I don't get the praise Battle Royal is getting. I find it to be quite mediocre. Sure the concept is pretty cool, but the execution is baad. There is next to no character development in that movie. And when there finally is any it is while the person is dying. "Oh by the way. I am glad you killed me, because I could never kill you, because I love you" *dies*. Come on people. That is just lazy writing.
Escape to the Movies: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
To be fair... they beat the system with trickery... not popular vote and empathy.ImBigBob said:
The movie actually follows the source very well, maybe even better than the first one. So the running around avoiding the other cool tribute veterans and dealing with the horrors of the arena instead were big issues in the book as well. To be honest, it never bothered me while reading, but it definitely stood out more while watching it play out on a visual medium.
One thing I should address about the review:
Anti-gay subtext? Um... No. No, Bob. If the movie is "anti" anything, it is anti-Hollywood, anti-one-percent, anti-doing-disgusting-things-to-your-body-to-achieve-some-semblance-of-what-society-considers-to-be-"beautiful".
Yeah, it's a major reach, Bob. This fact is blatantly obvious to anyone who has any awareness of current-day American culture. So obvious that the fact that your mind even went there says more about you than it does about the movie. Seriously, critique the movie however you want, but don't spread that kind of baseless bullshit around.
One thing I should address about the review:
Anti-gay subtext? Um... No. No, Bob. If the movie is "anti" anything, it is anti-Hollywood, anti-one-percent, anti-doing-disgusting-things-to-your-body-to-achieve-some-semblance-of-what-society-considers-to-be-"beautiful".
Yeah, it's a major reach, Bob. This fact is blatantly obvious to anyone who has any awareness of current-day American culture. So obvious that the fact that your mind even went there says more about you than it does about the movie. Seriously, critique the movie however you want, but don't spread that kind of baseless bullshit around.
Katniss and Peeta didn't get off scot-free. The entire premise of Catching Fire is that they manipulated the capitol into sparing them. Now they have to continue putting on an image, and the capitol decided to force them to go into battle again. It's far from a "happy" ending.DTWolfwood said:Yes but do you remember that the survivors in BR are considered fugitives and are hunted for the rest of their lives, they didn't get rewarded with fame and fortune for disobeying.ImBigBob said:You complain that Hunger Games was a cop-out because two people got to live at the end, then say that Battle Royale is so much better. You remember how Battle Royale ended, right?DTWolfwood said:When i saw the first in the series and the end was they both get to live, i damn near rage flipped a table. Its a complete cop out when the last two alive gets to live when the rule states only ONE gets to survive.
I'm just gonna rewatch Battle Royale again. That movie is just better
Nothing from the first movie made me want to see the second.
Though, I will say that the tone of the ending was changed from the book to the movie. In the movie, it ends with "woo, we survived!" The book has more of a "yeah, you won, but you are SO fucked" vibe to it.
I haven't finished the manga yet... because I bought them when a store stopped wanting to carry manga and put them on sale...franksands said:
I have every single volume except 6... or 8... or something.
I haven't seen Catching Fire yet, but that was my impression as well. Bob's not wrong about some aspects of the books/movies but I think what's really clear is just that Bob doesn't like The Hunger Games. Or, more specifically, he may like some of the ideas and concepts in The Hunger Games but he doesn't like the actual finished product itself. The clear good and evil, the overdone Capital VS District comparisons, the "interesting" characters all dying off screen, etc. are all elements of the source material and are largely executed as they are because of the target audience of the books. Personally, I really enjoyed the books (even though I'm not part of said target audience) and am looking forward to seeing Catching Fire, but I'm not saying the movies/books are good or bad. It's just that they're clearly not what Bob is wanting out of their constituent parts.Andrew Siribohdi said:
I haven't seen the films but I did read the books. It's kind of unfortunate that I went into them with the "its a battle Royal knockoff" mindset. It sounds like the film follows the events of the book quite closely.
The way Katniss was written still confuses me. It's like she was meant to be this total bad-ass, do anything for her family, tough, brave and willing to fight but the way she acts is almost the total opposite. The running and hiding I get, I think the smart thing to do in that senario is to hide and let the others kill each other off and then you, being rested, have the advantage on the guy who just fought 12 other people and flying monkeys. But in everything else she just comes across as kinda pathetic (especially in the later books). Still I'd rather have my young relatives reading/watching her than what's her face from twilight.
The way Katniss was written still confuses me. It's like she was meant to be this total bad-ass, do anything for her family, tough, brave and willing to fight but the way she acts is almost the total opposite. The running and hiding I get, I think the smart thing to do in that senario is to hide and let the others kill each other off and then you, being rested, have the advantage on the guy who just fought 12 other people and flying monkeys. But in everything else she just comes across as kinda pathetic (especially in the later books). Still I'd rather have my young relatives reading/watching her than what's her face from twilight.
I haven't read the books. and to be honest I don't understand what's so special about Lawrence other than she seems to be able to not be a drug addled mess like all other young actors. but I saw the first movie and my girlfriend accidentally bought the third hunger games book off audible a while back. we even tried listening to it on a road trip, got about 20 minutes in before the slog was too much.
I get really angry about series that do what this one does. which is simply to keep doing things TO the protagonist and having her basically refuse to go along with anything be the default reaction. like we were listening to the 3rd book, where all the important stuff should be happening, and you know what we got. a lot of talk about how the revolutionaries are just using her as a symbol and she's not happy about it but she's not doing anything about it either. and I guess in the 3rd book one of her love interests is dead. like dead dead, and she is still doing the back and forth of who does she really care for.... it's process of elimination sweetheart you only have one choice left. yet she agonizes over it. she gets caught up in all these different goings on but steadfastly refuses to participate one way or the other. I know if she was all gung ho about killing we wouldn't be supposed to like her but there comes a point in every show/movie/book/whatever that the main character has to make an active decision to participate in their own story in order to be the master of their own fate and get things done on their terms. and as far as I can tell katniss,(ugh) never gets to that point. it's just freaking boring.
also do this day favorite joke on hunger games "it's like running man without Arnold Schwarzenegger." Which if you haven't seen running man do yourself a favor and go watch it, before or after hunger games it's still a vastly superior movie.
I get really angry about series that do what this one does. which is simply to keep doing things TO the protagonist and having her basically refuse to go along with anything be the default reaction. like we were listening to the 3rd book, where all the important stuff should be happening, and you know what we got. a lot of talk about how the revolutionaries are just using her as a symbol and she's not happy about it but she's not doing anything about it either. and I guess in the 3rd book one of her love interests is dead. like dead dead, and she is still doing the back and forth of who does she really care for.... it's process of elimination sweetheart you only have one choice left. yet she agonizes over it. she gets caught up in all these different goings on but steadfastly refuses to participate one way or the other. I know if she was all gung ho about killing we wouldn't be supposed to like her but there comes a point in every show/movie/book/whatever that the main character has to make an active decision to participate in their own story in order to be the master of their own fate and get things done on their terms. and as far as I can tell katniss,(ugh) never gets to that point. it's just freaking boring.
also do this day favorite joke on hunger games "it's like running man without Arnold Schwarzenegger." Which if you haven't seen running man do yourself a favor and go watch it, before or after hunger games it's still a vastly superior movie.
"Kids chosen by lottery to kill each other."Winnosh said:
That's three things distinct to these two... and that's just the basic premise. Pretty sure they have much more in common.
But you know what they don't have in common? Being awesome, which, Battle Royale is and the Hunger Games is not.
The Hunger Games as killing clouds to keep them moving.wulf3n said:
Battle Royale has zones where their collars explode to keep them moving.
Same idea.
I can't understand why they introduce potential characters that could lead to an awesome fight only to have them die off screen. It's like somebody buying the best sports cars in history only to leave them in a garage. You got all that horse power, man! Let them out of the stable once in awhile.
Oh, well. Just another reason to not see this movie.
Oh, well. Just another reason to not see this movie.
That's actually incorrect.Mr. Q said:
The ones that are shown to be awesome fighters die on screen, or aren't implied to have died. The ones that die off screen barely get a second of exposition if any at all. Having said that the fights are quick and anti-climactic which to me is more realistic, but they're not for everyone.
"I wanted to see more cool deaths and fighting" (paraphrased)
... that's kind of missing the point right?
... that's kind of missing the point right?
Eh, kind of agree with Bob here. I love the book series but they don't translate all that well into movie form, and I think I have a theory on why. The main reason why the movies feel kind of dull is that the things that should be exciting like watching people kill eachother for sport is pretty anticlimactic and most of it consists of just hiding. And in the books, that's kind of the whole point. It's not an action series it's a survival series. The fun comes from the tension of not knowing who you can trust, who or what will jump out behind the next tree and what the sadistic overlords controlling everything will throw at you just to make you die in a way that will draw the a lot of ratings. When there is action it is usually quick, blurry and messy. That works fine in text form because then we can get internal monologues to show what Katniss is thinking to make the tension rise. On screen on the other hand, all that waiting is just...waiting.
As for the movie itself, I still kind of liked it. It was a faithful adaption of the book, and overall it felt better than the first one. The acting works fine, the scenery is much more visually interesting than it was the first time around, the action is more exciting (what little of it there is) and thankfully there is no shaky cam. Not great, but it held my interest all the way through.
As for the movie itself, I still kind of liked it. It was a faithful adaption of the book, and overall it felt better than the first one. The acting works fine, the scenery is much more visually interesting than it was the first time around, the action is more exciting (what little of it there is) and thankfully there is no shaky cam. Not great, but it held my interest all the way through.