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The first two out of 10 episodes of Beast Games, the game show created and produced by James Stephen Donaldson, were released on Prime Video on Thursday 19 December 2024 (at 6pm Italian time) (the others will be released one per week every Thursday until 13 February 2025). , the YouTuber better known as MrBeast.
The release of the show was preceded by a media and judicial case, arising from the accusations of 5 contestants who filed a class action against MrBeast and his company MrB2024, Off One’s Base, Amazon Alternative and 100 currently anonymous individuals. The accusations made against the production range from sexual harassment to non-payment, and also include having forced customers to unacceptable conditions (insufficient or interrupted meals and hours of rest, etc.) and the misleading advertising of the show which talks about 1000 contestants while in the first phase there were 2000 participants.
On Wikipedia there is, in English, a special information page entitled “Beast Games lawsuit” to explain in detail the incident to which we referred in the presentation of the show. And moreover, our director Rovellini already warned in September 2023 about the risks of extreme diffusion of a model, that of MrBeast, which makes a spectacle of systematic excess, whether it consists of crushing a Lamborghini or giving away 10,000 dollars to the first person who passes .
That these Beast Games were a television product bordering on indecency (if not beyond), therefore, was already known before the first episode came out. And if you create a show that awards the winner the sum (a record for world entertainment) of 5 million dollars, but between one thing and another the total prize money given to the contestants reaches 100 million dollars, you already know you’re doing something crazy. So, if you want to be amazed, excited, indignant and probably even feel a little disgusted, you can’t miss Beast Games. So let’s continue this review by explaining how the MrBeast show works.
How Beast Games works
The show is a mix between Squid Game (but without a script), Games Without Borders (but without the fil rouge) and Takeshi’s Castle made known by Mai dire Banzai (or is it Mai dire Banzai which was made known by Takeshi’s Catle?) .
A thousand competitors (of the initial two thousand) met last August in Canada, and only one of them will win the final prize of 5 million dollars. But as always happens in MrBeast games, along the way many other prizes will be offered-distributed-bestowed, both in money and with material goods such as a private island or a Lamborghini (evidently Jimmy is obsessed with the Sant’Agata Bolognese brand ).
Before even starting, for example, a million dollars was up for grabs for anyone who immediately left the game, and around fifty competitors preferred to take home almost twenty thousand dollars rather than risk returning empty-handed.
And so, after each game, the number of competitors is drastically reduced. There are tests in which someone has to sacrifice themselves to avoid having their team eliminated, there are attempts to “bribe” the competitors to convince them to abandon, and meanwhile there are individual or group games such as making a pile of bricks or taking flying balls falling from the ceiling or answering a quiz correctly.
After the first two episodes, there are around 300 remaining competitors: some have jumped at the chance to pocket some money, some have been cheated out of trust in their teammates, many have simply lost a game and with it the possibility of continuing the route, which takes 500 competitors to a sort of citadel built especially for the occasion, where they will sleep, eat and live for up to a month. Always in extreme conditions, with the dream of grabbing the final 5 million (official trailer at the bottom of the article).
Why (not) see Beast Games
If the waste of money, resources, time and neurons makes you angry, stay as far away as possible from this show, where excess is the rule without exceptions. In full classic “Americana” style but with the added modernity and globalization of a program designed by a 26 year old boy who has been doing certain things for almost ten years.
Opening hatches, bags of banknotes, catchy phrases, flashing lights and lots of mess are the main ingredients of Beast Games. Which, however, even manages to convey the humanity of the competitors, who after days and days together have mutually become much more than a number on a tracksuit, but new friends (at least until you find yourself in a situation of I will kill you my lifeObviously). And who, in some cases, participate in the game with noble intentions, such as helping family members in difficulty or providing shelter to the homeless.
Beast Games is a crazy game show, where crazy things happen and where huge decisions have to be made. With each elimination, not only the contestants who have to leave cry, but also those with whom they have bonded over the days, with a brutal effect for them and for the public.
But if there’s one thing there’s no doubt about, it’s that this show is absolutely irresistible. You can have all the opinions you want on certain waste, on the lawsuit brought by competitors and in general on MrBeast’s business model. But we challenge anyone to get bored watching Beast Games.
Vote: 7.5
