Squid Game: its not that good

 

Squid Game: its not that good

 

 

Like many millions, I watched this Netflix series, and after the second episode I fell in love with the concept, but I was bored, still I carried on just because I did not have anything else to watch.

The director and writer had the idea for over ten years, it was originally intended as a movie, but with Netflix on board it became a series, and potentially a franchise.

Did you read Lord of the Flies? If so think of the children doing what they had to do on the island not to survive but to win a sum of money. The ideas of Lord of the Flies are all over the series, are humans inherently evil? Do people care about others? Do we become who we are because of society and influence, or we are destined to be like this?

 

Of course there is more to this series than Lord of the Flies, namely the players in the game had a presumed free will to stop the game, and at some stage they did. Now they are free, back in the real world, can do whatever they wish to do. They quickly realised that “free will” is an illusion, and their lives in this capitalist society are meaningless. They also realised that this free-market economy does not give you any chance to make something out of your life, social mobility has stagnated, and we are locked in our classes, generation after generation. What do they do? What would you do, given the chance? Live the same life, knowing that hopes you have are lies you keep telling yourself, or take this one chance and play: Squid Games?

 

That juncture -in episode two- was a very well written and acted moment in the series, the philosophical meaning of it was very powerful, however, the show could not maintain that level of meaning and tension afterwards.

You could easily see how Netflix wanted to stretch this into 9 episodes not just 3 or 4. Introducing the doctor, which had limited addition to the story and harmed the believability aspect of it. In general, when watching fiction we activate what is known: suspension of disbelief, so we can go along  with the story (think of Marvell movies), however, once the unbelievable things increase and stop making sense, then we become very critical of the whole story. Squid Game would have been better if the cop was not there, dropped the organ harvesting section of the story, focused more on the players, and maybe, if it was given a proper ending, and I can think of many. Instead, we had our main character, who represented a great section of society, running to go back to the games, not for any reasons other than: “to be continued”.

 

I hope I did not spoiled it for you, watch it, and let me know what do you think..

 

Ahmad Baker