When I heard that Netflix was going to adapt Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy of novels and that the people behind it were the ones behind The Game of Thrones my initial reaction was:

It’s not purely because David Benioff and D. B. Weiss totally ruined the best fantasy drama ever made with that shoddy last season.

And true, my trepidation has a lot to do with how little confidence I have in Hollywood depicting one of the most sensitive periods of China’s history, the Cultural Revolution. For god sake, they couldn’t even do China’s folk tales right (exhibit 1: Disney’s live action Mulan), let alone China’s history. (PS: I’ll be covering more of this topic in part 2.)

But my main concern was around the inevitable China vs West comment wars on social media and movie forums everywhere, with both sides touting their version as superior, and then the inevitable “Communist Party bad”, “OMG Chinese propaganda” and “You only like the Chinese/Netflix version cos you’re pro-China/pro-West” conversation points.