The Hunger Games

[VTTBoscombe]

Can't see a thread on this (and I tried Google site search too!).
Although I remember someone discussing it on another tread somewhere here.

Anyway, went to see it in Version Original last night.

Very impressive in parts, never read the book so can't comment on it's accuracy to that.
Lead actress is very "eye catching" and holds centre stage very well.

***********NO REAL SPOILERS************
Actually very tense in places, especially the lead up to the games itself, as to that point , you can't imagine these young people doing/going along with this shit.

Couple of downers, like the soldier/peace keeper costumes seemed a bit Blake's Seven in a bad way, for such big budget production.
And some of the garishness of the Capitol seemed almost Willy Wonka-esque.
But generally overall it was kind of like The Trueman Show meets The Running Man, which is no bad thing.
Simon Cowell would love the franchise for this idea.

It has got my interest enough to read the books , I hope it is the same as my experience as with the Golden compass film (which actually was inferior to THG); but the "Dark Material"books were great.
So generally enjoyable stuff.

[HORN]

The Hunger Games

That's pretty much how I felt.

It's a sort of futuristic Spartacus, isn't it? It's served, somewhat inevitably, with a large dollop of formulaic predictability, but it's done quite well. I only shook my head with cinematic embarrassment once.

[Ginger Yellow]

The Hunger Games

It's no Battle Royale though. And I think the film's biggest problem (which may not be a problem in the book) is precisely because of how it differes from BR. Namely that the kids don't know each other before they enter the games, whereas in BR they're all classmates (apart from the "transfer student" of course). They have histories with each other and we learn about them through those histories. In contrast, the kids in The Hunger Games (the films) are more or less ciphers and we don't really care when most of them die.

[Ibn Pickthall]

The Hunger Games

GY - you can turn that around though and use it to an advantage. Even though they don't know each other there's still a theme on shared humanity, demonstrated through the sharing of food and the looking after of some by the others - primarily Katness (however her named is spelled). I haven't read the book, either, so perhaps less of a problme there.

I liked it, but a criticism would be the amount of time that's spent in the build up to the games, rather than the games themselves. It didn't really add a huge amount to what was going on, because much of what was important came out in flashbacks and discussions once in the games. It would've been interesting to see more on how the Districts reacted to the variable 'successes' of their representatives.

[Edit]Blinkin eck. I just looked up HG on wiki and the black guy assisting Katness with her preparation in the lead up to the games is played by Lenny Kravitz. I'd never have recognised him.

[delicatemoth]

The Hunger Games

The book (which is very good indeed) is written from Katniss' point of view, so the focus is very much on her shifting attitudes towards her fellow 'tributes', the thoughts and feelings that flow therefrom, how can she survive and maintain humanity etc.

It would've been interesting to see more on how the Districts reacted to the variable 'successes' of their representatives.

Again, this is a Katniss' POV issue - the reader is also uninformed in this regard, because she has no idea herself. The second book explores this a bit.

I'm still not sure if I want to see this film. I loved Northern Lights but thought the film was a dog's breakfast.

[Ibn Pickthall]

The Hunger Games

But the film doesn't need to be true to, or emulate, the book in every detail though, does it? We had a discussion over in Books on Bladerunner v "Do Androids dream...", they're distinct bits of work really, the film and the book.

GY's right in saying the film's no Battle Royale, but I'm not sure the comparison is even appropriate. HG is somewhere between BR and something like the Truman Show, a manipulated and contrived reality.

[Ginger Yellow]

The Hunger Games

The film certainly doesn't try to emulate the book, from what people tell me. It certainly doesn't even try to maintain the first person POV of the book, and there's quite big stuff (like the nature of the dogs at the end) which is completely changed.

GY's right in saying the film's no Battle Royale, but I'm not sure the comparison is even appropriate. HG is somewhere between BR and something like the Truman Show, a manipulated and contrived reality.

I think that's a good comparison, though I don't think it handles either the BR elements as well as BR or the TS elements as well as TS. I think the film didn't really know what it wanted to focus on - Katniss's personal struggle and development, like the book, or on the love triangle, or on the scoial context, or on the game-runners. So it ended up mashing it all together without any real sense of direction.

[Sits]

The Hunger Games

I know nothing about this except what's upthread, and my 17-year-old daughter's precis after seeing it yesterday.

I just feel a bit uncomfortable I suppose, with a movie aimed principally at teenagers, which has a premise of teenagers trying to kill one another. I realise it makes the viewer/reader confront the dilemmas involved, the kill or be killed decision, moral questions individuals should not be expected to take, and so on. I don't know, I just feel discomfort.

But of course I haven't read it, or seen it.

[RobW]

The Hunger Games

I saw it on Saturday. I've not read the books, nor seen Battle Royale which every review name drops. I thought it was excellent. Jennifer Lawrence was excellent as were Woody Harrelson and Stanley Tucci. I think Toby Jones only had one line in the film (but it was a good one).
I think the BBFC asked the makers to cut a little bit to get a 12A, I assume it was gore, blood etc that got cut. It was still pretty intense stuff and I didn't feel that it dragged at all.

I wasn't aware that it was Lenny Kravitz playing one of the mentors either.

[VTTBoscombe]

The Hunger Games

Having read the series of books now, I can understand why they made some changes to the film to make it more screenable, nothing additional to add what has been said before :

******AGAIN NO REAL SPOILERS BUT JUST IN CASE****
As said before Katniss is a very singular POV character,in fact one of the most sealed in ones I have read a whole series of books about.
If she has no personal experience of something she doesn't comment on it.
e.g. The need to have the dialogue between the game master, with the groovy beard, and Snow, and the extra bits with the game host to explain things.
Plus the other Tributes, if they never directly interacted with her, would appear just numbers.

The thing with the Muts, was glossed over in the film, and after seeing the film and then seeing what was in the book I was a bit shocked - maybe too "dark" for the film

NB I think it is 100% guaranteed they will be making the rest of the series into films as well, seeing how HG is thrashing all films at the box office.
But overall the books left me a little dissapointed, the series, didn't raise it's game enough in the remainder of the books for me.
It was good ; but not very good, which I was hoping.

[garcia]

The Hunger Games

saw the movie after reading the first book. i think the movie is better than the book, and that i would have enjoyed it more if i hadn't read the book first.

some spoilers follow...

the movie leaves out very little of the book. there's the question of how she develops her understanding with haymitch (woody harrelson / robbie savage) - which is probably omitted because it's unnecessary and it would take too much time to show how it happened. and there's the thing with the dogs, which frankly struck me as a non sequitur in the book - maybe it's explained or put in context later in the series. overall though, it's quite faithful.

stonelephant - i wondered how that would be negotiated, how you could have a popular series of books and movies with a child-killer as the main character. but morally it's very straightforward. katniss never kills anyone who doesn't deserve it. the characters who actively pursue killing are presented as unambiguously evil, some of them have volunteered for the games because they want the glory of winning, defining them as morally bankrupt from the outset. none of the evil characters is shown being anything but evil.

katniss kills one by dumping a wasp's nest on top of a group of them as they're waiting by the foot of a tree she's hiding in, she is stung herself and barely gets away. she kills another partly in self-defence, after they've sadistically murdered her little friend. a third evil character is despatched in a mercy killing after he's been seriously injured by third parties. a neutral, relatively minor character dies after stealing berries that katniss's friend gathered without knowing they were poisonous. so she's never morally compromised by killing. she spends more time worrying about whether she has feelings for the guy from her district.