Escape to the Movies: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Winnosh

New member
Sep 23, 2010
492
0
0
wulf3n said:
Draconalis said:
wulf3n said:
Not really, Hunger Games is more Spartacus meets the Day after Tomorrow.
The Hunger Games as killing clouds to keep them moving.

Battle Royale has zones where their collars explode to keep them moving.

Same idea.
I'm not saying there aren't similarities, the "games" of the hunger games are simply a plot device for the revolution story.
Yes the titular Hunger Games is only a very small part of the story. It's a catalyst that gets the plot going but not what the actual story is about.
 

Metalrocks

New member
Jan 15, 2009
2,406
0
0
had a feeling it might be like the first one. me and my wife dint like the4 first one either when we watched it in the cinema. so i think i would just rent the movie once its available. already other movies im more interested in.
 

Farther than stars

New member
Jun 19, 2011
1,228
0
0
I haven't seen either of the films and I don't really plan to, so can anyone confirm this: Donald Sutherland is 'the good guy among the bad guys with the least make-up', right?
 

xaszatm

That Voice in Your Head
Sep 4, 2010
1,146
0
0
Shoggoth2588 said:
About that bump at the end concerning Frozen...I'd gathered from the trailers that the movie is probably going to be crap...is Bob implying that it isn't or is he saying the trailers make it look a lot better than it actually is? I'm also surprised Bob didn't have a final "Happy 22nd" bump featuring a picture of Cat-Kigu-Mario or something.
What I can figure from other reviews, people are comparing Frozen to the movies from Disney's Renaissance (Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, etc.). Critics seem to REALLY like this film.

OT: Yeah, I got that vibe as well. Catching fire does seem really pointless.
 

Razorback0z

New member
Feb 10, 2009
363
0
0
I only saw the first one for the first time 2 nights ago on TV. Glad I didn't bother wasting money on seeing it at the movies. Poorly made, weak storyline, annoying main characters and most disturbing of all... Its a movie about teenagers killing each other I mean wtf?? If it was a move about them having sex it would have never been made. Not a single boobie in the whole movie. The only difference between these movies and Salo, everyone keeps their clothes on. One is banned in 154 countries, the other is mainstream entertainment.

People are firkin weird....
 

Plinglebob

Team Stupid-Face
Nov 11, 2008
1,815
0
0
Camaranth said:
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.
Third book spoilers follow:
I think the point of the third book is to show that while this sort of character may come off as being really cool, they're really not in the grand scheme of things. The third book is pretty much her going from being a big fish in a small pong to a big fish in the ocean with a bunch of sharks and and does a good job of slowly deconstructing the "Lone Warrior" archetype.

BrotherRool said:
"I wanted to see more cool deaths and fighting" (paraphrased)

... that's kind of missing the point right?
Considering how the first film shows surviving is more then just killing others and that death really isn't nice or fun, Bobs desire to see more people die onscreen definitely shows he's not paying attention with these films.
 

Paradoxrifts

New member
Jan 17, 2010
917
0
0
Got halfway through the first book before giving up on it. To put it succinctly; I really don't care for novels wherein the main character starts off as an unlikable little shit, and then learns to be a not quite so unlikable little shit. And I've heard nothing about the movies that has made me want to go and see them.
 

wulf3n

New member
Mar 12, 2012
1,394
0
0
Farther than stars said:
I haven't seen either of the films and I don't really plan to, so can anyone confirm this: Donald Sutherland is 'the good guy among the bad guys with the least make-up', right?
No, it's a new guy played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
 

Tono Makt

New member
Mar 24, 2012
537
0
0
Silverspetz said:
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.
Another part of the fun in the books is that literally everything is from Katniss. If she doesn't see it, hear it, pay attention to it or think about it... it's not in the book. Why don't we have descriptions for most of the tribute deaths? Because Katniss isn't there to see it. Why is the world the way it is? Katniss has no idea and it's not important for her to know. She's a teenager who's in way, way, way over her head and she's doing everything she can to survive.

It makes her seem like a much more realistic character - she's not a bad-ass chick carving her way through other tributes with her bows and arrows, she's a country girl who made a snap decision to save her sister from death and has no idea how to deal with it. She screws up, she gets lucky, she does the right thing at the wrong time, she does the wrong things at the wrong time and has the misfortune of being in the middle of an extremely dangerous love triangle. A love triangle that I'm sure many women have found themselves embroiled in something similar in their own lives. (Girl A wants Person B. Person B wants Girl A. (probably. maybe.) Person C wants Girl A. Girl A barely knows Person C is alive. For the most part this becomes a "How does Girl A let Person C down? Gently and compassionately, quickly and succinctly, slowly and painfully, etc.?", but if suddenly Girl A's life literally depends on her looking like she's in love with Person C...?)

As for the wrong thing at the wrong time, think about how a poor (yet photogenic in some way) girl in America would react if she happened to be thrust into the spotlight of American media and politics in September of this year and she blurted out "Just shut down the government - it's not working anyway." Then follow everything from her point of view, with only the information she has at her disposal to base decisions from.
 

Silverspetz

New member
Aug 19, 2011
152
0
0
Draconalis said:
Winnosh said:
That would be relevant if the two things had anything in common other than people fighting to the death.
"Kids chosen by lottery to kill each other."

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.
Didn't you just say that you haven't even tried the Hunger Games? How do you know it isn't awesome?

Anyway, I'm really kind of tired of the constant comparing between the two, I know it's unavoidable given the obvious surface similarities but whenever I hear someone say that HG is a "ripoff" or just a poorer version of BR, it kind of pisses me off. They both have the same premise (kids killing each other for a tv-show) but no one looks at the execution of this premise nearly enough. The thing about these two franchises is that they are both satirical works but the target of that satire is completely different. BR is a political satire that mocks the school system of the time and the politicians who established it. You see this an a ton of things like how it is a school class that is picked to fight, how they were picked because their grades were low, how they start the match in a school and how their teacher is overseeing the whole damn thing. The Hunger games on the other hand is a social satire mocking the popularity of shows like American Idol that thrives on seeing people fail just as much as seeing people succeed. We see this in the obvious interviews intended to boost the participant's popularity, how they need sponsors in order to stand a chance and how putting on a tragic love story earns Katniss and Peeta points.

My point is, they are not that similar just because they have the exact same premise. It's what they do with it that counts.
 

rbstewart7263

New member
Nov 2, 2010
1,246
0
0
lord.jeff said:
The whole make up things isn't any different then what a lot of movies and Star Trek have done with facial hear, you're looking far to much into a simple visual queue.
the make up is about decadence and overdoing it to the point that your unrecognizable as a human. not about gay or trans people or some such.
 

Draconalis

Elite Member
Sep 11, 2008
1,586
0
41
Silverspetz said:
Didn't you just say that you haven't even tried the Hunger Games? How do you know it isn't awesome?
Because it just can't compete... obviously.

Silverspetz said:
but no one looks at the execution
Funny you should mention the execution. I just watched a video about the two that informed me of how long it took for each movie to get to the kids killing kids aspect.

Hunger Games: 66 minutes

Battle Royale: 18 minutes, and two kids are kill before the game even started.
 

1337mokro

New member
Dec 24, 2008
1,503
0
0
I actually got REALLY excited about those characters and the GIGANTIC possibilities for epic fights with these kinds of how shall I say it Mortal Kombat characters.

This could have been so fucking awesome, but I guess it once again proves that you can rip of Battle Royale all you want you can never make it half way as interesting and engaging when you write it for tweens.
 

matsy

New member
Nov 19, 2009
21
0
0
Am I the only one who thought that review warranted a bit of a spoiler warning? Usually Bob is much more circumspect :/
 

Flunk

New member
Feb 17, 2008
915
0
0
I think it would actually be funnier to say that characters actual names, they're stupid enough to be jokes unto themselves.
 

VikingKing

New member
Sep 5, 2012
78
0
0
This movie and Elysium both present the wealthy as being possessed of technology that renders traditional models of workforce composition ineffective and costly. But they exist anyhow to create that social commentary.

Frankly, when your hypothetical situation doesn't even make sense within the context of your own story, you had best go back and produce a motivation for your villains that isn't just 'I like being a jerk.' and nothing else.
 

Ashley Blalock

New member
Sep 25, 2011
287
0
0
rbstewart7263 said:
lord.jeff said:
The whole make up things isn't any different then what a lot of movies and Star Trek have done with facial hear, you're looking far to much into a simple visual queue.
the make up is about decadence and overdoing it to the point that your unrecognizable as a human. not about gay or trans people or some such.
Silverspetz said:
Draconalis said:
Winnosh said:
That would be relevant if the two things had anything in common other than people fighting to the death.
"Kids chosen by lottery to kill each other."

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.
Didn't you just say that you haven't even tried the Hunger Games? How do you know it isn't awesome?

Anyway, I'm really kind of tired of the constant comparing between the two, I know it's unavoidable given the obvious surface similarities but whenever I hear someone say that HG is a "ripoff" or just a poorer version of BR, it kind of pisses me off. They both have the same premise (kids killing each other for a tv-show) but no one looks at the execution of this premise nearly enough. The thing about these two franchises is that they are both satirical works but the target of that satire is completely different. BR is a political satire that mocks the school system of the time and the politicians who established it. You see this an a ton of things like how it is a school class that is picked to fight, how they were picked because their grades were low, how they start the match in a school and how their teacher is overseeing the whole damn thing. The Hunger games on the other hand is a social satire mocking the popularity of shows like American Idol that thrives on seeing people fail just as much as seeing people succeed. We see this in the obvious interviews intended to boost the participant's popularity, how they need sponsors in order to stand a chance and how putting on a tragic love story earns Katniss and Peeta points.

My point is, they are not that similar just because they have the exact same premise. It's what they do with it that counts.
I think there is a really big difference between kill your classmates and kill some strangers some of which are older than you and some younger. So yea while there are so many things in common between the two films there are also key elements that make the two films very different.

It's sort of like when people compared The Raid Redemption with Dredd. Yea some elements that are the same like being trapped in a building where an evil person rules the building, but enough that is different to get two very different films out some of the same basic ideas.
 

TheDrunkNinja

New member
Jun 12, 2009
1,875
0
0
Draconalis said:
Silverspetz said:
Didn't you just say that you haven't even tried the Hunger Games? How do you know it isn't awesome?
Because it just can't compete... obviously.
Why are you demanding that they compete?
Draconalis said:
Funny you should mention the execution. I just watched a video about the two that informed me of how long it took for each movie to get to the kids killing kids aspect.

Hunger Games: 66 minutes

Battle Royale: 18 minutes, and two kids are kill before the game even started.
Indeed you are correct in that assessment. If your sole interest in the movie is to watch children die, then between the two films, Battle Royale is the movie for you.
 

uchytjes

New member
Mar 19, 2011
969
0
0
Because I'm bored, I'm going to attempt explaining this film without having yet seen it and without having read the final book as of yet.

1. The cliffhanger "see you in the sequel" ending

Assuming the movie follows the book, the story will end with a promise of a sequel. This is because the story follows a very simple formula for trilogies. In the first piece, write a self-contained story that doesn't guarantee a sequel, but is open enough for one to happen. Next, have a story that has plenty of new characters, new locations, and moves the plot along to where it sets up the last part. The most simple example of this in action is the original trilogy of Star Wars.

2. Class warfare

The Hunger Games is about, very simply, class warfare. The poor dying for the rich's amusement. How you can get anything else from that I don't know, but that is is what it is about. Its not about hating liberals, its not about hating conservatives, its not about religion, its not even really about slavery (although, I can see where that one came from). It is about the rich and powerful becoming so disconnected with the poor and the poor simply accepting their fate rather than fighting it (at least, until the plot came along).

3. The Fashions

A spin off of the class warfare bit, the fashion difference between the poor and rich isn't just to designate good and bad. The reason the poor are dressed like that isn't to make you feel sorry for them, it is because that is either all they can afford to do or they simply don't have time to spend on being fashionable. The reason the rich dress like that is because they DO have the time to spend on it and rather than sitting around being bored, they instead decide to find their hobbies.