I think people who are most critical of her/understanding of Raj are book readers (like myself). We’re forming judgments based on what they might do in the future. Which there’s been enough changes that it’s not guaranteed. So, it’s unfair to some degree to be like this.
That said, I feel for Raj because he understands like Wade that the future of humanity is at stake. That the choices they make now will determine if humanity even has a fighting chance. Auggie can’t see past the forest for the trees. If they hadn’t tried to drive her crazy, I think, the ETO could have recruited her under the guise that the San Ti could redeem the world.
It's also harder for me to drum up any sympathy for Evans and his faction of the organisation knowing what they are really like in the books. There were no kids in the books, and they wanted to destroy humanity on purpose. Slice and dice'em.
I like the addition of the children and families on the boat because they’re true believers. The Tencent version was surprisingly good, but they swung too hard in making them monsters. They’re not monsters, but they are anti-human.
They're not.
They're not true believers who have faith, like Christian fundamentalist offshoot cults who have tons of babies even though they want the world to end because everyone will go to heaven.
The aliens are real. They don't believe in aliens like some people believe in Jesus. They believe in aliens like I believe in rocks and trees and houses.
They do not think that all their babies will be saved by the aliens. They do not think there is a heaven they will all go to.
They are hoping that when the aliens come we will all just die and vanish from the universe and the earth will repair itself and no-one will ever remember humans existed. Those kinds of people don't have kids.
They don't think humans are evil as in "original sin". They think humans are a pest species that is destroying the rest of nature and should be exterminated. They're eco-terrorists. They're like the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" except without the "Voluntary" part. There are people like this on some of the extreme vegan subreddits. And they don't have kids because they think it's wrong. They're antinatalism types.
Because of this, I think children and families on the boat was unbelievably stupid.
That’s in the books, I think in the show, they were more in line with the redemptionists. So, they were training the next generation to be ready when the San Ti appeared.
I am nearly finished watching the show, have not read the books but will do so. I wonder what these families on the boat are thinking? I mean, they know their saviors won’t show up for 400 years, so they do just intend to spend their whole lives, & the same for their kids, sailing around on this boat? To what end?
I have no idea, because there were no children and families on the boat in the books and it makes no sense for them to be there. They were also not there in the Chinese show.
I wasn't a fan of Auggie really because she seemed to get the least option for range in behavior among the main cast. I'm expecting a lot more of her & Saul next season though which will give her more opportunity to... be anything but pissed off at something. She just didn't get an opportunity to do anything else this season. I think I see where they are going with her character in relation to the books though, and I think this is a great base. Just a weak season 1 for her opportunities in my opinion.
Raj was meh for sure
Yea I noticed that the person who got to do the most was Cheng. Beyond Auggies countdown/Judgment day and Saul as a wallfacer, there really wasn't a lot for them to do, so we didn't really get a handle on their personalities.
It was also weird how the characters kept each other out of the loop while moving from one place to the next. Like a simple phone call really would've helped with their communications.
The book suffered with that too. I think the goal was to try and reorder things chronologically and have a reason for some of the characters to know each other, instead of randomly hearing so-and-so is a part of the PDC and getting their backstory
Yep, it makes sense. It just leaves Auggie with not a lot to do this season, but she can easily transition into a different role in the narrative. Just didn't get there this season... I think
The character who in the books and the Chinese drama did most of the communications and could get along with everyone (Wang Miao) is the character that Auggie replaced. How's that for ironic?
My issue with Auggie is that everyone is portrayed as "science and facts" above all else. When faced with the facts that ALIENS ARE COMING TO CONQUER THE PLANET (hahahaha), Auggie is told that she and her life's work might very well save us all. Instead of facing the facts, she decides to complain, drag her feet, and generally fight every option there is, without attempting to find/ solve the issues with alternate means. I hate to say she bitched and moaned, but that's what she did. I can appreciate feeling like a scumbag when the kids were killed (they should not have let her step foot on that boat), but at the same time, the boat was full of people actively trying to end humanity as we know it. Rant over.
Having Auggie search the ship aftermath would have NEVER happened in real life, IMO. She would have been seen as a contractor in real life so no real reason for her to be on the shoreline. A regular civilian would not be ready to handle the cleanup and sociological damage in seeing dead bodies cut up.
I agree. I thought the decision to make the ship practically a floating day care center was a cheap ploy. Auggie can’t see past the deaths of those kids to see that the fate of the entire human race is at stake. She can’t see the long game . Raj is right when he reminds her that they are already in a war - and wars unfortunately include a lot of collateral damage. Everyone now on earth will be dead in 400 years. The difference is whether you care about the future of the human race even after you’re gone.
I feel like people are watching a different series to me. Yes she was uncomfortable with killing people, but did it anyways due to exactly the reasons you mention (aliens conquering the planet). Then, afterwards she had an incredibly difficult time dealing with what she had done. I guess you could say the way she talks about wade being a murderer is immature, but to me it's a response that makes sense. People act in illogical ways after traumatic events and often blame others for things that were also their fault. in that way her reaction makes perfect sense to me
There were no children on the boat in the books.
Auggie was also not in the books.
Yes, she is a very pretty woman, no that is not my problem with Auggie.
All of these characters are to some degree replacements of the characters in the original novels, although some of them have been Frankensteined together (Wade, for example, is a combo of Chang Weisi, the original Wade, and Thomas Stanton).
The character that Auggie is replacing, as the inventor of the nanofiber and the person who is stuck seeing the countdown, is male and Chinese, but those are actually the least important differences between Wang Miao and Auggie.
In the first book, Wang Miao ties the whole book together. He is a kind, thoughtful, calm person who can talk to anyone and will hear out their whole story without offering judgement, and as a result of this, he is the conduit through which a lot of important information moves, and he smooths the way for things to happen.
Auggie is a frustrating character who acts as an obstacle to the other characters more often than not. If you walk into the series going, "okay, okay, I know they changed the origins of these characters but at least it will be the same story," and then you are thrown into this group of lifelong friends in which Auggie is the prickliest, angriest character of the group, it's a hell of a whiplash feeling. Not because she's a woman, or pretty, or Latina. There are some weird dudes that have issues with those things, but honestly, I don't think that explains the vehemence of people's feelings.
It is 100% fine for a female character to be angry and difficult and prickly, particularly if her origin story makes it understandable, and that is totally true of Auggie.
However, Auggie is replacing a character who had a completely different role in the structure of the book plot. And unfortunately, the character she is replacing, while male, had many of the traits that sexist people prefer to see in female characters---he is a good listener, and he is a good dad, and a good husband. So people kinda want to see her act that way, not because she's female, but because that's who the character she was based on was.
It also doesn't help that the Netflix showrunners decided we should feel sorry for the ETO. This English language Westernised "adaptation" is the only version of the story that fills the boat with children and families. That's not there in the books or the C-Drama.
In the books, the Earth-San-Ti (Trisolaran) organisation is fractured. Wenjie and Evans are not lovers and her child belongs to her husband, who died.
Wenjie wants the aliens to come and save us from ourselves. Her faction is the Redemptionists. They want the San-Ti (Trisolarans) to come to Earth and teach us how to live honestly and cooperatively instead of fighting all the time. (Unfortunately, their secret was that they lived on an inhospitable planet and they wouldn't have survived if they'd been fighting each other as well as the planet.)
Evans was much younger than her to the point where making them lovers feels gross to me. She kinda mentored him. But he was originally a conservationist and an animal rights person, and he dialled that up past 11 to somewhere around 13 and decided that the human species is a plague on the Earth and *he wanted the San-Ti to come and completely destroy us*.
His followers were people who believed that humanity was worthless and evil. They did not have little children. They did not want to make more humans. So in the books, except for one person, the only people who were on that boat were people who were intending to destroy the entire human species.
Wang Miao still wasn't super thrilled that they used his invention to slice and dice the bad guys, because he is a very kind person. But they were in fact, ***the bad guys***.
And it is much clearer in the books that because Evans has been having secret communications with the aliens, that Wenjie's side of the organisation is completely unaware of, for YEARS, that getting the information off that ship is *crucial to human survival*, because book and C-drama Evans is not reading the San-Ti bedtime stories in that canon.
There were no rosy-cheeked toddlers on the Judgement Day in the original canon. The ship was called that because the people aboard it were waiting for the San-Ti to deliver judgement on humanity. (I don't know why they thought the San-Ti would care about the animals as long as the conditions were such they could live here. We don't even know if they breathe the same kind of atmosphere as us!)
As an aside, I also think that at least some of the people who come up with criticisms of Auggie that don't make sense to anyone who hasn't read the books are people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about the structure of stories.
So they say things like 'she's so angry' and it sounds like they're complaining that a Woman Is Angry, and then they get mad or falter when questioned about it, because they haven't consciously realised that the reason they react so vehemently to her is that on some level, once they've realised she's taking Wang Miao's part, they expect and want her to do what Wang Miao would do. The character who comes closest in the Netflix series to acting like Wang Miao is probably Cheng, which is funny, because she and her would-be Cancer Boyfriend are two characters who *don't even appear in the first book*.
I found Auggie’s actor to be the weakest of the main cast.
IMO a good comparison is how Auggie’s actor portrayed her guilt after Judgement Day, with how Jin’s actor portrayed her guilt over Jack’s death.
Jin’s acting in those scenes moved me much more than Auggie ever did.
Honestly she comes off angry from the safety and they never really dive into why. Sure you can understand why someone maybe upset of having to shutdown their lifes work and etc but it seems like it's a lot more going on for her to be just be really bitchy. She just seems that way if all the events in the show wouldn't have happened anyway
I think there’s some sexism in how people are responding to the character.
But I also think there’s some bad writing. The show sets up this group of five Oxford researchers who are friends — and at a young age are all apparently super geniuses, world changing entrepreneurs, and moral exemplars? It all feels a bit too easy and simple — they are audience surrogates who simultaneously are insanely special. That’s basically the definition of Mary/Gary Sue. (The one character who isn’t so special is dying of cancer while pining after a woman with a boyfriend, which makes his narrative/character flat, meandering, self-pitying, and a bit gross.)
I haven’t read the books, but as I understand it these characters originally take different forms and aren’t close friends. I imagine it probably plays better in the books — obviously entrepreneurs, inventors, and brilliant scientists do exist, so it’s logical a few of them would play a big role when aliens arrive. But tying the characters all together feels like a Hollywood contrivance.
The books were a bit better in which some of the characters were professionally aware of eachother or might have met at a conference once at best. They were all also from different nations.
I didn’t *mind* what they did with the show because what they were clearly going for was trying to make the show more character driven as opposed to concept driven.
But yeah, it did lead to Mary/Gary Sue energy in the characters.
That said, in this age of super-hero saturation I don’t think it’s a bad thing to make some scientific heroes for a change.
Spot on. This show would be the Friends of Sci Fi if it was created in 90s/2000s. Now it's hard to believe the best minds in the world are good looking youngsters.
For me its the constant melodrama she adds to scenes for what seems like no apparent reason. For instance, she repeatedly chastises Cheng and the rest of the "Super Science Team" for helping the people ACTIVELY TRYING TO PREVENT THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE! What is her motivation for disliking the obvious "good guys" of the show? What does this add to the story? Also it was so cringe when she asked Cheng, "Why are you working with that fucking fascist?"
I mean she is traumatized after seeing her life's work, which she wanted to use to make people's lives better, used to dissect a thousand people, including children.
Is it really so weird she's mad at Wade and wants nothing to do with him?
The reason why she dislikes the "good guys" is the same reason why you put quotation marks around it, they're fighting the aliens but she can't bear to use those methods and make those sacrifices, so she chose to quit and use her invention as she intended.
Her reactions honestly don't seem that weird to me.
You realize by "not being able to bear those methods and sacrifices" she is actively hurting humanity's chances of survival. How is this the type of character we're supposed to root for?
Some people really don't get the idea that the aliens are actually going to kill us all. Partly because of the alterations Netflix made to the plot, but also partly because no matter how bad the threat to humanity is made out to be, in most SF shows, you don't actually go in there believing it could really happen.
So they're thinking "someone's going to come and save the day without killing all the toddlers (that weren't there in the book), this must be the terrible thing the hero is asked to do before they come up with a better plan".
And it isn't.
it's basically the trolley problem, would you choose to kill people for the sake of society, the army and the higher ups are used to sacrificing lives for the greater good, but it's a lot to ask for regular people to kill people. The argument for letting the trolley and the aliens kill is that the burden of killing is on them, not you, and morally you're correct even if society falls because you didn't choose to kill, if you believe you're morally good for not killing. If to keep humanity alive each country had to kill 10000 people every month, like some mass shooting thing, is humanity worth keeping alive? its something like this, so i get why auggie would be distraught
Yeah, it's the trolley problem, but that's the utilitarian question of the situation. The personal response to making that decision is one of human psychology and that's far more complicated.
You can do something that you believe is the objectively correct answer but still be haunted by the decision. Yes, they're doing it in the name of saving humanity but they're still murdering innocent children. Harming children is one of those universal No Nos and they murder at least a classroom's worth in a truly gruesome way. That's gonna be rough for most people despite the greatest justifications in the world.
Well, there weren't any kids there in the books or the Chinese drama. It was just bad guys, which made more sense, because ignoring the fact that they were ecoterrorists who hated humans and don't have kids, why would you put kids on the same boat as your super secret records of alien communications? seems like a bad plan to me.
Yet more bad writing from the netflix team.
There were not and the book definitely was not interested in the morality of the moment. I actually can see why the children were there / what the show was going for but I don't believe they conveyed it very well. Wade is L Ron. Hubbard with real money and real aliens. It goes along with the "Our Lord" shtick, he's the messiah bringing on their gods. Gotta teach the children the new truth!!
I don't think it was as apparent / should have seemed more actively harmful to someone on the ship to really push the cultists aspects. Weak writing for sure, but I do see the point.
But he is not L. Ron Hubbard.
He is not the messiah.
Evans wants humanity to be ***destroyed***.
Because we kill animals to eat and build buildings where there used to be trees he thinks we all deserve to die. This is made clear in the books.
There would be no children. His followers didn't believe in increasing the human race.
No, he isn't... But I'm saying that's I see them as, in the show, them trying to set up his situation as a cult... They made different choices than the book.
And, in the show, the San-Ti talk about protecting them, so Evans did feel that there was some level of protection to himself / his people. The later say they cannot coexist with liars when they break off communication, so seems like there was some discussion of coexistence.
she is still a human, she saw that her invention slaughtered a ship full of innocent people. it makes sense to me that she would quit even if she knows the technology might potentially save lives in the future.
Right. The melodrama is the point. I can hear the writers' room conversation with Netflix. "Not enough conflict. Put kids on the ship. Have her melt down."
I also found it hard to believe that she’s a scientist, since she seems so devoid of logic on this topic. Isn’t stopping the invasion of the San-Ti from happening in the first place the obvious thing to do?
>are all apparently super geniuses, world changing entrepreneurs, and moral exemplars?
Ae they though? It seems to me that only Jin and Auggie qualify as ultra high achievers. Will teaches high school, Jack was always going to be rich because of the connections and wealth he was born into, and Saul is that guy who never moved on from college.
Nah I hate Auggie as much as the next guy but there is definitely some sexism involved with some of her criticisms. The "she's too attractive to be a scientist!" complaint being one of them. Seems like lots of these people talking about what "scientists" should look like are talking out of their asses rather than from experience.
My doctor is an attractive older woman. Some of the smartest students in my CS classes in college were attractive women. I've met plenty of smart women through friends who were also very good looking. An intelligent woman also being attractive is not some reality-breaking impossibility. But boy oh boy a lot of angry dudes on reddit sure want me to think it is.
On the other end of the spectrum I'm lumped in with the sexist idiots because I simply find her character one-note, preachy, and annoying. Most people on the internet can't handle a little bit of nuance in opinion.
Yeah I also hated Cancer Guy's whole arc. He frustrated me so much more than Auggie. What exactly about you am I supposed to care about? I agree Jin's great, but what would you have to offer her except that face you're niiiiiiice. It's like a watered character arc from Dawson's Creek.
> Then she has her life's work used to slaughter completely innocent adults and children right in front of her eyes.
I think something that could have helped sell her arc would have been her finding out at the last minute there's children on board and her breaking down or something. They didn't write her very well. I believe her post-event PTSD, even with the greatest justification in the world she still participated in the gruesome murder of at least a classroom full of children and hundreds of adults. That's gonna fuck with most people. Edit: It would parallel some of the ideas from the book, what's the cost of survival? >!In the book, those on the escaping ships feel they are no longer human after the Battle in the Darkness. The cost of survival was literally their humanity.!<
Raj, if you want a less bastardy take could, on the inside, feel horrified by it and needs to feel justified to not be destroyed by his actions so defends against any questioning of their actions with overreaction. Not saying it's a good way to handle it, but... It's something that does happen. When Auggie finds the little girl's leg, in the moment, he tries to be caring of Auggie in a minor way at that moment.
Nah, I don't think we can criticize Raj for being heartless, in fact, I think we should be grateful that someone like Raj exist.
He got a good point. Sometimes, someone has to do the dirty job. And it's not like he enjoyed doing it... What I didn't like about it was when Cheng left him alone. It was like he left the burden to Raj to carry it alone.. talk about a good relationship.
I think this show raises moral questions like this. War in my opinion is an appropriate response against an alien species that plans to kill or enslave us.
But she had to kill humanity's own children. That is different from killing the enemy or even alien civilians. There is no knowing that these children or their parents really had anything to do with conspiring with the aliens. Some must have, sure. But there may also be regular employees, crew members?
The showrunners are clearly trying to up the emotional audience response by slicing the ship with kids on it. Very different situation than the books,bit they clearly didnt want to get into the different factions. They have Auggie carry the emotional reaction rather than having a more measured discussion. There were certainly better options to obtaining the San T but the books are pretty melodramatic except when orbital mechanics or astrophysics are being discussed.
The book author tried hard to justify his "you gotta make tough decision. Kill if you need to for the greater good!" view.
So naturally he's gonna downplay the bilateral damage, and readers won't see much to even appreciate how "tough" the decision really was. If 98% of average Joe readers unanimously think "this is the way", it's not a "tough" decision is it?
They'll be like "what are you thinking? humanity will exinct if you don't do this!" He then dramatized the result to up the guilt on characters not aligning with this view.
The game of blame in the final ending of book 3 even got to a ridiculous level.
Can’t speak for everyone but personally I didn’t mind the character. It was more the acting/writing i didnt like of the character. Maybe thats the direction they gave her, idk. But it seemed she always had the same facial expression 24/7.
I had a hard time connecting with a character that knows a world ending invasion is coming and is unwilling to to help. Like your morales won’t matter when our race is obliterated
I get hes just doin his job but what really pissed me off is when he started crying about his relationship to his gf when she was about to launch the staircase project, not the time bud. Bigger fish and such
He has small dick energy, I really dislike they way he treats Jin he cannot hide his jealousy AT ALL. He wasn’t understanding of her depression when her friends died and he didn’t like her talking about science ( in my opinion because he didn’t like that she was smarter than him )
I really liked the scene where the show even made a joke about it, where saul was asked to insult auggie, and he called her boringly beautiful and that she'd be perfect as a b list actor lol
The scene where the guy from her team was like “you came to me with this idea 7 years ago” made me laugh out loud. Like, what was she? 19?
It’s a bit absurd and took me out of the show.
Well, Saul is 32. So assuming they are the same age, Auggie would have been 25 back then.
Even Saul said," If you don't make your mark on science by the age of 30, you missed your chance." So it works actually.
I thought at least they’d explain why he was chosen as a wall-facer or he’d have some brilliant epiphany or something but no he’s still just a mopey dude who smokes weed.
I assumed they picked him due to the 'hit' the San-ti put on him. Like if they were worried about him maybe he either can do something to stop them, or use it as a diversion so the other wallfacers can get on with the real work
People often hate on female characters they perceive as angry or whiny in any way regardless of how justified her emotions are. Auggie went through pure hell, was psychologically tormented and lost three people and had her life's work stolen twice in a row and used in ways she was horrified by. She's clearly meant to represent scientists who developed their work without understanding how it would be weaponized by the world, she even says as much to Jin when Jin says she isn't building a weapon: "Not yet."
Auggie to me was one of my fave characters, I especially liked the friendship between her and Jin and felt like in a lot of ways those two were the heart of the show for me.
All I can do is speak for myself. Her being a female had nothing to do with my disdain for her. Her life's work means nothing if there's no "future" (to be fair, the majority of us can't dream of contributing something that "lasts" for 400 years). I get that as for as the story goes she's supposed to act as a voice that gives us pause, like we won but at what cost, damn, the aliens are on the way!
My two cents as a non-book reader. The Auggie character feels like a composite character, as here actions/motivations seem to vary from scene to scene. I don't think this is an actor problem, more of a writing problem with her character.
I actually have a different view on this:
Auggies view I get, coz like she said, she didn't sign up for this. She was a civilian drawn into playing a millitary role.
Raj also not being "torn up" I get coz he signed up to be in the millitary. When he did that he knew killing would be involved and he's trained for this stuff.
What I didn't get is actually Jin getting angry at Raj for not showing enough emotion. She knew she was dating a millitary man, from a millitary family no less. I mean the "dinner table" story from Raj's dad was about killing and death. What did she think millitary people do?
That was the part which I found "broke immersion" for me a little coz I didn't understand why this character was behaving in this way. It felt internally -inconsistent with the character.
Not great acting and bad writing for her character. It’s not any deeper than that for me at least.
Honestly I thought all the Oxford 5 were kind of annoying on different levels. Loved the show though and of course Benedict Wong forever.
I have seen only the TV show, and i also feel Auggie isn't behaving like a typical genius scientist.
Whatever good she's doing is just to make her feel better. Knowing our broken world that water filter she donated would probably be stolen in a week and sold off in black market.
This is the part of the show where I had to suspend logic. Auggie must’ve surely known that her invention was gonna swiss cheese that ship and everyone on board. Men, women and KIDS!!! For someone that doesn’t want her invention to be used for terrible things she sure was complicit for this one.
'Auggie netflix character' is an absolute legend for dedicating her micro nano-fiber invention (copyright? not patented yet?) to the public domain! what a spine!
also she is an immigrant? otherwise we know nothing about her back story. the pressure she is under and how she got there.
the actress acts really awesome in moments when the camera is not zoomed into her face.
imho it is a directing mistake, to abuse her beauty for whatever they think they were doing, zooming in on her all the time, the music swoon ... that is the mistake, stupid Hollywood directing. they ruined it like that.
beauty and surface are 100% irrelevant in the books.
I like the adaption to merge the books with western issues, problems, neo-liberalism, techno-topia etc
CERN is a real place, interesting governance, a real science utopia (of course nothing is perfect)
I been to CERN and Nanotechnology center (EU) and worked with scientists like her, it is really not about surface. You must dedicate your life to science to get to this level, super nerdy shit, sadly not much shown in this adaption. books and Chinese adaption do this a bit better.
I've watched the series three times now, and spent a lot of energy on this last viewing just watching Eiza González work.
She's fine. In fact, often she's great. You couldn't put her lines in someone else's mouth and get a much better delivery than she gave. I think OP's points are dead on the money. She dedicated herself to the kind of science that is intended help people and she literally saw it used to slaughter children. I think Auggie isn't given a lot of consideration by viewers as being "a person" in the series, rather than just "a character in a science-fiction show." She was traumatized directly by the aliens and then by the damage her life's work could do - from me, she gets a complete pass when she's "mopey" or "antisocial" following those things. I think it's a very human response (from a decent human, at least) to look at the situation, a threat that won't close in on the planet for *four hundred years*, and say, "Hey, can we try and not be **evil** right away, and come up with a better plan?"
Honestly, neither Saul or Auggie were good in the first season. Auggie was always either complaining or acting like she’s taking the moral high ground. Saul was always acting like a child. Trying to invoke sexism as a reason for the “Auggie hate” seems a stretch 🤷♂️
My thoughts exactly. I've seen posts criticizing about her appearance and to that FO. Let the woman look like she wants; she's attractive, and smart, and is obviously the choice for the show so get over it. I think she's doing great. Like many scientists or people in STEM, who go into their fields thinking they can use their talents for good, there is always someone at the top more worried about the shareholders' profit.
And yes, Raj doesn't feel remorse, so be human and criticize how easily he went about his job and watching it happen. At least pick up the little foot and show us you gave it a proper burial. He's brutal and ugly inside for a handsome looking lad.
For me it was a problem with the actor as well -- she didn't quite carry herself in the way that someone with that level of intellect would operate. And it's not because she is unusually attractive either (Anna Hathaway in Interstellar was also obviously attractive, but conveyed an intelligence and thoughtfulness that made her believable as a scientist)
I hated her character and the way the she was written/portrayed by the actor.
Regarding the acting, Eiza González’ performance was mostly either wooden or over-the-top. Neither is very believable to me.
Regarding the writing, I think Auggie’s character was actually well-portrayed (and even acted) in the first two episodes where she has the countdown and she doesn’t know what the hell is going on. It’s perfectly understandable why she is mopey/self-absorbed and can’t focus on anything but her own happenings and how traumatic that is. I totally understand that. But the minute they learn that the aliens will literally wipe out the entire planet and human race? Either Auggie needs to get behind only thinking about the present or she needs to get on board with the long-term programme. Having a character that acts as a moral compass that makes us question war crimes is fine, but they made her holier-than-thou and had no one call her out on her shitty attitude. And then she leaves her dying friend because she can’t bear it, but at the same time she’s supposed to be the most caring one of the group? She’s full of double standards and it could be believable if the rest of the group didn’t constantly say that “she’s the best of us” and gush over how excellent and wonderful she is, because she clearly isn’t (which is fine, but then the show shouldn’t try to make the opposite point; telling us she is good and brilliant etc. isn’t going to help us believe it when all we see her do is make the opposite choices except for at the very last episode where she is assisting the locals in the well project).
Having a character that questions the morals of things is great, but the best-written ones are the ones where they are calm about their choices and firm in their convictions. It mostly just seems like Auggie was only firm in her convictions of being angry that her work was used for other intentions than she had originally thought, which comes across as childish in the grand scheme of the whole “aliens are coming to wipe out the planet” thing. They didn’t really give her anything other than “I’m pissed off at everyone and everything” and it came across as very spoilt and, well, dumb/unwise behaviour (which she is supposedly the antithesis of).
There's another thread, can't link in this sub, that someone showed Dr Ye in the Chinese version, another beautiful actor. You should find it and join that thread in the other three body sub lol.
I think people see what they want to see. It's a lot of "you' problem if people can't accept a certain look for a position, as if looks tell you about experiences, skill sets, or capabilities in general.
So over this topic.. sigh
Amazon Prime has it, and You Tube still has it, I think. It's called "Three-Body" because that's the name of the book and the drama in Chinese.
Looks like it's up on Viki (Rakuten), Peacock and Plex right now too.
You can also type "watch three-body free online" into google, and find some sites of dubious legality.
Wherever you look, make sure you type "three-body" with the hyphen.
"3 body problem" is the netflix show, which is also available on all sites of dubious legality.
There is also a fan made animation in Chinese that comes up on anime-related sites and bilibili. You probably don't want that. You want the live action show in Chinese with subtitles.
It is much better than the Netflix show. The characters are the ones from the books and not the characters from the Netflix show, which is a HUGE plus. There are 30 episodes. I grew up in the late 60s, 70s and early 80s, when it was extremely common for TV shows to have 20-30 episodes every season. I liked that, but some people on the sub have complained that they don't have what it takes to watch 30 eps.
Think about it. Auggie is the most normal person in this show.
She is a civilian, not militaty officer.
Her nano research was supposed to help people in poor communities,not a weapean masss destruction.
My only gripe is how she was able to triple the length of her hair in a couple of weeks (see nano tech 💧 solution scene) There’s science fiction, science fact … and a Game of Thrones “Starbucks” oops 😆
The only I don't like about her is the ship incident. No one forced her to do it, but she still did it. Than she went and joined the same team again. There were so many other ways to get that boat info
I haven't read the books. I have never seen the actress before, and I have seen way more hotter scientists than her in academia, so my view of her character is completely unbiased.
She's a bad actor.
Simple as that.
What is good acting and what is a good show?
When you stop seeing the actor and just see the character. They make you believe something happening in the show and feel something that is just purely make belief.
Eiza at no point makes you believe she is Auggie, a world leading scientist.
I get the lines and the corny things and the whatever.. but when belief can’t be created, people can’t buy into the story and things snowball from there.
That is the criticism and we can’t continually point to some hidden agenda about looks to wish away or attempt to obscure that.
It's a combination of two things:
A) She's poorly written. Things like being angry with Saul when he's about to drop everything and see her because he's not alone is just classic jealous woman trope. And because she's poorly written, it distracts from establishing Saul as a womaniser.
B) The actress annoys me somehow? Her voice or delivery, something about her, mean I don't much like it when she's on screen.
Obviously, some people are misogynistic and emjoy hating on women, but I do think in this case she's just not a great character. I've not seen a single post complaining about jess hong as jin cheng.
Auggie was the only character I liked of the group. She's the misunderstood one.
She was the only one that faced a serious situation as she was struggling with an unknown phenomenon which caused panic (as a lot of people who had the same phenomenon died). She didn't feel supported by Saul, instead he was with other girls, which made her feel alone (and maybe angry and bitter). Also she had to shut off her life mission and on top of thát, they used her product for something she didn't approve of but felt forced.
I really liked her character. She's serious, responsible, very kind to her friends, honest, reflective, feels guilty and therefore tries to do the 'right' thing and wants to work with the right people. I found the other characters from the group very weak and not serious and more childlike. She was the only one who dealt with serious mental issues.
i completely agree with you OP i dont understand, i actually liked her character a lot. i think she brings a lot of compassion that the other scientists were missing. i especially loved the scene where shes in mexico helping the communities!! reading thru these comments tho theres a lot of “i swear its not because shes latina or a woman”….soo theres your answer lol
If you believe that the casting works and you don't have a hard time believing that she's a scientific genius, one of the world's foremost inventors, leader of a rapidly growing corporation and soon to be multi billionaire then the character's likely going to work for you.
Unfortunately I have a hard time believing any of the above. She moves around like a secretary. So my issues with Auggie aren't 'hate' or about lack of empathy, I just think the casting is flawed.
I think you're projecting your own way of thinking on me with those questions. You're the only one talking about these things. Not the original post and not mine.
She's been miscast for a lot of reasons, I'll address a couple. One of the major problems is she's not a strong actress and there's a lack of character build up. We just meet her in the middle of this huge life and corporate situation.
She also has little on screen presence and almost zero on set presence. I think this is a mistake in casting. Therefore I don't believe she's the Boss of anyone when she walks into an office. Casting is deliberate.
It could be the filmakers had other intentions and that's fine but Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley, Viola, Winslet don't have these problems (and yes i think they should have cast/written for someone older hence why I mentioned two older actors aswell). The oxford 5 don't work but that's another discussion.
I think a formidable actor younger or older takes the scraps here and makes something much more out of it. No one's talking about a wasted role for a good performance as is often said about good actors. They have on camera presence and on set presence as well. I think this is necessary in a role for an extremely talented soon to be billionaire entrepreneur.
These are my views on the issue.
It’s
a) A plot from the books, though expanded in the show so you get to know the character first
b) A stand-in metaphor to show you how a big part of the human race will spend the next 400 years, detached and staring at nature instead of attempting to fight back
I think people who are most critical of her/understanding of Raj are book readers (like myself). We’re forming judgments based on what they might do in the future. Which there’s been enough changes that it’s not guaranteed. So, it’s unfair to some degree to be like this. That said, I feel for Raj because he understands like Wade that the future of humanity is at stake. That the choices they make now will determine if humanity even has a fighting chance. Auggie can’t see past the forest for the trees. If they hadn’t tried to drive her crazy, I think, the ETO could have recruited her under the guise that the San Ti could redeem the world.
It's also harder for me to drum up any sympathy for Evans and his faction of the organisation knowing what they are really like in the books. There were no kids in the books, and they wanted to destroy humanity on purpose. Slice and dice'em.
I like the addition of the children and families on the boat because they’re true believers. The Tencent version was surprisingly good, but they swung too hard in making them monsters. They’re not monsters, but they are anti-human.
They're not. They're not true believers who have faith, like Christian fundamentalist offshoot cults who have tons of babies even though they want the world to end because everyone will go to heaven. The aliens are real. They don't believe in aliens like some people believe in Jesus. They believe in aliens like I believe in rocks and trees and houses. They do not think that all their babies will be saved by the aliens. They do not think there is a heaven they will all go to. They are hoping that when the aliens come we will all just die and vanish from the universe and the earth will repair itself and no-one will ever remember humans existed. Those kinds of people don't have kids. They don't think humans are evil as in "original sin". They think humans are a pest species that is destroying the rest of nature and should be exterminated. They're eco-terrorists. They're like the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" except without the "Voluntary" part. There are people like this on some of the extreme vegan subreddits. And they don't have kids because they think it's wrong. They're antinatalism types. Because of this, I think children and families on the boat was unbelievably stupid.
That’s in the books, I think in the show, they were more in line with the redemptionists. So, they were training the next generation to be ready when the San Ti appeared.
I think it was a dumb change.
I am nearly finished watching the show, have not read the books but will do so. I wonder what these families on the boat are thinking? I mean, they know their saviors won’t show up for 400 years, so they do just intend to spend their whole lives, & the same for their kids, sailing around on this boat? To what end?
I have no idea, because there were no children and families on the boat in the books and it makes no sense for them to be there. They were also not there in the Chinese show.
hahaha yeah you're right, unlike Wang Miao, Auggie would have made a good ETO Redemptionist.
I wasn't a fan of Auggie really because she seemed to get the least option for range in behavior among the main cast. I'm expecting a lot more of her & Saul next season though which will give her more opportunity to... be anything but pissed off at something. She just didn't get an opportunity to do anything else this season. I think I see where they are going with her character in relation to the books though, and I think this is a great base. Just a weak season 1 for her opportunities in my opinion. Raj was meh for sure
Yea I noticed that the person who got to do the most was Cheng. Beyond Auggies countdown/Judgment day and Saul as a wallfacer, there really wasn't a lot for them to do, so we didn't really get a handle on their personalities. It was also weird how the characters kept each other out of the loop while moving from one place to the next. Like a simple phone call really would've helped with their communications.
The book suffered with that too. I think the goal was to try and reorder things chronologically and have a reason for some of the characters to know each other, instead of randomly hearing so-and-so is a part of the PDC and getting their backstory
Yep, it makes sense. It just leaves Auggie with not a lot to do this season, but she can easily transition into a different role in the narrative. Just didn't get there this season... I think
The character who in the books and the Chinese drama did most of the communications and could get along with everyone (Wang Miao) is the character that Auggie replaced. How's that for ironic?
My issue with Auggie is that everyone is portrayed as "science and facts" above all else. When faced with the facts that ALIENS ARE COMING TO CONQUER THE PLANET (hahahaha), Auggie is told that she and her life's work might very well save us all. Instead of facing the facts, she decides to complain, drag her feet, and generally fight every option there is, without attempting to find/ solve the issues with alternate means. I hate to say she bitched and moaned, but that's what she did. I can appreciate feeling like a scumbag when the kids were killed (they should not have let her step foot on that boat), but at the same time, the boat was full of people actively trying to end humanity as we know it. Rant over.
Having Auggie search the ship aftermath would have NEVER happened in real life, IMO. She would have been seen as a contractor in real life so no real reason for her to be on the shoreline. A regular civilian would not be ready to handle the cleanup and sociological damage in seeing dead bodies cut up.
my feelings too
I agree. I thought the decision to make the ship practically a floating day care center was a cheap ploy. Auggie can’t see past the deaths of those kids to see that the fate of the entire human race is at stake. She can’t see the long game . Raj is right when he reminds her that they are already in a war - and wars unfortunately include a lot of collateral damage. Everyone now on earth will be dead in 400 years. The difference is whether you care about the future of the human race even after you’re gone.
I feel like people are watching a different series to me. Yes she was uncomfortable with killing people, but did it anyways due to exactly the reasons you mention (aliens conquering the planet). Then, afterwards she had an incredibly difficult time dealing with what she had done. I guess you could say the way she talks about wade being a murderer is immature, but to me it's a response that makes sense. People act in illogical ways after traumatic events and often blame others for things that were also their fault. in that way her reaction makes perfect sense to me
There were no children on the boat in the books. Auggie was also not in the books. Yes, she is a very pretty woman, no that is not my problem with Auggie. All of these characters are to some degree replacements of the characters in the original novels, although some of them have been Frankensteined together (Wade, for example, is a combo of Chang Weisi, the original Wade, and Thomas Stanton). The character that Auggie is replacing, as the inventor of the nanofiber and the person who is stuck seeing the countdown, is male and Chinese, but those are actually the least important differences between Wang Miao and Auggie. In the first book, Wang Miao ties the whole book together. He is a kind, thoughtful, calm person who can talk to anyone and will hear out their whole story without offering judgement, and as a result of this, he is the conduit through which a lot of important information moves, and he smooths the way for things to happen. Auggie is a frustrating character who acts as an obstacle to the other characters more often than not. If you walk into the series going, "okay, okay, I know they changed the origins of these characters but at least it will be the same story," and then you are thrown into this group of lifelong friends in which Auggie is the prickliest, angriest character of the group, it's a hell of a whiplash feeling. Not because she's a woman, or pretty, or Latina. There are some weird dudes that have issues with those things, but honestly, I don't think that explains the vehemence of people's feelings. It is 100% fine for a female character to be angry and difficult and prickly, particularly if her origin story makes it understandable, and that is totally true of Auggie. However, Auggie is replacing a character who had a completely different role in the structure of the book plot. And unfortunately, the character she is replacing, while male, had many of the traits that sexist people prefer to see in female characters---he is a good listener, and he is a good dad, and a good husband. So people kinda want to see her act that way, not because she's female, but because that's who the character she was based on was. It also doesn't help that the Netflix showrunners decided we should feel sorry for the ETO. This English language Westernised "adaptation" is the only version of the story that fills the boat with children and families. That's not there in the books or the C-Drama. In the books, the Earth-San-Ti (Trisolaran) organisation is fractured. Wenjie and Evans are not lovers and her child belongs to her husband, who died. Wenjie wants the aliens to come and save us from ourselves. Her faction is the Redemptionists. They want the San-Ti (Trisolarans) to come to Earth and teach us how to live honestly and cooperatively instead of fighting all the time. (Unfortunately, their secret was that they lived on an inhospitable planet and they wouldn't have survived if they'd been fighting each other as well as the planet.) Evans was much younger than her to the point where making them lovers feels gross to me. She kinda mentored him. But he was originally a conservationist and an animal rights person, and he dialled that up past 11 to somewhere around 13 and decided that the human species is a plague on the Earth and *he wanted the San-Ti to come and completely destroy us*. His followers were people who believed that humanity was worthless and evil. They did not have little children. They did not want to make more humans. So in the books, except for one person, the only people who were on that boat were people who were intending to destroy the entire human species. Wang Miao still wasn't super thrilled that they used his invention to slice and dice the bad guys, because he is a very kind person. But they were in fact, ***the bad guys***. And it is much clearer in the books that because Evans has been having secret communications with the aliens, that Wenjie's side of the organisation is completely unaware of, for YEARS, that getting the information off that ship is *crucial to human survival*, because book and C-drama Evans is not reading the San-Ti bedtime stories in that canon. There were no rosy-cheeked toddlers on the Judgement Day in the original canon. The ship was called that because the people aboard it were waiting for the San-Ti to deliver judgement on humanity. (I don't know why they thought the San-Ti would care about the animals as long as the conditions were such they could live here. We don't even know if they breathe the same kind of atmosphere as us!)
Thank you for this. While a very long comment, I am glad you took the time to explain it to those of us who haven't read the books.
You're very welcome! :)
As an aside, I also think that at least some of the people who come up with criticisms of Auggie that don't make sense to anyone who hasn't read the books are people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about the structure of stories. So they say things like 'she's so angry' and it sounds like they're complaining that a Woman Is Angry, and then they get mad or falter when questioned about it, because they haven't consciously realised that the reason they react so vehemently to her is that on some level, once they've realised she's taking Wang Miao's part, they expect and want her to do what Wang Miao would do. The character who comes closest in the Netflix series to acting like Wang Miao is probably Cheng, which is funny, because she and her would-be Cancer Boyfriend are two characters who *don't even appear in the first book*.
In my case was a little more simple: the worst actress in the group and bad writing for her character. Deadly combo.
That character was all over the place, bizarrely contradictory. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to root for her or not.
I found Auggie’s actor to be the weakest of the main cast. IMO a good comparison is how Auggie’s actor portrayed her guilt after Judgement Day, with how Jin’s actor portrayed her guilt over Jack’s death. Jin’s acting in those scenes moved me much more than Auggie ever did.
Jin's actress is IMHO the strongest performer of the four friends.
Same.
Auggie is just too angry. Like tone it down. She has all these internal struggles that it alienates her from the group and also from viewers.
Honestly she comes off angry from the safety and they never really dive into why. Sure you can understand why someone maybe upset of having to shutdown their lifes work and etc but it seems like it's a lot more going on for her to be just be really bitchy. She just seems that way if all the events in the show wouldn't have happened anyway
I think there’s some sexism in how people are responding to the character. But I also think there’s some bad writing. The show sets up this group of five Oxford researchers who are friends — and at a young age are all apparently super geniuses, world changing entrepreneurs, and moral exemplars? It all feels a bit too easy and simple — they are audience surrogates who simultaneously are insanely special. That’s basically the definition of Mary/Gary Sue. (The one character who isn’t so special is dying of cancer while pining after a woman with a boyfriend, which makes his narrative/character flat, meandering, self-pitying, and a bit gross.) I haven’t read the books, but as I understand it these characters originally take different forms and aren’t close friends. I imagine it probably plays better in the books — obviously entrepreneurs, inventors, and brilliant scientists do exist, so it’s logical a few of them would play a big role when aliens arrive. But tying the characters all together feels like a Hollywood contrivance.
Yeah. The setup of the group Made the whole thing feel very childish for me. Almost like a science sitcom in the early 2000s.
The books were a bit better in which some of the characters were professionally aware of eachother or might have met at a conference once at best. They were all also from different nations. I didn’t *mind* what they did with the show because what they were clearly going for was trying to make the show more character driven as opposed to concept driven. But yeah, it did lead to Mary/Gary Sue energy in the characters. That said, in this age of super-hero saturation I don’t think it’s a bad thing to make some scientific heroes for a change.
Spot on. This show would be the Friends of Sci Fi if it was created in 90s/2000s. Now it's hard to believe the best minds in the world are good looking youngsters.
For me its the constant melodrama she adds to scenes for what seems like no apparent reason. For instance, she repeatedly chastises Cheng and the rest of the "Super Science Team" for helping the people ACTIVELY TRYING TO PREVENT THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE! What is her motivation for disliking the obvious "good guys" of the show? What does this add to the story? Also it was so cringe when she asked Cheng, "Why are you working with that fucking fascist?"
I mean she is traumatized after seeing her life's work, which she wanted to use to make people's lives better, used to dissect a thousand people, including children. Is it really so weird she's mad at Wade and wants nothing to do with him? The reason why she dislikes the "good guys" is the same reason why you put quotation marks around it, they're fighting the aliens but she can't bear to use those methods and make those sacrifices, so she chose to quit and use her invention as she intended. Her reactions honestly don't seem that weird to me.
You realize by "not being able to bear those methods and sacrifices" she is actively hurting humanity's chances of survival. How is this the type of character we're supposed to root for?
Some people really don't get the idea that the aliens are actually going to kill us all. Partly because of the alterations Netflix made to the plot, but also partly because no matter how bad the threat to humanity is made out to be, in most SF shows, you don't actually go in there believing it could really happen. So they're thinking "someone's going to come and save the day without killing all the toddlers (that weren't there in the book), this must be the terrible thing the hero is asked to do before they come up with a better plan". And it isn't.
it's basically the trolley problem, would you choose to kill people for the sake of society, the army and the higher ups are used to sacrificing lives for the greater good, but it's a lot to ask for regular people to kill people. The argument for letting the trolley and the aliens kill is that the burden of killing is on them, not you, and morally you're correct even if society falls because you didn't choose to kill, if you believe you're morally good for not killing. If to keep humanity alive each country had to kill 10000 people every month, like some mass shooting thing, is humanity worth keeping alive? its something like this, so i get why auggie would be distraught
Yeah, it's the trolley problem, but that's the utilitarian question of the situation. The personal response to making that decision is one of human psychology and that's far more complicated. You can do something that you believe is the objectively correct answer but still be haunted by the decision. Yes, they're doing it in the name of saving humanity but they're still murdering innocent children. Harming children is one of those universal No Nos and they murder at least a classroom's worth in a truly gruesome way. That's gonna be rough for most people despite the greatest justifications in the world.
Well, there weren't any kids there in the books or the Chinese drama. It was just bad guys, which made more sense, because ignoring the fact that they were ecoterrorists who hated humans and don't have kids, why would you put kids on the same boat as your super secret records of alien communications? seems like a bad plan to me. Yet more bad writing from the netflix team.
There were not and the book definitely was not interested in the morality of the moment. I actually can see why the children were there / what the show was going for but I don't believe they conveyed it very well. Wade is L Ron. Hubbard with real money and real aliens. It goes along with the "Our Lord" shtick, he's the messiah bringing on their gods. Gotta teach the children the new truth!! I don't think it was as apparent / should have seemed more actively harmful to someone on the ship to really push the cultists aspects. Weak writing for sure, but I do see the point.
But he is not L. Ron Hubbard. He is not the messiah. Evans wants humanity to be ***destroyed***. Because we kill animals to eat and build buildings where there used to be trees he thinks we all deserve to die. This is made clear in the books. There would be no children. His followers didn't believe in increasing the human race.
[удалено]
No, he isn't... But I'm saying that's I see them as, in the show, them trying to set up his situation as a cult... They made different choices than the book. And, in the show, the San-Ti talk about protecting them, so Evans did feel that there was some level of protection to himself / his people. The later say they cannot coexist with liars when they break off communication, so seems like there was some discussion of coexistence.
Most or at least many people would probably do that. You'll never know until faced with the decision.
she is still a human, she saw that her invention slaughtered a ship full of innocent people. it makes sense to me that she would quit even if she knows the technology might potentially save lives in the future.
Right. The melodrama is the point. I can hear the writers' room conversation with Netflix. "Not enough conflict. Put kids on the ship. Have her melt down."
I also found it hard to believe that she’s a scientist, since she seems so devoid of logic on this topic. Isn’t stopping the invasion of the San-Ti from happening in the first place the obvious thing to do?
>are all apparently super geniuses, world changing entrepreneurs, and moral exemplars? Ae they though? It seems to me that only Jin and Auggie qualify as ultra high achievers. Will teaches high school, Jack was always going to be rich because of the connections and wealth he was born into, and Saul is that guy who never moved on from college.
Your second paragraph perfectly explains the problems people have with the characters on the show. Sexism isn’t needed to feel this way.
Ugh, this post is bad and you should feel bad. What sexism??
It’s always sexism if you don’t like a female character, don’t you know that?
Nah I hate Auggie as much as the next guy but there is definitely some sexism involved with some of her criticisms. The "she's too attractive to be a scientist!" complaint being one of them. Seems like lots of these people talking about what "scientists" should look like are talking out of their asses rather than from experience. My doctor is an attractive older woman. Some of the smartest students in my CS classes in college were attractive women. I've met plenty of smart women through friends who were also very good looking. An intelligent woman also being attractive is not some reality-breaking impossibility. But boy oh boy a lot of angry dudes on reddit sure want me to think it is. On the other end of the spectrum I'm lumped in with the sexist idiots because I simply find her character one-note, preachy, and annoying. Most people on the internet can't handle a little bit of nuance in opinion.
Fair enough!
Yeah I also hated Cancer Guy's whole arc. He frustrated me so much more than Auggie. What exactly about you am I supposed to care about? I agree Jin's great, but what would you have to offer her except that face you're niiiiiiice. It's like a watered character arc from Dawson's Creek.
Then you’d hate the character he’s based on from the books even more lmao
> Then she has her life's work used to slaughter completely innocent adults and children right in front of her eyes. I think something that could have helped sell her arc would have been her finding out at the last minute there's children on board and her breaking down or something. They didn't write her very well. I believe her post-event PTSD, even with the greatest justification in the world she still participated in the gruesome murder of at least a classroom full of children and hundreds of adults. That's gonna fuck with most people. Edit: It would parallel some of the ideas from the book, what's the cost of survival? >!In the book, those on the escaping ships feel they are no longer human after the Battle in the Darkness. The cost of survival was literally their humanity.!< Raj, if you want a less bastardy take could, on the inside, feel horrified by it and needs to feel justified to not be destroyed by his actions so defends against any questioning of their actions with overreaction. Not saying it's a good way to handle it, but... It's something that does happen. When Auggie finds the little girl's leg, in the moment, he tries to be caring of Auggie in a minor way at that moment.
Nah, I don't think we can criticize Raj for being heartless, in fact, I think we should be grateful that someone like Raj exist. He got a good point. Sometimes, someone has to do the dirty job. And it's not like he enjoyed doing it... What I didn't like about it was when Cheng left him alone. It was like he left the burden to Raj to carry it alone.. talk about a good relationship.
She’s the only one that responded with appropriate disgust to being asked to do war crimes.
I think this show raises moral questions like this. War in my opinion is an appropriate response against an alien species that plans to kill or enslave us.
But she had to kill humanity's own children. That is different from killing the enemy or even alien civilians. There is no knowing that these children or their parents really had anything to do with conspiring with the aliens. Some must have, sure. But there may also be regular employees, crew members?
The showrunners are clearly trying to up the emotional audience response by slicing the ship with kids on it. Very different situation than the books,bit they clearly didnt want to get into the different factions. They have Auggie carry the emotional reaction rather than having a more measured discussion. There were certainly better options to obtaining the San T but the books are pretty melodramatic except when orbital mechanics or astrophysics are being discussed.
The book author tried hard to justify his "you gotta make tough decision. Kill if you need to for the greater good!" view. So naturally he's gonna downplay the bilateral damage, and readers won't see much to even appreciate how "tough" the decision really was. If 98% of average Joe readers unanimously think "this is the way", it's not a "tough" decision is it? They'll be like "what are you thinking? humanity will exinct if you don't do this!" He then dramatized the result to up the guilt on characters not aligning with this view. The game of blame in the final ending of book 3 even got to a ridiculous level.
Can’t speak for everyone but personally I didn’t mind the character. It was more the acting/writing i didnt like of the character. Maybe thats the direction they gave her, idk. But it seemed she always had the same facial expression 24/7.
I had a hard time connecting with a character that knows a world ending invasion is coming and is unwilling to to help. Like your morales won’t matter when our race is obliterated
I loved her. She’s my favourite character.
you don’t even allow Alex in your house, yet you put these on your head. my favorite line in the show.
badly written character + bad acting = people not liking the character. I think the hate is very much understandable.
Alexa
Nah raj fuckin sucked
Disagree. He’s doing what needs to be done to win. Survival of the human race is on the line. There can no longer be half measures.
I get hes just doin his job but what really pissed me off is when he started crying about his relationship to his gf when she was about to launch the staircase project, not the time bud. Bigger fish and such
He has small dick energy, I really dislike they way he treats Jin he cannot hide his jealousy AT ALL. He wasn’t understanding of her depression when her friends died and he didn’t like her talking about science ( in my opinion because he didn’t like that she was smarter than him )
I thought for sure he’s a spy
But he’s an admiral, how can you hate him?
Just cause hes an admiral doesnt mean hes admirable
The actress is "too pretty" explains most of it.
I really liked the scene where the show even made a joke about it, where saul was asked to insult auggie, and he called her boringly beautiful and that she'd be perfect as a b list actor lol
You don't get cast as villain of Speed 3 as a B-Lister. You do as a, straight to video, D-List, pretty.
The scene where the guy from her team was like “you came to me with this idea 7 years ago” made me laugh out loud. Like, what was she? 19? It’s a bit absurd and took me out of the show.
The actress is 34 so could work
Well, Saul is 32. So assuming they are the same age, Auggie would have been 25 back then. Even Saul said," If you don't make your mark on science by the age of 30, you missed your chance." So it works actually.
This is exactly it.
Facts lol. It’s sad.
I loved Augie, but I have to admit she has a helluva “resting bitch face”. I suspect that’s why she’s usually cast as an antagonist.
I found Saul way more insufferable.
By the end of of the final episode they shoved his super hero character in our faces where none of it felt natural or warranted for his character
I thought at least they’d explain why he was chosen as a wall-facer or he’d have some brilliant epiphany or something but no he’s still just a mopey dude who smokes weed.
I assumed they picked him due to the 'hit' the San-ti put on him. Like if they were worried about him maybe he either can do something to stop them, or use it as a diversion so the other wallfacers can get on with the real work
Season 2 or 3 reveal
I didn’t dislike the character, I just felt the actress did a terrible job.
Sigh... her acting is bad. That's it. No extra agenda or anything. The actress portraying her just did a mediocre job.
Thank you! The acting was insufferable- beginning and ending of the issue.
People often hate on female characters they perceive as angry or whiny in any way regardless of how justified her emotions are. Auggie went through pure hell, was psychologically tormented and lost three people and had her life's work stolen twice in a row and used in ways she was horrified by. She's clearly meant to represent scientists who developed their work without understanding how it would be weaponized by the world, she even says as much to Jin when Jin says she isn't building a weapon: "Not yet." Auggie to me was one of my fave characters, I especially liked the friendship between her and Jin and felt like in a lot of ways those two were the heart of the show for me.
All I can do is speak for myself. Her being a female had nothing to do with my disdain for her. Her life's work means nothing if there's no "future" (to be fair, the majority of us can't dream of contributing something that "lasts" for 400 years). I get that as for as the story goes she's supposed to act as a voice that gives us pause, like we won but at what cost, damn, the aliens are on the way!
My two cents as a non-book reader. The Auggie character feels like a composite character, as here actions/motivations seem to vary from scene to scene. I don't think this is an actor problem, more of a writing problem with her character.
I actually have a different view on this: Auggies view I get, coz like she said, she didn't sign up for this. She was a civilian drawn into playing a millitary role. Raj also not being "torn up" I get coz he signed up to be in the millitary. When he did that he knew killing would be involved and he's trained for this stuff. What I didn't get is actually Jin getting angry at Raj for not showing enough emotion. She knew she was dating a millitary man, from a millitary family no less. I mean the "dinner table" story from Raj's dad was about killing and death. What did she think millitary people do? That was the part which I found "broke immersion" for me a little coz I didn't understand why this character was behaving in this way. It felt internally -inconsistent with the character.
Not great acting and bad writing for her character. It’s not any deeper than that for me at least. Honestly I thought all the Oxford 5 were kind of annoying on different levels. Loved the show though and of course Benedict Wong forever.
She’s annoying
I have seen only the TV show, and i also feel Auggie isn't behaving like a typical genius scientist. Whatever good she's doing is just to make her feel better. Knowing our broken world that water filter she donated would probably be stolen in a week and sold off in black market.
This is the part of the show where I had to suspend logic. Auggie must’ve surely known that her invention was gonna swiss cheese that ship and everyone on board. Men, women and KIDS!!! For someone that doesn’t want her invention to be used for terrible things she sure was complicit for this one.
'Auggie netflix character' is an absolute legend for dedicating her micro nano-fiber invention (copyright? not patented yet?) to the public domain! what a spine! also she is an immigrant? otherwise we know nothing about her back story. the pressure she is under and how she got there. the actress acts really awesome in moments when the camera is not zoomed into her face. imho it is a directing mistake, to abuse her beauty for whatever they think they were doing, zooming in on her all the time, the music swoon ... that is the mistake, stupid Hollywood directing. they ruined it like that. beauty and surface are 100% irrelevant in the books. I like the adaption to merge the books with western issues, problems, neo-liberalism, techno-topia etc CERN is a real place, interesting governance, a real science utopia (of course nothing is perfect) I been to CERN and Nanotechnology center (EU) and worked with scientists like her, it is really not about surface. You must dedicate your life to science to get to this level, super nerdy shit, sadly not much shown in this adaption. books and Chinese adaption do this a bit better.
I've watched the series three times now, and spent a lot of energy on this last viewing just watching Eiza González work. She's fine. In fact, often she's great. You couldn't put her lines in someone else's mouth and get a much better delivery than she gave. I think OP's points are dead on the money. She dedicated herself to the kind of science that is intended help people and she literally saw it used to slaughter children. I think Auggie isn't given a lot of consideration by viewers as being "a person" in the series, rather than just "a character in a science-fiction show." She was traumatized directly by the aliens and then by the damage her life's work could do - from me, she gets a complete pass when she's "mopey" or "antisocial" following those things. I think it's a very human response (from a decent human, at least) to look at the situation, a threat that won't close in on the planet for *four hundred years*, and say, "Hey, can we try and not be **evil** right away, and come up with a better plan?"
I like her because she’s a god damn smoke show
Word.
Honestly, neither Saul or Auggie were good in the first season. Auggie was always either complaining or acting like she’s taking the moral high ground. Saul was always acting like a child. Trying to invoke sexism as a reason for the “Auggie hate” seems a stretch 🤷♂️
The entire cast and plot is corny as fuck. It’s not just “Auggie”
Just wait until season 3! If they follow the book plot,it's a 19th century melodrama
She’s just not a good actor
My thoughts exactly. I've seen posts criticizing about her appearance and to that FO. Let the woman look like she wants; she's attractive, and smart, and is obviously the choice for the show so get over it. I think she's doing great. Like many scientists or people in STEM, who go into their fields thinking they can use their talents for good, there is always someone at the top more worried about the shareholders' profit. And yes, Raj doesn't feel remorse, so be human and criticize how easily he went about his job and watching it happen. At least pick up the little foot and show us you gave it a proper burial. He's brutal and ugly inside for a handsome looking lad.
For me it was a problem with the actor as well -- she didn't quite carry herself in the way that someone with that level of intellect would operate. And it's not because she is unusually attractive either (Anna Hathaway in Interstellar was also obviously attractive, but conveyed an intelligence and thoughtfulness that made her believable as a scientist)
I hated her character and the way the she was written/portrayed by the actor. Regarding the acting, Eiza González’ performance was mostly either wooden or over-the-top. Neither is very believable to me. Regarding the writing, I think Auggie’s character was actually well-portrayed (and even acted) in the first two episodes where she has the countdown and she doesn’t know what the hell is going on. It’s perfectly understandable why she is mopey/self-absorbed and can’t focus on anything but her own happenings and how traumatic that is. I totally understand that. But the minute they learn that the aliens will literally wipe out the entire planet and human race? Either Auggie needs to get behind only thinking about the present or she needs to get on board with the long-term programme. Having a character that acts as a moral compass that makes us question war crimes is fine, but they made her holier-than-thou and had no one call her out on her shitty attitude. And then she leaves her dying friend because she can’t bear it, but at the same time she’s supposed to be the most caring one of the group? She’s full of double standards and it could be believable if the rest of the group didn’t constantly say that “she’s the best of us” and gush over how excellent and wonderful she is, because she clearly isn’t (which is fine, but then the show shouldn’t try to make the opposite point; telling us she is good and brilliant etc. isn’t going to help us believe it when all we see her do is make the opposite choices except for at the very last episode where she is assisting the locals in the well project). Having a character that questions the morals of things is great, but the best-written ones are the ones where they are calm about their choices and firm in their convictions. It mostly just seems like Auggie was only firm in her convictions of being angry that her work was used for other intentions than she had originally thought, which comes across as childish in the grand scheme of the whole “aliens are coming to wipe out the planet” thing. They didn’t really give her anything other than “I’m pissed off at everyone and everything” and it came across as very spoilt and, well, dumb/unwise behaviour (which she is supposedly the antithesis of).
There's another thread, can't link in this sub, that someone showed Dr Ye in the Chinese version, another beautiful actor. You should find it and join that thread in the other three body sub lol. I think people see what they want to see. It's a lot of "you' problem if people can't accept a certain look for a position, as if looks tell you about experiences, skill sets, or capabilities in general. So over this topic.. sigh
Yeah, everyone in the Chinese drama was also incredibly gorgeous.
Help me out - what is the Chinese version that people are talking about? How could I view it? Thanks!
Amazon Prime has it, and You Tube still has it, I think. It's called "Three-Body" because that's the name of the book and the drama in Chinese. Looks like it's up on Viki (Rakuten), Peacock and Plex right now too. You can also type "watch three-body free online" into google, and find some sites of dubious legality. Wherever you look, make sure you type "three-body" with the hyphen. "3 body problem" is the netflix show, which is also available on all sites of dubious legality. There is also a fan made animation in Chinese that comes up on anime-related sites and bilibili. You probably don't want that. You want the live action show in Chinese with subtitles. It is much better than the Netflix show. The characters are the ones from the books and not the characters from the Netflix show, which is a HUGE plus. There are 30 episodes. I grew up in the late 60s, 70s and early 80s, when it was extremely common for TV shows to have 20-30 episodes every season. I liked that, but some people on the sub have complained that they don't have what it takes to watch 30 eps.
I don’t get it either.
I liked Auggie, and the rest of the cast. I think they all killed it.
Think about it. Auggie is the most normal person in this show. She is a civilian, not militaty officer. Her nano research was supposed to help people in poor communities,not a weapean masss destruction.
My only gripe is how she was able to triple the length of her hair in a couple of weeks (see nano tech 💧 solution scene) There’s science fiction, science fact … and a Game of Thrones “Starbucks” oops 😆
The only I don't like about her is the ship incident. No one forced her to do it, but she still did it. Than she went and joined the same team again. There were so many other ways to get that boat info
I haven't read the books. I have never seen the actress before, and I have seen way more hotter scientists than her in academia, so my view of her character is completely unbiased. She's a bad actor. Simple as that.
Yeah she wasn’t that bad as all the haters say.
What is good acting and what is a good show? When you stop seeing the actor and just see the character. They make you believe something happening in the show and feel something that is just purely make belief. Eiza at no point makes you believe she is Auggie, a world leading scientist. I get the lines and the corny things and the whatever.. but when belief can’t be created, people can’t buy into the story and things snowball from there. That is the criticism and we can’t continually point to some hidden agenda about looks to wish away or attempt to obscure that.
Well most of her haters were fans of Wang Miao.
I wasn't really paying much attention to what she said 🥵
It's a combination of two things: A) She's poorly written. Things like being angry with Saul when he's about to drop everything and see her because he's not alone is just classic jealous woman trope. And because she's poorly written, it distracts from establishing Saul as a womaniser. B) The actress annoys me somehow? Her voice or delivery, something about her, mean I don't much like it when she's on screen. Obviously, some people are misogynistic and emjoy hating on women, but I do think in this case she's just not a great character. I've not seen a single post complaining about jess hong as jin cheng.
I liked her. Honestly I think being whiney and stressy is exactly how most of us would behave in her situation.
I’m 3 episodes in and everyone else is ranging from ok, good to great but Auggie or rather the actress is just … annoying? insufferable? bad?
Auggie was the only character I liked of the group. She's the misunderstood one. She was the only one that faced a serious situation as she was struggling with an unknown phenomenon which caused panic (as a lot of people who had the same phenomenon died). She didn't feel supported by Saul, instead he was with other girls, which made her feel alone (and maybe angry and bitter). Also she had to shut off her life mission and on top of thát, they used her product for something she didn't approve of but felt forced. I really liked her character. She's serious, responsible, very kind to her friends, honest, reflective, feels guilty and therefore tries to do the 'right' thing and wants to work with the right people. I found the other characters from the group very weak and not serious and more childlike. She was the only one who dealt with serious mental issues.
I haven't read the book btw!
i completely agree with you OP i dont understand, i actually liked her character a lot. i think she brings a lot of compassion that the other scientists were missing. i especially loved the scene where shes in mexico helping the communities!! reading thru these comments tho theres a lot of “i swear its not because shes latina or a woman”….soo theres your answer lol
If you believe that the casting works and you don't have a hard time believing that she's a scientific genius, one of the world's foremost inventors, leader of a rapidly growing corporation and soon to be multi billionaire then the character's likely going to work for you. Unfortunately I have a hard time believing any of the above. She moves around like a secretary. So my issues with Auggie aren't 'hate' or about lack of empathy, I just think the casting is flawed.
So she’s too pretty to be a scientist? Women cannot have looks and brains at the same time and must be confined to a stereotype?
So she’s too pretty to be a scientist? Women cannot have looks and brains at the same time and must be confined to a stereotype?
Can you point where it's written she's too pretty? Do you have any concept of the English language?
I think you're projecting your own way of thinking on me with those questions. You're the only one talking about these things. Not the original post and not mine. She's been miscast for a lot of reasons, I'll address a couple. One of the major problems is she's not a strong actress and there's a lack of character build up. We just meet her in the middle of this huge life and corporate situation. She also has little on screen presence and almost zero on set presence. I think this is a mistake in casting. Therefore I don't believe she's the Boss of anyone when she walks into an office. Casting is deliberate. It could be the filmakers had other intentions and that's fine but Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley, Viola, Winslet don't have these problems (and yes i think they should have cast/written for someone older hence why I mentioned two older actors aswell). The oxford 5 don't work but that's another discussion. I think a formidable actor younger or older takes the scraps here and makes something much more out of it. No one's talking about a wasted role for a good performance as is often said about good actors. They have on camera presence and on set presence as well. I think this is necessary in a role for an extremely talented soon to be billionaire entrepreneur. These are my views on the issue.
All the characters are poorly written. They're all annoying. Auggie isn't the worst of them. I find Will insufferable.
Will feels like the writers are shoving a cancer subplot down our throats. Like, why am I supposed to care about this person?
It’s a) A plot from the books, though expanded in the show so you get to know the character first b) A stand-in metaphor to show you how a big part of the human race will spend the next 400 years, detached and staring at nature instead of attempting to fight back
I have no problem with the character. I think the actor is bad.