Don’t lose your marbles.
I really enjoyed watching Squid Game. The marbles episode epitomized the show for me, allowing the characters to fully realise themselves while providing the viewer with edge-of-your-seat suspense. It was as close to perfect as it got. All in all I thought it was a great show.
Balancing act.
As a fan of well known Korean cinema – Oldboy, Sympathy for Lady Vengence, Parasite, Memories of Murder, The Chaser, I was looking for a similar kind of experience from Squid Game. I thought for the most part it achieved this, while also having the quintessential Korean lightness that doesn’t detract from the surrounding horror. With that said, the introduction of the cop character plot left me with lingering fear that the show would descend into a farcical formulaic type of thing which would detract from the rest of the action. The VIPs in their caricaturesque portrayal also detracted from the show. Squid Game retained its identity for the most part and did not become a farce as, for example, the 2020 film Alive did.
Robbed by the suits
I felt robbed by the last 5 minutes of the show. I’m hopeful that somewhere, probably not filmed, but possibly in the script or maybe in the writer’s early drafts is an ending that wraps it all up. An ending where the principal character gets on the plane and flies to the US where he will either reunite with his daughter or see her happier than ever and choose not to impose on that happiness. That, as far as I’m concerned, is the proper ending of the show.
But wait, there’s more.
But what we got was a moneyman flying down into the last scene to meet our newly empowered hero Seong Gi-Hun with his flame red hair just as he’s about to board the plane while we all scream not to dial that number, but he does and we hear him say, ‘Listen guys, there’s every indication that this show is going to be a big hit, so scrap that meeting with my daughter, we’re going to cash in on a sequel.’
If they wanted him back in the game, the time to do it was when Seong Gi-Hun was downtrodden and homeless, not spending a jeon of his winnings, a man with nowhere else to go, but that too would have sacrificed the sequel. In the end, the fans have lost an ending so that Netflix can milk a bit more out of it.
It will be a sequel I for one will not be watching, unless Kang Sae-byeok comes back as the world’s prettiest zombie.