Squid Game: The Challenge completely contradicts its source material

By Amirah Datwani

In 2021, Netflix’s Squid Game took the world by storm, breaking records and jumpstarting several new trends. Two years later, a reality competition based on the hit show was released. It was almost instantly met with criticism. 

Squid Game follows 456 contestants competing against each other in a series of children’s games for a cash prize of 4.56 million dollars. The show quickly garnered attention for its message about the lengths people would go to for money.

That’s where the first major contradiction of Squid Game: The Challenge arises. When the original show was released, the attention it gathered naturally caused executives to think of more ways to make money from it. The reality show was centred on generating revenue while avoiding the original show’s artistic intention of critiquing capitalism. Viewers quickly picked up on this, and Squid Game: The Challenge promptly earned a reputation as a cash grab.

Many people who watched the show condemned it for depriving the show of its message. “The reality show makers behind The Challenge may have missed the memo on irony...their effort to drain Squid Game of its anti-capitalist undertones results in a cringe-worthy and misguided cash grab.” writes Kshitij Mohan Rawat of Wion News.

Aside from whitewashing, the show also lacks constructive value: it doesn’t add anything to the original Squid Game. It serves no purpose but to capitalise on Squid Game’s success. Evidently, its sole purpose was to get as much money out of Squid Game as possible.

This situation ironically shines a light on the original message of Squid Game — money makes the world go round. The premise of Squid Game revolves around rich, privileged people using desperate low-income people entirely for their entertainment, and the reality show does the same thing, just without the irony and social commentary. It takes advantage of low-income people who are desperate for the cash prize, to provide money-generating entertainment — the exact thing Squid Game stood against.

There is also a significant amount of proof that the contestants of the show were subjected to inhumane conditions and forced to stay in harsh environments. Some contestants have threatened a lawsuit, saying that they were made to play the show’s first game, Red Light, Green Light, for over nine hours in “freezing” conditions. Netflix has confirmed that three players required medical attention.

There have also been claims of the game being rigged — some contestants said that players were eliminated even after crossing the finish line in Red Light, Green Light, and that some were given extra time because the show’s producers wanted them to stay in the show longer. While somewhat unconfirmed, it aligns with the previously shown problems of the reality show. 

In conclusion, Squid Game: The Challenge imitates Squid Game’s inhumanity, only without the irony meant to satirize that behavior. It is also an artistically tone-deaf piece that misses the point of the original show in an egregiously unjustifiable way. Squid Game: The Challenge completely contradicts its source material, and it shows how the main goal of these production companies has become milking as much money as possible out of anything popular, no matter what message it sends.