Why David Fincher’s ‘Squid Game’ remake symbolises a dark new era in television
Sometimes, it feels like the golden days of television are behind us, faced with a tsunami of trashy reality shows, exploitative true-crime dramas and shoddy remakes of original features that would have the directors turning in their creative graves. Through the rise of big studios and streaming platforms, filmmaking has been turned into a content-making machine, with people churning out endless drivel and sludge that does nothing but numb our minds to the external chaos of modern living. We wake up, go to work, and then watch TV to distract us from the reality of our waking lives, drowning our brains with an alternative form of information that negates our own unhappiness within late-stage capitalism.
However, in recent years, we’ve been living in this contradictory era where some of the best and worst stuff has been produced simultaneously. The likes of Succession and Barry have come out alongside Love is Blind and strange reality shows about cakes that are made to look like real-life objects because true entertainment is not being able to distinguish between a red velvet sponge and a calculator.
And after the release of Squid Game, it temporarily seemed as though TV was making a comeback. While it wasn’t my personal cup of tea, I can appreciate how rare it is to see an original show, with an entirely Korean cast not in the English language, that manages to seep through all the rubbish and become one of the most watched Netflix shows of all time. Great. This should be a calling card for the studio to invest in more original concepts and creative shows… right?
Wrong. Netflix took this as their sign to announce a complete remake of the show, but this time, with an English-speaking cast and David Fincher attached to direct. While some people may be excited just for the chance to see Fincher direct again, especially after the lukewarm reception towards his recent work on the streaming platform, this is not a win. And here’s why.
The decision to invest millions into a remake of a show that was barely released two years ago is so incredibly insulting and uncreative. The rather ugly core of this idea hinges on the selling point that this version will be in English, presumably centred around a non-Korean cast. Western audiences have, at best, shown a hesitancy towards watching global cinema, with people being reluctant to watch anything with subtitles or characters they can’t directly relate to, which is quite miraculous for a generation that can consume multiple different forms of media at the same time. But oh no, god forbid we have to read a few words on the screen, but it’s fine when we’re reading closed captions on TikTok.
The idea that non-Western media should be recreated to sit within the confines of our ‘comfort zone’ and Western viewing format is completely absurd and implies that global cinema isn’t a valid form of entertainment on its own; it is something that we need to adapt and mould to our standards in order to be truly accepted, and that only by making these changes, will it be truly great. And have they seriously exhausted all their other ideas to the point where they have to remake projects that were just released? If Squid Game had been released 50 years ago, I would understand this remake, but the fact that it is still hot off the press and they are just frothing at the mouth for more clicks and engagement, desperate to colonise a piece of media and Westernise it.
This adaptation symbolises a dark new period in filmmaking where the idea of universality is favoured over originality, with quick and uncreative ‘content’ being poured into the machine to keep it going, with all wheels spinning as they try to come up with bland remakes and adaptations that will grab the attention of the mass audiences and temporarily make them a bit more money. Instead of funding genuinely new and daring projects, they would prefer to make a safe and more palatable version of an existing one, which essentially just shits all over the original and announces to the world that it no longer matters – what really matters is the shiny new version directed by Fincher with a cast of English-speaking actors.
What also irks me about this is the fact that Netflix said they had no money to complete Fincher’s 2017 series Mindhunter, which was left on a cliff-hanger at the end of season two because the studio said that the production costs were too high for the number of viewers it drew in. This, in my humble opinion, is a complete and utter lie because Mindhunter is a wickedly smart show that was expertly crafted in every single area and was enjoyed by many viewers. But miraculously, Netflix has the money to fund the remake of Squid Game less than two years after the original was released. How convenient…
Netflix’s decision to create an English version of Squid Game over a third and final season to Mindhunter, a genuinely gripping series showcasing the medium’s full force, speaks volumes about the state of our current film industry. Netflix continues to fund irrelevant and over-funded projects for the sake of mass appeal, which actively negates the value of global stories, patting itself on the back for gaining some new subscribers and single-handedly destroying the film industry.
Their insidious business model is the antithesis of what cinema truly is, ripping the community from film lovers and instead forcing us onto our sofas as world-renowned filmmakers are being asked to make shitty adaptations of shows that don’t need to be remade. I hope Netflix is very happy in the newfound union with mediocrity and that they understand their complicity in the collapse of the entertainment industry as we know it.
