纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英主创谈网飞版三体中国元素为何大幅减少

The “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were finishing off their hit HBO series after an eight-season run and wondering what was next. That was when the Netflix executive Peter Friedlander approached them with a trilogy of science-fiction books by the Chinese novelist Liu Cixin called “Remembrance of Earth’s Past.”

《权力的游戏》(Game of Thrones)创作者戴维·贝尼奥夫和D·B·魏斯为HBO制作的这部热门电视剧播出八季后即将收尾时，他们不知道接下来要做什么。就在那时，网飞(Netflix)的高管彼得·弗里德兰德带着中国小说家刘慈欣的科幻小说《地球往事三部曲》找上门来。

“We knew that it won the Hugo Award, which is a big deal for us since we grew up as nerds,” Benioff said of the literary prize for science fiction. Barack Obama was also on record as a fan.

“我们知道它获得了雨果奖，对读科幻小说长大的我们来说，那是件大事，”贝尼奥夫说，雨果奖是发给科幻作品的文学奖。美国前总统奥巴马也曾公开表示喜欢这部作品。

Benioff and Weiss dipped in and were intrigued by what they found: a sweeping space invasion saga that begins in 1960s China, amid the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and involves a superior alien race that has built a rabid cultlike following on Earth. A heady mix of science and skulduggery, featuring investigations both scientific and criminal, it felt utterly unique. “So much content right now feels like, ‘Oh, here’s another forensic show, here’s another legal thriller,’ it just feels like it’s a version of something you’ve seen,” Benioff said. “This universe is a different one.”

贝尼奥夫和魏斯通读了小说，书中读到的东西激起了他们的兴趣：这部长篇小说讲的是太空人对地球发动全面入侵的故事，它始于20世纪60年代的中国文化大革命动乱期间，涉及一个能力更强的外星人种，他们在地球上发展了近乎狂热的极端信徒。小说将科学与阴谋诡计巧妙地结合起来，科学调查和刑事调查在其中占重要地位，令人耳目一新。“很多内容现在给人的感觉是，‘哦，它是又一个刑侦鉴识节目，它是又一部法律惊悚片’，让人觉得是曾经看过的东西的翻版，”贝尼奥夫说。“这部小说让人看到了一个完全不同的宇宙。”

Or, as Weiss added, “This is the universe.”

或如魏斯补充的那样，“它本身就是个宇宙。”

Those novels are now the core of “3 Body Problem,” a new series that Benioff and Weiss created with Alexander Woo (“True Blood”). It premiered on opening night at the South by Southwest Film Festival and arrives Thursday on Netflix. The setting has changed along the way, with most of the action unfolding in London rather than China (although the Cultural Revolution is still a key element), and the characters, most of them young and pretty, now represent several countries. But the central themes remain the same: belief, fear, discovery and an Earth imperiled by superior beings. Among the heroes are the gruff intelligence chief Thomas Wade, played by the “Thrones” veteran Liam Cunningham, and a team of five young, reluctant, Oxford-trained physicists played by John Bradley — another “Thrones” star — Jovan Adepo, Eiza González, Jess Hong and Alex Sharp. Can they save the world for their descendants?

这部小说现在是贝尼奥夫和魏斯与亚历山大·伍（《真爱如血》编剧）共同创作的新系列剧《3体》(3 Body Problem)的核心内容。该剧在西南偏南电影节（简称SXSW）的开幕夜首映，并于周四在网飞上播出。电视剧的背景在改编过程中发生了变化，大部分情节在伦敦而不是中国展开（尽管文化大革命仍是一个关键因素），剧中角色现在来自几个国家，大多年轻漂亮。但电视剧保持了原著的核心主题：信仰、恐惧、发现，以及地球受到更强生物的威胁。剧中英雄人物包括态度生硬的情报主管托马斯·维德（由《权力的游戏》老将利亚姆·坎宁安饰演），以及一个由五名从牛津大学毕业的年轻、不情愿被卷入其中的物理学家组成的团队，他们的饰演者包括另一名《权力的游戏》明星约翰·布莱德利，以及贾方·艾德坡、艾莎·冈萨雷斯、洁丝·洪和艾历克斯·夏普。他们能否为他们的后代拯救地球？

In an interview in Austin the day of the SXSW premiere, the series creators discussed life after “Thrones,” their personal ties to “3 Body Problem” and the trick to making physics sexy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

在SXSW首映的那天，该剧主创人员在接受采访时讲述了他们在《权力的游戏》之后的生活，他们与《3体》的个人联系，以及让物理变得刺激有趣的方法。以下是对话摘录，文字经过编辑。

The series is quite different from the books, particularly the settings and characters, both of which are a lot less Chinese. How did this come about?

该剧与原著有很大的不同，尤其是在背景和人物方面，两者的中国元素大为减少。这是怎么发生的？

D.B. WEISS Once the long process of acquiring the rights to the books was finished, we ended up with the rights for an English-language adaptation. So if we had kept all the characters Chinese in China, then we would’ve had a whole show set in China in English. We also thought it was really important to the nature of the story that the group of people working together to solve this problem look like the world. Obviously, there’s going to be an American involved. There’s a Chinese person who was born in China, but also the Chinese diaspora. There are people from Southwest Asia. There are people from Latin South America. It just made fundamental sense to us to broaden the scope of it, because if this happened to the world, it feels like that’s what would happen in the process of dealing with it.

魏斯：在获得原著版权的漫长过程结束时，我们最终得到了英本版的改编权。所以，如果我们把情节保留在中国、把角色保留为中国人的话，那我们制作的就是一部以中国为背景的英语电视剧。我们也认为，共同努力解决剧中问题的这群人看上去像是来自全世界，对故事的本质非常重要。会有一名美国人参与其中，这显而易见。有中国出生的华人，也有海外出生的华人。有来自西南亚的人。有来自拉丁南美洲的人。扩大角色的背景范围对我们来说有根本意义，因为如果这种事情在世上发生的话，应对过程就会是这样的。

“Game of Thrones” was a cultural behemoth. How did that experience inform how you approached this show?

《权力的游戏》是个巨大的文化现象。那个制作经历对你们处理这部剧有什么影响？

WEISS I thought we were making a show for a lot of Dungeons and Dragons players. Of which I am one.

魏斯：我觉得我们是在为很多《龙与地下城》的玩家制作剧。我也是玩家之一。

DAVID BENIOFF And it wasn’t a behemoth out of the gate. In case anyone from Netflix is listening: It took years for that show to become big, and they had faith in it and stuck with it. But one of the things I think we learned on “Thrones” was to hire really good people who know what they’re doing, and then make sure they understand what you’re looking for.

贝尼奥夫：《权力的游戏》一开始时影响并不巨大。它花了好几年的时间才取得了巨大成功，这话是说给网飞的人听的，支持拍它的人对这部剧有信心，而且坚持了下来。但我认为我们在拍《权力的游戏》过程中学到了一个东西，那就是，请真正优秀的人来，他们知道自己在做什么，然后确保他们领会你想要的东西。

We’ve been talking a lot about Ramin Djawadi, our composer from “Thrones,” who’s also the composer on this show and hopefully the composer on everything we ever do. Nine times out of 10, when he delivers a cue to us, we’re like, “That’s great, Ramin.” And then the 10th time — sometimes we don’t even know exactly what’s wrong with it, it’s like, “I don’t know.” And he’ll think about it for a second and say, “Let me just take another shot at it. I get it.” And that’s rare, I think, to find someone who’s such a high-level artist who’s also that open and doesn’t get easily offended. We have a number of people like that we worked with on “Thrones” that we brought with us to this show.

我们一直在大谈拉明·贾瓦迪，他是为《权力的游戏》配乐的作曲家，也是这部剧的作曲家，我希望他是我们以后制作的所有影剧的作曲家。他把配乐的一小段交给我们时，90%的时候我们会说，“太棒了，拉明。”但也有10%的时候（有时我们甚至不明白问题究竟在哪里）我们会说，“我拿不准。”他会在略微思考后说：“让我再试一次。我懂了。”我觉得能找到这种人很不容易，既是高水平的艺术家，又有开放的态度，不轻易觉得被人冒犯了。拍《权力的游戏》时与我们合作的人中有不少这样的人，我们把他们带到了这次的制作中。

How about having such a fervent fan base that wasn’t shy about what they wanted, especially down the stretch of the series?

有那么虔诚的、不忌讳说出自己想要什么的粉丝群，尤其是在这部剧后面的部分，是什么样的情况？

BENIOFF It was interesting. We live in interesting times.

贝尼奥夫：那很有意思。我们生活在有意思的时代。

WEISS You want people to watch what you make, but you don’t get to control people’s reactions to what you make.

魏斯：你想让人们看你制作的东西，但你没有办法控制人们对你作品的反应。

BENIOFF Not yet.

贝尼奥夫：现在还没有。

WEISS We’re working on a device. I’m sure somebody’s working on it, anyway. But until they make the device, you make the story that you want to make, if you’re lucky enough to have the backing necessary to do that, then let what happens happen.

魏斯：我们正在研发一种装置。反正我相信有人正在研究它。但在他们造出这种设备之前，你还得去制作你想要制作的故事，如果你足够幸运，可以得到做这个故事所需的支持的话，剩下的就听其自然。

You don’t see a lot of series that look at Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The opening struggle session sequence is terrifying.

人们没看过多少展现毛泽东的文化大革命的电视剧。《3体》开场的批斗会片段十分可怕。

ALEXANDER WOO It’s a part of history that is not written about in fiction very much, let alone filmed. And my family lived through it, as did the family of Derek Tsang, who directed the first two episodes. We give a lot of credit to him for bringing that to life, because he knew that it had not been filmed with this clinical eye maybe ever. He took enormous pains to have every detail of it depicted as real as it could be. I showed it to my mother, and you could see a chill coming over her, and she said, “That’s real. This is what really happened.” And she added, “Why would you show something like that? Why do you make people experience something so terrible?” But that’s how we knew we’d done our job.

亚历山大·伍：那是一段很少会有小说提及的历史，更不用说拍摄出来了。我家人经历过那段历史，《3体》前两集的导演曾国祥的家人也经历过。把文革场景活生生地展现出来，在很大程度上是他的功劳，因为他知道没有人用这种冷静的眼光拍摄过这些场景，也许从来没有过。为了把场景的每个细节都拍得尽可能真实，他下了大功夫。我把那个片段放给我妈看时，能看出她的恐惧，她说：“那是真的。真的发生过这样的事。”她还说：“你为什么要让人看这种东西？为什么要让人经历如此可怕的事情？”但她的反应让我们知道，我们做到了。

“Thrones” rolled out week by week and consequently received intense, sustained attention throughout most of its seasons. What has it been like working in the binge model, with the entire first season of “3 Body Problem” dropping all at once?

《权力的游戏》是一周播一集，那样做的结果是，剧作是在每季的大部分时间得到了高度、持续的关注。《3体》第一季的所有集一次性上映，为这种短时间狂看模式工作是什么感觉？

WEISS That was one of the biggest changes going in, but we got our heads around it. We loved doing it the other way, but there are costs and benefits to both versions. And this one, in hindsight, might be something that’s better dropped all at once, at least the first season. Netflix has given us what we need to tell a very difficult, challenging, ambitious and not at all obvious story. And the people we have partnered with across all departments have been great. I know this sounds like some kind of a “Manchurian Candidate” thing: “Ted Sarandos [the Netflix chief executive] is the kindest, warmest, most generous, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever met.”

魏斯：这是我们制作这部剧的最大变化之一，但我们明白也接受为什么要这样做。虽然我们喜欢用另一种方式来做，但两种方式各有自己的成本和好处。事后看来，对这部剧来说也许一次性全季上映最好，至少第一季是这样。我们讲述一个非常困难、具有挑战性、雄心勃勃且一点也不显而易见的故事，网飞已为我们提供了所需的东西。我们在各个部门的合作伙伴都非常棒。我知道这听起来有点像《满洲候选人》里的某个说法：“泰德·萨兰多斯（网飞首席执行官）是我见过的最善良、最热情、最慷慨、最勇敢、最出色的人。”

Between your show and “Oppenheimer,” physics has become sexy. This is an unlikely development.

从电影《奥本海默》(Oppenheimer)到你们的剧，物理已变得刺激有趣。这是一个出人意料的发展。

WOO We tried to make physics as sexy as possible. These things always come as a surprise. I don’t think anyone thought chess was sexy until “The Queen’s Gambit.” At the heart of it, it’s about people who are extraordinary at something. These are people with skills that you can’t even fathom, and there’s a kind of sex appeal to that. I think that’s what made “Oppenheimer” so fascinating and what makes the characters in our show so fascinating: They’re capable of thinking and conceiving of these things that we can’t, yet they’re still part of our world, and they still face a lot of very human challenges that the rest of us do.

伍：我们尽可能试着让物理变得刺激有趣。这种事情总是以令人惊讶的方式发生。我觉得在电影《后翼弃兵》(The Queen’s Gambit)出来前，没有人认为国际象棋刺激有趣。关键在于，把在某件事上特别优秀的人展现给观众。这些人有你完全搞不清的技能，这里面有一种类似性感的吸引力。我觉得这就是让《奥本海默》如此迷人之处，也是让我们剧中的角色如此迷人之处：他们有能力思考和设想我们无法思考和设想的事情，但他们仍是我们世界的一部分，他们仍面临着我们其他人面临的许多非常人性的挑战。

The series also seems to be wrestling with some ideas about faith and belief, with a faction of earthlings seeing these aliens as godlike saviors.

这部剧似乎也在努力处理一些有关信仰和信念的概念，一部分地球人将入侵的外星人视为神圣的救世主。

BENIOFF Two characters ask in the opening 10 minutes or so, “Do you believe in God?” That’s interesting for a series that’s a science fiction show, not really a religious show. Those questions are also asked in the books, and we thought it was fascinating, that link between believing in a superior something out there and believing in the divine.

贝尼奥夫：在开场10分钟左右的时候，一个角色问另一个角色：“你相信上帝吗？”对一个科幻剧而不是实际上的宗教剧来说，这很有意思。书中也提出了这些问题，我们认为将相信存在一种更高的东西与相信神圣联系起来很有意思。

WEISS I think a lot of people who were writing religious literature or fiction 200 years ago, or in the 1700s, would have been writing science fiction in the 20th century, when the genre came into its own. The series looks at this idea of believing in something that’s so overwhelmingly superior to you, at least on the surface, that you can’t even conceive of what their motivations might be for doing what they’re doing.

魏斯：我觉得，很多在200年前或18世纪写宗教文献或小说的人如果活在科幻小说开始出现的20世纪的话，就会写科幻小说。这部剧仔细考虑的一个概念是，相信某种（至少在表面上）比你优越得如此之多的东西，以至于你甚至无法想象他们做一些事情的动机是什么。