This horror and suspense drama created by Netflix swept the major charts in just a few weeks after its airing on September 17. It not only reached the top of the global streaming TV series, but also the popularity of public opinion continued to rise, and peripheral derivative products were selling well. Related The topic continues to ferment.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said that the show has become the platform's highest-rated non-English original drama, and it is even expected to win the highest-rated laurel in the history of Netflix.
The story of "Squid Game" is not new and bizarre.
A group of marginalized people with debts and desperation are lured into a bloodthirsty game.
The game bonus is preset to 100 million won per person, and 456 participants need to pass six levels such as one, two, three wooden people, and the squid game.
You can enter the next round of the game if you pass the level successfully. If you fail, you will be shot directly, and the prize money will automatically flow into the winner's prize pool.
The final winner can get a huge bonus of 45.6 billion won (approximately 245 million yuan).
The theme of the battle royale survival game has been performed by many well-known works before, including "The Hunger Games", "Battle Royale", "Alice in the Land of the Dead" and so on.
Why can "Squid Game" break the cultural barrier and become a global hit?
Sophisticated production is naturally the most basic, and the production team led by Huang Dong Hyuk, director of "The Furnace", clearly understands this.
The ups and downs of the plot, the relaxed narrative rhythm, the perfect interpretation of the powerful actors, etc., all ensure the rich and exciting visual enjoyment of the audience.
What is unique is that the rules of the game of life and death in the play are very simple.
Whether it is digging for candy, tug-of-war, gambling marbles and jumping squid rings, it is all ancient children's games without brain-burning.
It can arouse the audience's nostalgia, quickly enter the plot, but will not deviate from the focus, so that everyone's attention is always maintained on the character itself rather than the game.
The character setting is another highlight.
Unlike previous battle royale works that used teenagers as the protagonists, the characters in "Squid Game" are dominated by young and middle-aged marginalized people.
Although they are both at the bottom of society, their "fineness" is different.
Gambling and frustrated men who have suffered layoffs, social elites who have failed to invest, foreign workers who have been squeezed by black-hearted bosses, defectors who have been deceived by intermediaries... all kinds of people have been forced to the last corner by fate.
This will undoubtedly broaden the audience of "Squid Game" to the utmost extent.
Especially at the moment, social competition is becoming increasingly fierce, civilian debt is on the rise, and the sudden new crown pneumonia epidemic has brought various uncertainties, and the general public's survival pressure continues to increase.
At this time, drawing them into the scene in the play, facing the pain and struggle of the people at the bottom, can more arouse the sympathy, fear and resonance of the audience.
Then return to the eternal and universal topic of money and morality.
Every episode of "Squid Game" is constantly torturing humanity.
Life and money, which is more important?
We saw that this bloody game was once suspended. Fear defeated greed, and participants quit the game by voting.
However, the cruelty of real life is no less than the game itself. After several trade-offs, most participants eventually returned to the arena of life and death.
This is a cruel truth-for people in desperate situations, life and money are fundamentally intertwined and inseparable.
Similarly, the boundaries between emotion and reason, good and evil, are not clear-cut.
In "Squid Game", sometimes you need to express kindness to the people around you and find allies to hold together to overcome the crisis.
But sometimes allies may suddenly become your enemies, and you can only survive by killing the opponent.
When the rules of civilization are broken, the game exposes the evil of selfishness and greed in human nature, and also makes people see the compassion, love and kindness that are adhered to.
The "Süddeutsche Zeitung" critic said that every choice here makes the audience feel the same, "You will keep asking yourself, if I were them, what would I do?"
The most ironic thing is that when the game came to an end, everyone discovered that this survival game in which people of the same class fight each other is just a tool for the rich to seek the excitement of gambling, similar to a horse race.
The organizer also plausibly told the participants, “All those who participate in the game are equal. This is because we want to give people who are unfairly treated and discriminated in the outside world a last chance to win fair competition.”
The viewer is very contradictory.
At the end, the actor said fiercely to the other end of the phone, "We are not horses, we are humans!" It seems that people see the hope of resistance; but in an environment where the disparity between the rich and the poor is widening and social injustice is everywhere, This sentence is full of doubt and powerlessness.
Perhaps this is exactly what the director Huang Dong Hyuk intended.
In an interview, he said: "What I want to write is a fable about contemporary capitalist society."
Lin Wei