Squid game, help please

Hey guys this show is sweeping the nation and I want to hear from you. My free time for watching shows by myself is more limited then my time to play videogames. I'm intrigued by this show from what I've heard but want to hear from other geeks about this.

What do I need from you?

If you have seen Squid game:
What do you think of it so far? Is it worth watching it is it just ultraviolent secular entertainment? Also will you continue watching it, why, why not?

If you haven't but have heard of it:
Why have you decided to not watch it? Any reason is fine even if it's just not in your wheelhouse of entertainment. Do you have moral issues with what you've seen?

If this is the first time you heard of it:
It's a twisted hunger games from what I've heard and seen, very violent, which might be enough to write it off.

Peater:
Are you going to cover this? Maybe you don't have a Netflix subscription right now so that's why you haven't said anything. Or maybe you've posted it already and I missed it.

Thank you for your time as always God bless.

Well, the first time I heard of the show was last week when I saw this Matt Walsh video:



And after that, I decided I shouldn't watch the show.

Then I read the comments to the video, and it seems that even most of Walsh's regular watchers disagree with his take on the show since he's never actually watched it. So maybe there's more to it than ultraviolence like Walsh thinks.

Thinking about it, I still don't think I'm going to watch the show, though, for the following reasons:

1) It's in Korean, and I don't feel like reading subtitles for a whole TV show run.

2) I don't need any more gore in my shows and movies.

3) I've got so many other things to read, watch, and listen to that I really need to get through my backlog before entertaining any new additions.

4) I don't commit to watching TV show very often anyway. I prefer movies because they tend to have less filler.

JDMTheGreat wrote:

Peater:
Are you going to cover this? Maybe you don't have a Netflix subscription right now so that's why you haven't said anything. Or maybe you've posted it already and I missed it.

I've barely heard mention of this show and know nothing about it. No plans to cover it right now. But of course that can change if it starts getting enough buzz/controversy in geek circles. Or if I hear from enough of you guys that you want my reactions to it.

My wife and I have been watching it. We've seen up to episode 5 so far and we've been really enjoying it.

It is violent, but perhaps not as much as you guys are thinking. You see blood spurts out of people's back when they are shot, which is certainly not unique. There are also "surgical" scenes where organs are being harvested, but nothing more graphic than what you'd see on NCIS.
Perhaps it's the number of people dying that makes it feel more graphic.

I would say the violence is worse than a marvel movie, but not as bad as Zack Snyder's Army of The Dead (which was too much for me)

The things that appeal to me are:

* The characters, and seeing how they react to what's going on. The show actually has quite a character focus. The protagonist is especially well developed. He's a very troubled man with a lot of problems but you end up feeling a lot of sympathy for him. Especially when it comes to his relationship with his daughter.
* The mystery of it all. There's a to going on I am hungry to understand.
* The suspense. They take a very mundane game and make it into an edge-of-your-seat experience.
* Netflix gives you to option to watch it with dubbing (my preferred method) if you're not into subtitles.

One thing that surprised me from a Korean show is that one of the characters is a Christian. He turns to his faith during the stress of the games. Another character mocks him for his faith. They have a bit of an argument, although I didn't feel that either of them was making particularly strong arguments. I'm curious where they might go with this element of the story.

I hope some of that is helpful.

AdamCollings wrote:One thing that surprised me from a Korean show is that one of the characters is a Christian. He turns to his faith during the stress of the games. Another character mocks him for his faith. They have a bit of an argument, although I didn't feel that either of them was making particularly strong arguments. I'm curious where they might go with this element of the story.

There are a lot of churches in Korea.

When my wife and I went there from China for out honeymoon, we went out one Sunday to visit my friend's church. As we came up from the subway station, it was eerily quiet on the street. I guess we were in a calmer part of Seoul, but there were no other people and little, if any, traffic on the road. I remember thinking, "Boy, I hope we didn't miss the Rapture."

Then I realized that it was Sunday, so a lot of businesses were closed. I'd been in China for so long, where only the banks are closed on Sundays, that I'd forgotten what it was like in a "religious" country.

Then, to find my friend's church, he'd told us we would pass one church, then a cult church, and finally reach his church.

Update: I've watched the first episode, not nearly as violent as I had expected. Thanks Adam for that information it definitely influenced my choice to watch it. Unfortunately I'm having a really hard time connecting with the main character. His relationship with his daughter plays my heart strings, but that's where my empathy ends. Maybe if I understood the world better and why he's in the situation he's in. Can't help but due to his gambling issue and general thinking he should win his living instead of earn it doesn't pan with me. I'll probably watch the expanse in contrast and may come back to this once I've finished that.

I watched the entire first season. Most of the violence isn't up close or graphic. There is a lot. Think of a war movie like Saving Private Ryan. If you can handle that amount of violence you can handle this.

At its heart, the show is about what motivates individuals. How far will they go to get ahead? To what length will they go to get ahead? The themes in it are similar to Parasite.

You can watch a dubbed version of it but from what I've been told, you'll miss some details.

You can also watch it through the VidAngel service and remove some/all of the objectionable content.

jorowi wrote:You can watch a dubbed version of it but from what I've been told, you'll miss some details.

That's interesting. I had heard the opposite, that Korean people had said the subtitles were not good, and that the dub actually gave a better sense of the original.
But I heard this third-hand through my wife, so maybe the message got corrupted somewhere along the way.