What did you think of the Hunger Games movie (SPOILERS)

[BaronUberstein]

Boring, characters weren't interesting. While my memory of it is a little fuzzy by now, I still have this overall feeling that it was more "waaah why am I in this situation waaaaaah cry cry cry", and I personally dislike movies where the protagonists spend all their time bitching instead of solving the problem. I mean, they establish the character as some kind of super-archer and such, and then she spends the entire movie hiding, crying, and being all "woe is me".

The setting was neat though. I really liked the computer-controlled arena and such.

 

[Krantos]

I think it needed to have the main character narrate, like she does in the book. It would have allowed them to fill in a lot of gaps that the movie didn't cover. For example, you don't really get a feel for how horrible life in the districts is. You also don't get the feeling like the main characters are starving.

There's a lot of background details that don't come across in the movie at all, and I think are going cause confusion in later movies.

Oh, and the director needed to learn what the fuck a tripod is. I like the Bourne movies and this was WAAY too much shaky cam.

 

[xplosive59]

Terrible, no character development nor emotional involvement, I couldn't of given less of a shit when Rue died and there was no reason to dislike the main bad guy as his only claim to infamy was "He is trained in killing and he is a bit of a dick".

 

[V TheSystem V]

They got the casting right, the extra stuff they added in giving the Capitol more depth was good, and it was true to the book.

However, I didn't like it.

The cinematography was DIRE. Films shouldn't make the viewer dizzy from the camera moving sporadically (is that the right word) unless they are found footage films. Is The Hunger Games a found footage film? NO!

I read the books before seeing the film and I really enjoyed them (bar pre-games in Catching Fire and the last 100 or so pages of Mockingjay). There is one thing key to the books - violence. Panem is a violent, violent place to live, and the Hunger Games relishes violence. So...why wasn't there much of it shown in the film? I know they were going for the 12A rating for money, but the violence lacked impact. Pulling away from the violence when the killing blow is about to connect with a victim and turning to Katniss running (and believe me, she does a LOT of running) doesn't make me invested in the victim of the violence, and it doesn't make me hate the killer even more. Hell, I can't even remember who killed who in the film because the camera work was so, so shoddy.

And the film drags. Dear God, it drags, and I don't even know why! I think it may have something to do with the lack of soundtrack (seriously, where the hell was the music in the first hour?) but it's not right for a film that bases its whole premise on a dystopian society and violence to be this dull.

Don't get me wrong, the good stuff was good, it's just the film ended up as sub-par. Woody Harrelson did not deserve this, he's freaking Tallahassee!

 

[lRookiel]

The books were better. ALOT better, still it wasn't too bad. :3

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Firstly, the main character is a total Mary Sue. The first act of the film is spent painting her as this uber-dedicated girl who not only has a hot boyfriend and is able to shoot a deer with Legolas-like accuracy, she's also the emotional foundation of her family, and the one who raised her sister. If you look at the first act with a critical eye, you realise that this girl has no flaws whatsoever. She's supposed to be in this dirt-poor environment where everyday is a struggle, but somehow she's still a champion of moral virtue and a tracker-hunter of unsurpassed skill. She comes straight from the Twilight school of writing.

Piss poor adaptation from the books is the problem here. Book Katniss is a selfish, paranoid, manipulative, socially and emotionally remote girl who spends half the first book dehydrated, concussed, burned, and otherwise seriously injured. The tracker/hunter bit and archery is admittedly something of a silly conceit, but her personality is seriously whitewashed for the film. It's unfortunate, because I actually enjoyed the character of Katniss in the books specifically because she WASN'T a Mary Sue. She came across as extremely vulnerable, and her selfish teenage personality read as very genuine. Almost all of that is lost in the film, save what little Lawrence is able to convey through the quality of her performance.

So all in all, not a terrible film, but Battle Royale did practically everything in this film first, and did it better. It's a tenser, more brutal, more horrifying film. One that takes the initial concept and turns it into a proper punch to the gut, while still managing to keep some dark comedy in there for good measure.

Battle Royale is, indeed, a better film, but I wouldn't call it a good film by any measure, or a punch to the gut. It was a cult hit and I view it as an entertaining curiosity, but I certainly didn't leave it feeling like I'd just been exposed to great cinema or a harrowing piece of social commentary. Hunger Games is a bland adaptation of a fitfully decent series of books that rather adroitly manages to cut out almost everything that made the books interesting or worthwhile, so it's a fairly low bar for Battle Royale to clear.

 

[JoeCool385]

I hated it. Not because it was bad, but because, I realized, it was true. I think the first scene to make me angry (not at the movie, mind), was when Katniss, who has been established as poor and hungry, steps into the train to find it full of more food than's she likely ever seen. I realized two things: 1) there are many, many people in the world who are struggling far more than fictional Katniss did, and 2) I, like most first-worlders, have enough money to buy all the food in that train and throw it away.

It kinda went downhill from there.

Regarding the games, I began wondering how easily our society would justify that. Violence happens all the time in our world, most of the time without our knowing. Most of the time, we don't want to know. And in those rare occasions when we do find out about it, we either a) fumble around trying to fix it and end up making it worse, or b) justify it because we get something out of it in return.

I think what elevated Hunger Games in my mind from mediocre popcorn flick to scathing social commentary was this video:


Half-way through, being a priest, he launches into a commentary about how Christianity has the answer, which of course will be controversial here. Please try to restrain yourselves and not derail the topic. We all know his opinion is out of the main stream.