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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

While the comment section seems hell bent on pointing out other deadly game themed shows and movies, let's just take a moment to appreaciate how great a movie this is.

The setup is absolutely bonkers: Something, something, things are going bad in the future so we have children battle each other - even a seemingly well functioning class.

But to hell with that. It is quickly forgotten, once the game starts. Why the kids starts killing each other is much better shown in Battle Royale than why contestants in squid game accept the game.

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Sort of explains in the book that Battle Royale was a bureaucratic fuckup. Battle Royale takes place in an alternate reality where Japan didn't lose WW2 and the fascist government continued into the 21st century. Some time around the late 1940s, some politician facetiously suggested forcing the kids of Japan to kill each other as a kind of legislative poison pill, and through a series of parliamentary procedural events that nobody alive can particularly remember, it got passed into law. 50 years after the fact, it kept going simply because they had accepted it as a fact of life, which I think is a critique of how entrenched some of the more fucked up aspects of Japanese culture are

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"

Indeed. I think focusing on the social commentary in these kinds of films is kinda missing the point: it's simply one kind of setup to get to the premise of the film, a deadly free-for-all with arbitrary rules. It can hit or miss the mark on that without really affecting what the actual focus is.

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 didn't get that point at all, I thought it was more about how elders in society exploit the young, which is doubly true in a country like Japan with its poor birth rates

FWIW, dealing with misbehaving kids was a pretty serious issue in Japan at the time. A ton of pressure were put on them, and they diffused that pressure upon other kids, with pretty dire consequences (including deaths)

Of course the core issue isn't the kids, but that's not what the system was trying to solve. It evolve in a less bloody way (by instituting a system where teachers can basically dictate grades independent of test results), but Battle Royale is definitely a product of its time, and some teachers would probably have been totaly fine with that solution.

You don't remember the first episodes of Squid Game then - it's very clearly explained to you. The main character has a gambling problem, lost his job and has taken money from loan sharks who threaten to take a kidney and eye to sell if he doesn't pay up. He also has a mum who is late stage diabetic who can't afford amputation surgery or treatment, particularly as he cancelled the insurance for gambling money.

The antihero used Futures and committed fraud in a company, with the police after him and significant debts to repay as well.

That's why contestants in squid game join - they're all in so much debt that theyve even signed away rights to their body. That's why the contestants can get in and choose to stay.

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.

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