Along with a significant chunk of the YA writing/reading/reviewing world, I went to see The Hunger Games on it’s release day.
I’ll try to keep this as low on spoilers as I can, but I’m assuming all you cool people have read the books. And if you haven’t, read the friggin books, because even though this is a faithful and brilliant movie adaption it will never be as good as the books. The movie had to cut out or just imply a lot of things the book covers in more detail. So read the books.
The Good
- Haymitch! I didn’t care much for him in the first book, but movie Haymitch is brilliant. And he has an eerie similarity to Thor/Chris Hemsworth.
- Tracker Jackers! I was strangely concerned about them overdoing this and giving us some brightly coloured giant super-wasps. They didn’t do this. What they did instead was TERRIFYING and so very well done. The entire Tracker Jacker scene is made of win and awesome.
- Most of the ‘soundtrack’ songs weren’t actually in the movie, the soundtrack used was almost entirely instrumental. I liked a lot of the soundtrack songs, but the movie worked much better that way.
The Not-Quite-What-I-Expected
- Peeta. He’s a great actor, just not what I expect from the boy with the bread. But he won me round by playing the role so well.
- The dog-creatures (the mutts). They showed a 3D model of them that looked kick-ass, but something about their design in motion didn’t mesh well with me. They handled the fear in that scene very well, but they also took out a very creepy and powerful element from the books.
- The bloodlessness. I know this is a useless complaint, and if they had tried to add more blood this movie would never have been made… but sometimes the character deaths just felt too clean. It took away from the horror.
The Awesome
- SENECA CRANE’S BEARD.
- They somehow made Effie Trinket funny.
- The Gamekeeper’s Control Room.
- Rue’s lullaby.
- SENECA CRANE’S BEEEEAAARDDD.
I really loved this movie, and recommend it to anyone who loved the books — just be sure to treat it as a separate creature to the books. Totally worth sitting through the 30 minutes of boring cinema adverts, and the one hour bus ride with loud drunks and no seatbelts that followed.
I went on Friday to see the movie with my oldest daughter. We thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve yet only read the first book in the series, but I thought this was a faithful adaptation. I would also agree with what you said about treating the movie as a separate entity from the book and not trying to compare too much. This applies to the Harry Potter movies too. There are often good reasons why the movies have to differ from the books (e.g., you can get away with a lot more internal dialog in a book–this doesn’t translate too well to the screen). Moving from the first person account of the novel to a third person omniscient treatment in the movie was interesting. We clearly saw things that Katniss never saw. I was trying to recall if somehow the control room was mentioned in the novel, or if that was something imported from the other two novels, or if Suzanne Collins put this into the movie (she was one of the screenplay writers) because, given the change of perspective, she could. Any thoughts?
I totally agree with you about Peeta – I really wasn’t sure when I saw pictures of him but his charm just makes him Peeta.
And the Mutt scene was the one part of the book that made me really angry with the Games organisers. But as the film was only a 12A I can see why they didn’t translate the books exactly.
I’ve just read your review of Divergent too (which I loved) and found it funny how you commented on the Dauntless initiation being unbelievable (I do see what you mean but I kind of considered it as similar to Gang Initiation which can be equally as dangerous – adored the book though and it didn’t bother me too much) but we accept The Hunger Games. I’d be interested to think more about what makes the unbelievable believable.
(Late reply, I’m sorry!)
The Mutt scene mostly bugs me because it could have flown straight past the censors: there’s nothing adult-rated about giving dogs human eyes (and then possibly a quick-cut to the human in question, eg Rue). It would have added a little bit of depth to the end scene.
Great point on the Dauntless initiation being like a gang initiation — that would definitely make the risk believable to me.
I think making the unbelievable believable all comes down to worldbuilding and characters: can I empathise with the character and place myself in that world? With THG, I can empathise with Katniss and imagine myself being as ruthless as she was to survive. With Divergent, I can imagine myself as Tris but the traits I associate with her (sensibility, wisdom) don’t fit with her actions (jumping off trains with a high chance of death). It’s probably because in that situation, I’d go ‘to hell with this’ and stay on the train, taking a chance of my own ability to survive to get me through factionless life. Her actions go against all of my instincts, even taking the character into account. (That said, I’d never get sorted to Dauntless in the first place.)