My Review of Squid game

Squid game is a movie that represents social problems, especially competitiveness, survival, and morality. Without a doubt, it’s exciting series and worth watching. I will explain the parts I admire and my critics in the following.

Storyline

I think the goal of this series is to show contemporary social issues such as inequality, violence, and competition. Nevertheless, the author aesthetically depicts humanity concepts, including trust, empathy, and sacrifice. These concepts are presented in each season like “unfairness” which the doctor has privileged information about games by collaborating with some staff create an unjust environment even in the game.

The primary endeavor of this series is the way of demonstrating inequality in society — people who are desperate and fed-up with social classes. A scene shows 189 of 220 people deciding to return for the game. In a game, the chance of their won is around zero. When People have no fear of dying, they prefer to die rather than live their disastrous lives. They have different dreams about what to do with money. Some characters decide to take the risk to participate in this game for their family members. Others may do for fame or power.

Notable Moments

The favorite episode for me was Gganbu, where players are divided into duos, and only one person will survive.

In the scene that two girls decide to have a conversation in their time instead of competing with each other. Ant at the end, one of them decides to lose and sacrifice. She said, “I have nothing. You got a reason to get out of this place.” and when she died, she said, “I’m honored that we were a partner.” This scene makes me emotional.

Sang-woo deceives Ali to win a game by changing his marble with stones.

And when Gi-Hun tricks old man, the old man says

“Does tricking your friend like that make sense to you?

When u and I swore that we were gganbu buddies, gganbu always share everything with each other no matter what.”

Or another scene, Gi-Hun wants to stop the game, but Sang-woo kills himself in order for gi-hun to get the prize.

Characters

The first thing that takes my attention is choosing the leading man who is a totally normal father who is under a lot of debt, and his daughter and mother are the most valuable things. In the first episode, we can see he was not a great father for his daughter, but in the continue, we can see that she didn’t accept the offer that doesn’t see his daughter instead of the money. I admire this choice because every person can easily connect with this character. He has no superpower or any unique ability or intelligence. He is a broken person but consistent when he loses the game in metro repeatedly, and he didn’t give up until he finally won.

In my opinion, the author selected other characters wisely that represent a small but genuine society: A brutal and powerful, A cunning person, immigrants, devoted persons. There is any kind of person in the small group of characters. However, I’m not too fond of how the producer eliminates the players. Especially in episode 2 that 200 people died, and others didn’t react drastically. It carries that other people are not worthwhile as much as the main characters, and that annoys me. I think the series would be better if side stories were developed more like the story of the North Korean girl with her brother.

Another thing that disappoints me is the police character developed weakly in the movie. I really hoped it would have a major impact on the timeline, but I think it doesn’t change anything even if he did not exist. In addition, the series doesn’t tell about staff and their lives.

Conclusion

This series is categorized in movies like hunger games, maze runner, divergent, and platform. I can undoubtedly say that it is a great series. However, I had more expectations when I watched this series, maybe because compliments increased my expectations. Although I hope the next season will be more radical and vividly show discrimination and the corrupt system that controls the world. Like hunger games that Katniss revolted against the regime. Plus, it doesn’t mention the limitation of resources like the platform, which brilliantly and simply carries the concept of resource limitation and inequality. To sum up, it has great moments and scenes that remind us we are not above others and force us to think more about the world we have created.

My Score: 8.5/10