Dual Review: The Hunger Games (movie and book)

Here at last is my once much anticipated review of The Hunger Games movie, with the attached review of the book that I wrote for my previous blog (last Autumn, I think it was).  Unlike my last "Dual Review" (that one was the book A Princess of Mars and the film John Carter which was lossely based on it), I'm going to switch the order of things here and do the movie review first.  Primarily this is because the book review is a repeat.  That and I just felt like switching things up.  Haha!  Take that, you dastardly forces of entropy!  That's me.  Keeping it fresh, since... 20 seconds ago.

Ok, on with the reviewing.

Dual Review: The Hunger Games




The Hunger Games movie.  What can I say?  First and foremost, I’d say I was just glad to be able to get out of the house and have the money (via a giftcard generously donated by my mom) to go to the movies with my wife.  And then it wasn’t a chic flick, so that was a double bonus.  Not that my wife drags me to chic flicks very often, and to be honest, I usually don’t mind them that much.  Thankfully my sweetheart is the sort of woman who rarely has the inclination to watch an authentically sappy romance movie.  They usually are funny, and I enjoy humor.  Good thing too, as I have no discernible sense of humor of my own.  So I get my laughs from other things that I think are funny.  Like the national debt.  And people’s wildly differing views on Obama-care.  And why anyone would voluntarily get their bikini zone waxed.  You know, stuff like that.

Ok, I’m doing my usual thing here and getting off track.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, The Hunger Games.  I’m doing a dual review, but I’m technically cheating and putting on my previous review of the book for the book side of the review.  I’ll just add my recent thoughts on the movie and call it square, ok?  And I’ll try to keep my movie critique a bit short, as I went on in quite elaborate detail in that book review I wrote some time ago (those of you who recall my old blog might remember that review, but if not, this will be new ground and that is gratifying).

My take on The Hunger Games movie?  It wasn’t a bad movie.  But was it worth a full price movie admission ticket?  Hmmm...  Let me qualify that by saying that yes, it was, but only just barely.  

What can I say?  It has been a few weeks since I saw the film, so my memory is a bit thin.  And lately, to be honest, my memory seems a bit thin in general.  My wife says its stress-related.  I’m betting on a developing cerebral aneurysm myself.  But here I am getting off track again.

The Hunger Games was an enjoyable movie, with all the major plot points of the book, and was pleasant enough to watch.  I never found myself wanting to hurl my exceedingly pricey movie theater popcorn at the screen in disgust.  So that’s one thing.  On the other hand...  well it’s tough.  I always say that movies can’t really stack up to a based-from-a-book comparison.  Unless the book was really mediocre, that is.  And The Hunger Games film fits this “not as good as the book” description just like any sentient individual who watched trends could predict.

Where to begin?  Though you wouldn’t believe it from what I’m going to say below, there really isn’t much to say against the film.  Be that as it may, there are some points that deserve mention.  First, a matter of urgency.  That is to say, the movie seemed to lack a sense of it.  Urgency.  My wife quipped as we left the theater that the show wasn’t... what was the word she used?  Exciting?  No, that wasn’t it.  I don’t recall now, unfortunately.  But believe me, it lacked.  Whatever it was.  There was almost no sense of “oh my gosh are they gonna get out of this?”  Maybe this can be blamed on the fact that both of us were familiar with the plot, but just the same, it didn’t feel like the movie was holding you in its grip.  More like the thing was “on rails.”  “Push-button” might also be an adequate term.

"Must run faster.  Must run faster!"  One of the more gripping scenes carried over from book to movie.  / Source:EW.com

For instance, at the end of the film, the dog-like beasts (who were way scarier in the book) come barreling out of the woods, and the survivors of the games run for the cornucopia.  The scene didn’t really make my heart pound.  Yes, I knew what was going to happen (or thought I did, but more on that in a minute), but still...  It was a jaded feeling that came to my soul, and not a pulse-pounding one.  I don’t know why exactly, but the effect seemed a bit flat.  Well, maybe I do, and that is another complaint that I had.  I’ll get to that now.  This gripe, which I might call complaint #2, was the need the director seemed to have for doing a lot of close-up work and a lot of shaky cam.

I had read a short snippet of a review on The Hunger Games movie that said the thing was mostly close-in filming and shaky cam, so I suppose my opinion was pre-influenced.  But honestly, whoever said it wasn’t lying.  Most of the film is one long close up of one character or another.  And the zoom-in effect is used a lot.  Not the cheesy 90s version that I witnessed recently while watching an episode of Star Trek Voyager.  You know, the one where a pivotal moment occurs and the frame jumps forward a pre-set amount.  Like saying “pay attention to how climactic this is!” in camera-speak.  No, in this case it was simply a change of focus that made the viewer’s eye go to what the director wanted you to see.  Like when Katniss is first sizing up her fellow Hunger Games tributes, there are a couple of instances when the cameraman focuses on a particular character, as though a person is looking through the camera and their eyes take in someone whom they hadn’t noticed before.  Does that make sense?

My gripe?  If you have to use techniques like this (and worse still, the shaky cam when it isn’t called for) to tell us to pay attention, you’re trying too hard.  Some might say that I’m just old-fashioned, but I think a lot of directors these days are trying to do something new and losing track of the stuff that works.  Like an over-abundance of CGI, which makes peoples’ wonder sense turn off because... well, let’s face it, you can show people anything using CGI.  You could show a huge 3D animated Mickey Mouse doing the tango on the surface of Jupiter with Roseanne Barr with fireworks flying out of their butts, and it’d look pretty much like a person could imagine it.  But then again, people know its CGI.  

This whole thing goes back to my gripe that too many movies these days spend lots of time on their computer-animated stuff, and not enough on thinking of ways for the audience to say “how the heck did they do that?”  On that score, however, The Hunger Games did... well, ok.  The CGI was actually pretty subdued, for the most part, which was nice.  The director may have made a good choice here, if that was the intent of the tight close-ups we spent most of the film being subject to.  You weren’t distracted by all the CGI and were focusing on the characters.  

On the other hand, there were a few instances when the CGI should have been more spectacular.  The chariot scene, for one.  The fire involved was nice, and fairly believable, but it seemed a bit thin when compared to the descriptions in the book.  It seemed more as though the other contestants were just dressed dumb, and Katniss and Peeta were dressed best and just happened to have some fire coming from their clothes too.  The director could have taken a page from Cecil B. Demille here.  Everybody should have looked jaw-dropping, with Katniss and Peeta blowing you away because they were so much better in their entrance than the others.  But still.  Big.  BIG!  This one three letter word seems to me to be the movie’s bane.  Sorry, but that’s my take on it.

Next let’s look at the trueness of the film to the book.  The few cuts they made I can understand, but a couple of them seemed like they didn’t do the movie any favors.  Hmmm... the most glaring.  I realize they probably wanted to keep this puppy in the PG-13 zone and were afraid that the last kid’s death... what was his name again?... at the horrid jaws of the beast creatures, but slowly since he was in that special armor and it took them awhile to kill him, would maybe be “too much.”  But they were wrong.  If they couldn’t put in the life and death struggle that really made the book punchy, why did they bother in the first place?  Peeta was on the verge of death in the book, if I recall correctly.  The use of the berries would have been so much more poignant if we’d been allowed to believe that these people were really beat up.  

Why didn’t they do it properly?  Was the director afraid he might not have enough control of his art to keep it from sliding into “R” rated?  To me, I think somebody was monkeying with things, and so what could have been a stellar film ended up just being “good enough.”  It felt as though we were watching teenagers have a teenage experience, which sharply contrasted with the initial scene at the cornucopia which was brutal and pretty graphic and intense for a PG-13 movie.  And then they ended on a mip moment (as I read back through this, I can't recall what adjective I meant instead of "mip," so I'm afraid Mip is what you're stuck with.  Don't know what it means, but it does the idea justice, just the same.  Mip.  Mip.  I might start using that).  I don’t get it.  Do you?

Anything positive to say?  I sound as though I hated it, or as though I personally could have done a better job.  This is not my intent in this writing, on either point.  The actress who played Katniss did a pretty good job.  My wife had said she was disappointed in the casting choice, but I now think the girl who played her did a good job.  The rest... well I didn’t see what’s-his-bucket from the show Cheers as Haymitch.  The gal who played... oh I’m struggling on names here.  The lady who does the drawing and then goes around as Peeta and Katniss’s capital escort and PR agent of sorts.  The one with the wild colored eye shadow and the funny accent?  She was great.  The little gal who played Rue was good.  My jury is still out on Peeta.  He was ok.

What else was good?  I can’t put a finger on anything specific, like I can with my complaints.  Which is too bad, as the movie wasn’t a bad one.  It just didn’t quite do its source material justice, I think.  Simply stated, I think it could have been better.  It was a good movie, and fun entertainment, but it seemed to shackle itself with some problems that were ultimately insurmountable.  If you really want to get the most out of your experience, watch this on the cheap from Redbox, and go read the book while you’re waiting.

Here is my previously written review of the book The Hunger Games, upon which the movie was based.

Book Review: The Hunger Games
(Originally from the Wong Lives! post: "Scar Tissue")



Source: Amazon.com

 The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Since this is book one of a three-part series (and I have strong opinions on books that need sequels, but I'll speak on that matter at a later time), I can't give a full accounting of this book just yet.  The reason: it's a trilogy book.  Most people would say that shouldn't affect your review, but in this case, it did.  I'll get to that in a minute, but please bear it in mind.

From the start, I didn't like this book.  "What!?" I hear you shout.  Just hang in there, and I'll explain and clarify.  I found the beginning of the book to be somewhat dis-jointed (I know coming from me that is the pot calling the kettle black, but hear me out).  The author's style took a little warming up to, on my part.  The first person, present-tense usage was a bit distracting at first, and I thought I wasn't going to like the book at all simply because it didn't draw me in right away.  I had just come from reading a heavy history on Elizabeth I and the Gentlemen Adventurers of sixteenth century England, so the switch over to Collin's prose was jarring to me.

But the book grew on me.  By the time Katniss left to prepare for the games in the capital city, I was hooked.  I must admit, I quite enjoyed the story, and the author's writing style became much more tolerable after that.  In fact, by the end I hardly noticed it.  Well, not until I picked up the second book (metaphorically picked up, as I listen to almost all my books on my mp3 player... and I'll admit, this does color my interpretation of the content from time to time, The Hunger Games falling into this category).

I recently heard at a family Christmas party that the narrator for this book series is quite good - in the opinion of the person speaking (I can't recall which of my cousins said this).  And I can agree, to a certain point.  At first the narrator's voice was a bit distracting from the material.  This was my take on it.  But like the story, the narrator did grow on me as well.  I'm not saying she did a bad job, but her accent was not conducive to easy reading when coupled with the author's use of first person present tense.  It threw me.

And now on to the story itself.  This book was carried by its story.  I'd have stopped reading if not for that fact.  Way to take "Survivor" and make it truly griping, Ms. Collins.  The use of the cliches we take for granted in reality TV shows but in a really touching way was spot on.  For instance, our lead character Katniss (forgive my spelling if it isn't spot on) makes an alliance with a little girl named Rue, and then loses her in a trap.  The scene where Rue meets her end actually made me feel a little bit of tenderness and almost a tear or two.  That shows that the author knew how to get us where we live.  I consider myself a "tough" guy and say that I don't cry for no good reason.  So for a work of fiction to elicit a bit of tender emotion from my already jaded sensibilities, it has to have something going for it.

Now I won't ruin the whole book by giving it a blow-by-blow recounting here.  Yes, if you were wondering, this means that I do recommend it.  By way of summary, we have a future post-apocalyptic world in which the northern hemisphere has banded together (somewhat unwillingly, in most cases) to form a civilization known as "Panam."  Again, please forgive my spelling, as I'm going by what the words sound like, not what they look like in print.

This civilization is made up of twelve separate areas or "districts" as the book calls them, and a last group known as the Capital.  The Capital runs things, and the districts provide.  Our protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is from District Twelve.  This area is in the Appalachians.  The other districts are from other regions of North America.  Not enough detail is given for us to really pinpoint where each district is in our present-day geography, other than District 12 and the Capital.  The Capital is located in the region of the Rocky Mountains.  As a side note, here is a place where I as a reader got a bit annoyed, but I can excuse it.  The use of the Rockies as the future capital of this new civilization makes sense when viewed through the defensibility of the region, but the ostentatiousness of the people there annoys me.  I'd like to hope my distant descendents, if they lived in this area at such a hypothetical time, would not be such pricks.  Thus ends my personal two cents on the Capital.



Author Suzanne Collins / Source: SuzanneCollinsBooks.com

 The districts rebel against the rule of the Capital over 70 years prior to the book's narrative.  They lose the fight, and as punishment, they are required to put forth two of their youths each year to take part in a brutal bloodsport known as "the Hunger Games."  The two teenage kids, one a boy and the other a girl, are chosen by lottery, sent to the Capital, wined and dined and prepared as best they can, and then transported to a selected site and let lose to kill their opponents.  There are 24 participants in all.  The Capital does not have to contribute players for these games, they just watch.  Like I alluded previously, it's "Survivor" meets "Gymkata" (a very cheesy 80s movie about a bloodsport in a fictitious Eastern European nation where competitors fight to the death through an obstacle course, the winner being given the gift of asking the country's sovereign for whatever he may wish.  It's a poorly executed film but a fun campy watch).

Katniss is adept at hunting, and she has some brains.  It isn't hard to figure out that she wins the games.  The story hangs on how she does it, as well as the details leading up to the start of the games themselves, and the budding romance that occurs both before and during the competition.  This romance with her fellow District 12 "tribute" is a major crux of the story.

I thought the execution (no pun intended) of the love story between Katniss and Peta was well done.  It had the virtue of shedding light on the quasi-alliances we see in so-called reality TV shows such as "Survivor" and shows such as "The Bachelor/Bachelorette."  What happens when two people are paired up and are supposed to be allied toward a common goal, and the audience wants to see sparks fly between them romantically, but one person really doesn't feel it?  We are quick, as audience members, to judge people who seem to be playing false for the camera because they know they are expected to fill a role in one of these "reality" shows (hence my loose use of the term "reality"), and yet we can see that their actions are pointed strictly toward the best interest of the moment.

The book's take on this situation is one of survival.  If the audience watching the Hunger Games feels that Katniss and her co-tribute from District 12 named Peta, are two star-crossed lovers, then the audience is supportive.  If they grow bored with the show, the people running the games (the so-called Game-Makers) will amp up the stakes by introducing lethal traps and manipulative incentives to get the contenders to kill each other more quickly.  Talk about a tough Neilson rating!

In the end, the Game-makers manipulate the show so that Katniss and Peta may both win - and thus survive - if they are both alive when the last remaining competitor other than themselves drops dead.  They have to team up to defeat all the rest.  This offer is given to all the pairs of competitors (male and female) from each district, but since only our protagonists and one other pair are alive by the time the offer is made, it is clear that the game is being manipulated so that our would-be romantic duo are kept in the spotlight.

From the moment this "offer" was given, I saw it for what it was (not to brag, but it was clear).  This was a trap.  This is where I appreciate the author's thought process.  This competition isn't just a game.  The politics involved, and the manipulations being devised, are first-rate.  As a reader, you get drawn in.  For it is obvious with a little reflection, the Game-Makers don't want two people to win.  It ruins their image of the "lone champion."  And it paints a great big bulls-eye on anyone who fits the offer's description, so to speak.  It was like the Game-Makers were trying to get the other remaining contenders to kill either Katniss or Peta, or more opportunely - both.

Duh, I hear you say.  But when you look at that from the point-of-view of the Games as a manipulative device to keep the districts in line (they only were having them as a way to show the districts that they were inferior to the Capital, and that they could and would do whatever they wanted with their children and then ship them home in the proverbial pine box), it all becomes so much clearer.  What will happen to our pair of young heroes?  Will they survive the Game-Makers machinations and the efforts of other competitors to kill them off?  Peta is wounded badly, they have little to no food, they wait on the generosity of sponsors to drop them needed supplies via small parachutes...  This gets pretty tense, and makes the book a real page-turner.


You know your books series has hit it big when they make socks associated with it. / Source: GeekAlerts.com.


Ok, I've waxed poetic enough here.  The spin on reality TV is very effective.  I couldn't help but draw connections between the Roman coliseum (the description of the Capital fit the Roman model quite aptly), reality TV, and power politics.  A few time the short story "The Running Man" by Stephen King - and yes, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film version of that story - crossed my mind.  The book has many layers, and this gives it strength and keeps it interesting.

Some have made the point that this is a so-called "children's" book, but that the content is quite violent and therefore inappropriate.  The publisher is Scholastic, whom I remember from my youth as the company name that was on the back of almost every book you would see at the annual book fair that came to my Junior High school.  Yes, I was one of those nerds who went to the book fair, if only just to look around for a minute or two.  But that is another tale.

As to the claim of violence in "The Hunger Games," well yes, it is violent.  So I wouldn't recommend this book to audiences below a certain age.  And it does concern me that this content might be marketed to kids who are too young to fully grasp what they are reading.  You know how it is these days; kids want to be older and do things beyond their age limits.  Little girls dress far too provocatively - in my semi-conservative opinion - and boys talk like sailors when they should be playing video games and riding their bikes around the neighborhood.

Where was I going with that?  Oh yes, the violence question.  In counter to the argument of the maturity level of the book, I would say that it is sad that we don't live in a world where people aren't drawn to things like this.  But we don't.  When children have older siblings who have been off to Afghanistan or Iraq, it is difficult to pull the wool of innocence back over their eyes.  Nobody in their right mind is pretending that these two conflicts were simple "Peace corp" assignments.  Our guys were over there fighting and dieing, coming home maimed in body and spirit.

And things back here in the good 'ole U.S. of A aren't much better at an emotional and spiritual level.  Though we live in what I'd call a blessed land, and we've been sheltered in many ways from the harshness of day-to-day reality in places - such as Afghanistan, which is one of the most impoverished nations on the face of the earth - we still see that life really is as Thomas Hobbes said in his seminal text "Leviathan."  Hobbes wrote in the sixteenth century that when every man is turned against his neighbor and the common welfare is not everyone's goal, then "the life of man (is) solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  Life, even in the U.S. fits that description far too often.

Anyone who knows me knows that I feel this very acutely.  Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you must, but I fear for the future of our world.  It has never truly been different than it is now, but then again we live in a time when we can see the difference.  And in seeing it, we can - and many would argue we must - do something about it.  If you know better, you are compelled by morality to do better.

We know that life does not have to be kill or be killed.  And yet we live in dichotomy.  It is the nature of existence, and has been from the beginning.  But we know better.  Or we believe in a better world.  And this I bring back to "The Hunger Games."  Yes, it is violent.  But the violence is not gratuitous.  It isn't clean and sterile, but it also isn't for pure entertainment (witness slasher films, or their modern equivalent in torture movies such as Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes).  There is a biting reality in the book's descriptions of what is going on.  It says: "This is a tough life."  "It isn't fair."  "It isn't pretty."  "Some people pretend it is, but they are the minority."  And the book asks: "How would you do it differently?"

I have only one last small observation about the book at the moment, and then I'll move on.  I found it interesting that the games' announcer's last name was Temple-Smith.  And "Panam's" president is named "Snow."  And the use of the Rockies for the site of the Capital.  For my LDS readers, think about it.  My wife said she had heard the author was LDS.  What an interesting use of a few small details, don't you think.  One could read more into these things than I would hope was intended.  No, I'm not putting forth any conspiracy theories or anti-Mormon questions by drawing inferences from subtle place/name usage.  But the coincidence is interesting to me, just the same.  Especially when we meet President Snow more closely in Book Two.  But that is a story for another review, when I've finished that book.


Cartoon characterizations of some of the folks found in the Hunger Games series.  Some of these guys look more convincing to me than those we were given in the film.  Especially Snow.  Creepy...  / Source: TheHungerGames.wikia.com


In the final analysis, "The Hunger Games" had a few small annoyances in its style, but the content and the questions it raised were worth the price of admission.  The book touched some valid areas of concern in my soul, and I'm glad for the experience.  I believe that a book that simply informs or simply entertains is only half a book.  A book that speaks to the soul, no matter its source or its original intent, is more complete in my humble opinion.  This book is superficial if you want it to be, but you can ask questions after reading it, and I like that.  So I say it was worth my time.  But I don't recommend it for kids who are too young to understand what they are reading (I'd say mature teens or higher), or for adults who want an excuse to ban books that don't fit their particular schema of how the world works.

 Learn more about "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins on Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Source: Ramascreen.com

In keeping with the theme of this post, here's a bit of Hunger Games-related humor from the all-seeing all-knowing eye of Google.  Talk about keeping it real.  Now that's a line I want to be in!