Sorry, Squid Game — The Hunger Games Still Did It Better

Spoilers for Squid Game Season 3 and The Hunger Games franchise ahead.

Recently, I finally found the time to finish the third season of Squid Game, which sees the show coming to a finale. I've been what you could call a "reluctant" fan of Hwang Dong-hyuk's children’s-games-turned-vicious, and though I'm fascinated by its battle royale take on Red Light, Green Light, Hide and Seek, and more, I can't help but feel a bit underwhelmed.

The return of battle royales to film and TV was strong in Squid Game, as the interesting premise brings a unique twist to what's otherwise unexplored in the industry as a whole. Bringing in contestants in the form of indebted people too desperate to think twice about slicing another person's throat shows human desperation in a way that hasn't been seen before, and it adds a tinge of humanity to nearly Saw-like gore.

Twisted as Squid Game may be, the momentum quickly falls off in Season 2 and 3, and it felt more like it was being milked for content than an actual narrative with an entire point and purpose. Seong Gi-hun's return to the games feels a bit forced in a character that seems wildly inconsistent in his values as a father figure, then moral authority, and then murderous avenger, and it feels like keeping the formula simple would have benefitted the overall narrative.

 

Though every season tussled with the idea of the Squid Games being revealed to the public and found by the police, it felt like a mandatory subplot to an otherwise grand celebration of violence. The inclusion of the "outside world" and an overarching narrative of victory for justice and good feels misplaced in a show that doesn't often touch on those topics, and neither does it entirely commit to them.

It feels forced and a bit of a band-aid to explain away the carnage — like an attempt at making something otherwise morally wrong (watching people get massacred while playing Rock, Paper, Scissors) and justify it with a "good prevails" narrative. As a watcher, I often felt like I wanted to be shown more of the games, not because I'm a frequent peruser of violence and gore (far from it), but because the premise of the show was exactly that, and it's the only one to ever do it.

Squid Game is too afraid to explore senseless gore and violence in a way that allows the watcher to partake in a way similar to the VIPs: picking and choosing who might live and die. Its biggest fault is adding subplot after subplot that feel pointless, while also incorporating a false sense of safety and success in Hwang Jun-ho's crusade against his brother.

Media as a whole has become a bit predictable, and the trope of the good side always winning grows stale by the minute as it makes movies see-through, and though Squid Game manages to avoid falling into that same hole, it fails to do so gracefully. Stories within the games themselves make sense: Min-su, Jun-hee, Jang Geum-ja, and others add to making the characters feel real and varied, but it feels senseless to add a plot that leads nowhere in "exposing" the games, or a plot of a rebelling Pink Guard for the sake of a player.

The culmination of Season 3 feels like a bit of a slap in the face — I'm glad that Gi-hun died and the narrative didn't take a surprise turn for the better as "everything works out", and the open-ended finale leaves room for an American sequel. But all of the time spent outside of the games would have been better spent looking inward, into what's happening with them, the characters, and letting us fall more in love with the (surprisingly) lovable cast.

The Hunger Games manages to avoid this feeling by adding real consequences to the numerous subplots scattered throughout, and though the ultimate culmination is that Panem is saved for all and democracy prevails, there's real weight behind that victory. The loss of beloved characters, the mental damage done to Katniss as a protagonist, and the weight of victory isn't understated, as the Rebels bomb children for the sake of ruining President Snow's reputation at the end.

Despite showing no gore in its movies, it feels like The Hunger Games touches on far rawer topics and manages to find a balance between fantasy and fiction, without surrendering itself to the need of moral justice. Children are killed for the sake of advancing a political agenda, and the subplots culminate in a middle ground, where not everything is happy (I'll forever be bitter about Finnick's death), but at least it has a culmination of sorts.

The Hunger Games establishes this very early on: the movies spend almost half of the entire runtime preparing you for the horrors and the political struggles. The first movie is amazing in the way that it paces itself from getting you to know Panem, the Districts, and then the Games, but other things come together in the following entries to show you that it's a story about more than murder for the sake of it.

And it's not that I have a problem with "murder for the sake of it": I take a problem with tonal discrepancies presented throughout. If Squid Game was going to embrace violence, then let it be that — violent. Let the games continue unscathed, let a new set of 456 players return to face their odds again, and let me weep and mourn the characters that I wished would win.

But for all its gore, Squid Game felt cowardly in its approach to the overall presentation: the good guy wins while the bad ones get their due, and it's pronounced which was which. Villains are over-caricatured for the sake of giving us an enemy to root against, and it fails to feel like an adult take on battle royales with real-life implications, such as debt, morality, and desperation.

Yet, when it came to the ultimate day of reckoning, the day that the Squid Games would be stopped because the Coast Guard was on its way, a last-minute culmination saw the island explode, the VIPs exported, and the crew escaping unscathed. It filled screen time with narratives that led nowhere, consequencelessly existing for the sake of suspense or drama that felt misplaced: I was never convinced the rebel squad would win, and it didn't feel like it belonged in the show to begin with.

While I won't claim that The Hunger Games is a flawless take, it kept me on my toes wondering between ally and foe far more commonly, and it embraced its narrative, political implications and subplot demands, fully in mind. It culminates in a story that is self-fulfilled and respects the viewer's time by ensuring there are no loose ends to question or wasted screentime in blatant red herrings or bland stories.