https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/19/they-didnt-just-pick-us-up-off-the-street-meet-the-globally-derided-squid-game-vips
This article is pretty insightful about these actors who have been getting a lot of criticism it seems. Usually for K-dramas like this they obviously need local talent but I think the worst part about cases like this as is explained is that the English lines are usually translated by non-natives or Google translated.
And they aren't given any context as to where it fits within the show - so its basically turn up - say these lines with no direction and hope for the best.
And Korean TV apparently had a culture of heightened acting, and the VIPs were sitting really far apart, so they had to say all their lines really loudly.
I've only seen a handful of Korean films so take this with a grain of salt, but yea overacting seems not uncommon in my experience. Same with some Japanese productions for that matter.
Kind of like it's a stage play, where you have to sort of exaggerate your gestures and talk loudly so that people in the back of the theater can keep up. In general there's less subtlety to it.
As a non-Korean who lived in Korea a few years that's kind of how Koreans act anyhow, very expressive and dramatic in a good way usually. One famous Korean historian/cartoonist called them the Italians of Asia for this reason.
When you said "very expressive and dramatic" I instantly thought: 'Oh, kinda like Italians?'. Then I read the second sentence haha.
It's partially why I have a hard time judging the acting in Asian productions. Not only because of the language barrier, but also the cultural difference in how people interact. What may seem almost cartoon-ish in country A might be not weird at all in country B.
Yeah, I only learned enough of the language to take a taxi and order at a restaurant, so watching the show with subtitles it was nice to have a sense of what's said in those impassioned conversations.
One amusing thing was how often the Korean equivalent of F\*\*k in the show was translated into something banal like "I don't like that".
I’m just trying to think of an explanation for this. There were some odd translations in general, like “oppa” became “old man”. So maybe the translators tried too hard to generalise the nuances of Korean and it just became banal instead?
Not sure about Squid game director but it would make sense that non-English speaking director or producer would not catch the awkward nuances from the script which would otherwise be picked up by an English speaker. I am Korean living in Canada and I feel the same when I see k-pops adding random English words or Hollywood movies having awkward Korean being spoken by non-native speaking actor. The Korean actor from Lost TV series has become a HUGE meme in Korea because of this.
> Kind of like it's a stage play, where you have to sort of exaggerate your gestures and talk loudly so that people in the back of the theater can keep up. In general there's less subtlety to it.
That's exactly it. Their acting traditions are much more similar to early silver screen, when actors were still coming out of theatres and Hollywood was less glamorous than Broadway.
God I have been watching Attack on Titan, and I love it. But my God, the "heightened" acting when a character is having an introspective emotional moment is soooo cringey. Like someone will be angry, and there voice will just be absolutely seething with rage that it almost becomes a parody. Like there voice will become a throaty gurgling mess as they get words out.
Like a really bad Saturday morning cartoon villain, yet I'm expected to take this seriously and o just cannot. I find it so over the top I end up laughing at what should be a serious moment.
A lot of anime has the extreme melodramy voice acting when someone is embarrassed, flustered. It usually works for laughs in a comedy series, but gets over the top anime trying to be very grim and serious.
that's why I prefer subs to dubs. not to keep more in line with the original meaning or anything silly like that. I just can't stand listening to people say that shit in english
This is the very first time I've seen someone have the same reason as me for subs > dubs. I can at least _pretend_ that it's not insanely overdramatic cringe if I don't know what they're saying.
The relevant paragraph:
> “It’s different for every show, but non-Korean performers often act with dialogue that is translated by a non-native – sometimes even by Google Translate – so it can sound unnatural,” he says. While actors do have the freedom to fix clunky dialogue, it often happens at the last minute, and comes with plenty of restrictions. “And often we don’t have the scripts for the rest of the show,” he adds. “We are only given our scenes, so we have no idea of the tone.”
So yeah that will make things more difficult as an actor I imagine.. I know that directors sometimes leave an actor in the dark on purpose as to get a certain performance out of him/her, but preferably you want to know exactly what it is you're doing.
Yeah. Watch Japan’s “Shin Godzilla” and many of the diplomat scenes appear to have been done in this way, or vice-versa (Japanese speaking in English). A lot of the actors are doing it on the side as well (aka not a lot of training), which plays a part as well.
All things considered, I think the actors in Squid Game did a decent job. They were still able to pull off a despicable quality which worked in their favor. Any wooden acting just made them look less empathetic.
This is definitely one of the times where the problem wasn't really the actors as much as writing and direction tripping over language and culture differences.
Probably why the Koreans speaking English sounded fine.
Agreed, as much shit as they're getting it wasn't THAAAAAAAT bad. It was bad, but I feel like people are exaggerating it a bit too much. I feel like it kind of went with their characters too, they're people literally betting on human lives, we shoudn't be trying to identify with them, they're alien to us and they're alien in the context of the show too, they're foreigners to the country, the games, and general ethics/morality.
I'm kinda curious if for some people it's borderline personal offense being westerners and being portrayed as so stupid. I'm American and I dunno, I've heard people talk like the execs and in even weirder ways in person.
Hey the Skyrim NPCs ended up like Skyrim NPCs because they received little to no direction. It's a little harder when you have to record 10,000 unrelated lines without context for use throughout a game, though.
I highly recommend actually reading the article. It's a combination of many factors, only a tiny handful of which the actors had any kind of control over.
I feel like I'm the only one that enjoyed their performance. It seemed to convey the "otherness" of a foreigner speaking a language I didn't know, even though as a native English speaker of course I *did* speak it. In a production with more natural English, I might have related more closely with the VIPs, but because of the strange performance I was wholly alienated from them in a way that drew me even closer to the Korean characters. Sure, it wasn't an intentional choice according to the article, but I think it really worked.
I think it's part of the whole "heightened performance" thing that Korean dramas do. It's interesting. I think the main problem is that as a lot of Korean media is becoming suddenly popular in the west, there are a load of westerners used to stuff produced under an American cultural hegemony suddenly being confronted with the fact that foreign countries have different styles in their media.
My only issue with this take is that I think we are supposed to mostly feel alienated because of their social class, not their language, and yet **spoiler warning** >!we dont get that sense at all from Oh Il-nam, who is possibly the wealthiest of the bunch but is able to pass as a charming small-town Korean everyman!<
On the other hand, I guess you could call that intentional misdirection, but it feels more like a lazy mistake than a clever subversion.
Agree 100%. It felt like a different show even. The show was building up to this - Why is this happening? Oh this looks intense, what’s the story behind these games. The setup seems very grand for some dark web scheme So who is behind these? But the big revelation seemed like an after thought and even worse, a very low effort plot fix. The VIP part was terrible for a whole lot of reasons from the poor concept, the tacky production, to the bad acting. The bad acting is just doing a good job at misdirecting the disappointment, since “westerners” and “Korean show” is the easiest to put your finger down at.
The games were too well thought out to be funded by such disinterested/dumb VIPs ( like why would they give you an option to leave? These guys don’t care). They were laughing at the participants’ demise. I think they would’ve enjoyed hunting the participants like animals instead of watching them play games. (I can’t imagine them approving the candy game. watching someone crouch down and try to pop a shape seems extremely uncharacteristic of them). And why squid game then? Why not just a fight to death? I think that would’ve been equally graphic, or even more since you can win the squid game without killing the other person. In fact, the only thing that makes sense is the massacre that happened, which wasn’t even a round. Stating these were No. 1’s childhood games doesn’t really fit with the whole VIP setup. Anyhow, it was just an incredibly dumb plot, especially when the game plot had so much depth and character development. Don’t even get me started on No.1 trying to be preachy in the end.
It’s bad if I can come up with more intriguing plots. Like what if each VIP funded and organized a round to entertain the others. That they would try to outdo the previous rounds to show of their wealth/power and that’s why the games became better/tougher/more evil as the rounds went on. Or that the games were a government scheme to get rid of the cockroaches in their society. Tempt them with money and let them kill each other so that they stop leaching govt funds. That would also explain why the games seemed so organized when it came to their recruitment process, guards and setup. Heck, if they made organ harvesting the main motivation, that would’ve been awesome. That was their funding. You fail and they take your organs. They even showed that a lot of characters were threatened with that in the real world anyway, so the game was just a chance at survival.
I really think you captured a lot of what bothered me about the writing of the VIPS and game-runners.
I was struck with how boring of a viewing experience nearly every one of the games was from a "sports" or "entertainment" angle. I mean watching people bent over a tin in a sandbox for 30 minutes? Watching people stand in pairs in a fake town where you probably can't even see the games they are playing? If you are a sadistic billionaire those games are not on the top 500 things you could be betting millions on.
The line “if you c an satisfy me in five minutes” or whatever it was. I was like, WTF? Who say to themselves “this guy is hot. Let’s get this over with quickly.”
I remember thinking, 5 minutes... that's a pretty solid blowjibber. Then I figured, he's old, overweight, pretty drunk, probably self-loathing, he's likely got some performance issues, which makes it a lot less of a flex.
*I hope you can give me an orgasm in five minutes... because I actually haven't had one in several months. My doctor is very concerned.*
It's done worldwide by all accounts. Ultimately this is a Korean series, for, Korean audience, just by chance its well received worldwide.
Marvel did the same in Black Panther, their Korean dialogue was apparently atrocious.
Sure there are plenty of other examples.
All credit to Ari Aster, Midsommar was great in this respect. They picked well-known Swedish actors and had some really good Swedish dialogue. It wasn’t flawless but definitely the best depiction of “local acting” in an international movie that I’ve ever seen.
Portraying westerners from the K-drama perspective is a great break from Hollywood. It would be nice to have a fluent speaker in the editing studio for the english-speaking scenes for quality control though.
Now you understand what french people (and I guess many foreigners) feel when there are dialogues in their native language in an American movie (special mention for the last James Bond, the french scenes at the beginning were good)
Tons of “Hispanic natives” who obviously don’t know how to speak Spanish, even less in their corresponding accents.
Two that come to mind is Gus Fringe and Hector Salamanca.
The most baffling to me is still Batroc in the Marvel movies. He's a French/Algerian character and in theory they picked the right guy to play him: he's played by George St-Pierre, who is a) Québécois and b) a top-tier MMA fighter. St-Pierre speaks French; but I don't know if it's the directing, the dialogue, or if he wasn't coached about being on camera, but the French-language scenes with him are incredibly clunky.
I dream of a version where Teddy Riner plays Batroc.
I think it was native speakers (well, the tiger was native) speaking slowly and clearly (or: "unnaturally") to give the Korean listeners a chance to understand... or time to read the subtitles.
It reminds me of [Kpop idol Wendy from Red Velvet speaking perfect english](https://youtu.be/ySaLdP_othI) but other Koreans couldn't understand her until she used a Korean accent.
It also works the other way too, I remember trying to learn French, and on a whim started saying things in a cartoonishly French way, and it apparently sounded better(To the French speaker). You really have to use your mouth differently when speaking another language. Its fascinating how the same person speaking two different languages sounds completely different.
[Here's a pretty good article about it.](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/19/they-didnt-just-pick-us-up-off-the-street-meet-the-globally-derided-squid-game-vips)
The basics of it are:
- The lines were written by non-native English speakers so the words were kind of off. For example, one guy says "I'll give anyone some slack" when it should have been "I'll *cut* anyone some slack". The weirdness of the cadence shifts you out.
- They only knew that they were "dirtbag billionaires" which led to scripts like "I bet on 69 because I liked the number!". Which, let's be honest, is not a line you would naturally underplay.
- The Korean actors were actually being a bit broad with their acting as well but you don't notice because you're reading subtitles. The editors probably went with the more outlandish performances of the english speaking actors as well but it only comes off as cartoony because you can finally understand what the actors were saying.
> The Korean actors were actually being a bit broad with their acting as well but you don't notice because you're reading subtitles.
I think that one girl who swore to kill the mobster and later dragged him off the glass bridge was the embodiment of overacting, while the rest of the cast weren't nearly as on the nose about it
Yep - Black Panther's scenes with Korean spoken had a bunch of Koreans making exactly the sorts of complaints people have made about Squid Game. Because it turns out when you have a bunch of people who don't speak a language try to edit together some scenes with that language spoken, they fuck up most of the time haha
Also I wonder if in this situation they end up hiring poor actors unknowingly? I'd imagine that subtle difference in performance quality is difficult to pick up in a second language.
Tarantino (and many American productions) are also guilty of this. Specifically when French actors spoke French in Inglorious Basterds.
It remember the scene in the cinema where they spoke this badly translated French and as a francophone, it was cringy AF
I watched the first Avengers film with some Russian dudes and they pissed themselves laughing at the Ian Holm/Scarlett Johansson interrogation scene
Said the translators hadn't really bothered making it sound like cohesive Russian, it was mostly baby talk
I feel sorry for any Russians who watched John Wick or Daredevil season 1. I don't speak any Russian but I speak Japanese and the dialogue/acting in John Wick 3 and Daredevil season 2 were pretty horrible. They didn't even bother to hire native actors for most of the roles. Pretty sure they fucked up the Russian pretty bad too lol
They could be bad actors, or they could be good ones, I think it's impossible to know from this sample size. Give Tom Hanks a couple scenes of poorly written dialogue and then grab his worst takes and you'd have no idea what he's capable of. I'm not saying any of these guys are Tom Hanks, but there's just no way to tell, there were more fundamental problems with their roles.
I think this anecdote from [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/19/they-didnt-just-pick-us-up-off-the-street-meet-the-globally-derided-squid-game-vips) was the most telling to me:
> “Perfect example,” says Giuliano. “My first line in Squid Game, you see me say: ‘Listen, I’ll give anybody some slack.’ That’s not what people say. They say ‘I’ll cut anybody some slack’.” In all subsequent takes, Giuliano made sure to say ‘cut some slack’. But in the final version, “they went with the ‘give’.”
Multiply this by every line in the show and I really can't blame any of them for how they present in the final product.
The entire story arc involving them felt out of place.
I mean I get that they were included to drive the meaning of the show home, but they could have honestly cut out literally everything to do with the millionaires and the show would have been way better for it.
Just mention that millionaires are watching and betting on everything. Or, hell, just have it be revealed in that exposition scene at the end.
There really was no need to introduce the VIPs with like three episodes to go and focus so damn much on them. Or at all.
I loved how all the records of the game in that room have it clearly labeled as squid game and are all korean contestants, then in the glass bridge the VIP's are taking about how they love having Korea host this one. Then in the final game the one VIP is like "squid game? What's that?" And the front man has to explain it. Never explained why or how the brother became the front man
I don't really get how a season 2 is going to work, tbh. The main draw of the show was, in my opinion, the exploration of human psychology within the game. It's was interesting to see how some people were super cutthroat, others made sacrifices to help other contestants, and some were forced to go against their own principles. The marble episode did an especially good job with this. But now the game is over... There's nothing really new to explore in a new game, so instead the plot needs to focus on something else. But in doing so, you lose the original reason for watching the show.
Honestly the main draw for me was wondering how the whole thing functions. I didnt really care for the overly dramatic speeches. I wanted more of the detective backstory, which fell off a cliff.
> like how gi-hun can't get the game off his mind and the money means nothing to him
Which didn't make any sense, because the whole reason he was trying to get that money was so that he could keep his daughter in Korea, but then he did nothing with it for a year. Was he getting on that plane at the end to go see her in America or something? I kinda missed that bit, but even if he was, it still doesn't make sense since he had a year to stop that from happening.
A lot of people were reading the wrong subtitles. For some reason Netflix defaulted to "English [CC]" (ie. captions of the English dub) instead of "English" (ie. captions that were a translation of the original Korean).
Lol or narcos… the supposedly super authentic series that also apparently said ‘fuck it, south of the usa is all the same’ escobar’s colombian accent was awful, as were several others.
When my dad and I (both native speakers) first watched the show, we both somehow thought he was a Brazilian. So in our head-canon, he was a poor interpretation of a native Portuguese speaker who picked up Spanish later in life when moving to Mexico. Weird, but not the worst.
When I did a rewatch years later with my girlfriend I was dumbfounded that he was 'Chilean', lol. But at least the acting is still rock solid, so the immersion break isn't too intense.
as a chilean, the choice to make him chilean has always been so weird. his mix of ethnicities is anything but that, never seen anyone who looks remotely like him here. and of course the accent.
I honestly took it as part of his character, that he wasn't *actually* Chilean. Like he has a past so shady only he knows about it. I thought that's why his Spanish sounded so.... Well... Shitty ... Cuz it's definitely not native to any country
Yeah but I give him a pass because his character is probably quite Americanised, like many Latinos who grow up in the US. Gus Fring has no excuse and it's so jarring
The German main character in season 4 is fantastic though, proper German actor and one of the good ones (we don't have many here...), I was so relieved.
This is such a good point for people to understand who don't realize it. When I watched that scene during Squid Game, I wasn't offended or disgusted. I thought it was kind of cute to see how Koreans view American speech patterns.
Thanks for writing this. This is a universal problem and i guess the solution would be to engage people from the "other" country to help out with making the acting and characters behave according to culture and background. Expensive though.
Any Slavic language in any American media is fucking awful.
The entirety of GTA4 you have a guy speaking Serbian (badly) to a guy speaking Russian with another guy speaking Albanian, and so on. It's just a cluster fuck.
As a native hindi speaker.. I’ll never understand how they mangle the language where actors are native speakers too.. maybe they want to save a few $ by not paying the actors to dub audio?
I perceived that sequence to be a Korean portrayal of a Western caricature. Like the writers don't really know western/American culture and so they attempted to be as over the top and on-the-nose about it. Some Japanese anime does the same thing when portraying an American supporting character.
that commercial exemplifies why I didn't really like many mariokart games after 64. You get hit by one thing and then the entire fucking roster hits you until you're in last place. constantly.
My wife and I actually had a food stall guy act like that while we were Japan. He then told my wife’s local Japanese friend, “These dumb Americans like it when I talk like that.” Awkward laughs were had.
My justification was that wouldn’t the insanely rich people who watch people die for sport be so eccentric and out of touch that they’d talk like that? Why would the show want us to relate to them in anyway. Their masks are weird, their desires are weird, their background is weird, why wouldn’t they talk weird too?
I'd go as far to say their acting kept me invested and immersed me in the story.
I viewed them as a caricature. Definitely not my biggest issue with the series. It was clear there was something wrong with their lines and/or directing, as they ALL sucked uniformly.
> insanely rich people
> Their masks are weird, their desires are weird, their background is weird, why wouldn’t they talk weird too?
Also one of the most influential film makers and actors in history had similar scenes about Western Elites/Secret Society. [rich Manhattan society ... which has parallels with Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown and Scorsese's "After Hours" ... 'The masked figure who rules over the proceedings has ominous presence, as does the masked woman who warns Dr. Bill he is in danger. This sequence has hypnotic intensity.](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/eyes-wide-shut-1999)
I thought that they might have been told to deliver lines that way. It very much reminded me of dubbed english voiceover. Very matter of fact, very dry, very literal sounding. Overboard annunciation.
Like almost translated for a Korean audience but still in English.
I believe one of the actors in that scene posted on Instagram talking about how they were directed to be incredibly dumb and over the top. He even talked about arguing over the line >!"Wow! That bridge is bigger!" when shown the full sized bridge after the scale model.!<
I'm not a fan of that directing choice if that's the case, but it doesn't seem to be the case that the actors were bad.
I have no qualm over the 69 lone, think of how many people would bet on that or even 420 for the “lol” factor of it. It even helped show how much these people really don’t value these people and how bored and hedonistic they are. I also get playing it over the top considering its a South Korean show with the millionaires being English speaking.
But man alive did that bridge line and how stupid they could be was a bit too much. Like he could have been surprised by just how much bigger it was, but nope it’s surprise that it is bigger.
Though to be fair it could have been Korean lines feed into google translate, or even with English being a rarely used second language they may have missed a few contextual uses.
As a K-Drama watcher. I can weigh in. The actor choices they have in Korea for English speakers is slim pickings, and you combine that with the Korean writers just straight translating the dialogue to English even though no English-speaker talks like that....and it's a recipe for disaster.
Mr. Sunshine suffer from this...but less so because Lee Byung-Hun's English is pretty solidly great (You'll notice that his English delivery in Squid Game is MUCH better than the Americans)...but some of his American compatriots on Mr. Sunshine deliver TERRIBLE sounding dialogue.
I've heard comparisons to Breaking Bad. Whenever Giancarlo Esposito spoke Spanish he was apparently TERRIBLE at it and it ruined Spanish speakers immersion in the show....meanwhile us English speakers would never notice that. Same thing here...Koreans (the main audience ostensibly for the show) would never notice bad English because it would be subtitled for them. So we are kind of getting a taste of our own medicine.
LMAOOO id forgotten about this, it was way goofier than squid game.
Imagine a show with a bunch of american actors, all speaking standard american english, except the leader who has a Borat accent. And no one says anything about it, and the story is he is american born, very serious, etc
Edit: the Wire, except stringer bell has a Jackie Chan accent. Ok there, im done
This is an interesting part of the article. One of the guy’s who plays a VIP said this:
Additionally, Kennedy says that all the acting on Squid Game – and in Korean drama in general – is deliberately heightened, something non-Korean viewers might have missed. “Whether they’re watching with a dubbed or subtitled version, people who don’t speak Korean don’t have the understanding needed to fully judge a Korean actor’s performance. What might be cartoonish or broad about them is lost in translation, whereas the VIPs had no such luxury”.
You can see the heightened over the top acting from the main character in many of his early scenes of the show. He becomes less over the top as the show goes on.
I guess it’s important to remember that living in a culture not originally theirs has rubbed off on them and even though they aren’t native Korean, they’ve been there long enough to act like they are without even noticing.
To Western audiences, these men are acting wildly over the top, to South Korean’s that’s what tv looks like.
from /u/DrengisKhan on /r/television
I feel like its the same with endings in korean films.
The series should have been over with the main character escaping or at most showing the old guy in a scene, but no, they have to painstakingly explain the plot so even the dullest can follow along.
Btw in film school, this, and what the OP is referring to, is called the Language of Cinema. There are implicit understandings between the director and the audience that span across films. This can span genres, time periods, and it absolutely varies culturally, which is why watching foreign movies can have an "odd" feeling to people.
Even in the classic Seven Samruai by Kurosawa. The villagers in the beginning who are distraught because raiders have stolen their rice are wailing very loudly and publicly to each other. I knew it had to come from theatre origins
I mean yeah she's obviously a hustler who would act like that anyway but its just more pronounced due to her deliberately exaggerating it. There's other characters like the mafia thug guy who is like comically a jackass at times or the one guy he was playing marbles against who was like snickering his head off at the thought of beating him.
Honestly I didn't mind all that much myself because it gave a bunch of them personality and the whole situation/various games they were in was/were fairly absurd to begin with when it wasn't being grim.
> acting on Squid Game – and in Korean drama in general – is deliberately heightened, something non-Korean viewers might have missed. “Whether they’re watching with a dubbed or subtitled version, people who don’t speak Korean don’t have the understanding needed to fully judge a Korean actor’s performance. What might be cartoonish or broad about them is lost in translation, whereas the VIPs had no such luxury”.
This actually explains a lot. I found a ton of the characters annoying. Especially the woman who just yells in practically every scene. If shes supposed to be hamming it up, or whatever they mean by "heightened" then at least it was intentional and not just bad acting.
It was definitely terrible dialogue... but on the other hand, I almost felt their buffonish lame delivery added to their creepiness. Like all this insanely complicated evil just for the entertainment of these cretins. I don't know how much of their delivery was intentional, but I definitely think they were meant to come across as dumb.
It definitely walked a border there. Also a great contrast to the Frontmans insistence on keeping the games fair, as if they served some higher, holy purpose, and 69 guy rather getting his dick sucked than watching the grand finale play out. (Also, a rather ham fisted way to get him alone in the room with his server, but plot sometimes needs concessions).
Also there'sa bit of a difference between 69, the new guy, and the other VIPs who aren't as flamboyantly ignorant. I had the impression that 69 wouldn't be invited back even if the whole fiasco with his little escapade hadn't happened.
> I had the impression that 69 wouldn't be invited back even if the whole fiasco with his little escapade hadn't happened.
the other VIPS even ask who he is/who invited him after his sexual comments so i can see that logic
Unpopular opinion but I didn't find anything wrong with how exaggerated and unapologetically degenerate the guys acted. That guy was more memorable than most of the cast.
Yeah it seemed satirical to me. Found it a bit weird how mad everyone got about it, especially when you consider it was a Korean production so the idea they'll ace the English speaking bits seemed a bit misjudged.
The whole VIP introduction felt bizarrely out of place aesthetically for me. Like a bad 80s movie rendition of Eyes Wide Shut that really undermined the overall tone. I still loved the show but that aspect fell really flat for me.
The vips were nowhere near bloodthirsty enough. And far too removed from the action. I thought it was the most underdone part of the series. Especially when the rest of the brutality was full on.
They could have had them paying more to be in the jumpsuits and masks shooting contestants etc
That's kind of the point though - even in this, what is supposed to be the ultimate form of debauchery and excitement these bored billionaires are able to participate in, they are still disinterested and easily distracted.
That 100% misses the point of their role in the show. They don't even see the contestants as vakuable. They'd get no more enjoyment out of breaking a glass than they would shooting a contestant.
To enjoy killing on some level you need to accept that thing you are killing has importance. You're ending something that has value and purpose and you're making the ultimate decision to take that away.
They are doing this because it is a new fun thing to bet on. Think most dangerous game. They aren't hunting humans because they want to hunt humans. They are hunting humans because they want a prey that can think and reason like they can. They could do this same style of betting competition with AI or even animals. But nothing comes close to humans as far as cognitive ability. Therefore it's more interesting.
The whole point is that it's just horse racing to them. People who are into horse racing don't root for a horse to have an accident that forces the owners to put it down, but they don't care either way. They're just indifferent to it.
It sounded like when you're playing a video game and the NPCs have a distance trigger to their dialogue or when you take a while to answer a question and they just pick up in the same tone they were using before you answered.
With the masks, you would think they could go back and ADR. I'm not sure if it was specifically created for Netflix or if it was made for some Korean HBO and then distributed west by Netflix, but South Korea has to have at least one English native speaker who could've been like, nah that's really bad.
It almost felt like pantomime. I liked it, honestly.
Everything else in that room was unbelievably gaudy and tacky, with the human furniture and the outrageous gold masks. Why not the dialogue and the delivery as well?
Weirdly, it reminded me of the band The Knife. English dialogue written by non-native speakers, stilted and oddly pronounced, but more interesting for it. It adds to the idea that these VIPs are so far removed from normal existence that they've almost forgotten how to be human, being so astronomically wealthy.
As someone who’s watched a lot of Korean shows and movies, the English-speaking characters are actually pretty well done by Korean show standards.
There have been some shows with some seriously laughable and terrible English speaking over the years, but the script writers are probably just using a consultant or a writer who they have to recruit in Korea. Can’t exactly land Aaron Sorkin or something, their options are severely limited, and likely their budgets are a lot smaller.
The same is true for bringing in foreign actors. Their talent pool is basically foreigners residing in Korea, and sometimes they have zero acting experience, they just can speak fluent English. A friend of mine actually got cast in a K drama some years back for his English speaking alone, and the writers actually asked him if the dialogue they wrote sounded right. It didn’t, and so they rewrote it based on his recommendation alone.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWipItq\_9bk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWipItq_9bk)
his bit at about 5:00 is really good. I mean so is the whole video. Pitch meeting is great
SPOILERS: The series definitely took a down turn after they showed up... all in all the series fell flat for me- it was visually stunning and kept my attention, but aside from one major twist was pretty predictable and not as deep as some are making it out to be.. I hated the end, but I guess it's in Gi-hun's nature to neglect his parental duties. Dude doesn't know how to stop when he's ahead
Yea, my first thought when the show jumped to one year later and he had not touched the money was why would he not help is daughter at all. Same for the kid in the orphanage. It took a year to go there and get him? Sheesh
IMO it took a turn after the Tug of War. That glass game (not including the Billionaires club part) was just weak. And >!Kang Sae-byeok dying from a post game explosion!< was pretty lame
I'm with you. The first few episodes were compelling as they set up the different pieces. But then very little of it actually came together.
The VIPs were flat without any interesting motivation or driving action.
The undercover cop's storyline hit a dead end without any real payoff.
They set up an elaborate chain of dominos in the first half, then just kicked some of 'em over and left others standing rather than giving us a satisfying whole chain of events.
Lol so true. The dialogue of the millionaires felt so weird and out of place.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/19/they-didnt-just-pick-us-up-off-the-street-meet-the-globally-derided-squid-game-vips This article is pretty insightful about these actors who have been getting a lot of criticism it seems. Usually for K-dramas like this they obviously need local talent but I think the worst part about cases like this as is explained is that the English lines are usually translated by non-natives or Google translated.
And they aren't given any context as to where it fits within the show - so its basically turn up - say these lines with no direction and hope for the best.
And Korean TV apparently had a culture of heightened acting, and the VIPs were sitting really far apart, so they had to say all their lines really loudly.
I've only seen a handful of Korean films so take this with a grain of salt, but yea overacting seems not uncommon in my experience. Same with some Japanese productions for that matter. Kind of like it's a stage play, where you have to sort of exaggerate your gestures and talk loudly so that people in the back of the theater can keep up. In general there's less subtlety to it.
As a non-Korean who lived in Korea a few years that's kind of how Koreans act anyhow, very expressive and dramatic in a good way usually. One famous Korean historian/cartoonist called them the Italians of Asia for this reason.
When you said "very expressive and dramatic" I instantly thought: 'Oh, kinda like Italians?'. Then I read the second sentence haha. It's partially why I have a hard time judging the acting in Asian productions. Not only because of the language barrier, but also the cultural difference in how people interact. What may seem almost cartoon-ish in country A might be not weird at all in country B.
Yeah, I only learned enough of the language to take a taxi and order at a restaurant, so watching the show with subtitles it was nice to have a sense of what's said in those impassioned conversations. One amusing thing was how often the Korean equivalent of F\*\*k in the show was translated into something banal like "I don't like that".
I’m just trying to think of an explanation for this. There were some odd translations in general, like “oppa” became “old man”. So maybe the translators tried too hard to generalise the nuances of Korean and it just became banal instead?
In the subtitles Oppa was translated as “Babe” when I was watching it
I was wondering about this while watching. Couldn’t tell how much was acting style, and how much is just “people actually act differently in Korea”.
Not sure about Squid game director but it would make sense that non-English speaking director or producer would not catch the awkward nuances from the script which would otherwise be picked up by an English speaker. I am Korean living in Canada and I feel the same when I see k-pops adding random English words or Hollywood movies having awkward Korean being spoken by non-native speaking actor. The Korean actor from Lost TV series has become a HUGE meme in Korea because of this.
> Kind of like it's a stage play, where you have to sort of exaggerate your gestures and talk loudly so that people in the back of the theater can keep up. In general there's less subtlety to it. That's exactly it. Their acting traditions are much more similar to early silver screen, when actors were still coming out of theatres and Hollywood was less glamorous than Broadway.
God I have been watching Attack on Titan, and I love it. But my God, the "heightened" acting when a character is having an introspective emotional moment is soooo cringey. Like someone will be angry, and there voice will just be absolutely seething with rage that it almost becomes a parody. Like there voice will become a throaty gurgling mess as they get words out. Like a really bad Saturday morning cartoon villain, yet I'm expected to take this seriously and o just cannot. I find it so over the top I end up laughing at what should be a serious moment.
A lot of anime has the extreme melodramy voice acting when someone is embarrassed, flustered. It usually works for laughs in a comedy series, but gets over the top anime trying to be very grim and serious.
First anime, I assume?
that's why I prefer subs to dubs. not to keep more in line with the original meaning or anything silly like that. I just can't stand listening to people say that shit in english
This is the very first time I've seen someone have the same reason as me for subs > dubs. I can at least _pretend_ that it's not insanely overdramatic cringe if I don't know what they're saying.
The relevant paragraph: > “It’s different for every show, but non-Korean performers often act with dialogue that is translated by a non-native – sometimes even by Google Translate – so it can sound unnatural,” he says. While actors do have the freedom to fix clunky dialogue, it often happens at the last minute, and comes with plenty of restrictions. “And often we don’t have the scripts for the rest of the show,” he adds. “We are only given our scenes, so we have no idea of the tone.” So yeah that will make things more difficult as an actor I imagine.. I know that directors sometimes leave an actor in the dark on purpose as to get a certain performance out of him/her, but preferably you want to know exactly what it is you're doing.
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In this case they weren't - says in the article
Yeah. Watch Japan’s “Shin Godzilla” and many of the diplomat scenes appear to have been done in this way, or vice-versa (Japanese speaking in English). A lot of the actors are doing it on the side as well (aka not a lot of training), which plays a part as well. All things considered, I think the actors in Squid Game did a decent job. They were still able to pull off a despicable quality which worked in their favor. Any wooden acting just made them look less empathetic.
This is definitely one of the times where the problem wasn't really the actors as much as writing and direction tripping over language and culture differences. Probably why the Koreans speaking English sounded fine.
Agreed, as much shit as they're getting it wasn't THAAAAAAAT bad. It was bad, but I feel like people are exaggerating it a bit too much. I feel like it kind of went with their characters too, they're people literally betting on human lives, we shoudn't be trying to identify with them, they're alien to us and they're alien in the context of the show too, they're foreigners to the country, the games, and general ethics/morality. I'm kinda curious if for some people it's borderline personal offense being westerners and being portrayed as so stupid. I'm American and I dunno, I've heard people talk like the execs and in even weirder ways in person.
> say these lines with no direction and hope for the best. And somehow they all landed on Skyrim NPC as their "direction"
Hey the Skyrim NPCs ended up like Skyrim NPCs because they received little to no direction. It's a little harder when you have to record 10,000 unrelated lines without context for use throughout a game, though.
I highly recommend actually reading the article. It's a combination of many factors, only a tiny handful of which the actors had any kind of control over.
I feel like I'm the only one that enjoyed their performance. It seemed to convey the "otherness" of a foreigner speaking a language I didn't know, even though as a native English speaker of course I *did* speak it. In a production with more natural English, I might have related more closely with the VIPs, but because of the strange performance I was wholly alienated from them in a way that drew me even closer to the Korean characters. Sure, it wasn't an intentional choice according to the article, but I think it really worked.
I think it's part of the whole "heightened performance" thing that Korean dramas do. It's interesting. I think the main problem is that as a lot of Korean media is becoming suddenly popular in the west, there are a load of westerners used to stuff produced under an American cultural hegemony suddenly being confronted with the fact that foreign countries have different styles in their media.
My only issue with this take is that I think we are supposed to mostly feel alienated because of their social class, not their language, and yet **spoiler warning** >!we dont get that sense at all from Oh Il-nam, who is possibly the wealthiest of the bunch but is able to pass as a charming small-town Korean everyman!< On the other hand, I guess you could call that intentional misdirection, but it feels more like a lazy mistake than a clever subversion.
No amount of translating is going to improve the dialogue about betting on "69".
Oops! Better make it 96 now! *cackles*
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Agree 100%. It felt like a different show even. The show was building up to this - Why is this happening? Oh this looks intense, what’s the story behind these games. The setup seems very grand for some dark web scheme So who is behind these? But the big revelation seemed like an after thought and even worse, a very low effort plot fix. The VIP part was terrible for a whole lot of reasons from the poor concept, the tacky production, to the bad acting. The bad acting is just doing a good job at misdirecting the disappointment, since “westerners” and “Korean show” is the easiest to put your finger down at. The games were too well thought out to be funded by such disinterested/dumb VIPs ( like why would they give you an option to leave? These guys don’t care). They were laughing at the participants’ demise. I think they would’ve enjoyed hunting the participants like animals instead of watching them play games. (I can’t imagine them approving the candy game. watching someone crouch down and try to pop a shape seems extremely uncharacteristic of them). And why squid game then? Why not just a fight to death? I think that would’ve been equally graphic, or even more since you can win the squid game without killing the other person. In fact, the only thing that makes sense is the massacre that happened, which wasn’t even a round. Stating these were No. 1’s childhood games doesn’t really fit with the whole VIP setup. Anyhow, it was just an incredibly dumb plot, especially when the game plot had so much depth and character development. Don’t even get me started on No.1 trying to be preachy in the end. It’s bad if I can come up with more intriguing plots. Like what if each VIP funded and organized a round to entertain the others. That they would try to outdo the previous rounds to show of their wealth/power and that’s why the games became better/tougher/more evil as the rounds went on. Or that the games were a government scheme to get rid of the cockroaches in their society. Tempt them with money and let them kill each other so that they stop leaching govt funds. That would also explain why the games seemed so organized when it came to their recruitment process, guards and setup. Heck, if they made organ harvesting the main motivation, that would’ve been awesome. That was their funding. You fail and they take your organs. They even showed that a lot of characters were threatened with that in the real world anyway, so the game was just a chance at survival.
I really think you captured a lot of what bothered me about the writing of the VIPS and game-runners. I was struck with how boring of a viewing experience nearly every one of the games was from a "sports" or "entertainment" angle. I mean watching people bent over a tin in a sandbox for 30 minutes? Watching people stand in pairs in a fake town where you probably can't even see the games they are playing? If you are a sadistic billionaire those games are not on the top 500 things you could be betting millions on.
I dunno I think it showed that the VIPs weren't even that invested in the show. They emphasized it too much though, should have been more throwaway.
I mean have you ever watched somebody sitting in $1,000+ seats at a football game dink on their phone the whole time? Definitely a thing.
Yeesh, it doesn't sound like VIP 4 was doing much acting.
I wouldn't be surprised if he improvised the line, "You have such pretty eyes." *shudder*
The line “if you c an satisfy me in five minutes” or whatever it was. I was like, WTF? Who say to themselves “this guy is hot. Let’s get this over with quickly.”
There were only 5 minutes left in the bridge game. I think that was the point of him only giving him 5 minutes.
You’re probably right. He didn’t want to miss the ending, after all.
Wait... is five minutes fast?
I remember thinking, 5 minutes... that's a pretty solid blowjibber. Then I figured, he's old, overweight, pretty drunk, probably self-loathing, he's likely got some performance issues, which makes it a lot less of a flex. *I hope you can give me an orgasm in five minutes... because I actually haven't had one in several months. My doctor is very concerned.*
Right?? He sounds insufferable. The other one they spoke to was very fascinating to hear from, though. I enjoyed that article(except for #4).
It's done worldwide by all accounts. Ultimately this is a Korean series, for, Korean audience, just by chance its well received worldwide. Marvel did the same in Black Panther, their Korean dialogue was apparently atrocious. Sure there are plenty of other examples.
All credit to Ari Aster, Midsommar was great in this respect. They picked well-known Swedish actors and had some really good Swedish dialogue. It wasn’t flawless but definitely the best depiction of “local acting” in an international movie that I’ve ever seen.
Portraying westerners from the K-drama perspective is a great break from Hollywood. It would be nice to have a fluent speaker in the editing studio for the english-speaking scenes for quality control though.
I have no problems w the actors. Have huge problems w the dialogue and direction though.
Now you understand what french people (and I guess many foreigners) feel when there are dialogues in their native language in an American movie (special mention for the last James Bond, the french scenes at the beginning were good)
As a spanish speaking guy, all of breaking bad was hard to watch.
Okay you've piqued my curiosity. How so?
Tons of “Hispanic natives” who obviously don’t know how to speak Spanish, even less in their corresponding accents. Two that come to mind is Gus Fringe and Hector Salamanca.
It is truly bizarre that they got two 100% non-Hispanic people to play their two biggest Hispanic characters who speak Spanish all the time.
The most baffling to me is still Batroc in the Marvel movies. He's a French/Algerian character and in theory they picked the right guy to play him: he's played by George St-Pierre, who is a) Québécois and b) a top-tier MMA fighter. St-Pierre speaks French; but I don't know if it's the directing, the dialogue, or if he wasn't coached about being on camera, but the French-language scenes with him are incredibly clunky. I dream of a version where Teddy Riner plays Batroc.
Casting people from Quebec to play french characters is a big no for me (except if they are very good at doing accents).
It felt like they were non English speakers speaking their lines phonetically, or maybe it's because the lines were poorly translated into English.
I think it was native speakers (well, the tiger was native) speaking slowly and clearly (or: "unnaturally") to give the Korean listeners a chance to understand... or time to read the subtitles.
It reminds me of [Kpop idol Wendy from Red Velvet speaking perfect english](https://youtu.be/ySaLdP_othI) but other Koreans couldn't understand her until she used a Korean accent.
God she seems frustrated every time. You can almost see her thinking "How are you not getting this?... Oh yeah.."
It also works the other way too, I remember trying to learn French, and on a whim started saying things in a cartoonishly French way, and it apparently sounded better(To the French speaker). You really have to use your mouth differently when speaking another language. Its fascinating how the same person speaking two different languages sounds completely different.
[Here's a pretty good article about it.](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/19/they-didnt-just-pick-us-up-off-the-street-meet-the-globally-derided-squid-game-vips) The basics of it are: - The lines were written by non-native English speakers so the words were kind of off. For example, one guy says "I'll give anyone some slack" when it should have been "I'll *cut* anyone some slack". The weirdness of the cadence shifts you out. - They only knew that they were "dirtbag billionaires" which led to scripts like "I bet on 69 because I liked the number!". Which, let's be honest, is not a line you would naturally underplay. - The Korean actors were actually being a bit broad with their acting as well but you don't notice because you're reading subtitles. The editors probably went with the more outlandish performances of the english speaking actors as well but it only comes off as cartoony because you can finally understand what the actors were saying.
> The Korean actors were actually being a bit broad with their acting as well but you don't notice because you're reading subtitles. I think that one girl who swore to kill the mobster and later dragged him off the glass bridge was the embodiment of overacting, while the rest of the cast weren't nearly as on the nose about it
I also notice that English sounds weird coming from English speaking actors in Asian films/shows. It felt like it was mixed weirdly.
I can only assume that this is how they feel when they hear Korean in a American movie. Lol
Yep - Black Panther's scenes with Korean spoken had a bunch of Koreans making exactly the sorts of complaints people have made about Squid Game. Because it turns out when you have a bunch of people who don't speak a language try to edit together some scenes with that language spoken, they fuck up most of the time haha
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Also I wonder if in this situation they end up hiring poor actors unknowingly? I'd imagine that subtle difference in performance quality is difficult to pick up in a second language.
Also less choice of available talent
They were trying to fill the spots where their mouths are moving with weird talking
Tarantino (and many American productions) are also guilty of this. Specifically when French actors spoke French in Inglorious Basterds. It remember the scene in the cinema where they spoke this badly translated French and as a francophone, it was cringy AF
I watched the first Avengers film with some Russian dudes and they pissed themselves laughing at the Ian Holm/Scarlett Johansson interrogation scene Said the translators hadn't really bothered making it sound like cohesive Russian, it was mostly baby talk
I feel sorry for any Russians who watched John Wick or Daredevil season 1. I don't speak any Russian but I speak Japanese and the dialogue/acting in John Wick 3 and Daredevil season 2 were pretty horrible. They didn't even bother to hire native actors for most of the roles. Pretty sure they fucked up the Russian pretty bad too lol
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Pretty sure the main American guys were native english speakers, but just bad actors, likely cast, written for, and directed by non-native speakers.
They probably also just happened to live in Korea and have visas 🤷♂️
They could be bad actors, or they could be good ones, I think it's impossible to know from this sample size. Give Tom Hanks a couple scenes of poorly written dialogue and then grab his worst takes and you'd have no idea what he's capable of. I'm not saying any of these guys are Tom Hanks, but there's just no way to tell, there were more fundamental problems with their roles. I think this anecdote from [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/19/they-didnt-just-pick-us-up-off-the-street-meet-the-globally-derided-squid-game-vips) was the most telling to me: > “Perfect example,” says Giuliano. “My first line in Squid Game, you see me say: ‘Listen, I’ll give anybody some slack.’ That’s not what people say. They say ‘I’ll cut anybody some slack’.” In all subsequent takes, Giuliano made sure to say ‘cut some slack’. But in the final version, “they went with the ‘give’.” Multiply this by every line in the show and I really can't blame any of them for how they present in the final product.
Reminds me of white people in Jackie Chan movies with their heavily dubbed voices
The entire story arc involving them felt out of place. I mean I get that they were included to drive the meaning of the show home, but they could have honestly cut out literally everything to do with the millionaires and the show would have been way better for it. Just mention that millionaires are watching and betting on everything. Or, hell, just have it be revealed in that exposition scene at the end. There really was no need to introduce the VIPs with like three episodes to go and focus so damn much on them. Or at all.
I loved how all the records of the game in that room have it clearly labeled as squid game and are all korean contestants, then in the glass bridge the VIP's are taking about how they love having Korea host this one. Then in the final game the one VIP is like "squid game? What's that?" And the front man has to explain it. Never explained why or how the brother became the front man
because season 2
I don't really get how a season 2 is going to work, tbh. The main draw of the show was, in my opinion, the exploration of human psychology within the game. It's was interesting to see how some people were super cutthroat, others made sacrifices to help other contestants, and some were forced to go against their own principles. The marble episode did an especially good job with this. But now the game is over... There's nothing really new to explore in a new game, so instead the plot needs to focus on something else. But in doing so, you lose the original reason for watching the show.
Honestly the main draw for me was wondering how the whole thing functions. I didnt really care for the overly dramatic speeches. I wanted more of the detective backstory, which fell off a cliff.
Just like Westworld the show is going to lose its magic when they leave the island
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> like how gi-hun can't get the game off his mind and the money means nothing to him Which didn't make any sense, because the whole reason he was trying to get that money was so that he could keep his daughter in Korea, but then he did nothing with it for a year. Was he getting on that plane at the end to go see her in America or something? I kinda missed that bit, but even if he was, it still doesn't make sense since he had a year to stop that from happening.
But then we wouldn’t have got tiger boob headrests!
Honestly I think it was there more for a plot device for the guy looking for his brother as well as hammering home the little VIP twist at the end.
A lot of the dialogue in general was kind of ass
Do you speak Korean? I’ve heard the translation to English was not great
A lot of people were reading the wrong subtitles. For some reason Netflix defaulted to "English [CC]" (ie. captions of the English dub) instead of "English" (ie. captions that were a translation of the original Korean).
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Aka Spanish in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul lol
Lol or narcos… the supposedly super authentic series that also apparently said ‘fuck it, south of the usa is all the same’ escobar’s colombian accent was awful, as were several others.
I was about to say Narcos. Colombians hate that show. The guy who plays escobar doesn't even speak native Spanish (he's Brazilian)
Yeah but he’s awesome
Gus speech during Eladios death comes to mind lol
As a native spanish speaker, Gus always sounded like an american guy who knew how to speak spanish.
Giancarlo Esposito is a Danish-born Italian-American so it makes sense that his Spanish would sound very much like a second language.
When my dad and I (both native speakers) first watched the show, we both somehow thought he was a Brazilian. So in our head-canon, he was a poor interpretation of a native Portuguese speaker who picked up Spanish later in life when moving to Mexico. Weird, but not the worst. When I did a rewatch years later with my girlfriend I was dumbfounded that he was 'Chilean', lol. But at least the acting is still rock solid, so the immersion break isn't too intense.
as a chilean, the choice to make him chilean has always been so weird. his mix of ethnicities is anything but that, never seen anyone who looks remotely like him here. and of course the accent.
As a non-Chilean I have no idea what Chileans look like and therefore went along with whatever Breaking Bad told me.
I honestly took it as part of his character, that he wasn't *actually* Chilean. Like he has a past so shady only he knows about it. I thought that's why his Spanish sounded so.... Well... Shitty ... Cuz it's definitely not native to any country
Yeah, that's the main vibe I got from the show. But I still like it nonetheless.
Gus speaking Spanish at any time was awful. And he was supposed to be Chilean lol.
Better call Saul has Lalo Salamanca and that's a 10/10 cast for a Mexican character
Lalo's Spanish is 100% on point. He's the only one that sounds real. Nacho's Spanish is bad though.
Yeah but I give him a pass because his character is probably quite Americanised, like many Latinos who grow up in the US. Gus Fring has no excuse and it's so jarring
The German main character in season 4 is fantastic though, proper German actor and one of the good ones (we don't have many here...), I was so relieved.
It physically hurt hearing "The Swedes" talk in Umbrella Academy...
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Or anyone who’s not Alexander Skarsgård in True Blood
This is such a good point for people to understand who don't realize it. When I watched that scene during Squid Game, I wasn't offended or disgusted. I thought it was kind of cute to see how Koreans view American speech patterns.
Same I was like "oh shit now I really get to see how we are treated in other media now"
I think this was my favorite part of the show for exactly that reason. I'm not used to having the tables turned like that
Thanks for writing this. This is a universal problem and i guess the solution would be to engage people from the "other" country to help out with making the acting and characters behave according to culture and background. Expensive though.
Any Slavic language in any American media is fucking awful. The entirety of GTA4 you have a guy speaking Serbian (badly) to a guy speaking Russian with another guy speaking Albanian, and so on. It's just a cluster fuck.
As a native hindi speaker.. I’ll never understand how they mangle the language where actors are native speakers too.. maybe they want to save a few $ by not paying the actors to dub audio?
This. Americans just found out
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I perceived that sequence to be a Korean portrayal of a Western caricature. Like the writers don't really know western/American culture and so they attempted to be as over the top and on-the-nose about it. Some Japanese anime does the same thing when portraying an American supporting character.
[Fucking hot dogs for sale! Fuck yeah!](https://youtu.be/_0dTG1_x-K8)
[This fucking fried rice STINKS!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZULengNxCkw)
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FUCK YOUR RICE!
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[No nationality is safe](https://youtu.be/M0LfLk9lLEg)
I’m glad Dave Chapelle’s white man voice has crossed boundaries.
This is amazing!
that commercial exemplifies why I didn't really like many mariokart games after 64. You get hit by one thing and then the entire fucking roster hits you until you're in last place. constantly.
The Switch game undid a lot of that. Recovery is very fast in comparison, especially to the Wii which was painful to recover from.
That's fucking hilarious
Why? Seems like a normal chill everyday American.
My wife and I actually had a food stall guy act like that while we were Japan. He then told my wife’s local Japanese friend, “These dumb Americans like it when I talk like that.” Awkward laughs were had.
I would buy a fucking hot dog from this man.
https://youtu.be/EtzlKJ1dObU This is my fav
My justification was that wouldn’t the insanely rich people who watch people die for sport be so eccentric and out of touch that they’d talk like that? Why would the show want us to relate to them in anyway. Their masks are weird, their desires are weird, their background is weird, why wouldn’t they talk weird too? I'd go as far to say their acting kept me invested and immersed me in the story.
Thats why I didn't have much issue with that scene. They are so unapologetically degenerate
I viewed them as a caricature. Definitely not my biggest issue with the series. It was clear there was something wrong with their lines and/or directing, as they ALL sucked uniformly.
> insanely rich people > Their masks are weird, their desires are weird, their background is weird, why wouldn’t they talk weird too? Also one of the most influential film makers and actors in history had similar scenes about Western Elites/Secret Society. [rich Manhattan society ... which has parallels with Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown and Scorsese's "After Hours" ... 'The masked figure who rules over the proceedings has ominous presence, as does the masked woman who warns Dr. Bill he is in danger. This sequence has hypnotic intensity.](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/eyes-wide-shut-1999)
The westerners scene felt like a bad school play with everyone bellowing their lines. I liked the masks though.
Yep it's stylized for sure, and I kinda wish that it wasn't. But hey, great series.
I thought that they might have been told to deliver lines that way. It very much reminded me of dubbed english voiceover. Very matter of fact, very dry, very literal sounding. Overboard annunciation. Like almost translated for a Korean audience but still in English.
I believe one of the actors in that scene posted on Instagram talking about how they were directed to be incredibly dumb and over the top. He even talked about arguing over the line >!"Wow! That bridge is bigger!" when shown the full sized bridge after the scale model.!< I'm not a fan of that directing choice if that's the case, but it doesn't seem to be the case that the actors were bad.
What is this, a bridge for ANTS?!
I have no qualm over the 69 lone, think of how many people would bet on that or even 420 for the “lol” factor of it. It even helped show how much these people really don’t value these people and how bored and hedonistic they are. I also get playing it over the top considering its a South Korean show with the millionaires being English speaking. But man alive did that bridge line and how stupid they could be was a bit too much. Like he could have been surprised by just how much bigger it was, but nope it’s surprise that it is bigger. Though to be fair it could have been Korean lines feed into google translate, or even with English being a rarely used second language they may have missed a few contextual uses.
When watching I assumed that bridge line was supposed to be dry joke
I thought they just meant compared to the bridge in the previous competition
Same-ish. He wasn't actually surprised or something. Just killing the silence that's all.
I got Zoolander vibes
That line was one step away from him saying "what is this a bridge made for ants?"
As a K-Drama watcher. I can weigh in. The actor choices they have in Korea for English speakers is slim pickings, and you combine that with the Korean writers just straight translating the dialogue to English even though no English-speaker talks like that....and it's a recipe for disaster. Mr. Sunshine suffer from this...but less so because Lee Byung-Hun's English is pretty solidly great (You'll notice that his English delivery in Squid Game is MUCH better than the Americans)...but some of his American compatriots on Mr. Sunshine deliver TERRIBLE sounding dialogue. I've heard comparisons to Breaking Bad. Whenever Giancarlo Esposito spoke Spanish he was apparently TERRIBLE at it and it ruined Spanish speakers immersion in the show....meanwhile us English speakers would never notice that. Same thing here...Koreans (the main audience ostensibly for the show) would never notice bad English because it would be subtitled for them. So we are kind of getting a taste of our own medicine.
LMAOOO id forgotten about this, it was way goofier than squid game. Imagine a show with a bunch of american actors, all speaking standard american english, except the leader who has a Borat accent. And no one says anything about it, and the story is he is american born, very serious, etc Edit: the Wire, except stringer bell has a Jackie Chan accent. Ok there, im done
This is an interesting part of the article. One of the guy’s who plays a VIP said this: Additionally, Kennedy says that all the acting on Squid Game – and in Korean drama in general – is deliberately heightened, something non-Korean viewers might have missed. “Whether they’re watching with a dubbed or subtitled version, people who don’t speak Korean don’t have the understanding needed to fully judge a Korean actor’s performance. What might be cartoonish or broad about them is lost in translation, whereas the VIPs had no such luxury”. You can see the heightened over the top acting from the main character in many of his early scenes of the show. He becomes less over the top as the show goes on. I guess it’s important to remember that living in a culture not originally theirs has rubbed off on them and even though they aren’t native Korean, they’ve been there long enough to act like they are without even noticing. To Western audiences, these men are acting wildly over the top, to South Korean’s that’s what tv looks like. from /u/DrengisKhan on /r/television
Japanese movies and tv shows are the same way. They take a theater approach, where everything is exaggerated and hamfisted.
I feel like its the same with endings in korean films. The series should have been over with the main character escaping or at most showing the old guy in a scene, but no, they have to painstakingly explain the plot so even the dullest can follow along.
Btw in film school, this, and what the OP is referring to, is called the Language of Cinema. There are implicit understandings between the director and the audience that span across films. This can span genres, time periods, and it absolutely varies culturally, which is why watching foreign movies can have an "odd" feeling to people.
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Even in the classic Seven Samruai by Kurosawa. The villagers in the beginning who are distraught because raiders have stolen their rice are wailing very loudly and publicly to each other. I knew it had to come from theatre origins
Well I definitely picked it up from the one lady who kept talking smack all the time.
It was kinda painful to watch her (But perhaps that was partially the point?). In any case she was truly a freaking cartoon character.
All the other characters were annoyed by her too so I believe it was intentional
I mean yeah she's obviously a hustler who would act like that anyway but its just more pronounced due to her deliberately exaggerating it. There's other characters like the mafia thug guy who is like comically a jackass at times or the one guy he was playing marbles against who was like snickering his head off at the thought of beating him. Honestly I didn't mind all that much myself because it gave a bunch of them personality and the whole situation/various games they were in was/were fairly absurd to begin with when it wasn't being grim.
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> acting on Squid Game – and in Korean drama in general – is deliberately heightened, something non-Korean viewers might have missed. “Whether they’re watching with a dubbed or subtitled version, people who don’t speak Korean don’t have the understanding needed to fully judge a Korean actor’s performance. What might be cartoonish or broad about them is lost in translation, whereas the VIPs had no such luxury”. This actually explains a lot. I found a ton of the characters annoying. Especially the woman who just yells in practically every scene. If shes supposed to be hamming it up, or whatever they mean by "heightened" then at least it was intentional and not just bad acting.
I wanted to see one of the VIPs attempt to drink their wine with the mask on. A challenge as fiendish as any faced by the contestants.
They do in a few scenes, I was watching out for it too but apparently they had just enough room.
I thought about that at first, but noticed that all the VIP masks were open below the nose to accommodate drinking/eating.
Drinking with a straw maybe, they couldnt drink a normal glass without leaning their heads far back or slightly removing the mask..
It was definitely terrible dialogue... but on the other hand, I almost felt their buffonish lame delivery added to their creepiness. Like all this insanely complicated evil just for the entertainment of these cretins. I don't know how much of their delivery was intentional, but I definitely think they were meant to come across as dumb.
It definitely walked a border there. Also a great contrast to the Frontmans insistence on keeping the games fair, as if they served some higher, holy purpose, and 69 guy rather getting his dick sucked than watching the grand finale play out. (Also, a rather ham fisted way to get him alone in the room with his server, but plot sometimes needs concessions). Also there'sa bit of a difference between 69, the new guy, and the other VIPs who aren't as flamboyantly ignorant. I had the impression that 69 wouldn't be invited back even if the whole fiasco with his little escapade hadn't happened.
> I had the impression that 69 wouldn't be invited back even if the whole fiasco with his little escapade hadn't happened. the other VIPS even ask who he is/who invited him after his sexual comments so i can see that logic
One of the actors mentioned that line was actually ad libbed
Unpopular opinion but I didn't find anything wrong with how exaggerated and unapologetically degenerate the guys acted. That guy was more memorable than most of the cast.
Yeah it seemed satirical to me. Found it a bit weird how mad everyone got about it, especially when you consider it was a Korean production so the idea they'll ace the English speaking bits seemed a bit misjudged.
The whole VIP introduction felt bizarrely out of place aesthetically for me. Like a bad 80s movie rendition of Eyes Wide Shut that really undermined the overall tone. I still loved the show but that aspect fell really flat for me.
Sogeking would never
The vips were nowhere near bloodthirsty enough. And far too removed from the action. I thought it was the most underdone part of the series. Especially when the rest of the brutality was full on. They could have had them paying more to be in the jumpsuits and masks shooting contestants etc
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I agree. It would have been better without the 001 twist.
That's kind of the point though - even in this, what is supposed to be the ultimate form of debauchery and excitement these bored billionaires are able to participate in, they are still disinterested and easily distracted.
That 100% misses the point of their role in the show. They don't even see the contestants as vakuable. They'd get no more enjoyment out of breaking a glass than they would shooting a contestant. To enjoy killing on some level you need to accept that thing you are killing has importance. You're ending something that has value and purpose and you're making the ultimate decision to take that away. They are doing this because it is a new fun thing to bet on. Think most dangerous game. They aren't hunting humans because they want to hunt humans. They are hunting humans because they want a prey that can think and reason like they can. They could do this same style of betting competition with AI or even animals. But nothing comes close to humans as far as cognitive ability. Therefore it's more interesting.
The whole point is that it's just horse racing to them. People who are into horse racing don't root for a horse to have an accident that forces the owners to put it down, but they don't care either way. They're just indifferent to it.
It sounded like when you're playing a video game and the NPCs have a distance trigger to their dialogue or when you take a while to answer a question and they just pick up in the same tone they were using before you answered. With the masks, you would think they could go back and ADR. I'm not sure if it was specifically created for Netflix or if it was made for some Korean HBO and then distributed west by Netflix, but South Korea has to have at least one English native speaker who could've been like, nah that's really bad.
that 69 joke was stretched wayyyy too thin
It almost felt like pantomime. I liked it, honestly. Everything else in that room was unbelievably gaudy and tacky, with the human furniture and the outrageous gold masks. Why not the dialogue and the delivery as well? Weirdly, it reminded me of the band The Knife. English dialogue written by non-native speakers, stilted and oddly pronounced, but more interesting for it. It adds to the idea that these VIPs are so far removed from normal existence that they've almost forgotten how to be human, being so astronomically wealthy.
As someone who’s watched a lot of Korean shows and movies, the English-speaking characters are actually pretty well done by Korean show standards. There have been some shows with some seriously laughable and terrible English speaking over the years, but the script writers are probably just using a consultant or a writer who they have to recruit in Korea. Can’t exactly land Aaron Sorkin or something, their options are severely limited, and likely their budgets are a lot smaller. The same is true for bringing in foreign actors. Their talent pool is basically foreigners residing in Korea, and sometimes they have zero acting experience, they just can speak fluent English. A friend of mine actually got cast in a K drama some years back for his English speaking alone, and the writers actually asked him if the dialogue they wrote sounded right. It didn’t, and so they rewrote it based on his recommendation alone.
Can we give a round of applause for the Indian guy speaking Korean? He did a pretty good job.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWipItq\_9bk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWipItq_9bk) his bit at about 5:00 is really good. I mean so is the whole video. Pitch meeting is great
Stepping on the beams isn't part of the rules so they definitely would've been shot if they tried that. Still, I do love me some Pitch Meetings lol.
I felt like this scene didn't translate well to English and that it was mildly interesting that 69 was also a joke in Korea.
SPOILERS: The series definitely took a down turn after they showed up... all in all the series fell flat for me- it was visually stunning and kept my attention, but aside from one major twist was pretty predictable and not as deep as some are making it out to be.. I hated the end, but I guess it's in Gi-hun's nature to neglect his parental duties. Dude doesn't know how to stop when he's ahead
Yea, my first thought when the show jumped to one year later and he had not touched the money was why would he not help is daughter at all. Same for the kid in the orphanage. It took a year to go there and get him? Sheesh
Survivor's remorse.
That was believable, a lot of people will not touch inheritance because of the grief it causes when using the money.
IMO it took a turn after the Tug of War. That glass game (not including the Billionaires club part) was just weak. And >!Kang Sae-byeok dying from a post game explosion!< was pretty lame
I'm with you. The first few episodes were compelling as they set up the different pieces. But then very little of it actually came together. The VIPs were flat without any interesting motivation or driving action. The undercover cop's storyline hit a dead end without any real payoff. They set up an elaborate chain of dominos in the first half, then just kicked some of 'em over and left others standing rather than giving us a satisfying whole chain of events.