Originally published at: Watch: the cast of Squid Game compete in non-lethal games on The Tonight Show | Boing Boing
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risky lame clueless (and gormless) question: What’re the salient plot differences between The Squid Game and The Hunger Games? (“They’re Koreans!” “The Squid Game goal is more selfish!” …)
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Squid Games was born out of those early internet rumours of certain small, out of the way islands in Indonesia where the VERY wealthy could go on hunting expeditions, only they were hunting… humans.
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(I have only seen up to episode 5 of 9)
Its closer to Saw than Hunger Games. They’re volunteers as opposed to conscripted into the games
The villain’s premise behind the games is that the contestants are in such dire straits financially/in life that have much better chances at success there than they do in real life. That he is allegedly doing them a favor. The games being far fairer and giving a greater sense of equality than life does. Much like Jigsaw’s traps are done by the premise of “people should live life to the fullest”.
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AKA where Donald Trump Jr goes for vacation every summer.
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It’s a more direct critique of late-stage capitalism, dispenses with the comforting cushion of an it-can’t-happen here dystopia, and delves into the reality-based reasons why people would end up in this version of a neoliberal “utopia” where everyone starts out equal and can bootstrap their way to becoming a multi-millionaire.
I finished it last night. Watch it with the subtitles (not the CC ones).
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Squid Game.
/pedant
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FWIW, while this show is very anxiety inducing, I was enthralled.
I bet $20 they make this into an American version. Call it Red Rover, and that is the first game played.
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I don’t think that I have ever heard anyone refer to The Hunger Games as a “psychological thriller,” but I would definitely call Squid Game that. I think that the fact that the latter takes place in the real world is also quite significant, as it creates a lot of mystery about what is going on and why (a luxury that The Hunger games does not have, because it has to spend a lot of time on worldbuilding from the get-go to make sense).
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The big difference is that Hunger Games/Battle Royale is about going up against and killing all your opponents.
Squid games has the competitors playing against the game. The side effect is that the losers get eliminated, but that’s not the point of the play. It’s about you winning, not directly about causing others to lose.
Freeze tag, candy cut and the bridge (I dunno what the hashtags kids are calling them) could all have been completed with zero casualties in theory.
Yes, when there is some PvP action, it counts, and advances the roster, but it’s incidental, and not the point. I was relieved when half-way through this was established, although there was a brawl, it didn’t define the rest of the episodes.
So the driving motivation is less “Kill or be killed” and more about “Staying alive”, even if it pans out pretty similar.
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It dates back much farther than that.
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I’ve watched an episode and a half of Squid Game and so far so good.
I like Alice in Borderland better though.
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