Single-Sentence Review of The Hunger Games

Someone start a site for “Is most of ___ in italics, or is it just me?” ie, I’m curious if everyone else sees everything on mightygodking.com in italics after the title.

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And yes, Kyle W. Everything but the post title is in italics.

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Are the books any good? I’ve only heard of them. Haven’t seen the movie either, so comparing the two won’t do any good.

And the only words I see in italics are ‘Katniss’ and ‘Jennifer Lawrence’. Maybe it’s been changed or something.

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I liked the books a lot.

The movie was pretty good too, dancing on the edge of being great.

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Bookwise, the trilogy was a series of diminishing returns, for me. The first one was very good–it was a better written Battle Royale (albeit from a 1st person perspective) and provided some neat ideas about the society it came from. The second felt like a repeat, which isn`t surprising, given the premise, but some of the new characters were interesting enough to hold my interest. By the third book, though, the melodrama reaches a rather fevered pitch and Katniss seems to slide between naive and indecisive. I actually went away from it thinking that it`s a shame that teenage girls were left with such a wishy-washy sci-fi model.

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The problem I’m having, after seeing the movie and then talking to people who have read the books, is that the “divisive” aspect of the Games is not made at ALL clear. In the movie it just seems like a bread-and-circuses spectacle, and it’s never clear why it would be enough to help keep the Districts in line, or why Katniss being kind to Rue would be so bizarre or remarkable. The fact that the winning District gets more food and wealth (hence the title of the freaking movie) goes unmentioned. The eventual riot seems like something that should have happened long, long before. It’s enough to seriously hobble the film.

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As a fan of the trilogy, I thought the movie was extremely well-done, but with a 2 hr 20 min run time, it would’ve been near impossible to examine the political/social climate of the country without pushing it past 3 hours, which is really the strong point of the books.

Prankster, I think you are absolutely right, that the one thing missing is exactly how the Games serve to not only help The Capitol keep the districts in line, but pit the districts against each other for the right to survive, the tributes a microcosm of a larger battle for food/shelter/water amongst entire populations. For example, in the book it’s considered extremely touching when District 11 sends Katniss/Peeta food (or is it medicine) because the thought of a district supporting another district’s kids is unheard of.

Other than that, entertaining film that hits most of the points it needed to while appealing to 20-somethings (like me) and tweens alike.

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It wouldn’t make sense to make the film R-rated, anyway. It’s an adaptation of a YA book (ages 12-18; though of course it has an older fanbase as well). It’s true that a literal adaptation would undoubtedly be R-rated, but that’s a consequence of the difference between what you can write on the page and what you can put on screen.

I don’t think it would make any sense to adapt it into a film that most of the book’s target audience couldn’t see without adult accompanyment.

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The books gloss over the violence somewhat. I don’t mean that they shy away from it, but they certainly don’t linger on descriptions of gore, so keeping it somewhat sanitized in the movie makes perfect sense to me. Personally, I think they should have played up, a little, the Peeta romance is an act angle, and used that to better illustrate the way that the games are really one of the many tools that the Capitol uses to control every aspect of the lives of those in the districts, but overall, I thought that it was as good as a movie version of a book can be.

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The books gloss over the violence somewhat. I don’t mean that they shy away from it, but they certainly don’t linger on descriptions of gore,

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I want to make a point about this. I thought that the first book especially was amazingly disturbing BECAUSE Collins chose to make the descriptions so matter-of-fact rather than dwelling on which bits of gore splattered where. It made the whole enterprise all the more chilling to me at least because my imagination filled in the gaps.

And I agree with the diminishing returns – the first book is nightmare fuel for me (possibly because I’m the parent of a small child), the second book is decent 1970s era sci-fi material (I say that as a fan of the novel Logan’s Run, so it isn’t a knock – it just doesn’t compare to the first book as far as visceral reactions go), and by the third book I can almost read Collins screaming “Goddamn it isn’t this book finished yet?” as I make my way through the text. It’s a light read (it’s never difficult to keep reading), but it seems like she set too big of a “plot goal” for the series to wrap up in three books but the character arcs aren’t strong enough to last for three books. So the plot feels rushed while at the same time my interest in the character arcs sputters out at the beginning of the third book. To me anyway – if I were 13 years old and reading this for the first time it might feel just right.

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