but like someone posted before, the government has the technology to build force fields and cloaking systems - at least an artificial battleground with controllable and adjustable components can be built. I mean, we already can do things like that today and in a future like that we can't even do something that simple? Just holes in the ground with monsters? really?
Well they completely control the weather, and have a variety of natural disasters on hand, fire, flood etc.
however the simplest answer is, that's what the people in the capitol want to see. The point of the games is a combination of punishment and control for the districts and entertainment for the capitol
So basically, the answer you're giving me is "Hey, we have all this great crap we can throw at them to show how powerful we are but let's just have them run around in the woods for a while" yeah, really interesting watch - it sounds about as interesting as a paintball match
Well, they don't want to kill them. and the very fact that they are able to force all the people to surrender their children is enough of a display of their power.
well, may not kill them but at least use some of this impressive technology to make games interesting, like maybe a massive flood-inducing rainstorm or destroy some areas of the combat zone with fire - force them combatants to get in close instead of separating - heck, even the coliseum would be flooded from time to time to have boat fights
It's possible that they had boat games in one of the Hunger Games, but we only see two Games.
Also the 75 Games (the one in the second book) was much more creative than the first one.
The arena was designed to mimic a clock. For every hour, some form of torture designed by the Gamemakers would be activated in a section of the arena. It was split into 12 sections, each for a different hour of the day. The arena was shaped like a circle and was very small. The Cornucopia was on an island in a large, round pool of salt water. Encircling the water was a jungle. The only fresh water was rainwater stored inside the trees. There were various foods in the arena, including nuts, "tree rats," and shellfish that some tributes cooked by bouncing them off of the forcefield.
12-1 - Bursts of lightning hit a single tree.
1-2 - Blood rains down from the sky.
2-3 - Corrosive fog spreads through the jungle.
3-4 - Orange monkey muttations attack.
4-5 - Jabberjays torture the tributes with their loved ones' screams.
5-6 - Unknown
6-7 - Unknown muttation that rips it's prey apart; Peeta calls it the "Beast".
7-8 - Unknown
8-9 - Unknown
9-10 - Unknown
10-11 - Tidal wave hits the beach.
11-12 - From the sound of clicking, Katniss guesses that it could be insect mutts with pincers.
In my opinion, they're an example of Good Idea, Bad Implementation. The author is heavy-handed (especially towards the end of book 3); she makes excuses for getting her main characters back into the ring (a common trope of continuing "situational" book series that have to find justification for sequels); her characters, while not as poorly written as some, still don't behave very realistically - more like caricatures than characters; and her backstory makes little sense outside of some sort of anti-capitalism-victimization screed.
That said, they're fun light reading. Just don't expect more out of them than out of (say) the Chronicles of Narnia.
My two cents: The main reason why the book is so amazing is because it has a lot of SUSPENSE built into the story. Now, we all know that
the main character seems to always survive until the end.
Yet what drives the book for me was that it actually made you sit back and think about their position. How would you try to live through everything? Would you actually kill others to survive?
Now, before you say "Oh, of COURSE you would kill someone to survive! It's survival instinct!" Not all people are able to deal with it. As you can tell Katniss
goes pretty much mad because she is brought back by all the killing she had done.
What I disliked about the story is other than actually having something else other than tension, the story brings almost nothing else to the table. Trust me, I have tried to read the series again after the first time (I always do with every good series/book) and I was disappointing. I started to notice that the story itself was poorly written starting after the first book.
When you get to the last book:
The author seemed to become lazy with the character development, and was just unwilling to write about all the characters "What happens AFTER the whole shebang is over" story. So she just simply killed them all off.
Overall: Kinda disappointing, but you may enjoy it the first go around.
My opinion: Don't buy it unless more then one person is going to read it. It looses its appeal after the first read-through.
My pleasure from the first book came from three elements.
A) The love story isn't formulaic. It's certainly informed from the love-triangle thing that's so popular with teen girls nowadays (get off my lawn), but it wasn't predictable. I honestly have no idea how the series ends because the protagonist's feelings for the two love interests are complex and fully-developed. So fully developed, in fact, that it deserves its own point.
B) The protagonist is both a sociopath and a good person. You can relate to her about 90% of the time, but that 10% where she's operating off of her concentration-camp survival skills makes her a fascinating character. The way she approaches love in such a frightened way because irrational behavior can get her killed was compelling. And that leads to my next point...
C) The setting was interesting. There is so much set up used so well in such a small amount of words: an interesting and believable dystopian future, a description of the life of the poor and the privileged, a well-fleshed out family dynamic which drives the plot, a tantalizing hint of a future rebellion... and finally, a look at child soldiers from a child's perspective, wrapped in exciting fight scenes and the rich interpersonal relationships of people who are fighting and dying together.
TLDR: I liked it because it was deep. It made me think, it made me feel for the characters, it made me curious to see what would happen next. It did all the things a book should do, without feeling like it was mass produced crap (which the movie did feel like to me).
I didn't particularly like the first book. I read a portion after the movie came out and briefly everyone seemed to talk about the series like it was some profound modern cultural artifact. This was more or less what happened with twilight as well - by the time it penetrated my own normal sphere, the movement was vast and baffling.
That said, the things I didn't care for are relatively minor nitpicks. The society demonstrated was distopian with no obvious control mechanism. The games themselves run contrary to the goals of the government given the notable story of the Minotaur from greek myth (a story that basically demonstrates why this exact scheme is a bad idea in the long run). The story is based around the games themselves and it struggles to actually tell a story throughout save for the "love affair". It is this love bit that bugs me most as the demonstration of the capacity of empathy among those chosen for the games runs contrary to literally everything about the games and the people who appear to participate in them.
In most ways, my problem is with the twin issues of narrative dissonance (what we are shown often conflict with other things we are shown) and fundamental plot holes. While I have some tolerance for plot holes, when they inform the action, the history and the motivations of the characters they present a problem in my view.
Still, since the Hunger Games is like Twilight in that it is designed to appeal to someone other than myself (specifically, teen females I assume) it gets a pass. I don't particularly like it but it is also relatively easy to avoid interaction and thus I am content for it to remain as little more than a notable moment of foreign zeitgeist worthy only of passing consideration.
While I will agree with you on that they both take similar situations but run in different directions for them, I still think it's a very valid comparison, and that Battle Royal was still better. Granted, I've only seen the movie, and only read the first two Hunger Games books, but the one Battle Royal movie was better than the two Hunger Games books. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Hunger Games, they just aren't great or anything.
Ender's Game was a better book to. My point is that you can compare anything to Hunger Games and say if it's better or worse, but using Battle Royal (especially because it is the go to "Hunger Games ripped it off" movie) as a comparison of quality tends to give the impression of "did the same thing but better" at which point people will argue, that it was not actually the same thing at all.
It wasn't the exact same thing, there were some major differences, but it's still a bit more valid than saying something such as Ender's Game(Unless it's Peter's story in the Shadow series, as that did have a lot to do with the individual rising up and being able to take on and even beat the corrupt society. Somewhat, though still many differences, like Hunger Games) because there was simply more similarities between Battle Royal and Hunger Games than differences. The people that say it is the same thing but better are full of it and clearly didn't read one or the other well enough to understand what the writer was trying to get across. My only point is that it is still a valid enough piece to be used in a side by side comparison, like comparing a red delicious apple to a granny smith. They both have they're differences, but they're both still apples.
What I appreciated about The Hunger Games is how undeniably real it is, I've never seen a story before that held less to narrative conventions than to portray events(in a fictional setting) exactly how they would play out with the people involved. Nothing happens it feels because its got good narrative purpose, but instead because thats what Katniss would really do. It catches people out, MovieBob when reviewing the film assumed the districts would eventually rise up and overthrow their oppressors and made fun of the Capitol for deliberating training people in the art of war. This does not happen. The book makes it clear the first thing that would happen if this was tried is that everyone would die because the Capitol have space-age weaponry and the districts have sticks.
But it made me wonder, this is good and it acheives everything it aimed to do (to show exactly how brutal and horrific this situation would be with the permanent long-lasting trauma). But why would I want to read it if it's trying to create an awful emotion?
It took me a long time to think about this question but eventually I came across it in the very last paragraph of the last book
(Contains no plot spoilers but it is the culmination of what this series was about)
I'll tell them how I survive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.
This is what elevates it above any teen novel, and really almost every novel I love purely for entertainment value. It's a message I'll take away, and not accept, but think about and whenever the cruelty of the world is getting me down I can think about this, and it might not solve my problems, but it might be a starting point
BNguyen said:
tangoprime said:
Hate to be this guy... but I liked the Japanese Version better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale
I tried, but all I could think about was how this feels like a stupid SciFi version of Battle Royale, and couldn't get into it. That is all.
I agree, to me, the Hunger Games felt like it was trying to trivialize actual events by turning it into what it is - basically a sci-fi version of gladiators but with children
I was going to quote the person you're quoting but I figure you give a more advanced launch point that is quite interesting.
Still this is still pretty copy and pasted and I might become a little lazy because this is a pretty common discussion, I was thinking about counter-arguments before I'd got to the end of the first book because it was pretty clear it would come up. Also as a starter, I would also like to note that it appears that Susan Collins came upon the idea separately rather than drawing inspiration from Battle Royale. It's not really that wacky of an idea and I believe her, because she doesn't seem the sort of person who would enjoy watching weird ultra violent Japanese films. (Note I haven't read the manga). Lord of the Flies runs with the same concept.
So without more ado
Why The Hunger Games isn't Really Comparable To Battle Royale Even Though It Seems It Should Be
The core idea my argument relies on is that the theme and intent and 'genre' of the book are far more important that the setting and apart from setting, Battle Royale and The Hunger Games share almost nothing. You can like one more than the other, but to directly compare them is akin to saying 'In my opinion, bacon is far superior to apples'. If you disagree with this part, you can pretty much ignore the rest and we'll talk just about this because the rest will be explaining how they share almost nothing in common.
Since we're gamers, this is the easiest tl;dr. Battle Royale is CoD4 (the good one). And The Hunger Games is Spec Ops. The same setting, outwardly the same events. Total different experiences and the latter is pretty much trying to make you feel bad about the same sort of things the former does to make you feel good.
Battle Royale is an exploration of how society breaks down, when certain social boundaries are removed and other enforced, with children in the place of adults both for shock value and the more clearly established social connections you get in a school. It asks the question, how would you change in this situation? It's basically Lord of the Flies with guns. When you watch it, there is a lot of humour and the lot of the violence is over the top and very very cool. It's main purpose is to entertain, but to have depth behind that entertainment because it's interesting all the social intrigue and machinations that come behind such a situation.
The Hunger Games is an exploration of the inate cruelness that lies in all humanity, but of a much more subtle and realistic kind than we'd associate with that term. The cruelness that The Hunger Games focuses on is the apathetic cruelness that allows us to ignore situations and let things slide which we're not personally connected to. Whereas the BR uses the arena to explore how people would change in it, the Hunger Games has the conceit that basically, people don't change in the arena. They bring in exactly what was always with them and instead of asking how we change, it asks who we really are in life? And it's much more focused on people than society at large, in BR it's about alliances and reflections of anarchy and society, in the Hunger Games its about people and how people really behave in general.
Now this is the most important distinction (worth a new paragraph at least =D). Battle Royale sought at it's heart to entertain. This is not the objective of the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games aim is to convey just how brutal this situation would be. It's aim for the same type of engagement as a Holocaust film, rather than being about fun, it's about learning about an uncomfortable aspect of humanity and understanding it a bit better. When someone dies in Battle Royale, it's basically meant to be fun, or stylish or funny etc. The Hunger Games purpose is to make you feel how bad someone dying would actually be and study the trauma that that would cause in people.
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