I was all set to watch this yakuza crime series, on Netflix, called Giri/Haji, but knowing that 3 Body Problem was out, I thought I should give it one final consideration. I decided that I would watch the trailers for each, back to back, and then choose which one grabbed me the most. For some reason, 3 Body Problem didn’t look as wide, nor as dark, as I seemed to remember it. Don’t get me wrong, some scenes are very dark, but a lot of it looked really good. Right after this, Netflix recommended to me a Korean Drama called Mr. Sunshine. It was also wide aspect, but it just looked amazing. It featured amazing period set pieces, with cable cars in the old city, and old style warships battling at sea. I added it to my list. Maybe I got over my aversion to 2.35:1 content already?

Anyway, I started watching 3 Body Problem, which is a really cool show. Since it comes from a Chinese novel, written by the famous Cixin Liu, who also wrote The Wandering Earth, quite a bit of it is set in China, with Chinese language dialogue, and there are a number of Chinese characters in the parts set elsewhere. Maybe that makes it somewhat comfortable to me. It brought some questions to mind though.

As an American, who grew up on Hollywood movies and TV shows, I always envisioned that if a major alien event happened, it would happen to America, or America would be at the center of it. If, however, such an extraterrestrial event happened to China, even if it were decades ago, would they even tell us? Would we ever even know about it? This is one thing I like about watching Chinese, Korean and Japanese dramas. It isn’t just Americans who get to go into space, become superheroes, or get attacked by alien robots. We get different perspectives on things.

3 Body Problem is, without question, a big budget, Hollywood production, but the source material is from China, and so far, it doesn’t seem like they are trying to erase that from the story. I thought I might be in for a binge. It was hard to stop watching, and take a break, even to write this post, and do some other work that needed doing. I will actually try not to finish it all today, but I really can’t wait to get back into it.