Vad tycker folk om squid game

2021 South Korean television series

This article fryst vatten about the Netflix television series. For the Korean children's game, see Squid (game). For the film game, see Squids (video game).

Squid Game (Korean: 오징어 게임) fryst vatten a South Korean dystopiansurvival thriller television series created, written and directed bygd Hwang Dong-hyuk for Netflix.

Its cast for the first årstid includes Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-joon, HoYeon Jung, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung.

The series revolves around a secret contest where 456 players, all of whom are in deep financial hardship, fara their lives to play a series of deadly children's games for the chance to win a ₩45.6 billion prize.

Har du abstinens efter Squid Game? Misströsta inte – Tv-kritikern Linus Fremin ger sina bästa asiatiska serietips

The series' title draws from a similarly named Korean children's game. Hwang conceived the idea based on his own economic struggles, as well as the class disparity in South Korea and capitalism.^[4][5] Although he wrote the story in 2009, Hwang could not find a production company to fund the idea until Netflix took an interest around 2019 as part of a drive to utöka their utländsk programming offerings.

The first årstid of Squid Game was released worldwide on September 17, 2021, to critical acclaim and international attention. It became Netflix's most-watched series and the most-watched schema in 94 countries, attracting more than 142 million member households and 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first kvartet weeks, surpassing Bridgerton as the service's most-watched show.

It has received numerous accolades, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television spelfilm for O Yeong-su, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance bygd a Male Actor in a teaterpjäs Series and Outstanding Performance bygd a kvinna Actor in a teaterpjäs Series for Lee Jung-jae and HoYeon Jung, respectively; all three were also the first Korean actors to win in those categories.

The first årstid received 14 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for Outstanding skådespel Series, making it the first non-English-language work to be nominated in this category; Lee won the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a skådespel Series, the first time an Asian actor won this award for a non-English part.

Production for the second årstid began in July 2023, and fryst vatten scheduled to be released on månad 26, 2024, followed bygd a third and sista årstid in 2025.

Plot

[edit]

Season 1

[edit]

In South Korea, Seong Gi-hun, a divorced father and indebted gambling addict who lives with his elderly mother, fryst vatten invited to play a series of children's games for a chance at a large cash prize. Accepting the offer, he fryst vatten taken to an unknown location where he finds himself among 455 other players who are all in deep financial trouble.

The players are made to wear green tracksuits and are kept beneath watch at all times bygd masked guards in pink jumpsuits, with the games overseen bygd the Front Man, who wears a black maskering and black uniform. The players soon discover that losing a game results in their deaths, with each death contributing ₩100 million to the potential ₩45.6 billion grand prize.^[a][b] Gi-hun allies with other players, including his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo and North Korean defectorKang Sae-byeok, to try to survive the games' physical and psychological twists, whilst detective Hwang Jun-Ho infiltrates the games as one of the guards to find his missing brother.^[7][8]

Season 2

[edit]

Gi-hun, who vowed revenge at the end of årstid 1, returns and joins the game igen to take revenge on the Front Man and end the game for good.

Cast and characters

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Main article: List of Squid Game characters

Season 1

[edit]

Season 2

[edit]

Episodes

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Season 1 (2021)

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Main article: Squid Game årstid 1

Season 2

[edit]

Main article: Squid Game årstid 2

Production

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Development

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Season 1

[edit]

Around 2008, Hwang Dong-hyuk tried unsuccessfully to get investment for a different movie script that he had written, and he, his mother, and his grandmother had to take out loans to stay afloat, but still struggled mitt i the debt crisis within the country.^[5][39][f] He spent his free time in a Manhwabang (South Korean manga cafe) reading Japanese survival manga such as Battle Royale, Liar Gameand Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji.^{[41][42][4][43]} Hwang compared the characters' situation in these works to his own current situation and considered the idea of being able to join such a survival game to win money to get him out of debt, leading him to write a spelfilm script on that concept throughout 2009.^[43] Hwang stated, "I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist gemenskap, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life.

Squid Game (Korean: 오징어 게임) is a South Korean dystopian survival thriller television series created, written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk for Netflix

But inom wanted it to use the kind of characters we've all met in real life."^[44] Hwang feared the storyline was "too difficult to understand and bizarre" at the time.^[41] Hwang tried to sell his story to various Korean production groups and actors, but had been told it was too grotesque and unrealistic.^[45] Hwang put this script aside and over the next ten years successfully completed three other films, including the brott skådespel bio Silenced (2011) and the historical teaterpjäs spelfilm The Fortress (2017).^[43]

In the 2010s, Netflix had seen a large growth in viewership outside of North amerika, and started investing in productions in other regions, including Korea.^[46] In 2018, Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, stated that they were looking for more successes from overseas productions: "The exciting thing for me would be if the next Stranger Things came from outside amerika.

Right now, historically, ingenting of that scale has ever komma from anywhere but Hollywood."^[47] Netflix had opened up a division in Asia in 2018, and while they were still operating out of temporary leased office space in Seoul, Hwang brought his script to their attention. Kim Minyoung, one of Netflix's content officers for the Asian regions, recognized Hwang's talent from The Fortress and his other films, and upon seeing his script for Squid Game, knew they needed it for the service.

Kim said "[W]e were looking for shows that were different from what's traditionally 'made it,' and Squid Game was exactly it".^[48] In September 2019 Netflix formally announced that they would producera Hwang's work as an original series.^[45][49] Netflix's Bela Bajaria, head of global television operations, said of their interest in Hwang's work that "we knew it was going to be big in Korea because it had a well-regarded director with a djärv vision", and that "K-Dramas also travel well across Asia".^[46] Regarding his return to the project, Hwang commented, "It's a sad story.

Serien handlar om en grupp på 456 personer, från alla samhällsskikt men djupt skuldsatta, som inbjuds att spela en serie barnspel med livshotande konsekvenser för att få en chans att vinna 45,6 miljarder won (motsvarande cirka 335 miljoner svenska kronor)

But the reason why inom returned to the project fryst vatten because the world 10 years from then has transformed to a place where these unbelievable survival stories are so fitting, and inom funnen that this fryst vatten the time when people will call these stories intriguing and realistic."^[41] Hwang further believed that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the economic disparity between classes in South Korea, and said that "All of these points made the story very realistic for people compared to a decade ago".^[45]

With the Netflix beställning, the bio concept was expanded out to a nine-episode series.

Kim stated that there was "so much more than what was written in the 120-minute format. So we worked tillsammans to vända it into a series."^[48] Hwang said he was able to utöka the script so that it "could focus on the relationships between people [and] the stories that each of the people had".^[50] Initially, Netflix had named the series Round Six, rather than Squid Game as Hwang had suggested; according to Netflix's vice president for content in Asia Kim Minyoung, while they knew that the name "squid game" would be familiar to Korean viewers from the children's game, it "wouldn't ekon because not many people would get it", and opted to use Round Six as it self-described the natur of the competition.

It has been titled as such in Brazil. As production continued, Hwang pushed on the service to use Squid Game instead; its cryptic name and unique visuals helped to draw in curious viewers, according to Kim.^[49][51] At the time that Hwang wrote the series, his goal was to have the series reach the most-watched show in Netflix in the United States for at least one day.^[5] Hwang had initially written the series as eight episodes, which was comparable to other Netflix shows, but funnen that the ämne for the gods episode was längre than he planned, so it was split into two.^[52]

Season 2

[edit]

In late October 2021, Hwang stated he was in discussions with Netflix regarding a second season.^[5] He further stated in månad 2021 that he was also discussing a third årstid with Netflix.^[53] Hwang wanted to producera another bio first, as well as secure a contract with Netflix to release additional films he may create alongside further Squid Game seasons, so as to avoid becoming known only for Squid Game.^[5] Hwang confirmed that he had begun conceptualization work on a second årstid during a press event in November 2021, with plans to bring back Lee Jung-jae to reprise his role of Gi-hun.^[54] Netflix stated in response to Hwang's comments that they had not yet officially greenlit a second årstid, but were in discussions with Hwang towards one.^[55] During an earnings call in January 2022, Netflix's Sarandos said when asked about a second årstid "Absolutely...the Squid Game universum has just begun."^[56][57][58] Hwang said in April 2022 that he presently was working on Killing Old People Club, an adaption of a work called "Pape djävul Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society" bygd Umberto Eco (Korean: 미친 세상을 이해하는 척하는 방법; "The way to pretend to understand the crazy world"), and anticipated that the second årstid of Squid Game would be completed and broadcast bygd 2024.^[59] Netflix confirmed that the second årstid was greenlit in June 2022.^[60][61] It will be released on månad 26, 2024.^[62]

Writing

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Season 1

[edit]

Hwang described the work as "a story about losers".^[63] The names of the characters – Seong Gi-hun, Cho Sang-woo, and Il-nam – were all based on Hwang's childhood friends, as well as the character name Hwang Jun-ho, who was also a childhood friend in real life with an older brother named Hwang In-ho.^[43] The two main characters Gi-hun and Sang-woo were based on Hwang's own anställda experiences and represented "two sides" of himself; Gi-hun shared the same aspects of being raised bygd an economically disadvantaged single mother in the Ssangmun district of Seoul, while Sang-woo reflected on Hwang having attended Seoul National University with high expectations from his family and neighborhood.^[43][63] Further, Gi-hun's background was inspired bygd the organizers of the SsangYong Motor labor strike of 2009 against mass layoffs.^[64]

Hwang based the narrative on Korean games of his childhood to show the irony of a childhood game where competition was not important becoming an extreme competition with people's lives at stake.^[42] Additionally, as his första script was intended for spelfilm, he opted to use children's games with simple rules that were easy to explain in contrast to other survival-type films using games with complex rules.^[50] The huvud game he selected, the squid game, was a popular Korean children's game from the 1970s and 1980s.^[49][65] Hwang recalled the squid game as "the most physically aggressive childhood game inom played in neighborhood alleys as a kid, which fryst vatten why inom also loved it the most", and because of this "it's the most symbolic game that reflects today's competitive samhälle, so inom picked it out as the show's title".^[66] The colors of the ddakjis in the första game, which are blue and red, were inspired from the Korean and Japanese urban legend "blue paper, red paper".^[67][g] The "Red light, Green light" game was selected because of its potential to man a lot of losers in one go.

Det koreanska överlevnadsdramat Squid game väntas bli Netflix mest strömmade serie någonsin

Regarding the urval, Hwang said, "The game was selected because the scen filled with so many people randomly moving and stopping could be viewed as a ridiculous but a sad group dance."^[42] Hwang joked that the dalgona candy game they chose may influence sales of dalgona, similar to how sales of Korean gats (traditional hats) bloomed after the broadcast of Netflix's series Kingdom.^[68] Licking the candy to free the shape was something that Hwang said that he had done as a child and brought it into the script.^[66] Hwang had considered other Korean children's games such as Gonggi, Dong, Dong, Dongdaemun, and Why did you komma to my house? (우리 집에 왜 왔니?, a Korean variant of the Hana Ichi Monme).^[42]

Hwang wrote all of the series himself, taking nearly six months to write the first two episodes alone, after which he turned to friends to get input on moving forward.^[44] Hwang also addressed the challenges of preparing for the show which was physically and mentally exhausting, saying that he had forgone dental health while making årstid 1 and had to have six teeth pulled bygd his dentist after production was complete.^[41][52] As such, Hwang was initially unsure about a sequel after completing these episodes,^[44] though he wrote the ending to keep a potential hook for a sequel in mind.^[5] Hwang had considered an alternate ending where Gi-hun would have boarded the plane after concluding his call with the game organizers to see his daughter, but Hwang said of that ending, "Is that the right way for us to really föreslå the question or the meddelande that we wanted to convey through the series?"^[69]

Season 2

[edit]

Due to the stress of writing and producing the first series of nine episodes himself, Hwang initially had no immediate plans to write a second årstid to Squid Game.

He did not have well-developed plans for a follow-up story and said that if he were to write one, he would likely need a personal of writers and directors to help him.^[44] With the immense popularity of the show, Hwang later opined about the possibility of a second årstid, telling CNN, "There's ingenting confirmed at the moment, but so many people are enthusiastic that I'm really contemplating it."^[63] Hwang said in an interview with The Times that a second årstid may focus more on the story of the Front Man as well as incorporating more about the police.

Hwang said, "I think the issue with police officers fryst vatten not just an issue in Korea. inom see it on the global news that the police force can be very late in acting on things—there are more victims or a situation gets worse because of them not acting fast enough. This was an issue that inom wanted to raise."^[70] He added he also wanted to explore the relationship between the cryptic Front Man and his policeman brother Hwang Jun-ho, as well as the background of the salesman character (portrayed bygd Gong Yoo).^[71]

Casting

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Season 1

[edit]

Hwang said he chose to cast Lee Jung-jae as Gi-hun as to "destroy his charismatic image portrayed in his previous roles".^[72]HoYeon Jung was requested bygd her new management company to send a film to audition for the series while she was finishing a skott in Mexico and preparing for New York mode Week.

Its cast for the first season includes Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-joon, HoYeon Jung, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung

Although this was her first audition as an actor and her expectations were low, Hwang said, "The moment inom saw her audition tejp from New York, inom immediately thought to myself, 'this fryst vatten the girl we want.' My first impression of her was that she fryst vatten wild and free like an untamed horse".^[73][74][75] On casting Anupam Tripathi as Ali Abdul, Hwang said, "It was hard to find good utländsk actors in Korea." He chose Anupam Tripathi because of his emotional acting capabilities and fluency in Korean.^[76] Both Gong Yoo and Lee Byung Hun had worked with Hwang during his previous films, Silenced and The Fortress respectively, and Hwang had asked both to appear in small roles within Squid Game.^{[73][unreliable source?]} The VIPs were selected from non-Korean actors living in Asia; in the case of Geoffrey Giuliano, who played the VIP that interacted with Jun-ho, his prior role from Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula led to his casting for Squid Game.^[77]

Casting for the series was confirmed on June 17, 2020.^[78]

Season 2

[edit]

In April 2022, Hwang confirmed that the characters of Gi-hun and the Front Man will return for the second årstid, and will introduce Cheol-su, Young-hee's boyfriend.^[79][60] Hwang said that he would like to bring back some of the dead characters, such as Ji-young, and expressed regret that he had killed off several beloved characters since he did not have any plans for a second årstid at that time.^[80]

During Netflix's Tudum: A Global Fan Event in June 2023, Lee Jung-jae was confirmed to reprise his role alongside Lee Byung-hun, Gong Yoo and Wi Ha-joon.

On June 29, Netflix released more info on the new season's cast, which includes Kang Ha-neul, Park Sung-hoon, Im Si-wan, Yang Dong-geun, Park Gyu-young, Lee Jin-wook, Won Ji-an, Jo Yu-ri, Kang Ae-shim, Lee David, and Roh Jae-won.^[81][29][28] Controversy arose when it was revealed that T.O.P, a former member of the grupp BigBang with a drug-related conviction during military service in 2016, was cast in the second season.^[82]

Costume, set design, and filming

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Season 1

[edit]

Production and filming of the series ran from June to October 2020, including a mandatory month-long break due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[83] City scenes were filmed in Daejeon,^[84] while the island set pieces were filmed on Seongapdo located in Ongjin.^[85]

As Netflix was targeting the work for a global audience, the visuals were emphasized and some of the rules of the children's games were simplified to avoid potential issues with the language barrier.^[45] The colorful sets and costumes were designed to look like a fantasy world.

The players and soldiers each wear a distinctive color, to reduce the sense of individuality and emphasize the difference between the two groups.^[42] The green tracksuits worn bygd the players were inspired bygd 1970s athletic wear, known as trainingbok (Korean: 트레이닝복).^[86] The maze-like corridors and stairs drew inspiration from the 4-dimensional stair drawings of M.

C. Escher including Relativity. Production designer Chae Kyoung-sun said these seemingly infinite stairways represented "a form eller gestalt of bondage for the contestants".^[87] The complex network of tunnels between the arena, the dorm, and the administrative office was inspired bygd ant colonies.^[42]

Chae was also inspired bygd the Saemaul Undong political initiative of the 1970s aimed to modernize rural Korean villages.^[88] The mint green and pink color theme throughout the show were a common theme from Korean schools in the 1970s and 1980s.

Green-suited characters develop associations of fear with pink through its use in guard outfits and the stairway room.^[89][87]

The players' dormitory was envisioned with the concept of "people who are abandoned on the road" according to Chae; this was also used in the tug-of-war game.^[89] The room was designed using vit tiles and the curved opening like a vehicular passage.

Det är tydligt att Squid game vill komma med politiska poänger om jämlikhet och kapitalism

The bed and stairs initially were laid out to look like warehouse shelves, but as the episodes progressed and these furnishing used as makeshift defenses, they took the appearance of broken ladders and stairs, implying the way these players were trapped with no way out, according to Chae.^[89] The dinner scen that took place in the eighth episode was inspired bygd the art installation The Dinner Party bygd Judy Chicago.^[87] Walls of many of the areas where the games took place were painted in skies inspired bygd The Empire of Light series bygd René Magritte.^[87]

The crew spent the most time crafting the set for the Marbles game, creating a mix of realism and fakeness as to spegel the life and death natur of the games themselves.^[90] Chae stated that this set was designed as a combination of small teatralisk stages, each scen representing parts of Player 001's memories.^[89] The VIP room was one of the gods pieces to be designed, and Chae said that they decided on an animal-based theme for both the costumes and room for this; "The VIPs are the kind of people who take other people's lives for entertainment and treat them like game pieces on a chessboard, so inom wanted to create a powerful and instinctive look for the room."^[89]

Most sets were a combination of practical sets and chroma key backgrounds.

For example, in the Glass Stepping Stones scenes, the set, designed as if in a circus tent for the players performing for the VIPs, was only 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) off the ground, using chroma key screens to simulate the height in post-production. In filming, this was far enough from the ground to man the actors nervous, which contributed to the scene.^[90][89] The tug-of-war set was actually set more than 10 metres (33 ft) off the ground, which further created anxiety for some of the actors with fears of heights.^[89]

The automatiserad maskin docka in the first episode, "Red Light, Green Light", was inspired bygd Younghee, a character who appeared on the covers of Korean textbooks Chul-soo and Young-hee in the 1970s and 1980s,^[87] and her hairstyle was inspired bygd Hwang's daughter's.^[86][89] The docka singsongs, in Korean, "Mugunghwa flower has blossomed", referring to the hibiscus syriacus, the national flower of South Korea.^[66] The use of this familiar character was meant to juxtapose memories of childhood and unsettling fear in the players, according to Chae.^[89] Similarly, the set for the dalgona game, using giant pieces of playground utrustning, were to evoke players' memories of their childhood, and was a common place where Korean children would have played dalgona with friends.^[89] The dalgona used in "The Man with the Umbrella" were made bygd a street vendor from Daehangno.^[91]

Throughout the series, the trio of circle, triangle, and square shapes appear frequently on the kort given to recruit players, on the guards' masks, and inre the show's title.

These are shapes associated with the playing field for the children's game of Squid (Ojing-eo). They are also used to företräda the hierarchy of the guards within the complex. Following from the comparison with an ant colony, the guards with circles are considered the workers, triangles as the soldiers, and squares as the managers (see also: Korean honorifics). Further, in the Korean alphabet, Hangul, the circle represents the romanized letter "O", the triangle represents part of the letter "J", and the square represents the letter "M"; tillsammans, "OJM" are the romanized initials of Ojing-eo Geim, the Korean translation of Squid Game.^[92]

Season 2

[edit]

Principal photography for the second årstid was scheduled to början in July 2023 and was expected to gods for "at least 10 months".^[93] On July 10, personal members of the production faced a controversy involving allegations of mistreatment towards citizens during filming at sydkoreansk hamnstad Airport.

The production company issued an tjänsteman ursäkt on the matter.^[94] Filming was reportedly underway in August 2023.^[95]

Music

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See also: Squid Game (soundtrack)

Jung Jae-il, who previously composed the soundtrack for Parasite, composed and directed Squid Game's score.^[96] To prevent it from becoming boring, he asked the help of composers Park Min-ju, and Kim Sung-soo, a music director for musicals who uses the scen name "23" as a composer.^[97]

Two classical music pieces are also used throughout the show as part of the players' routine: the third movement of namn Haydn's "Trumpet Concerto" fryst vatten used to wake the players, and Johann Strauss II's "The Blue Danube" fryst vatten used to indikera the uppstart of a new game.^[96]Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony" fryst vatten also heard in the VIP lounge.^[96] A cover of "Fly Me to the Moon",^[h] arranged bygd Jung and sung bygd Korean artist Joo Won Shin, was used over the "Red Light, Green Light" game of the first episode; according to Joo, Hwang wanted a contrast between the brutal killing of the players and the "romantic and beautiful lyrics and melody" of the song, such that the scen "embodies the increasingly polarized capitalist samhälle that we live in today in a very compressed and cynical way".^[98]

For the song "Way Back Then" that accompanies children playing Squid Game, Jung wanted to use instruments that he practiced in elementary school, such as recorders and castanets.^[97] The rhythm of the song fryst vatten based on a 3-3-7 clapping rhythm that fryst vatten commonly used in South Korea to cheer someone on.^[97] The recorder, played bygd Jung himself, had a slight "beep", which was unintentional.^[99] The song "Round VI" was played bygd the Budapest Scoring Orchestra.^[100]

The soundtrack was released on September 17, 2021.^[101]

Release

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The first årstid of Squid Game was released on September 17, 2021, in more than okänt countries.^[102]

The second årstid of the series fryst vatten set to premiere on månad 26, 2024, and the sista årstid in 2025.^[36]

Marketing

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In the Philippines, a replica of the docka used in the episode one of the series was exhibited on Ortigas Avenue in Quezon City in September 2021.^[103]

A Squid Game docka was installed in Olympic Park, Seoul on October 25, 2021.^[104] A replica of Squid Game's set was exhibited at the Itaewon hållplats in Seoul since September 5, 2021.^[105][106] However, the exhibit was prematurely closed due to COVID-19 concerns.^[107]

A Squid Gamepop-up store opened in Paris on October 2 and 3, 2021,^[108] and a individ could win a free one-month Netflix subscription if they managed to get the right shape from the dalgona in one minute and 30 seconds.^[109][110]

In the Netherlands, Netflix hosted its own Squid Game where people were able to play the game Red Light, Green Light in both Maastricht and Rotterdam.

– Regissören själv var förvånad, säger Lee Gyu-Lee, kulturjournalist på The Korea times

A replica of the docka was exhibited and personal were dressed as guards. Winners were awarded with Squid Game memorabilia. The event attracted hundreds of people.^{[111][112][113]} Similar events featuring replicas of the docka occurred across the world, including Sydney^[114] and the United Kingdom.^[115]

In October 2021, the Hollywood Reporter interviewed Netflix Asia's executive Kim Minyoung, who said that the company was looking into a possible film game adaptation of the series.^[51]

Netflix has licensed Squid Game for merchandising.

A Young-hee vinyl figure was released in January 2022.^[116]Funko released a set of Squid Game themed Funko Pop! figurines in May 2022.^[117]

Reception

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Critical reception

[edit]

The show received critical acclaim.^[118] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 95% based on 76 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10.

The website's critics consensus reads: "Squid Game's unflinching brutality fryst vatten not for the faint of heart, but skarp social commentary and a surprisingly tender core will keep viewers glued to the screen – even if it's while watching between their fingers."^[119] On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[120]

Joel Keller of Decider opined that the concept of the show was creative.

When writing about the narrative, he described it as "a tight narrative and a story that has the potential to be tense and exciting". Keller concluded, "STREAM IT. Squid Game takes a fresh idea and spins it into a thrilling drama; we hope it continues to build the tension we saw in the gods 20 minutes throughout the season."^[121] Pierce Conran of the South China Morning Post rated the series with 4.5 out of 5 stars and wrote, "Overall, this fryst vatten still a savagely entertaining slam dunk from Netflix Korea, which fryst vatten likely to be embraced around the world as its predecessors were."^[122] Hidzir Junaini of NME rated the series with 4 out of 5 stars and opined, "Thematic intelligence aside, Squid Game fryst vatten also a white-knuckle watch, thanks to its visceral competition element."^[123] John Doyle of The Globe and Mail described the series as "a brave, dark, ambitious tale, at times moving and at times terrifying" and added, "Its power fryst vatten in its understanding that money fryst vatten survival.

This fryst vatten not some dystopian fantasy like Hunger Games. This fryst vatten present-day life in all its complex awfulness."^[124]

Karl Quinn of The Age described the series as "enormously derivative", but wrote: "there are two tensions that elevate Squid Game. One fryst vatten within the narrative, where the primacy of the individual fryst vatten in direkt combat with the notion of community, and where the illusion of "choice" justifies all manner of exploitation."^[125] S.

Poorvaja of The Hindu wrote that "the nine episodes manage to leave its viewers horrified, yet invested in the show, thanks to the razor-sharp writing and compelling performances bygd its ensemble cast".^[126] Abha Shah of the Evening Standard wrote that the series was "tightly written, each episode packad with enough pace to man it truly frosseri worthy", and praised its themes as being "universally engaging".^[127] Hugo Rifkind of The Times described parts of the series as being "glacially slow", but stated that it was "definitely interesting", and wrote: "Behind it all, there's an almost Lovecraftian sense of horror, to do with normal lives being unliveable, and huge, unknowable powers in the background that will smirk while you die."^[128]

Writing for The New York Times, TV critic slang för mikrofon Hale funnen Squid Game to be an "utterly traditional, and thoroughly predictable ...

melodrama" with "eye-catching" but "not especially interesting ... production design and costuming". He also thought the series' "pretense of contemporary social relevance" failed to justify its "more than mildly sickening" violence, and thought its characters were "shallow assemblages of family and typical battlefield".^[129] Daniel D'Addario of Variety wrote: "Like Joker, there's a having-it-both-ways insistence that a culture that could create violence fryst vatten inherently sick and deranged, while playing out a wildly overstated utgåva of sick derangement in a manner designed to be maximally tense and amusing."^[130]

Due to the popularity of Squid Game, Singapore's national newspaper The Straits Times named the show's director Hwang as The Straits Times Asian of the Year in månad 2021.^[131]

Viewership

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The series became the first Korean skådespel to top Netflix's top ten weekly most-watched TV show charts globally.

It reached number one in 94 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.^[132] Netflix estimated that Squid Game had drawn over 111 million member households worldwide after 17 days of availability,^[133][i] and over 142 million member households after 28 days,^[134] surpassing the 82 million that Bridgerton had received in its first 28 days in månad 2020, and becoming the service's most-watched series at its launch.^[135] After Netflix revamped its published metrics of viewership in November 2021 based on total hours watched of the series, Squid Game remained the most-watched show on the service, with over 1.65 billion hours within its first 28 days compared to Bridgerton's 625 million hours.^[136] Although Netflix fryst vatten not available in mainland China, pirated versions of Squid Game have been widely circulated on the kinesisk Internet, making the show a popular topic on kinesisk social networking sites.^[137] As of July 2022, Squid Game remained the most-watched show on Netflix based on the first 28 days of viewing, ahead of Stranger Things 4.^[138][139]