Escape to the Movies: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Elf Defiler Korgan

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There was a lot of tip-toeing around from Bob, and he finally let it out.

His politics has got in the way. He doesn't like the urbanites (tremendously appearance obsessed with some clearly gay to our eyes) being the bad guys, and the salt of the earth being more decent and more human.

Rurals can be crude, prejudiced and prone to brawling, but for me the urbanites of a totalitarian system actually fit as bad guys. Hoarding all the resources, playing up the Roman death games, obsessed with fashion and appearance. There is a critique of effete culture in there and an association with evil, but as a rural who headed to the city the simplification strikes me as possible in storytelling. The upper classes in the hunger games are not nice, they are vain, petty enthusiasts of reality tv and watching the suffering of the less fortunate. The urbanites as the bad guys does not feel like such a stretch. That is the setup, but Bob has a problem with the world building.

Bob is really torn with these movies and votes them down here I think because of the critical tone towards urbanites and stereotyped garish LGBT groups. There have been points made by others that the effete urbans are implied to be homosexual and it is wrong that they are cast as the bad guys. This restricts Bob's thinking here, he can't get away from what he has read and he doesn't like this idea at all.

The cities are meant to be the sight of progress (for progressive groups, in contrast to more traditional rural areas), and Bob does not like a different narrative to this being conveyed in film.
 

Amir Kondori

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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 cue.
I rather you think you are looking far too shallowly. Movies are a visual medium and they convey a lot of their meaning this way, through the use of imagery and symbolism. Commercial movies do this, indie movies do this, good movies do this well and bad movies do this poorly.

I guarantee you there was intent in every shot of this movie.
 

kingmob

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This is what happens when you stay too close to the source material. Books can not be adapted properly by sticking to them too strictly, it hardly ever works.

Also, since I actually read the books for some reason, I suggest people shouldn't get their hopes up for the third movie (the books manage to really turn to shit there).
 

Ukomba

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Bob, the the reason you're having such trouble liking the movie is because it isn't a leftwing ows movie. They are rebelling against an all controlling, hedonistic, socialist government, not some rich corporation/person. Corporations might not even exist in this world. It better fits the tea party, sorry. ;)
 

S1leNt RIP

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I think the aspect of the subtext that everyone is missing is that even those of the Capitol are victims (to a reasonable extent) of this system that has been set up by the ruling class. It's actually not Capitol vs Districts! It was always (from my perspective) President Snow vs the Districts. His main approach was to fragment the Capitol and districts from ever realizing that they were more alike than any of them realized. It starts to come out in the second and third books that the Capitol citizens are being awakened from their slumber, their moral stupor that renders them flaccid and ineffectual as REAL human beings. And THAT is where I think the power of the message comes from. I see the Capitol as the United States, or even just as "Me"...the 1%. No I don't make a lot of money, but compared to Africa and South America, we are ALL the one percent living with more luxury than we know what to do with. WE (seriously all of us, Bob, you, that guy over there...) are the Capitol at the party, eating and throwing it back up with our Roman opulence. We don't care about anyone but ourselves, and our media helps with that. They turn our minds from things that are important, and redirect them right back onto ourselves, our "reality tv" and our sports. The West is the Capitol, too blind and hedonistic to see anyone else or care about anyone else.

There is real suffering happening around the world and yet we only focus on ourselves. Compassion...there's a word. It means to co-suffer. To put aside your comfort and luxury and co-suffer with another person. You do NOT have compassion when you give $5 to some homeless guy if five bucks is nothing to you. Sending $20 overseas to help with Tsunami relief isn't compassion, it's just morally comforting.
We are the Capitol, and our ruling class is making sure we continue the system. Work in the mines, do retail, pump oil in the machine. :(
It's pretty sad.
 

deathzero021

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I agree with everything, except I do think they are good movies. They are not great movies though, they are not amazing movies or a must-see. They're slightly above average if only for the themes and the world, as well as some good characters and minor development. The action is completely down-played, which i don't mind since i'm not a fan of action anyway but even still, there never seems to be much of a strong climax in this movie. I feel there is so much more they could have done with this that they didn't do. There is also a lot left unsaid about the world they live in, a lot of plot holes start to form due to this missing information. I think they should stop focusing solely on Katniss and give a little more camera time for exposition and other characters (especially the more interesting characters)
 

sageoftruth

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Tough decision. I haven't seen the first one yet, and I don't feel like part of the target market, but everyone on Roger Ebert and Rotten tomatoes, is highly praising it, and it's I about time I finally admitted that my standards for movies aren't very high. Maybe I'll read the books first and see what I think then.
 

wulf3n

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uanime5 said:
Why do they need a working class when they have complete control over animals? Why not use the animals as their working class or control the working class in the same way?
What makes you think they have "complete control"? Most of what they do can be achieved with basic training, doesn't mean they can start farming or mining for coal.
 

Gxas

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wulf3n said:
uanime5 said:
Why do they need a working class when they have complete control over animals? Why not use the animals as their working class or control the working class in the same way?
What makes you think they have "complete control"? Most of what they do can be achieved with basic training, doesn't mean they can start farming or mining for coal.
Basic training can't conjure up animals out of thin air like they do in the movies. (Granted, I've only seen the first thus far, but those dogs were literally just thought up and made on the spot)
 

omega 616

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I've seen the obvious comparison to this film, Battle Royale and I have to say that is a much better film. Hunger games (not having seen this one) is very Hollywood, especially with the love thang.

It is a story about a group of kids who get sent off to some place to kill each other and only one walks away, that sounds like a fucking horror film. These Hunger games movies have all the violence off screen and cheesy love scenes on camera.

In the first film they are killing, mostly off screen (you see a girl stung to death and some blood squirts) and chasing/surviving, then (as I now like to call her) Catfish Jellybean stumbles across her district partner, where she carries him to a cave so the tenderness can happen. "leave me!" ... "I won't leave you here!" *que caressing the cheek, moving hair out the face, "you're putting cream on my leg but I am looking loving at you" scene* ... in the middle of a bubble of death! It's like the under age, out of wedlock soft core porn in Friday the 13th films but scaled back.

These films should be about 1 girl from the worst district (sounds like bleach, don't it?), managing to survive the hunger games! Not setting up the next twilight franchise.
 

LadyTiamat

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Andrew Siribohdi said:
A fair review. In defence of the source material, I think most of the faults (such as the characters getting killed off-screen) are stemmed from the original source material; this seems to be a closer adaptation than the first one was.
The movie was too truthful to the books: they could have made it much more interesting action wise. Glad they fleshed out president snow's character though.
 

wulf3n

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Gxas said:
wulf3n said:
uanime5 said:
Why do they need a working class when they have complete control over animals? Why not use the animals as their working class or control the working class in the same way?
What makes you think they have "complete control"? Most of what they do can be achieved with basic training, doesn't mean they can start farming or mining for coal.
Basic training can't conjure up animals out of thin air like they do in the movies. (Granted, I've only seen the first thus far, but those dogs were literally just thought up and made on the spot)
The scene with the dogs can be interpreted in several ways. I just watched the scene after my post [had to confirm what I said :p] and it never specifically states they were created then and there.

There's a scene where a technician appears to be designing the dog, and the game supervisor says something like "Yeah that's good", but she could have just selected the dog from a list of animals they have.

As for them appearing out of thin air it never actually shows them spawning, so it could just as easily be they were in a holding cell under the arena.

It's probably explained better in the book which may confirm or deny either position, but I haven't read them.
 

Darken12

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I think going to see The Hunger Games for the violence/action is pretty much the most ironic missing of the point you can possibly make.

That is literally the way the Capitol treats the hunger games, they too would be disappointed they didn't get to see some good old-fashioned slaughter.

That's pretty much not what the story is about. The story is about class warfare, totalitarian regimes, celebrity culture, "bread and circuses" and, from the second installment onwards, the systematic destruction of the psyches of Katniss, Peeta and Gale, and their descent into absolute madness. The last installment (which is going to be divided into a two-parter because that's just the way Hollywood rolls now) is about the three main characters slowly spiralling into absolute insanity, particularly for Katniss (though Peeta isn't far behind), and how, by the end, her mind is roughly 90% trauma.

I think the marketing for these movies needs to stop trying to sell it as an "edgy action movie for teens" and start selling them as "futuristic version of your usual depressing war movie, with teens".
 

Tentaquil

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I'm engaged in the Hungry Games right now. An epic battle between worthy contenders for the grand prize.



I'm making a sandwich.
 

heroicbob

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im guessing the reason everyone dies in these movies off screen or through the use of smash cuts is to lower the rating but then that begs the question of why they are making these movies at all
 

DementedSheep

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wulf3n said:
Gxas said:
wulf3n said:
uanime5 said:
Why do they need a working class when they have complete control over animals? Why not use the animals as their working class or control the working class in the same way?
What makes you think they have "complete control"? Most of what they do can be achieved with basic training, doesn't mean they can start farming or mining for coal.
Basic training can't conjure up animals out of thin air like they do in the movies. (Granted, I've only seen the first thus far, but those dogs were literally just thought up and made on the spot)
The scene with the dogs can be interpreted in several ways. I just watched the scene after my post [had to confirm what I said :p] and it never specifically states they were created then and there.

There's a scene where a technician appears to be designing the dog, and the game supervisor says something like "Yeah that's good", but she could have just selected the dog from a list of animals they have.

As for them appearing out of thin air it never actually shows them spawning, so it could just as easily be they were in a holding cell under the arena.

It's probably explained better in the book which may confirm or deny either position, but I haven't read them.
Na it actually worse in the books because they also resemble the tributes who died and have their eyes somehow. So they must have been made after the tributes were selected at the earliest.