Midway through the new season of “Squid Game,” the protagonist, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), talks to a fellow contestant in the murderous big-money competition he has found his way back into. Gi-hun, who claimed the jackpot last season at the expense of hundreds of dead comrades, wants the players to exercise their right to vote to end the game. His friend argues that if they survive just one more round, they could all walk away with a bigger prize.

新一季《鱿鱼游戏》(Squid Game)过半，本剧主角奇勋（李政宰饰）设法回到了这场有巨额奖金的杀人竞赛中，并与另一名参赛者聊了起来。在上一季中，奇勋以牺牲数百名同伴为代价赢得了头奖，这一次，他希望选手们行使投票权来结束比赛。而他的朋友认为，如果多活一轮，他们所有人就能带着更多的奖金离开。

“Last time I was here,” Gi-hun answers, “someone said the exact same thing.”

“上次来这里的时候，”奇勋回答说，“有人也说过同样的话。”

You might think the same thing to yourself if you watch the seven-episode return of “Squid Game,” now streaming on Netflix. You will hear things you essentially heard in Season 1. You will see things you saw in Season 1. And should you happen to hear or see something new, it will likely come from a character who is very much like someone you watched die — or kill someone — the first time around.

如果你看了本季回归Netflix的七集《鱿鱼游戏》，你可能也会有同感。你会听到第一季里听过的东西。你会看到第一季里看过的东西。如果你碰巧听到或看到一些新的东西，它很可能来自和第一季中某个死去或杀死他人的角色非常相似的角色。

One suspects this is by design. This “Squid Game” is a “things you’ve seen before” delivery device.

有人怀疑这是故意的。这一季的《鱿鱼游戏》是一种“你以前见过的东西”的传送装置。

The 2021 premiere of this dystopian South Korean thriller was an international sensation, less for the novelty of its themes (capitalism exploits the desperate) or structure (see “The Hunger Games” and much reality TV) than for its spattery panache and visual inventions. The killer doll! The jumpsuits! The piggy bank! Those are what the people paid to see, and “Squid Game 2” dutifully delivers them again.

这部反乌托邦的韩国惊悚剧集在2021年首次播放时引起了国际轰动，不是因为它的主题（资本主义剥削绝望者）或结构（参见《饥饿游戏》和许多真人秀电视）有多么新颖，而是因为它的血腥华丽场面和视觉创新。杀人玩偶！连体服！小猪存钱罐！这些都是人们花了钱想看的，《鱿鱼游戏2》尽职尽责地再次提供了这些东西。

Season 1 introduced Gi-hun as a ne’er-do-well debtor who accepts an invitation to play a series of children’s games at a remote location for a life-changing pot of money, all for a viewing audience of debauched billionaire “V.I.P.s.” The losers die — usually spurting great arterial gouts — and a stack of bills representing their worth plops into the insatiable belly of the prize oinker.

在第一季中，奇勋是一个一无所有的欠债者，他接受了一个邀请，去一个偏僻的地方玩一系列儿童游戏，以便获得一笔可以改变人生的奖金，所有这些都是为了给一群骄奢淫逸的亿万富翁“VIP”观赏。失败者会死去——通常会喷出大量的动脉血——然后扑通一声，一叠代表他们身价的钞票就会掉进贪得无厌的小猪肚子里。

Gi-hun emerges 45.6 billion won richer, but shattered and vowing retribution against the game’s organizers. The Gi-hun we meet in Season 2, three years later, is thoroughly grim and hard-boiled, which makes him more formidable but less interesting. (Lee, who gave his hard-luck hero an engaging Everyman spirit, spends this season doing a lot of glowering and speechmaking.)

奇勋获得了456亿韩元的财富，但他深受打击，发誓要报复比赛的组织者。三年后，我们在第二季中见到的奇勋是一个极为严肃冷酷的人，这让他变得更可怕，但却没那么有趣了。（李政宰曾为这个时乖命蹇的主角赋予一种迷人的普通人精神，然而在这一季里，他经常怒目而视，还做了很多演讲。）

Of course, he must return to the game in order to destroy it, but “Squid Game” takes its time getting him there. It takes its time with everything, stopping and starting as if in its own game of Red Light, Green Light.

当然，他必须回到游戏中才能摧毁这个游戏，但《鱿鱼游戏》没有急着让他回归。一切都是不慌不忙的，走走停停，就像在玩自己的“红绿灯”游戏。

We meet a new set of contestants — many of them variations on Season 1’s casualties — including an arrogant rapper, an elderly mother and her bumbling son, an influencer who pumped a failed cryptocurrency. (A repeated theme is that some of the game’s prey were themselves predators.) The continuing story line in which a policeman (Wi Ha-jun) hunts for the game’s organizers, this time by sea, drags the narrative momentum like an anchor scraping the ocean floor.

我们认识了一组新的参赛者——他们中的许多人都是对第一季那些牺牲品稍加变化——包括一个傲慢的说唱歌手，一个年迈的母亲和她笨手笨手的儿子，一个恶炒了一种失败的加密币的网红。（一个反复出现的主题是游戏中有些猎物本身就是捕食者。）上季一名警察（魏嘏隽饰）追捕游戏组织者的故事线得到了延续，这次是在海上，就像刮蹭着海底的船锚一样在拖慢叙事的前进。

The season does try to expand its scope by delving into the staff running the game, particularly the menacing Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), the game’s manager and Gi-hun’s ultimate quarry. Another subplot, involving a North Korean defector (Park Gyu-young), starts intriguingly but never really develops.

这一季确实试图通过深入探讨运行游戏的工作人员来扩大叙事范围，特别是危险的“负责人”（李炳宪饰），他是这场游戏的主理人，也是奇勋的最终猎物。另一个次要情节涉及一名脱北者（朴珪瑛饰），一开始很有趣，但并未真正展开。

What “Squid Game,” directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, still has going for it is its visual imagination. Its themes of class struggle, shared with Korean films like “Parasite” and “Snowpiercer,” are rendered with flair, and not just in the pastel abattoir of the game sets.

由黄东赫导演的《鱿鱼游戏》在视觉想象力方面仍有精彩之处。与《寄生虫》(Parasite)和《雪国列车》(Snowpiercer)等韩国电影一样，它也出色地呈现了阶级斗争主题，斗争不只是发生在游戏的粉彩色屠宰场中。

A memorable set of Season 2 scenes takes place in a children’s theme park, where we go backstage with the costumed mascots, sweltering inside their fuzzy exoskeletons. As with the deadly playground games of the competition, the delight of childhood here is warped by the cruel economics of the adult world, where one person’s delight is another’s misery.

第二季中令人难忘的一幕发生在一个儿童主题公园，我们在后台看到那些穿着戏服的吉祥物，他们穿着毛茸茸的外套，汗流浃背。与致命的游乐场竞赛游戏一样，这里的童年快乐被成人世界的残酷经济扭曲了，一个人的快乐建筑在另一个人的痛苦之上。

第二季呈现了负责游戏运行的工作人员的生活，尤其是游戏的“负责人”（李炳宪饰，中）。

But there’s a lot more misery than delight as the season returns us to the games, repeating the bloody spectacle with new twists but the same crabs-in-a-barrel personal dynamics.

但是，随着剧集回到游戏当中，痛苦多过了快乐，重复着血腥的场面，故事有了新的转折，但体现“螃蟹效应”的个人动机却如出一辙。

This season is titled “Squid Game 2,” as if it were a movie sequel, which raises a question about just what this thing is meant to be. Is it a second season of a serial, which advances a larger story line? Is it the follow-up to a blockbuster, offering a stand-alone variation on the thrills of the original? “Squid Game 2” is neither, really. It continues a story but does little over its seven hours to expand it.

本季名为《鱿鱼游戏2》，仿佛一部电影的续集，这引发了一个问题：这到底是什么意思？它是为一部连续剧推进更大故事线的第二季吗？还是在原作的刺激基础上带来独立变体的大片续集？《鱿鱼游戏2》两者都不是。它继续讲述一个故事，但在长达七个小时的时间里，它几乎没有对故事进行扩展。

And maybe that’s fine for the audience. But if the series is just a vehicle for more of the same high-design carnage, are we, collectively, just a bargain-basement version of the V.I.P.s? Somewhere around the umpteenth stabbing and machine-gun execution, I had to wonder if this was supposed to be fun, and at what point its social critique just becomes fatalism. (I also wondered other things, like how the inmates’ sneakers remain so blindingly white with the gallons of blood spilled on the floors.)

也许这对观众来说没有问题。但是，如果这个系列只是一个载体，用来呈现更多同样的高设计感屠杀，那么，我们这些观众是否只是廉价版的VIP？看过无数遍捅刺和机枪处决的场景，我不得不怀疑这是否应该被当做一种乐子，而剧集对社会的批判在什么时候变成了宿命论。（此外还有一些让我疑惑的东西，比如在地板上洒满鲜血的情况下，参赛者们的运动鞋为何依然白得刺眼。）

It is possible, of course, to tell a story like this without simply repeating the pattern each season. In the thematically similar series of “Hunger Games” books and films, the story becomes less about the games with each installment and more about the dystopian larger society whose existence sustains and depends on the cruel spectacle.

当然，讲述这样一个故事并不需要简单地重复每一季的模式。在主题相似的《饥饿游戏》系列书籍和电影中，每一部的故事越来越与游戏无关，而是更多地讲述了一个反乌托邦的大社会，这个社会的存在依赖于残酷的奇观。

This season of “Squid Game” hints at larger-scale ambitions but does little to pursue them. As one antagonist tells Gi-hun, “The game will not end unless the world changes.”

这一季的《鱿鱼游戏》暗示了更大的野心，但并没有具体实现。正如一个对手告诉奇勋的那样，“除非世界改变，否则游戏不会结束。”

The line is a taunt and a dismissal, but you could also read it as a clue. If the blood sport is the natural culmination of an economic death match that everyone everywhere competes in, then the solution to this larger problem must lie outside the game.

这句台词是一种嘲弄和回绝，但你也可以把它当作一种线索来解读。如果一场经济的生死对决会自然而然地发展成流血的竞技，而世界各地的每个人都在参与，那么这个更大问题的解决办法一定在游戏之外。

It’s just not clear that “Squid Game” is ready to leave the arena — at least, not until after one more round, one more score.

现在还不清楚《鱿鱼游戏》是否准备离开这个竞技场——至少还得再比一轮，再得一分。