One thing rich people love to do is miss the point. Entire multimedia franchises are built as critiques of powerful people using their money and influence to put the average Joe through some hellish trial for their own amusement, and then rich folks are like, “What if I remade that?” Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, who has made a lot of YouTube content out of putting people in viral simulations of outlandish competitions or even dangerous situations with the promise of a cash prize, has already made a recreation of Squid Game, the hugely popular Netflix series which was intended to be a commentary on the power the wealthy wield over the impoverished. Now, he’s apparently considering doing the same for The Hunger Games, a dystopian franchise about a society where the wealthy and powerful who reside in the Capitol treat the common citizen like cattle and make them kill each other for sport.
In an interview with The Today Show, Donaldson was seemingly caught off-guard when the interviewer asked him about his plans for a Hunger Games recreation. He did say that the idea would “obviously” not pit people against one another in a fight to the death, with the concept instead being to put “potentially 26 random people” on an island and have them use something like laser tag guns instead of real weapons to eliminate each other, with the last person standing winning a million dollars.
“I think that would absolutely crush because yes, we recreated Squid Game, but we also rebuilt Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,” Donaldson said on The Today Show. “I have a chocolate company, and we gave golden tickets and brought people out, and people loved it. A lot of times, we just bring these fictional ideas to life, and people love seeing it.”
Donaldson isn’t wrong that people love to experience a facsimile of their favorite fictional worlds. It’s why theme parks are so popular, and you can find an escape room based on all your favorite horror franchises. I’m sure his team will have no shortage of people volunteering as tribute, but I still think that recreating these stories, even if they aren’t actually putting people in deadly situations, involves taking advantage of those in need in order to profit from the theater and spectacle of it all. MrBeast has used his position to do a lot of good, but I can’t help feeling like using The Hunger Games and Squid Game as reference points for your real-world game shows just makes everyone involved look like caricatures of the sadistic game makers these dystopian stories are meant to critique.
