The Hunger Games

[hells_half_acre]

My sister is in town for the weekend, and her son wanted to see The Hunger Games. Luckily, Vancouver happens to have a theatre that is STILL PLAYING IT.

I went along...

I have not read the books...

But I keep hearing all this stuff about Katniss/Peeta or Katniss/Gale (or Peniss and Kale?)...but but...did people see the same movie that I did? Because where the hell are my Katniss/Cinna shippers?!? This is my OTP....at least for the movie.

Anyway, good times. Really well done movie. Katniss was a really great character. I also liked how the wounds/injuries were realistic...in that when they got injured, it was srs bsns...and Katniss actually went into shell shock when something exploded close to her.  

But, like I said, I haven't read the books, so I have no idea whether it's a faithful adaptation or not. I just thought it was a good film.

Comments

[missyjack.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it - i think it is a good adaptation of the book esp given the book is all Katniss POV. I agree with you on Katniss and Cinnia! And great casting there too.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Agreed! :)

I'm not a huge fan of Lenny Kravitz's music - but I thought he was wonderful in this film (and quite good looking, I was digging the gold eye-liner). I thought everyone did a great great job. Also, Stanley Tucci is amazing, even in a relatively small role.

[kuhekabir.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it. To be honest, all this talk about it from every possible side has put me off the movie so I haven't seen it yet either...

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Did you read the books? The movie was alright. I actually was surprised it got such a mainstream response when it's so dark and dystopic, and lacking a genuine romance...but then, I guess that's me underestimating the average cinema-goer just as much as the movie industry does, which is why we don't get more non-romance films.

[kuhekabir.livejournal.com]

No, I never read the books. Basically from the moment I saw the trailer to everyone talking about it just really put me off the movie. Everyting I've heard about it so far, even through squee, just makes me dislike it more.

Not sure what it is about the movie that gets me to reject it like this...I have got no clue! It really isn't quite rational but I feel the very strong urge to never, ever see it.

Quite odd...really. Inception was another movie like this. There was so much chatter on LJ and so much squeeing and it put me off. I still haven't managed to see it...

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ah sometimes things like that happen. I've never seen Titanic or Avatar for those reasons...and I never will.

[kuhekabir.livejournal.com]

Yes, very logical of us, isn't it...? LOL

[franztastisch]

Aw man I love the Hunger Games. And I thought the film was good, but I still prefer the books. I reccomend you read them. I've been making people read them all over the place and I'm happy to say no one has been disappointed yet! :D

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Well, the books aren't really a priority for me on my reading list. But I may read them someday... perhaps on audiobooks or something.

My friend read them and liked them...I think except for maybe bits of the last one? I think her conclusion was that the first book was the strongest.

[franztastisch]

OH BUT THEY SHOULD BE. I read all three of them in three days. I loved them. And yeah the first one is the best really, but... they're just so good. Katniss is such an interesting main character. And Suzanne Collins was so good at making her act her age. You believed her actions. Also, Suzanne Collins can stab you in the heart with a single well placed line. Finishing them was like a punch in the gut.

But I can occasionally be obsessive and overdramatic about things I love. :P

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

As can we all. ;)

[franztastisch]

Haha so true. :P

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I read the book on an airplane recently. I think this is one of the rare occasions when the movie is probably better than the book; it wasn't bad, not at all, and there were a few small things that the movie left out or skimmed over for obvious and practical reasons...but the writing is a little on the rough side, a little heavy on the exposition. It made me want to go into beta-mode, because the potential was there but the writing was clunky as hell, at least in the first third of the book or so. Once it got into the whole fight or die territory, it was on studier ground. But the great thing about movie adaptions is that they add polish. The telling, not showing, is an easy vice to fall into in writing, but a lot harder to do in a visual medium like the movies.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when I was watching the movie and seeing the Districts and then the Capital and whatnot, I was actually thinking to myself "I bet these are all huge paragraphs in the books that are explaining everything in long drown out detail." :P

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

There are, but they're kind of the wrong details. Much of Katniss' inner monologue reads like a 14 year old's essay on...oh, the Irish Troubles or something like that that's a very complex and nuanced issue? But it's a weird thing for someone to be thinking, outside a school assignment.

Another part of it is that I was willing to accept, for the purposes of the story, that things are as they are, but some of the explanations didn't do much expect to draw attention to the ways in which the world doesn't really make sense...which I'd been happily ignoring or handwaving up until that point, you know? For example, it's repeatedly mentioned that the whole system is designed to keep the districts in line and to crush their spirits. But it's kind of an Evil Overlord (who hasn't read the list) kind of plan, because from a real-world perspective, every little aspect of the system seems designed to foment rebellion, not to quell it. The real world has presented many, many ways in which to completely and very successfully oppress a population without tipping them over into outright rebellion. North Korea is practically a study in how far you can push it without going over the edge. However, keep a large number of people starving, or in danger of starvation...while constantly rubbing their faces in their oppression, without even a good propaganda arm, while also broadcasting people's suffering and nobility in the face of their oppressors...does not seem to be a very good way to do it. Which is not to say all fantasy premises need to be plausible; it's just that if you stop to explain these things as, "well, they make us do this because they want to humiliate us" and "we're kept on the edge of starvation because they're punishing us and want us to be oppressed" it can force the reader to consider these things. And it just doesn't add up.

Here's an example of the early prose:
"Gale knows his anger at Madge is misdirected, on other days, deep in the woods, I've listened to him rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on super and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. "It's to the Capitol's advantage to have us divided among ourselves," he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine. If it wasn't a reaping day. If a girl with a gold pin and no tesserae had not made what I'm sure she thought was a harmless comment."

There's nothing wrong with it, it's just...clunky. Especially in context.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yeah, that IS pretty clunky for an internal monologue.

And yes, I was sort of having similar thoughts in the movie, like "um, if this is supposed to be preventing a rebellion...they're getting it backwards." :P

Though, it did remind me of some theories on what caused WWII...extremely vaguely.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I can't read the books, the writing style puts me right off. My son and his friends who were in sixth grade/ 11-12 yrs old DEVOURED them. I was like, are people all over the country really so psyched about having their 10-12 yr olds go to see a GLADIATOR TOURNAMENT WHERE CHILDREN FIGHT TO THE DEATH?!?!?!?

So then I felt the onus was on me to actually go see the movie.... and I thought it was amazing. I really did not expect it to be quite as politically satirical as it was. I totally burst into tears in the middle at the events in District 11.

I kind of think most people who go to see it don't view it beyond the surface to see what the message is about the growing gap between rich and poor, and the exploitation of labor all over the world by the richer nations. I liked how they handled it.

also I totally ship Katniss/Cinna. Peeta is kind of weird if you ask me, and Gale is just not my type (nor Katniss's either I doubt).

Also, I am Appalachian, so it's awesome to see My People valorized in film. :P

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was really surprised by how popular such a dark satire was. But, if never occurred to me that maybe people didn't realize that it was a dark satire :P Oh man...I weep for the future if that's the case!

Peeta is a very interesting character to me (again, I don't know what he's like in the books). In the movie, I thought he came across as a very cunning guy...but more bordering on the Slytherin form of cunning, rather than the Ravenclaw form.

Yay for Appalachia!!

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Absolutely Peeta would be Slytherin. In the first movie he's very much in control of how people perceive him, and is far more astute than he seems to be.

In the books he goes through a lot, to say the least -- based on what my kid has reported to me!

Satire goes right over people's heads most of the time. Most people are not taught how to read it. ):

[majorshipper]

LOL NGL my OTP after walking out of the theater was Katniss/Cinna. But then I went home and read through the trilogy and fell in love with Katniss and Peeta.

It was a good movie, and, actually, a good adaptation, I thought. It stayed true through almost all the main points and only really deviated where it was necessary. I liked it.

I was really fascinated by the world and the social commentary, too. That's actually what attracted me to it. We get more of that in the later books, though, so it isn't as obvious in the movie.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Haha, well, I'm glad that the Katniss/Peeta was based on the books!

It's a pretty cool world. I actually really like dystopias, which is weird because I usually try to stay away from tragedies and depressing things...but dystopic worlds fascinate me, probably solely because of the social commentary on our own society.

I may read the books one day. They'd probably be pretty easy for me to find on audiobook - which, depending on my job, is usually the format that I can consume the fastest.

[majorshipper]

I love dystopia. And scifi is my drug, and since the two of them often go together, it makes me very happy. I wish there were more dystopian TV shows and movies to fangirl over.

Yeah, they're out on audiobook. I tried that, but I can never focus on what I'm listening to because I get the urge to multitask.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

That's funny, because I like audiobooks BECAUSE I can multitask when reading them - as opposed to regular books, where all I'm doing while reading is reading. Mind you, I'm limited in the tasks that I can do while listening to a book, because I can't do anything that involves reading or writing (though I CAN copy...which is why depending on what task I'm assigned at work, I can sometimes listen to audiobooks while I do it.)

[majorshipper]

Yeah, I'm seriously limited on what I can do if I'm listening to an audiobook, to the point where I just prefer to read it with something solid in my hands than having to remind myself every few minutes to pay attention.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

I have to say that one advantage to actually having a physical book is the fact that if I want to go back and read a section again, it's much easier to flip back in a book than it is to be like "Now, uh, what was the minute mark when that event occurred?" :P