Courtesy of Netflix

"Squid Game 2" is good fun. Get past episode 2, which just sucks, ignore all the stuff on the boats and the policemen, and you'll enjoy the rest. Don't expect Season 1. Don't expect it to be the "best thing you've ever seen," but if you want a transgender woman mowing down baddies with an assault rifle, Lee Byung-hyun breaking necks and looking hot, and more of those ridiculous M.C. Escher stairs as a backdrop, it ain't bad entertainment.

Gi-hun played by Lee Jung-jae is now our red-pilled hero bent on revenge. The new Neo. He's not only trying to take down the agents, he's intent on breaking down the entire system itself. Looking for the architect of the Matrix. Wanting to peer behind the curtain. That he now shoots assault rifles with alarming accuracy is just another addition. It's like how Ridley Scott's "Alien" was all scary gripping horror and then James Cameron's "Aliens" said, "Screw that, we're gonna start blowing stuff up." Squid Game seems to be going the same way. Some of its characters are brilliant. Some less so.

But the key idea is the genre shift. The "Predator" series did the opposite when going from John McTiernan's 1987 romp of gatling guns and teams of juiced up jungle warriors to Stephen Hopkins 1990 exploration of lethargic inner-city cops with barely a firearm to call upon. The new Squid Game is not just repeating the same tropes as before. Yes, the costumes, locations, and some characters are the same, but the genre is different. And so is the theme, moving from capitalism to democracy. Now, I'm not saying Squid Game is on the same level as either Alien or Aliens but if you know those two movies and how different they are, that's how Squid Game season 1 and 2 feel to me. Squid Game 1 was claustrophobic as hell, with an oppressive terror waiting to close in on it. Squid Game 2 is expansive and filled with assault rifles and killers. People spraying lead and using walkie talkies to move on positions.

Gong Yoo and Sebyeok

Gong Yoo as The Recruiter is brilliant at the start. You watch it for him and him alone. He just demands your attention and has you wondering what the hell is going on. I almost wish they had abandoned the whole season 2 thing and done a spin-off with this character, taking it in a whole new direction. That's how good Gong Yoo is. There's one moment towards the end when they're playing Russian Roulette and you can just see how much more dynamic and capable he is of taking you places emotionally. He's the bad guy you don't want to die.

Now in season one the real star was Sae-byeok the North Korean defector played by Jung Ho-yeon. She dominated every scene she was in. Particularly episode six, the first season's highpoint. That was a huge kick in the balls and an emotional rollercoaster that stays with you days afterwards. Despite Sae-byeok's hard exterior you can see underneath that she has layers and depth. She's from a bad country, in a dangerous game, but she's a good person. It's undeniable that Sae-byeok should have won season one. That was the character that we were all rooting for. So her eventual death felt unjust. Particularly the way they did it. Gi-hun winning was just too damn predictable. It was vanilla. It's what we expected. Him winning almost undermines the whole message of the drama.

But just imagine that Seo-byeok the North Korean defector had won? What kind of ideological message would that have sent? Imagine in Cold War South Korea, a North Korean defector from an enemy Communist state defeats the game of capitalism. Oh my God!! That would have been a huge "fuck you" to the system! That would have been powerful.

"The Hunger Games," "Snow Piercer," AOC's dress, and everything else show just how super popular it is to criticize the capitalist world. Multibillion-dollar companies fall over themselves to tell us how rigged the system is and to rally against wealth inequality. But Squid Game season 1 flinched at the last moment. Instead of holding true to its critique of capitalism, it indulged in fantasy, and it gave us this ridiculous fantasy ending that was never more emphasized by the red hair that it gave Gi-hun. If only it could have held true, there would have been something worthwhile. Instead, it produced another in a long line of anti-capitalist material that further reifies the capitalist system, providing our catharsis for us, and proving that Mark Fisher was probably right all along

Korean Society

The ragtag team of the transgender person, the pregnant woman and the old lady who survived the Korean War with her deadbeat son is a great set-piece. It's genuinely emotional when they finally complete the game around the rainbow and you can't help but be caught up in the spectacle. But it's just a shame that these characters are more like caricatures and labels than individuals. And if you live here in Korea, a lot of the themes and characters are almost too on-the-nose. They are basically just reflecting issues in Korean society, which makes it interesting but at the same time almost is if they're just checking off lists from the newspaper. It also very much roots Squid Game in the current age. This means that it will probably seem very dated in a few years. When you make something that is timely, it's less likely to become timeless. Too many of the characters in Squid Game 1 and 2 are timely.

You have the transgender character with a military background not being accepted by society. This shows us the story of Byun Hee-soo. Born a man, she had a sex change to become a woman and then, as a result of this and other complications was not allowed to complete her mandatory military service. She ultimately took her own life. You have the crypto scam artist that takes everyone's money and then tries to runaway echoing Do Kwwon who's wanted by authorities for taking amounts of money I honestly can't even comprehend. The failed rapper who got busted for drugs is, in an amazing piece of cinema, played by an actual rapper who got busted for drugs. How fun is that! The shaman starts a cult and scares the shit out of you because those stories are all over Korean media.

But if they wanted to do something truly progressive with the characters, they would have subverted expectations rather than reinforce them. So it's sad that in the end Squid Game accentuates stereotypes rather than challenging them. It becomes conservative instead of progressive. The transgender character is a good person. The drug taking rapper is a bad person. Wow! What an original perspective for our modern Korean world! Just imagine, for example, had they twisted that! Think about what the reaction would have been. Imagine how seeing that play out would have challenged our own expectations and notions. Imagine the Shaman was kind or had some genuine vision? Imagine the Korean-American drug-taker was actually a decent person who just liked getting high when making music? Imagine the transgender character was seen to be manipulative or selfish? That would be a real drama! Instead, we were just spoon fed the same narrative that we always get.

The Star: T.O.P.

Choi Seung-hyun (T.O.P. from BigBang) is a brilliant "coked-up" psycho villain. He annoys you at first but you slowly come to terms with the beauty of his performance. Having someone say "skrrt" and quoting raps in a butchered form of Gyopo Konglish while people fear for their lives is fabulous juxtaposition. And his face is constantly in close-up. You get to see every hair of his eyebrows, see his mouth twitch, and basically smell his breath.

His greatest moment comes when the characters are playing the mingle game. The contestants spin round and round on a central revolving platform and then have to team-up in a certain number before entering a door. The tension is real. You know now that about half of the people don't want to be there and are just going to be wiped out by masked killers. The children's song playing as they spin makes everything just more freaky. A lullaby before your brains are blown out. Nice! And then there's Thanos, all high on drugs and dancing. There's an incredible long shot where you can see everyone frozen in fear but you can make out one contestant just bouncing around like a lunatic and you know exactly who it is. It's Thanos.

There're obviously a lot of K-pop fans who are angry about BigBang or his performance. We get it. We know anti-fans are a huge part of that industry. These are people that go out of their way to drag any member of a group that is not the one they stan. And yes there are going to be people that don't appreciate T.O.P.'s performance here. They'll want something dark, brooding, and serious because they think that makes for intelligent drama. But if I'm going to watch people's heads be blown off for 7 hours, I at least want some jokes in between. Quentin Tarantino knows this and that's why there are always eccentric characters in his movies amidst the violence. Thanos feels like he could have come from a Tarantino movie. He's a god-damn movie character. He makes everyone else feel insignificant. I'm sure he was also probably channeling some of the media abuse he received for smoking weed a decade or so ago. Now he gets to let everything out and give a middle finger to the media by playing a drugged-up rapper. And boy does he do it well.

David A. Tizzard has a doctorate in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social-cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the "Korea Deconstructed" podcast, which can be found online. He can be reached at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.