‘3 Body Problem’ review: The ghost of ‘Game of Thrones’ haunts Netflix’s sci-fi epic

It’s impossible not to think about Game of Thrones while watching 3 Body Problem.

Netflix’s latest sci-fi series comes to us courtesy of Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who’ve teamed up with Alexander Woo (The Terror, True Blood) for this adaptation of Liu Cixin’s lauded Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. The similarities don’t stop there: Game of Thrones actors and collaborators pepper the entire series. John Bradley (aka Samwell Tarly), Liam Cunningham (aka Ser Davos Seaworth), and Jonathan Pryce (aka the High Sparrow) have prominent roles. Ramin Djawadi composed the show’s music, while frequent Game of Thrones director Jeremy Podeswa helms several 3 Body Problem episodes.

But perhaps the deepest similarity between 3 Body Problem and Game of Thrones is that of the complexity of the source material — complexity which has rendered both book series to be viewed as “unadaptable.” Game of Thrones owes that label to its wide scope and unwieldy cast, but Liu’s work is an even taller order. The trilogy covers millions of years and is hard science fiction. It smashes near-impenetrable physics concepts together at lightning-fast speeds, just like particles in the accelerators that are so key to 3 Body Problem‘s main mystery.

How do you translate this story to the screen, then? If you’re Benioff, Weiss, and Woo, you make some big changes, including creating entirely new characters to better ground us in the grand scope of 3 Body Problem. Frequently, though, that scope ends up overwhelming any actual emotional resonance. Or, worst of all, it falls flat, failing to create any sense of wonder or horror in the face of the cosmic unknown.

What’s 3 Body Problem about?

Even though 3 Body Problem takes place on Earth, it’s the idea of the cosmic unknown that really drives the series as it alternates between the past and the present.

The show kicks off in Cultural Revolution-era China, where astrophysicist Ye Wenjie (an enthralling, steely Zine Tseng) witnesses her physics professor father being murdered in a “struggle session” (a public spectacle where enemies of the state were denounced, tortured, and sometimes murdered). He’d been accused of teaching “reactionary” concepts like the Big Bang theory. (Given the Game of Thrones connection, comparisons to Arya Stark watching Ned’s beheading are inevitable.) A few years later, she finds herself at a top-secret military base. Her activity there will shift the entire course of humanity… but we won’t really begin to feel the effects of her work until 2024.

The first of these effects is a mysterious string of brilliant scientists dying by suicide, all around the world. Grizzled detective Clarence Shi (Benedict Wong) takes on the case, which leads him to the aforementioned totally new characters, a group of scientists and classmates known as the Oxford Five. (Notably, 3 Body Problem shifts the present’s story from China to the U.K.) Among them are Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), an insatiably curious theoretical physicist; Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), a researcher about to revolutionize the world with her new nanotechnology; Jack Rooney (Bradley), head of a snack empire; Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), a talented but unfocused research assistant; and Will Downing (Alex Sharp), a high school physics teacher. Together, they’ll uncover a looming alien threat to Earth.

Said threat may be centuries away, but for humanity, the planning for the future begins now. Each member of the Oxford Five will have a very different role to play in humanity’s coming battle for survival — but when it comes to making good television, only some of these storylines truly hit.

3 Body Problem‘s characters are hit-or-miss — and so is the story.

Our first main gateway into the perils the Oxford Five will face is Auggie, who is tormented by a ticking countdown only she can see. The horrors of the countdown reduce Auggie (and González, by default) to a perpetual state of trembling panic, which later gives way to a perpetual state of drinking, smoking, and looking beautiful, but not much else. It’s a less-than-compelling treatment of a principal character, and any later, more emotionally weighty scenes involving Auggie crumble as a result.

Luckily, things start to pick up as 3 Body Problem turns its focus to Jin and Jack. Both receive mysterious VR headsets that transport them into an astonishing, immersive video game about helping civilizations throughout history survive chaotic eras of planet-wide catastrophe. The two throw themselves into the game with gusto, combining Jack’s (sometimes uncouth) gamer savvy and Jin’s penchant for problem-solving. Bradley and Hong make a winning pair: Bradley brings welcome comic relief to some of 3 Body Problem‘s stranger scenes, while Hong harnesses Jin’s curiosity with such verve that it’s impossible not to get sucked into the game — or any complicated scientific explanations — with her.

The remaining pair of the Oxford Five fares less well. Will receives a diagnosis that upends his entire life, but he spends most of the season pining after Jin in what feels like 3 Body Problem‘s version of the “nice guy” trope. (It also features the most out-of-nowhere Lana Del Rey needle drop.) Saul’s unresolved past romantic entanglements with Auggie also feel undercooked as he, too, is frustratingly sidelined until the very last minute. This show simply isn’t equipped for relationship drama.

Thankfully, the interactions between any of the Oxford Five and Wong’s Clarence are delightful across the board, be they funny or weighted down with existential dread. If only the core friendships at the heart of the show could be as believable and as developed.

3 Body Problem‘s sci-fi is also a mixed bag.

If 3 Body Problem‘s characters don’t always give us anything to latch onto, at least we’re in for some cool sci-fi shenanigans, right? Right?

For the most part, yes. 3 Body Problem delivers some truly excellent sci-fi set pieces. Any scene set within the video game creates the opportunity for grand-scale spectacle, from an army millions-strong to a cataclysmic freeze. We’re also treated to some compelling body horror, as civilizations within the game dehydrate themselves into desiccated corpses to survive chaotic eras. Coming back to life is literally a matter of just adding water, making for some neat, trippy scenes of bodily expansion.

Elsewhere, we get a space mission sequence that is among the most gripping parts of the show, some thrilling deep-space intrigue courtesy of young Ye Wenjie, and a horrifying ship-set attack where the threat lies only in what you can’t see. Thanks to some clever visual effects and a whole episode of careful build-up, that scene becomes the closest 3 Body Problem gets to replicating the shock and awe of Game of Thrones at its most captivating. Judging by my own stunned reaction, I’d put it somewhere near the White Walkers’ attack on Hardhome.

What truly makes these moments of spectacle tick isn’t sheer grandeur, but rather the emotions behind it. Curiosity, devastation, hope, disgust — these intermingle to create immediately impactful television. Yet 3 Body Problem also falls into the trap of alienating its emotional depth from its own physics musings. (Although to its credit, it does a better job than the book.) Major science-related twists are often delivered through mountains of heavy exposition that give you little to no room to process. Sometimes, they can be fun, like when a striking warrior avatar (Sea Shimooka) in the video game flies down from the sky to explain what’s going on. Overall, though, the explanations are dizzying or downright dull, no matter how hard actors try to sell them.

Even the alien threat feels underdeveloped, although part of that could certainly be chalked up to 3 Body Problem‘s attempts at maintaining an air of mystery. With 400 years before the aliens’ supposed arrival, there’s too much of a sense of remove. 3 Body Problem certainly tries to convince you that generations down the line will feel the impact of this arrival, even drawing a clumsy comparison to climate change. Yet it all feels strangely flat, stuck in two dimensions even as the series waxes poetic about the infinite dimensions the universe could contain.

3 Body Problem is now streaming on Netflix.