So its basically like the first movie. Good premise, good actors, potential for some good action with underlining themes/morals to leave us thinking... on execution though, a very average movie. The first movie had 3 main issues, its at odds with itself, while the Heroine is seen as a extension of the people she is fighting for, honorable, valiant to a fault, yet she spends alot of time sulking & being pretty high strung for a "heroine of the people"..
a great setting for action that is supposed to serve as entertainment for the upper class... yet most of it is running and hiding, badly shot shakey cam, or happening offscreen.
the series has the whole extreme idealogies, political underlinings and rather violent novels and yet its a PG13 movie with barely any blood. Aren't we supposed to be getting shocked by children getting gruesomely killed? Pussying out and not showing it (or underplaying it) is counterproductive to the overall message.
I get Movie Bob's issue with the whole conflicting story aspect of "why keep people in poverty if a machine can create all this vegetation and animals", and how hamfisted the whole thing can seem.. but the bigger issues are far more problematic. The movie is at odds with itself!
Battle Royale doesn't have any of those issues, not to mention it had commentary on Japanese society, which eventhough it was about the Japanese school system & the larger society, much of it can be applied to Western society. The divide between the youth and teachers/parents/political figures, and the lengths the elderly go to discipline youth.
The misunderstood youth (ie one random class from one random highschool shipped off to an island) being forced to fight for their lives because of a growing national problem of youth violence, gangs and school shootings. A countries fear coming from within rather than outside forces, and the political climate selling the point that in order to overcome this problem it must force the message to the rest of Japan's school system that youth violence will only lead to their own downfall, while also combating the rising population problem.
Hunger Games substituted this divide with rich vs poor, and the poor being mostly in the form of children. I don't see that as any more or less hamfisted a premise, its just when you paint as the rich being so obviously evil & foppish, it kind drags everything down.
In Battle Royale its more clear from the only adult we can see, that being so absorbed with his work leaves him disconnected from his family... thats where it stems.
Also Battle Royale did something that no other film has for me, it deconstructs the nature of friendships, trust and our views on innocence. The problem of youth is the lack of any real open communication between youth or between youth and adults, but in extreme situations when guns are thrown into the equation, obviously everything is going to come out.
Penetrates the awkwardness/confusion, reveals the undercurrent of crushes/emotions... and by doing so gives them the experiences they need to overcome the reckless abandon of being a youth. The false nature of cliques are stripped away, friends turn on friends when survival is at stake.
The supposed "rebelliousness of youth" that larger society is afraid of, only comes out in 3 students. One that kills for revenge for being bullied, one that kills for mere pleasure and one that only does so in self defence but still does not want to be a part of the school system and hates adults (the 3 that seem slightly older than the rest).
The others seem to be driven to many other reasons, either trying to stay civilised/polite and hiding, suicide,
"killing to survive", or going crazy.
