There’s a lot going on with Beast Games, MrBeast’s reality show version of Squid Game, so I want to remove a few things from the equation before we get started. Let’s ignore the fact that doing this as a reality show strips the narrative of its satirical value and thematic messaging – one could argue that by airing on Netflix and returning for a second season after wrapping up so completely the first time, the show already undercuts itself.
Let’s also leave aside that by doing this show, you’re aligning yourself with the villains of Squid Game, because that’s a tad overdramatic – while there were complaints of the hazardous conditions during production, contestants were not murdered to entertain the richest elite. He’s not actually doing Squid Game. Let’s also side-step previous criticism MrBeast has faced for his altruism being self-serving. That has been discussed enough. When you take that away, what are you left with? The answer is ‘not a lot’, and that’s the whole point.
Too Much Content Creation Is All Content, No Creation
While there are a lot of YouTubers out there making original works and contributing to the media ecosystem creatively, most of the extremely popular content is lowest common denominator stuff. Originality does not sell. Everyone in media is relying on other media in some way – this article is about Beast Games, and most of the stuff I write is about video games. Building on other works or critiquing them has always been creative. But that’s not how most of it goes these days.
Reaction videos are often just a streamer green-screened into the bottom corner of a video someone else worked hard to make while occasionally laughing or going “Nah bro that’s crazy though”. There’s an entire genre of YouTuber who just reads articles from gaming websites aloud while calling those same websites trash and otherwise contributing nothing to the conversation. The best idea is always someone else’s. This sort of content is mental candy floss – it’s sweet, but it won’t fill you up, and it fades away the second you touch it.
That’s not necessarily MrBeast’s brand. He tends to go for high profile stunts, paying people with cars or cash to perform some sort of test. It’s not too dissimilar to junk food TV from the ’90s, but it’s mostly original stuff. However, lately that approach has changed, and Beast Games is an extension of that.
MrBeast Is Now One Of The Big Faces Of Entertainment. It Doesn’t Suit Him.
Over the past couple of years, MrBeast has gone from being a YouTuber to the YouTuber. No longer just a fairly popular guy that the younger generation idly watches on their iPads, he became the face of a whole sphere of content. And it may have starved him of his ideas. His biggest venture this year was Lunchly. An exact replica of Lunchables that proclaimed itself more nutritious, only to ship with a very publicly embarrassing mould problem. He followed this by renting out a theatre to eat said Lunchlys while listening to KSI’s meme failure of a song The Thick of It and watching meme podcast Talk Tuah.
I can’t believe I find myself thinking this, but that sort of nonsense seems below MrBeast. He’s not the guy who does what everyone else is phoning it in on. He’s more likely to (as he discussed on Beyond The Records) go for something completely off the wall like rent out the Great Pyramids. For the record, I think that’s a historically disrespectful thing to do and everyone involved in the decision should feel a little ashamed for the contempt they have for humanity’s legacy on this planet. Nevertheless, at least it was original.
Beast Games is unoriginal for two reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, it’s just Squid Game. To look at Squid Game and think ‘hey we should do that’ shows a surface level reading of the show (I know, I said I wouldn’t go there), but also a startling lack of originality. They say great writers steal, but I don’t think that’s what they meant. Secondly, it’s not even the first time he’s done this. When season one dropped in 2021, MrBeast organised his own version of it. He was the first person to repeat Squid Game to any sort of scale, which is worth a sliver of reality. But this? It’s nothing.
MrBeast has made it his business to not have much of a personality, so building this show around him, however interesting the contestant narratives or games themselves are, feels like a bad idea. An idea at, at the very least, is his own. With this being the second swing MrBeast has had at it, Netflix doing their own reality version, and every vaguely trendy city on the planet having their own knock-off version of a Squid Game contest on some gentrified street also featuring with cocktail bars, escape rooms, and pool golf, I don’t see the point of this.
Even when I don’t like it, which is most of the time, I still see the point of whatever MrBeast is doing. The pyramid thing? Deplorable. Also deeply understandable for a man in an industry without consequence or morals to think it’s a cool thing to do. This wasn’t a cool or original idea the first time, and we are so far past the first time now. Beast Games breaking free of YouTube to join streaming is like all those shows where it might be a cake and it also might not be. It’s the future of entertainment. The secret is you take the past of entertainment, and you do it again.
- Release Date
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September 17, 2021
- Seasons
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2