I watched “The Hunger Games” on Monday, and I was quite taken by it…
Not by the movie itself, but the idea behind the movie. First rant: when will directors stop with the shake-cam take on action? It serves no purpose… if they’re aiming for a “real” feel to it, maybe don’t cut down on the blood and guts? Just saying, it’s annoying watching a movie and all the action scenes are just a jumble mess of things on screen… It’s not real, it’s not visceral, it might have been fun the first 3 or 4 times you saw it in a movie, but enough is enough…
For those that don’t know, “The Hunger Games” is based on the first book of a series of novels called “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. I’m not going to say I read the books before I watched the movie, because I never knew of the books before, to be honest (which apparently is a terrible thing to do amongst the nerd nation).
Although the movie has tremendous flaws (the aforementioned shake-cam, the plot pieces that don’t go anywhere, the lack of background about the story-world), it picked my interest enough to consider picking up the books…
The movie takes place in a dystopian society where some provinces of a larger domain tried to rebel against their masters. After being defeated, their punishment was to deliver every year two people to compete in a type of fight-to-the-death televised show.
It’s a bit silly, I admit… As crowd control measures go, this one is pretty rotten… Still, that’s the setting, and what happens in the movie seems like an updated version of 1987 movie “The Running Man”, which I enjoy very much…
The characters are the usual flat-fare that Hollywood has shoved in our faces for years and years, and the “Twilight” undertones can become annoying sometimes, but all in all, the characters are likeable enough for me not to lose interest in them… The main character Katniss in particular is pretty interesting, oscillating between teenage crybaby (the “Twilight” undertones) and a strong, driven woman (where it becomes a lot more interesting).
The aesthetic is also pretty interesting, with that kind of excessive, over-the-top visuals we’d expect from a decadent society that indulges in blood sports for kicks…
As I said, the movie is interesting enough to make me wonder about the books… if they deliver a bit more than the movie in terms of ambient and background story (and more evolution to the characters), they actually might be very nice!