The Hunger Games - Rating 6/7
If anyone asked me what was the story of The Hunger Games my answer would have been "24 teenagers battling to death in a jungle until only one remains". After watching the film I think this answer is right and wrong at the same time. Right because this seems to grab the attention of your listener rather quickly and wrong because they don't start killing until the second half. Well, what happens in the first half then? The first half is about how and why these teenagers are chosen to kill each other and the circumstances surrounding about why and for what purpose these games are created.
This movie talks about various points of views of this event as seen from the inhabitants of The Capitol where the hunger games are held, the tributes (teenagers) who are brought from 12 districts of Panem the country where the movie is set, previous winner of the hunger games who is assigned with the task of mentoring Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark of district 12 and more individual observations that seems to be mirror the class differences of our own present times.
Fighting the critic in me: One year ago, I read Suzanne Collins book The Hunger Games and I have to concede that I was impressed by the book. The only thing which won my admiration was Collins narration of the story entirely from the first person view of Katniss Everdeen. And then I heard they were making a movie, which brought the critic out like a boss. Until the moment I walked into theater my boss ego kept going "They will screw up the movie big time. There is no way they can capture the book in the way it was written and this will be another franchise for the twilight bitches." Watching jennifer Lawrence bringing the character to life is the only reason I would be interested going again for seconds. The film was very faithful to it's book and didn't pull any punches.
Fighting other movies: Another reason which my boss ego was vehemently betting against this movie was because of the overworked storyline which seems to be used more times than my friend saying "This is the last fag". The major contender is the Japanese film Battle Royale where the no of players is upped to 40. My only argument in defending THG is that while Battle Royale is more about group dynamics and keeping a birds eye view on the whole, THG invests screen time only on our protagonist. There have been others like The Condemned, The Death Race, Logans Run, Lord of the Flies which deal with similar story lines.
Fighting the fans : For this I was thinking of an analogy...
Building up the fanbase for THG must have been the same as campaigning for President of US. On the right we have all the dumb and stupid people a.k.a the twilight fans who could be persuaded with a simple "This is the new twilight(I refuse to use CAPS for twilight)". In the center we have the Independents like myself, who made curious with the trailer and the book to film period which was rather short. On the left are democrats who are proud fans of HP series reeling under the loss of beloved series with the promise of a bold new series tailor made for them. The campaign ignored the Tea party people generally meaning old people who were better put to use as a vessel for carrying the 13 year old's to the theater.
Even though all the above bull shit doesn't amount to shit, this movie did what films were supposed to do - Forgetting everything outside the screen for two hours.
