Before Squid Game, there was Battle Royale

I got that wrong.

“You know what they call the Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with Cheese.”

Too many things going on, typed it in backwards!

I wonder if anyone will pick up Red Rising at some point. Might be too expensive to do properly

First introduced to Takeshi Kitano in the 2000 remake of "Zatoichi" (highly recommend).

>but it’s still a B-movie

It was "the third highest-grossing Japanese film of 2001". "At the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Battle Royale was nominated for nine awards, including Picture of the Year, and won three of them".

Hardly a b-movie, except in the sense "not a Hollywood blockbuster crapfest"

Fujiwara did not have to wait to become a famous actor after BR. The same for Shibasaki Ko (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_Shibasaki)

People focus on Kitano too much he was just a secondary character in that movie.

Battle Royale was a novel before it was a movie, and it's a much better novel than movie.

Takeshi Kitano , AKA Vic Romano of Takeshi's Castle ("MxC" in US cable networks).

For anyone that misses that jewel of japanese game show, they have rebooted the franchise and the new series are available in Amazon prime.

Also, Asakusa Kid (biopic of him) is a really good movie, and Hana-bi is a great movie as well.

> battle royale was a B movie

Yeah, if it's not an American movie, it's some cheap shit! /s

My brother, it was nominated for nine Japanese Academy Awards, it was helmed by one of Japan's top directors, is an adaptation of a best-selling novel, is regarded by critics as one of the best films of the era, has high production values, stars arguably the most famous actor in Japan, was scored by a famous and prolific composer (you might have heard his music in another movie called Django Unchained), etc.

That's not even getting into the economics of film in Japan. A successful film in Japan nowadays earns around $10M on a budget of half a million. BR, produced nearly twenty years ago, had a budget nearly ten times that much and grossed triple.

Suffice it to say, Battle Royale is a high production cost movie, which forecloses the possibility of it being a B movie.

and because I'm just some guy,

https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/japan-ethics-of-making-ch...

"The Running man" by Stephen King was published in 1982, the movie starring Schwarzenegger was released in 1987 (another adaptation will be released this year in 2025)

The story is similar to a Robert Sheckley's short story from 1952,"The Prize of Peril" adapted into a movie in Germany in 1970 "Das Millionenspiel" and in France in 1982 "Le prix du danger" (same year as King's Running Man novel)

I would say "The Prize of Peril" is the grandfather of these books, movies and series, as far as I know. Battle Royale is the start of another branch, though : it's not one vs many anymore, it's many vs many.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize_of_Peril

The Long Walk is cited by the Battle Royale author as an inspiration.

Collins has cited "The King Must Die", Mary Renault's book about Theseus and the Minotaur, as a primary inspiration for the The Hunger Games, FWIW.

The Most Dangerous Game was published in 1924

I had the same idea after watching Hunger Games. Played around with the concept for a few weeks and then eventually tossed it. My first interaction with Fortnite was when I saw them selling t-shirts in a brick and mortar shop.

But I don't feel hard done by, I'm sure many people had similar ideas around that time, and I never executed. I also have no idea how I would get a large multiplayer game off the ground without funding. The idea of making even a two-player game scares me.

Before Fortnite released its Battle Royale game, it was a PVE survival/crafting shooter. It did the Battle Royale game mode copying the absolute sensation that was PUBG in 2017

But PUBG began as a series of mods for Arma 3, before moving to its own game with its own monetization (and running like absolute crap on release too).

I think there have been versions of PUBG mods for Arma for much longer than when I discovered it.

Definitely relevant and maybe inspirational, though I find "fight to death game show" format quite distinctive, so much so that it created its game genre 15 years later even with the same name as the movie.

[dead]

PUBG and Fortnite are both directly inspired by Battle Royale. The whole video game genre exists and is named such because of that movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game

PUBG was inspired by the movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds

Fortnite added Battle Royale game mode because they saw how popular PUBG was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale

Unsurprisingly, since PUBG was essentially "what if Battle Royale was a video game?", and Fortnite is a PUBG clone.

> the creator was financially screwed out of the first.

I wasn't aware of that until watching this recently: The Capitalist Body Horror of Squid Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxNnAAbKk4

> You've never heard of Breaking Bad?

Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs that fhe character does not have ready access to funds to pay.

It does feature hubris, the traditional central feature of tragedy, though.

> For the medical debt angle, the macabre and outrageous 'Repo Man'(2010) is a pitch-dark and fascinating examination of the end-game of medical insurance.

I really hate the twist ending in that movie. Please, screenwriters stop doing that, it ceased to be original like 30 years ago. Aside from the ending, good movie.

I'll have to check out Emily the Criminal, because I'm convinced her best role was as Lenny in Legion.

Repo Men is the 2010 film; Repo Man is the 1984 one.

To stay on topic, Repo! The Generic Opera (2008) is another film - a musical, even! - that covers a very similiar topic.

Zydrate comes in a little glass vial...

Reborn rich

At least for Korea, both exist. Tuition debt is almost a non-factor though. Medical debt can be, but of course nothing like the US

On the contrary, debts from failed businesses (as used in the series) are incredibly common here - probably the most common kind of debt that makes people spiral out of society. Korea has a very high percentage of people who try at some point to start some kind of small business, much higher than the US or Western Europe. Of course this can easily go wrong.

So yes, the debts used in the series are apt for Korea.

That's kind of interesting that you say that, since multiple characters are raising money due to medical reasons.

Technically it's not debt (treatment hasn't occurred, no money is owed), but medical issues are still a big deal even in countries with more accessible healthcare.

Wouldn't Korea have medical debt for the cosmetic surgery which is very popular there? Or is that sort of thing free too?

Not sure it really matters that much. Squid Game is a global phenomenon and even though it’s ostensibly a Korean series, it’s pretty clearly funded by the very American corporation Netflix.

This is the answer, you're expecting a South Korean show to depict US problems, because culture is invisible if you're in it. These problems don't exist in many countries (e.g. here in Greece we have free education and healthcare, so you can't have student loans or medical debt).

South Korea ranks near the top in highest amounts of consumer debt. Significantly higher than the US.

Yeah, we really shouldn't ask a South Korean show to depict American problems

> Media like Squid Game annoy me to no end because they perpetuate the idea that any severe debt someone might be in is always the fault of the individual, rather than circumstance

You didn't watch the show then? This simply isn't the case.

they perpetuate the idea that any severe debt someone might be in is always the fault of the individual

Irresponsibility -> debt is just one of the multiple motivations for the fictional contestants. Others include medical costs for family members, being impoverished by someone else's bad actions, being threatened for a debt incurred by someone else, and so on. You're arguing against a simplistic and inaccurate summary of the story by generalizing from the main character.

One of the contestants in Squid Game fell into debt because of a failed business venture, and several of them are there because of medical debt caused by others in their families.

I don't see it that way.

Squid Game is taking advantage of indebted people. It is an evil organization taking advantage of circumstances and human flaws. That is why gambling should be heavily regulated, and that slot machines shouldn't be appearing in convenience stores.

Just because someone self inflict a wound on themselves doesn't make it OK for an organization to make the wound worse.

Student loan is usually your fault. You had the choice to not believe what society told you about education Except for highly regulated jobs where there are no alternative

You're annoyed that a Korean show isn't about your American problems? Good grief.

Fringey political theorists like the Situationists have a concept called recuperation which suggests that capitalism doesn't just do these things to make money, but to perpetuate itself by giving people a safe method of blowing off steam, much like the 'bread and circuses' idea of Roman imperial governance. You could argue that the second season of Squid Game is specifically about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

You can't walk away without repercussion, through, and from my understanding it becomes very difficult to attempt to collect the things you walked away from again. E.g. no one will give you a loan to start a business after declaring bankruptcy.

Offline gambling also deliberately drives addiction, and has for much longer.

> Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

You Americans really have lost the touch of reality with regards to politics, that's for sure.

Tech companies are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the world. They do what they do in order to increase profit. Nothing left-leaning about that.

In a few days your new president and his gamer buddy takes office, and they both have their own social media networks.

They're liberal on cultural issues, because it's an easy marketing win, (or at least was), they're not interested in any left-wing ideas that would give greater ownership of these companies to their employees for example.

> college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take!

Sure, the left wing take is to have high quality education paid for via tax dollars and thus being universally available, same as healthcare should be.

> Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

No, none of the big for profit, often venture-capital funded or publicly traded, firms in the tech industry have been advocates for any of the pro-labor and anti-capitalist ideologies that define the left. Being (often only performatively) on the Democratic side of some of the culture war issues between the centrist Democratic Party and the hard-right Republican Party while spending lots of money to keep the Democratic Party strongly committed to corporate capitalism doesn't make them even slightly left-leaning.

I think the other commenter is right in calling them neoliberal, not left wing. An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility…but I don’t want to veer into that debate here.

To answer your question: because a good portion of a company like Netflix’s annual revenue is derived from credit card payments that are sort of “forgotten” monthly bills. These companies don’t benefit at all from a financially-literate and secure customer base.

That's such an American thing to say. Tech companies are better described as neoliberal

> Why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

No. They have their own thing going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology.

> During the 1990s, members of the entrepreneurial class in the information technology industry in Silicon Valley vocally promoted an ideology that combined the ideas of Marshall McLuhan with elements of radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics, using publications like Wired magazine to promulgate their ideas. This ideology mixed New Left and New Right beliefs together based on their shared interest in anti-statism, the counterculture of the 1960s, and techno-utopianism.

Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing." They are just boring old neoliberals.

So extremely of the left they made the Wobblies look right wing! /s

https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399591/wobblies-of-the-wor...

America's corporate seemingly managed to convince y'all that identity politics are "left".

First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. In fact it's the epitome of individualism when you're focused on what makes you different from them instead of focusing on what is common between the general population (which they are part of). Labeling it as left has been a very successful psy-op to create a controlled dissidence (which is not dissident at all).

Why do you think megacorps like Disney et al are so adamant on pushing this agenda? Everything a company does, everything, is calculated. This is not "neoliberalism" like sibling comments are mentioning. This is a very calculated power move to shift the narrative (and how it's labeled as "left" is proof that it succeeded).

The only alternative explanation would be that they're trying to capture a greater market share, but it has been proven time and time again that it has only led to flopping (by pushing away the majority of non-identitary people while not even capturing the already small minorities) and yet they still push for it. Why?

By making vast swaths of "revolutionary" youngsters (as all youngsters are) fight for this nonsensical cause, they have effectively suppressed any possibility of a real struggle for power that might topple the actual elites.

And as a neat side-effect this identitarism has managed to make the everyday man focus on their peers as the source of all their woes. Corpos like that. It prevents Mangiones that might take action against their actual oppressors. Energy is finite, so they're trying to make it be wasted on intra-class instead of inter-class politics.

Stop playing their game.

>That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement.

Same applies to many, many soldiers — and it's not just about the skills.

It's just that things don't matter as much anymore outside of that environment.

This was always so interesting to me, especially when I think back to being a kid. The neighborhood kids would hang out in nearby farms and fields, catching bugs, snakes and frogs...only to put them in jars or terrariums to see if they would fight. In retrospect, it seems positively sociopathic, but it was fun at the time (and spurred a lifelong interest in frogs, for me).

As an adult, it makes me wonder if that's what we were doing though; setting up gladiator games to try and feel a dominance over something in a world where we were constantly the bottom of the hierarchal ladder. The above step on the below, so to speak.

There are literal live adaptations of Kaiji too (3 feature films starring Fujiwara Tatsuya)

I like this even though I don’t read manga. From time to time you just stumble upon a comment that explains that in manga … actually … and it was …. And it all makes a lot of sense! It creates out-of-band immersion unavailable to most western stories, which often just hand-wave shallow stereotypical motivations and world mechanics.

In 1996, times were tough after sudden and dramatic burst of the great Japanese real estate bubble. Multi-year recessions, mass layoffs, people turning to sketchy hustles to make side income.

Kind of mirrors what's going on in many countries.

There's "inspired by" media with similar concepts, then there's straight up copying it and not even bothering to change the content. Star Wars is inspired by westerns but adds its own flavor. Squid Game straight up copies Kaiji to the point that the only real difference is the language.

While I fundamentally agree with you about the lineage, I can appreciate that there is a direct thread of artistically psychotic surrealism in Squid Game that feels inherited from Battle Royale.

The pink caskets (which might be my favourite visual element) feel like they would be at home in the world of Battle Royale, but IMO feel way too dark humor for Hunger Games.

Battle Royale and Squid Game both feature characters reaching quivering ecstacy when players die. My memory could be rose colored at this point, but Hunger Games just wasn't that dark.

> Squid Games is just Kaiji with better presentation.

The presentation comparison is apples to oranges. Kaiji just wouldn’t work as live action (although they tried with a movie) as it relays heavily on the affordances of anime/manga as a medium to present Kaiji’s inner world and show visual metaphors for his emotions. Without that you take away the substance. It’s fair to say Squid Game steals a lot of themes and ideas from Kaiji, but it’s certainly not just Kaiji with different wrapping (unless there is something I am missing having not read the manga).

Same, Battle Royale always seemed anti-government to me where Squid Games is very explicitly anti-capitalist.

I know there was a reward for winning and the fundamental reason for the Battle Royale was economic, but I always got the vibe the government was the problem.

Like, the kids in Battle Royale weren't exempt if they were rich, right? It was a lottery. Squid Game only appeals to people struggling under capitalism.

Because Kaiji is just less popular

That's the correct analogy and chronology.

Another one is Ready Player One borrowed from Sword Art Online, which borrowed from .hack, which borrowed from Serial Experiments Lain, which drew upon a rich pantheon of cyberpunk novels.

A lot of stuff is apparently explained in the book that just happens for no reason in the movie. Especially the whole ending seems to be missing quite a few scenes to make any sense (I've read online that in the book it is actually explained)

My point is, those things actually don't need an explanation for the movie to be good. The director just said "fuck those details, let's get to where these kids gets weapons in hand"

I didn't read the book but it seems like a hand-wavy justification for having kids kill each other and the movie is better for not having it.

It is actually a good one from a storytelling perspective. The entire point of the story is that kids kill each other for no good reason, so give a reason that is not good. Not giving a reason would have the reader wonder about the "why", which is not the point.

I think the point is that the build up of why they are there is pointless fluff. The subject matter is the game itself, so it's better to rush through the setup and have more action.

Cube is a great lesson in budget filmmaking.

I came here specifically to recommend Alice in Borderland. I believe season 3 is due out soon this year.

I just watched season 2 of Squid Games and whilst it was fun and I enjoyed it, it didn't really seem to add much to the series.

...horror?

Pretty sure S1 of AiB was out around a year earlier than SG, in 2020.

They both seem to go back a ways though - AiB is based on Manga that was serialised starting in 2010 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Borderland

And SG was apparently first written in 2009.

And yes, I agree it should get more attention! There are obvious similarities, but AiB appeals to me more in its mysteriousness.

It's based on a manga. Or whatever the Korean equivalent is.

IMO it was less a cliffhanger and more a hard cut

Exactly. That's a very weak motive. Which is why most kids get killed because they have no appetite for murder.

Both versions of the running man are very interesting. Whereas the book was more of 'we are all doomed' and the movie was more 'we can take control of this'.

I really like it. It's not a genre film, but a cold existential drama based mostly on mood.

Yes.