LaraQ
Badass
English Rose
Posts: 2,305
Likes: 2,839
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Post by LaraQ on Jun 12, 2022 17:03:25 GMT
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Post by Martin Stett on Jun 12, 2022 17:11:15 GMT
Just please god don't let the damn detective plotline and VIPs ever be mentioned again
Having finished the show now, I mostly like it. The gamers themselves are terrific. They are very exaggerated archetypes, but that doesn't mean that their decisions don't make sense or have emotional power. (It is a lot like Rogue One in that sense - fairly shallow characters, but we know enough about them through their archetypes that their decisions hold a lot of weight.)
But oh boy, there are PROBLEMS with this show. The world's stupidest detective gets by entirely on luck and SOMEHOW isn't murdered forty times over through the course of the story. (And then his entire story goes nowhere, which is hilarious to me. I actually laughed when I realized that he had zero impact on the story.) The introduction of the VIPs makes no sense in universe - if these are just bad rich people betting on human lives, WHY THE HELL ARE THE ORGANIZERS ACTIVELY SABOTAGING THE FAIRNESS OF THE GAME!?!?!? Why is game 5 based entirely on luck in the first place, for that matter? The worldbuilding is irredeemably terrible and the more answers are revealed, the more braincells are slaughtered by this thing.
The epilogue is... fine? It's fine. I am far more annoyed by the stupidity of the Front Man/Detective/VIP shit. It is rather on-the-nose with the moralizing, but eh, I'm okay with that. Subtlety was never this show's strong suit, and spelling out the need for kindness and altruism with no thought for what you can get out of it has been the point of the show, and I thought it was cute enough. I'd rather have the bad guy express some remorse or change of heart in his conversation because of what he has experienced, but... whatever, it's fine.
This is a show that nails the desperation of its characters and highlights the goodness and evil they are capable of when faced with something sadistic. Will Gi-hun's morals crumble in the face of the marble game? Will Ali's innate kindness and his penchant to see the good in people help him or hurt him? It's an excellent fable in that regard.
Whenever it stops being about the players, the show IS A DUMPSTER FIRE. So... I'm not really excited for season 2, because that will mean more worldbuilding.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 15, 2022 18:00:27 GMT
whole season peaked at the climax of Episode 1 with Red Light Green Light, and then got infinitely more dumb and irritating as it went on, culminating in some truly wackadoodle plot twists that have me lowkey dreading what they come up with for Season 2.
Acting highlights are Lee Jung-jae who deserves the accolades he's been getting and Park Hae-soo who's been weirdly overlooked in favor of likable grandpa Oh Yeong-su. On the female side, HoYeon Jung is just a quiet goth who occasionally stares angrily at people, and the villain performance of Kim Joo-Ryung is straight nails-on-a-chalkboard.
As far as Netflix K-drama fare goes, My Name is just so much better in every respect.
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