Respect copyright, respect originality.
It is undeniable that Sino-ROK relations are at a relatively delicate juncture, and whenever we accuse South Korea of non-heritage declarations and sportsmanship, some strange events will always appear at an inopportune time.
In recent days, a Korean drama called "Squid Game" has caught fire. Although "Squid Game" was not released in Chinese mainland, the hot search for this series has been dizzying, "multinational schools warn not to let children watch squid games", "Squid games are suitable for children to watch", "how difficult is the sugar cake of squid games", and so on, and the amount of reading is often hundreds of millions.
And because of this heat, there is a well-known video website in China: Youku.
On October 20, Youku officially announced a new variety show - "The Victory of the Squid", whether it is from the design of the text, or the color matching, as well as the iconic elements such as squares, triangles, circles, etc., "The Victory of the Squid" cannot be said to have nothing to do with "The Squid Game", but can only be said to be as close as brothers.
As soon as this matter came out, public opinion was in an uproar. Netizens have accused Youku of plagiarism, when we ridicule South Korea as a "country steal", what is our entertainment circle doing? Soon, the incident spread to South Korea, and the copyright holder of "Squid Games" Netflix explicitly responded that it did not authorize Youku, and this incident became the latest weapon for South Korean netizens to mock China.
Although Youku urgently changed the name of the variety show to "Victory of the Game" afterwards and redesigned the visual elements, the bad impact caused by it has been irreparable.
Youku's misbehavior this time deserves to be taken as a warning by the domestic entertainment industry. It is disrespectful to creators that copyright should not be so blatantly trampled upon for any purpose.
Returning to the "Squid Game" itself, this unprecedented Korean drama has received the attention of many netizens. But what is not known is that "Squid Game" also has the shadow of many works, and if you have to say it, it is also suspected of plagiarism.
Admittedly, "Squid Game" has undoubtedly become one of the hottest episodes in the world this year, since its launch on September 17, it has topped the popularity list in more than 190 countries and regions, its Rotten Tomatoes freshness is more than 93%, and it is even more popular in Netflix's own series of the same period, and even won the high praise of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos "may become the most popular drama in Netflix history".
However, in Douban, the evaluation of "Squid Game" is relatively calm, and the score is maintained at the level of 7.6, which is not up and down. Even so, in my opinion, the rating of 7.6 is still a bit of an inflated one.
Looking at the comments in the comment area, you will find an interesting phenomenon, for the audience who is first exposed to the theme of "battle royale", it will often give "Squid Game" a higher score and praise the series. For audiences who have seen works of similar themes, especially works such as "Battle Royale" and "Gambling Apocalypse", the overall quality of this drama is often difficult to satisfy, and even suspected of plagiarism, and the copying is quite clumsy.
"Squid Games" has a near-perfect start, with "1, 2, 3, Wooden Man", a childhood game shared by people around the world, and the sudden deaths of hundreds of people in the first episode, which maximizes the audience's curiosity. The bonus of emotion, the sensory stimulation, the plutocrat's fooling of the commoners, the gambler's psychology, each of which is a classic element that the audience likes to hear.
However, leaving aside the elements of blood and violence, and the cliché of capitalism in which the chaebols fool the common people, the script of The Squid Game itself does not have many highlights. Coupled with the high opening and low walking of the plot, many viewers paid attention to this drama because of the hot search, but it also produced a rebellious psychology.
Of course, that's not the point of my discussion, the point is that Squid Games is far from being the first to eat a crab, and it doesn't eat the crab well.
As early as 1996, Japanese manga artist Nobuyuki Fukumoto began serializing the manga Gambling Apocalypse, which can be seen as the originator of such survival games. Perhaps many people are unfamiliar with this work, the Chinese film "Animal World" released in 2018 is adapted from "Gambling Apocalypse". In 2020, when the Japanese film market was extremely sluggish, the film adaptation of the same name, "Gambling Apocalypse 3", won 2 billion yen at the box office, and the performance was eye-catching.
There's a line in Gambling Apocalypse: "Your daily life is like garbage, right?" It can be said that this sentence has become a fixed personality for the protagonist in many similar works in the future, including today's "Squid Game".
In the first episode of "Squid Game", the screenwriter created a good lazy, good gambling, old and unambitious male protagonist Cheng Qixun, who owed a butt gambling debt, and even took his mother's pension to gamble, his wife divorced him, and his daughter was awarded to his mother. Because of the loan shark, the creditor came to the door and wanted to cut off his kidney.
Such a standard social waste firewood, accidentally got a chance to gamble, in the mysterious isolated island, by completing the game, you can earn tens of billions of bets, thus changing your life. If the game fails, it will die.
This plot begins basically the same as the Gambling Apocalypse more than twenty years ago.
Kaiji Ito, the protagonist of "Gambling Apocalypse", is an unmotivated lazy man, who is good at gambling but must lose every gamble, but has a kindness beyond ordinary people. Because of his kindness to guarantee people, Ito Kaiji was deceived and saddled with tens of billions of usurious loans, and was unable to repay them.
At this time, a gambling ship called "Hope" appeared, and as long as it won the game, it could pay off all its debts overnight. But if he loses the gamble, he will be greeted by another miserable life, or even a sacrifice of life.
Waste wood and kindness are inherent in such roles. Kaiji Ito's kindness lies in his trust in others, and he suffers a great loss because of it. Cheng Qixun's kindness is reflected through compassion for stray cats.
But there is one point that makes "Squid Game" and "Gambling Apocalypse" have a very huge difference - the protagonist of "Gambling Apocalypse" conforms to the basic laws of survival game theme works, relying on his strong reasoning ability to pass the level. The protagonist of "Squid Game" seems to be really a waste of firewood, relying on the help of his teammates to barely reach the end. What's more, in terms of the difficulty of the game, "Squid Games" can not be compared with "Gambling Apocalypse". If in "Gambling Apocalypse", you will feel a little abrupt about the rapid growth of the male protagonist, then in "Squid Game", the male protagonist who relies on luck to go to the end is abrupt to no reason.
A waste of wood without ability, but thinking of saving the world, even if he is good, he is not suitable for the world of survival games. If it were not for good luck, such a role would never have survived to the end.
Ironically, at the end of "Squid Game", Cheng Qixun actually chose to return to the island to participate in the game, where did this confidence come from? Unfortunately, the plot does not make a reasonable explanation for this.
In survival game works, the game link that creates survival pressure often becomes the key to creating dramatic conflict. In response, "Gambling Apocalypse" chose "stone, scissors, cloth" to guess the fist, while "Squid Games" chose "1, 2, 3, wooden man".
I believe that many people have been brushed by this "Beijing flavor" picture, "Squid Game", all those involved in the gambling game, will wear this school uniform, and get a unique number. Unlike the "1, 2, 3, Wooden Man" we played in our childhood, all the eliminated gamblers will be shot immediately and die directly. The moment they heard the gunshots, many viewers were shocked.
The trial was carried out through this cute girl doll in an orange-red dress, a scanning device in the eye, and once the contestant was detected to have a displacement, he would be shot by a distant gunman. Here, the imagery of the dolls is the same as that of the clowns.
It can be said that the "1, 2, 3, wooden man" in this drama is the same as what we play every day, which is nothing more than turning the elimination punishment into death. But even in such a simple game, the male protagonist Cheng Qixun still needs the help of others to pass the game. Such a fluke is constantly staged in the later plot.
Also based on the real world game, "Stone, Scissors, Cloth" in Gambling Apocalypse sets the rules of the game with a more variable game, and the player's starting capital is three stars, as well as four cards each for stone, scissors, and cloth. Play against other players within the allotted time, and finally maintain three stars, and the person who runs out of all the hands can win. The whole game process is full of calculation and human nature.
It is in this game that the male protagonist Kaiji Ito has grown rapidly, relying on his strong reasoning ability to go all the way to the end. Because his actual performance is good enough, it will convince the audience that he can live to the end.
You can say that "Squid Game" has gone to the other extreme - simplifying complexity, which not only greatly reduces the difficulty of the game, but also greatly reduces the viewing threshold, no longer burns the brain, and even simple to the point of brainlessness, coupled with frequent deaths, the sensory stimulation is more intense, but it also loses the core charm of the survival game theme. In such a simple game, the actor's performance is still very bad, and the audience cannot see his growth, and it is difficult to form empathy.
If "Squid Game" only borrowed inspiration from "Gambling Apocalypse", then its high similarity with the game setting of the comic "As God Says" cannot be called a reference.
The manga series "As God Says" was serialized in 2011 and is also a survival game genre. The story takes place on a campus where the teacher suddenly headshots to death, the mysterious Dharma appears on the podium, and the students must participate in a game of "1, 2, 3, Wooden Man", and those who break the rules will die.
In 2014, the film adaptation of the same name, "As God Says", was released. After the explosion of "Squid Game", netizens found that simply in terms of the game of "1, 2, 3, Wooden Man", "Squid Game" and "As God Says" are too similar. On one side is Dharma, on the other side are dolls, similar countdowns, similar mirrors, similar piles of corpses like mountains.
In a sense, "Squid Game" can be called a stitching monster, the protagonist can find shadows in past works, and the settings of the game also have similar problems. However, he was born with the right nationality, foreign monks are good at chanting, and there are very few criticisms of his stitching in China.
Such a work can be popular around the world, and the promotion of Netflix is indispensable. In recent years, Netflix's investment in making original series has become increasingly high, reaching $8 billion in the first half of 2021, and this does not include marketing expenses. As early as 2018, Netflix's spending on marketing had reached $2 billion. Nowadays, "Squid Game" can be popular around the world, and the marketing behind it is indispensable.
In fact, the Asian market has long become one of Netflix's key development markets, and has invested more than 770 billion won in Korean film and television dramas over the years. "Squid Games" raised Netflix's stock price to $600 in one fell swoop, which is a phenomenon, and Netflix spent 20 billion won (about 100 million yuan) to invest.
In addition to South Korea, Japan is also the focus of Netflix's investment, in recent years, the production of "Alice in the Land of the Dead" and other similar theme dramas, although Netflix will give Japan, South Korea local production teams a high degree of freedom, but in the choice of themes, it is obvious that they will tend to survive games and other eye-stimulating works.
In the situation that there is no access to the Chinese market, South Korea and Japan have become the must-compete places for Netflix. The reason behind this is, on the one hand, that the North American market tends to be saturated and the growth is weak. Disney, on the other hand, is close behind, ready to watch. But in the Asian market, especially in the Southeast Asian market, Netflix's influence is not as big as imagined, and many streaming media platforms, including Tencent and iQiyi, have joined in to launch a brutal competition. The Southeast Asian market is characterized by the development of mobile Internet, while China's low-end mobile phones occupy an absolute advantage in these regions. Industries are interconnected, whether it is long video platforms such as Tencent, iQiyi, or short video platforms such as TikTok, all have strong competitiveness in Southeast Asia.
There is no doubt that "Squid Games" has become a battle book issued by Netflix to competitors.
Not only that, but the great success of Squid Games in the sale of peripheral goods cannot be ignored. Especially in the Chinese market, even if the show has not been introduced, it still has the sales of many peripheral goods, such as the iconic candy in the play. These goods, which are in the name of Squid Games, are obviously not officially authorized, but they can still be circulated in the market. Under the entanglement of interests, the merchants who sell these small commodities have objectively become the helpers that increase the popularity of "Squid Game". As for the resulting second degree of creation, it is even more inexhaustible. This can also explain why Youku will make a price drop for the porcelain "Squid Game".
With the popularity of "Squid Game", discordant sounds such as "Wu Jing school uniform plagiarism" are also staged one after another, such as foreign malicious modifications to the origin of "Lime Sugar". Wikipedia, a well-known tool website, previously described the candy as "originating in China". But after the broadcast of "Squid Game", netizens found that Wikipedia's introduction to lime sugar happened to delete this expression. Check the revision record, the netizen who made the modification is from Taiwan, and the reason for the modification is that "the candy originated in South Korea".
In addition to all kinds of chaos, if there is anything worth reflecting on in "Squid Game", it must be an indictment of capital and chaebols. And this is also what director Huang Donghe is good at. Especially in a country like South Korea, it can resonate with the masses. But in reality, this anti-chaebol's work is ultimately serving the chaebol and capital. It opens up the frontier for Netflix and earns traffic for traders.
"Squid Games" will become Hwang Dong-hyuk's latest masterpiece, but the height of this series is far from the "Melting Pot" he directed in 2011. Evaluating an artist is always his highest achievement, and Huang Donghe is still a very good director.
In "The Melting Pot", Kong Liu and Huang Donghe had their first cooperation, and their superb performance left a deep impression on the audience. Many years later, in "Squid Game", Kong Liu made a cameo appearance, and there were not many scenes.
Hwang Dong-hyuk is a director with excellent ability, whether it is a cameo appearance by Lakon Liu Lai, or the use of a group of powerful actors such as Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-so, Ande Hae-joon, which is a direct embodiment of his casting ability. Regardless of the quality of the script for "Squid Games", the actors alone have already made the audience addicted. And these powerful actors together, it really makes you unable to pick a thorn in the performance. Although the male protagonist Cheng Qixun really can't be liked, Lee Jung-jae's performance makes people have to give him a thumbs up.
But this is not enough to hide the excessive borrowing of "Squid Game" from the previous works, as well as the shallowness of the script and the delay in the later rhythm.
If you have to give "Squid Games" a five-star reason for praise, probably a hole Liu, that is enough. As for whether this series is too prestigious, let's leave time to answer.