a bit of a slow burn that rewards audiences with a certain amount of patience — but by the end of the second episode, it grips your attention and won't let go.

"3 Body Problem" begins following narratives in two different time periods. First, we see a young woman — Ye Wenjie, played by Zine Tseng — watch her father, a university professor, be beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution in China. Labeled a dissident by association, she is sent to a work camp before being recruited to collaborate on a secret project designed to communicate with extraterrestrial life.

Meanwhile, in the present day, there is a different kind of upheaval among the scientific community. A group of Britain-based researchers are reeling from the recent suicide of one of their friends and colleagues. Before her death, she began to see numbers counting down everywhere she looked. So it's especially disconcerting when Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), another scientist, starts to see the same numbers and is told by a mysterious figure that the only way to avoid a similar fate is to stop her research. But this is all just the tip of the iceberg, and events that occur in 1960s China have massive ramifications in the present day, leaving the group of scientists to deal with a crisis decades in motion.

On the face of it, "3 Body Problem" seems like it would be a difficult novel to adapt. It's sprawling and intellectually complex in a way that could easily lose viewers. And indeed, the first episode is a bit of a slog to get through, as it sets up the main players and stakes carefully. You would be forgiven for feeling that it's going to be more trouble than it's worth to attempt to become emotionally invested in it. But that feeling quickly wears off — in short order, it's off to the races. Part of this is down to the ramping up of the dramatic tension, as the mysterious science fiction elements of the story become more clear. 

It's interesting on an intellectual level — who among us hasn't pondered the Fermi paradox and where we stand in the great expanse of the universe? But the harder challenge is to take all of these philosophical musings and turn them into good drama, and that's where "3 Body Problem" really succeeds. The large ensemble of actors — which contains "Game of Thrones" alum like John Bradley and Liam Cunningham, as well as popular British actors Benedict Wong, Alex Sharp, and Jonathan Pryce — work well together, and although Zine Tseng's Ye Wenjie is narratively isolated in the past, her performance builds a strong foundation that pays dividends as the story goes on.

Where a lot of Netflix shows have a visual style that feels lazily over-CGIed, "3 Body Problem" has a sleek aesthetic, especially as some of the characters venture into the virtual reality video game world that has been surreptitiously delivered to them. These sequences are some of the most engaging of the entire show, creating a physical manifestation of an otherwise theoretical thought problem. Although we know that these moments are taking place within a virtual reality, they somehow manage to have real stakes.

As much as David Benioff and D.B. Weiss get a bad rap for how they handled the later seasons of "Game of Thrones," we have to admit that they — along with their co-creator Alexander Woo, who shined as a writer on "True Blood" and a number of other television series — have managed to pull the rabbit out the hat once again. "3 Body Problem" is a stunningly ambitious adaptation of an unwieldy science fiction text, bringing both humanity and existential terror to its otherwise analytical approach.

"3 Body Problem" premieres on Netflix on March 21.