Victor Ng-Thow-Hing

This show was a pleasant surprise! I initially thought it was going to be a simple tale of a girl that gets bullied and somehow manages to exact revenge by gaining some technical superpower, but it turned out to be a deeply nuanced, big concept, geopolitically complex and accurate science fiction thriller that doesn’t dumb down its characters, or the technology behind the story. All plot lines are intelligently written and very plausible. All the characters are complex and have interesting arcs. Thought provoking, and very timely in our current world of global change.

As a book reader, I think the changes Netflix made were understandable and made the characters more relatable. I think it was clever to break up the main character from the book into multiple people - it’s more interesting and believable to have a team effort than one person doing everything. The key reveals and plot lines are intact, and I can even see some key seeds being planted for later reveals. Put it this way - the show runners had the advantage of knowing the whole story, so they did some clever changes to consolidate some characters without compromising the main story. I felt they did a better job with the characters than Cixin Liu did in his book - his books always put the ideas first - and I felt the characters were always a bit shallow and mainly there to support and move the plot along. In some of his chapters, they are almost like essays - so for a medium like television, you need more visuals and characters the audience can get behind. This alien invasion story is much more grounded with the known scientific constraints of our universe than typical American alien invasion movies where the solution is always exposing some kind of virus - either biological or computer to the aliens. This is how you write an alien invasion story without sloppy or expedited solutions.

I’m only on episode 15, but the pacing of this show gives time to explore the thoughts and friendships of Bruce Lee, his philosophy and his pioneering attitude in the martial arts world. Yes, the dubbing can be cheesy, but I appreciated the in depth analysis of his opponents styles and strategy. They also hired real Martial artists who could accurately demonstrate the techniques and contrasts in styles. What was also eye opening was Bruce Lee’s friendships with folks of many races, including his best friend Kimura who was Japanese (where there is some historical animosity because of invasion during World War II). Even though Bruce Lee had a lot of pride for being Chinese, his ability to be open to everyone and learn and be humble yet also extremely confident is truly inspiring. People point out continuity errors, but keep in mind the show had only a 6 million budget for 50 episodes! The key is the focus on his philosophy and the martial arts, which is something you will never see go into this amount of depth in a flashy Hollywood or Hong Long movie!

For people who are complaining about the flashbacks, I felt they were important character development to understand the current behavior and motivations of the characters, especially there modern decisions. Without the flashbacks, you would be wondering why characters all of a sudden did what they did.