Escape to the Movies: The Hunger Games

Francisco Aguirre

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Feb 13, 2012
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Sigh, I had a bad feeling about it but I didn't think it would be that bad. And they explain everything in the book, guess it was hard to transfer that without making the dioluge long and dreary. And i need to learn how to spell that...
 

Grabbin Keelz

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Jun 3, 2009
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I've never read the book, nor have I heard of the enormous fanbase of it until recently. I really hope most of this review wasn't just to be cynical towards fans, because I found it a pretty good movie. Until you showed those other examples, I had no idea that so many movies had the same general idea as this one, and I'm sure most other viewers have no idea those other movies even existed. I can see this review being more towards someone with plenty of movie watching experience. And since I'm not big on technical terms, your description of the cinematography translated to 'it was bad'
 

Canadamus Prime

Robot in Disguise
Jun 17, 2009
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BehattedWanderer said:
canadamus_prime said:
Oh boy, it's going to be Eragorn all over again.
That movie. Urgh. One of the greatest series around, and it got a movie that was the equivalent of a hurricane on a small tourist island's economy. Shame, really. A permanent skidmark on the series, unfortunately.
Again clarification: I was referring to the excessive Internet hate that surrounds that movie, not the movie itself.
 

Endocrom

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Apr 6, 2009
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So, Cabin in the Woods isn't about...
people making a horror/snuff film in a holodeck?
 

JMeganSnow

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Aug 27, 2008
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Wow, looks like the film really is a faithful adaptation of the book. I read it yesterday and, geez, if you're going to invent (or steal) a dystopian future, why on earth would you then write a book that focuses primarily on:

1. Describing every meal the protagonist eats, in detail
2. Hair, clothes, fashion, body waxing
3. The protagonist's daddy/abandonment issues
4. Whether or not the protagonist REALLY has feeeelings for the hawt guys in her life.
5. Just general agonizing

Tiresome.
 

BehattedWanderer

Fell off the Alligator.
Jun 24, 2009
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canadamus_prime said:
BehattedWanderer said:
canadamus_prime said:
Oh boy, it's going to be Eragorn all over again.
That movie. Urgh. One of the greatest series around, and it got a movie that was the equivalent of a hurricane on a small tourist island's economy. Shame, really. A permanent skidmark on the series, unfortunately.
Again clarification: I was referring to the excessive Internet hate that surrounds that movie, not the movie itself.
Oh. Well. That's different. Though, in fairness, it was a shitty movie. But from what I understand from the internet, having not read the books, the movie is a fairly faithful adaptation, if slightly less bloody. The Eragon movie chewed up spat out context and bits from the book, and earned it when we hit it with a stick.

A mediocre movie, however, might be different. We might not hate it that much, and instead just be "meh" to it, or hope it gets better for the later installments.
 

Atticus89

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Nov 8, 2010
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JMeganSnow said:
Wow, looks like the film really is a faithful adaptation of the book. I read it yesterday and, geez, if you're going to invent (or steal) a dystopian future, why on earth would you then write a book that focuses primarily on:

1. Describing every meal the protagonist eats, in detail
2. Hair, clothes, fashion, body waxing
3. The protagonist's daddy/abandonment issues
4. Whether or not the protagonist REALLY has feeeelings for the hawt guys in her life.
5. Just general agonizing

Tiresome.
It's satirizing reality TV. Think Jersey Shore or Survivor but with death.
 

BehattedWanderer

Fell off the Alligator.
Jun 24, 2009
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animehermit said:
BehattedWanderer said:
canadamus_prime said:
BehattedWanderer said:
canadamus_prime said:
Oh boy, it's going to be Eragorn all over again.
That movie. Urgh. One of the greatest series around, and it got a movie that was the equivalent of a hurricane on a small tourist island's economy. Shame, really. A permanent skidmark on the series, unfortunately.
Again clarification: I was referring to the excessive Internet hate that surrounds that movie, not the movie itself.
Oh. Well. That's different. Though, in fairness, it was a shitty movie. But from what I understand from the internet, having not read the books, the movie is a fairly faithful adaptation, if slightly less bloody. The Eragon movie chewed up spat out context and bits from the book, and earned it when we hit it with a stick.

A mediocre movie, however, might be different. We might not hate it that much, and instead just be "meh" to it, or hope it gets better for the later installments.
I read the first couple of books before the movie, the movie is only partially faithful with a lot of stuff cut out to make it shorter, a lot of the magic stuff was cut, which was sad because that was the best part of the book. Having said that, the books are no great work of art either, being only severely mediocre at best and being downright awful at worst.
Good to know. I haven't been told by many people that I should read them, so I've kept out of them. Out of curiosity, would you recommend them on their value as a literary series alone?
 

nightwolf667

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Oct 5, 2009
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Atticus89 said:
It's satirizing reality TV. Think Jersey Shore or Survivor but with death.
No, it's not. It's supposed to be, but it isn't. The problem is that there isn't a lot of satirizing going on and it goes about it in the least offensive way possible. Death Race does a better job of satirizing reality TV, and that's about convicts killing each other with cars in a dystopianish future on HBO.

It's a nice little thought to make it socially relevant (or something) but it doesn't pan out. The book can't even support it's own internal logic. It's not really sure what it wants to be and frankly, Katniss isn't really that great a role model. Tamora Pierce is a better friend for all young adult readers.

More on topic: I grew up watching the 1938 version of The Adventures of Robin Hood, the bow stunts in that movie are awesome and no other movie has ever managed to match it. Because firing live arrows at your principle actors is both gutsy and insane!

Also, the things Katniss is said to do with a bow in The Hunger Games are not actually physically possible. The bow is an amazing weapon, unfortunately the book does not honor it's amazingness, it's effectiveness, or it's brutality. Research is the friend of any author, I wish Suzanne Collins would do some. She'd write better books.
 

Cain_Zeros

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Nov 13, 2009
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canadamus_prime said:
Oh boy, it's going to be Eragorn all over again.
Except Eragon was mediocre source material that the movie threw out a lot of the good bits of (while also making everyone human). The Hunger Games in pretty good source material (nothing amazingly unique, but the first-person perspective [at least if I'm remembering correctly] and the characters themselves still made it entertaining) that... Well, I don't really know what if anything the movie changed because I haven't seen it.
 

cidem1324

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Mar 24, 2012
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I have to respectfully disagree with Bob on this one. I feel he's comparing it to other movies too much in a jaded way.

While the movie isn't perfect (the overly shaky camera during the action scenes), the Hunger Games movie was a good adaptation of the book. They did the world-building and emotional scenes very well.
 

teebeeohh

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Jun 17, 2009
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what i have heard so far about this is that it follows the books and thus never leaves catfish jellybean and doesn't tell us a whole lot about who the games actually work for the audience.
oh well i will just watch this when my friend buys the dvd.
 

Ogargd

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Nov 7, 2010
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TO all the people who say he should read the book, that defeats the point of the movie, if your going to bring something into a new medium it should do just a good a job as the book of explaining whats going on.
 

Faux Furry

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Apr 19, 2011
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The whole movie struck me as Kat's Adventures in Mojo-Verse than anything else. Considering that alot of Katniss' success was the result of luck rather than skill, maybe she does have a mutant Luck Factor in common with Longshot. She has better fashion sense than he does (or rather, the gamemakers of the Hunger Games make more sensible costuming choices for the players than Mojo did), but that's about all.

Seeing the real-world audience reaction to young girls in peril show exactly why the premise just isn't the slightest bit believable.
The one thing that any long-term oppressive regime never does is the wide-scale killing of the females among the servant class. No compulsory gladiator game participation for any slave women, no induction of young women into any 'selctive services', not even so much as pretnding to saw a woman in half in a magic show would be countenanced and a bloody revolution would be shortly forthcoming.
Besides that, thoughtlessly killing them off for any reason is generally seen as a waste of the spoils of war.
 

Eric the Orange

Gone Gonzo
Apr 29, 2008
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You better bunk down in the bomb shelter for awhile Bob, I think the fans are camped outside waiting for you to leave.
 

Your once and future Fanboy

The Norwegian One
Feb 11, 2009
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So lets see; Running man, Battle Royale, The Condemned, Ring of Death, the two Reb Brown cage fighting films, too many tv-show episodes (i.e Angel, Justice League,etc), and many, many more.
Yes, the idea of deathmatch for entertainment have been done to death (he he, pun).

The funiest thing is how many reviewers who give the movie posetive reviews and scores like 5 out of 6. A norwegian paper gave it this score, but the funniest thing about the article was this "insighteful" little gem; "The hunger games is something as rare as a character-driven sci-fi movie".

Yes, the main focus in most sci-fi is the setting and world the writers have created, but the film is driven forward by the characters and their struggle. This have been true since Flash-Gordon, Star Wars and Tron to name a few.