Full disclosure: I am a total "Hunger Games" newbie—I haven't read any of the books, and only had a vague notion of what it's about. Nonetheless, I just got back from seeing the new movie amid a good sized crowd on 42nd Street and here are a few impressions. Don't worry, I won't give away anything.
- For a blockbuster-y sci-fi teen fantasy, "Hunger Games" is fairly grim business. Life and death issues are dealt with in a snark free environment, for once. Any laughter heard was of the, why-aren't-there-any-laughs-in-this? nervous variety.
- Teenagers—adapt or die. The Man is only interested in your stamina and your animal ruthlessness plus, he has fixed the game against you. Young people are literally expendable. (If you wish to draw parallels to the current job market, I won't stop you.) The lesson is clear: If you hope to make it Out There in the metaphorical woods, the Old Ways and the Old Values will be the most useful. (Conservatives should like that part.) Not one character survives because of their texting or video gaming skills.
- The Media is scary. In the future, not only do the teenage participants have to battle each other to survive, they also have to compete in the pitiless arena of public opinion. The Powers That Be use media bread and circuses to babysit the spoiled sophisticates in the city and to consolidate control of the simple folks out in the country. Think imperial Rome as reality TV.
- Actor Jennifer Lawrence locks all this down as our infinitely resourceful heroine, Katniss Everdeen. Just as she did in that great movie "Winter's Bone," Lawrence is direct and smart and hard as nails. Anyone who can go stalking around in the woods AND wear a sparkly evening dress AND pull off both not only credibly but with gravitas?... Well, it just shouldn't be possible. "Everyone likes an underdog," says one TV producer character and Lawrence's Katniss is a beauty.
- On the whole? If Katniss, or Jennifer Lawrence for that matter, should ever run for political office, sign me up for the maximum donation. Stuff will get done.
So what did you think? Consider this a Hunger Games thread and may the odds, etc., etc……
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Nice to see you. Miss seeing you on the show.
Considering she was born in 1990, the Senate in 2016 doesn't work, the Constitution requires that Senators must be 30 or older, but maybe she could start in the House, for a few terms? From the quotes in her Bio, she seems well-centered, with real common sense, so she'd be a serious contender!
Plus she looks great in blue paint! (I couldn't resist)
The books are fantastic. Going to see the movie tomorrow with a friend, but from reviews I've seen so far online, the book is slightly grittier than the movie. Don't know if I'd agree since seeing it acted out is more visual and graphic than reading words on a page.
My daughter turned me on to the books. I read all three and went to the midnight showing last night with my daughter and her friends. I think I was the only person over 30 in the audience. Don't want to spoil it for anyone so I can't be specific. I really liked the movie. It was actually a lot like "Winter's Bone". Both teenaged heroines had to take care of their families because their fathers were absent and their mothers couldn't handle it. One lived in Appalachia and the other lived in a future dystopia called Panem after "Panem et circuses" or bread and circuses. I was sorry the the writers and director chose to tone the movie down. They toned down the political themes which were what kept me reading the books.The scene in the first book at the end of the 74th Hunger Games would have been riveting and very cinematic but they chose to omit it. I also thought it was a mistake to let one of the main characters emerge from the games unscathed when he actually suffered a significant injury. But despite my criticisms, it was a really good movie.
District 12 would actually be more or less in or around the Appalachian mountains
Sorry, but you know how it is with blog comments -- one little mistake and suddenly you are persona non grata (gee, I hope I got that right). Anyway, it's "Panem et Circenses" for "Bread and Circuses". I know you knew better.
P.S. I miss seeing you on the show.
Why arent you on the show anymore??
I have no idea what Hunger Games is about, I dont even know what the basic plot is. Love story, fantasy, horror?? Idk maybe one day I will get the book or watch it on cable.
The first book is mostly adventure, if dark adventure. The story is set in a future North America in a nation called "Panem" with 12 districts run by the Capitol. Every year the Capitol hosts the 'Hunger Games' where 2 kids from each district are sent into an arena to battle to the death. The main character Katniss volunteers to go in place of her younger sister, Prim, when she is chosen.
The later books go a bit deeper into the politics and moral ramifications of this society, and become a social commentary on media and how it is used to portray war. It's a very clever series, but perhaps not for the faint of heart. The first book is arguably the most hopeful and satisfying, and if you see the movie... it's still pretty grim.
I have read the books after my daughter did and we are going with my sisters and their teenage kids to see it tomorrow. The story is about a post apocolyptic country called Panem with a Capitol and 12 districts (there were 13 but the 13th was obliterated during a revolt. The districts are where people work to make things for the Capitol. There is starvation and hardship. After the districts lost the uprising they instituted the Hunger games in which 2 children between the ages of 12 and 18 (? i think) are picked by a lottery from each district to fight each other to the death until only one remains. The winner gets to live in a nice house and have food and their district gets a year of supplies. The lottery is stacked because at 12 the kid can apply for something called Tesarae and have 4 entries placed in the bowl. It is cumulative as well so a 12 year old would have 1 entry (or 5 if they sign up for the Tesarae) and there name would be added a certain number of times for each year. If they sign up for Tesarae every year that number would increase even more. It's a pretty interesting series. I would recommend it.
I'm reading the first book now. All the huffing and puffing about this not being suitable for younger viewers is poppycock--horse hockey. There's always been the divide between sheltering kids and letting them know that the world isn't always a nice place. This movie is one of the latter. Don't look for Dumbledore, Hermoine, or a Weasley family--they don't exist in this series. This world is hard and cold and mean and the Games are the ultimate reality show--full of technological advances ONLY available to the Capitol OR durning the games in the Arena. There are no sparkly vampires or werewolves to save the day--just the sense of the characters--the SURVIVAL sense.
By the way--the 'Tessarae' don't necessarily stack the Lottery. Remember that Kat's hunting buddy Gale has something like over forty entries due to his tessarae through the years--and he doesn't get picked--ever.
Just saw the movie last night. The books were great. I think though that I wouldn't want her to run because it takes her until the end of the last half of book three to actually figure out what is going on. when you see the next movie or read the second book you will see what I am talking about. While she is calm and decisive in the arena she is anything but in the rest of her life. Peeta would be my choice not just for his compassion but also for his clearheaded view of the world as it is not as someone else wants it to be.
why can't you call her an "actress" ?...this hollywood PC BS makes me sick
I don't think it's BS. It's more for gender equality. Just as Steward and Stewardess has been replaced with "Flight attendant;" and Host and Hostess, waiter and waitress are being condensed to just one word, so is actor.
The term "actress" only exists today because of awards shows. It would have died out long ago were it not for the Oscars and Tony awards and their ilk.
Case in point: when is the last time you said "authoress" or "poetess" or "doctoress" in casual conversation or ... ever, for that matter?
"Actress" is just archaic. No one under 40 even notices when a female is called an actor. It's the norm.
The art direction on this is almost ruthlessly, distressingly clever: no matter what you're afraid of, Katniss Everdeen appears to be rebelling against it.
If you're a conservative, Panem is a huge nation of virtuous rural people who are dictatorially controlled by an elite crowd of liberal-looking Hollywood types who mock rural people for their poverty. Katniss Everdeen fights for the dignity of common people against Hollywood elites!
If you're a liberal, Panem is a corrupt kleptocracy where a wealthy corporate elite relentlessly crushes working people. Katniss Everdeen fights for the 99% against the 1%!
What's brilliant about it is that The Hunger Games trilogy doesn't need to be about left vs right. It's about revolution, and what personal reasons make young people fight in one, and what doing so does to them.
Saw the film last night and I have mixed feelings.
First off, I know no matter what the books will always be better. It's just fact. Same went for the Harry Potter films. The books have a type of spark that cant be duplicated in a film. Each readers imagination propels the novels to levels of which a camera may never be able to capture.
With that being said, I enjoyed the movie for what it was. The first thing I noticed was the camera movements. Clearly Gary Ross wanted the audience to see the story through the eyes of Katniss. This leads the viewer to follow along with a very shaky angle of the events. The camera seemed to always be shaking, swaying, angled, etc etc. Maybe once or twice it was obvious they had a steady cam but for the most part it felt like an action war film, very very chaotic and absolutely perfect.
I suggest people look up other reviews that reveal what is missing in the movie from the books. I did this prior to seeing the movie and it dulled the sting of some of my favorite book moments being omitted. I also suggest being careful of the audience you're with. If there are jokers in the theater they will spoil the fun. Although this is a young adult novel it packs some heavy topics that shouldn't be laughed at.
It's deep, and it'll have you asking yourself "what if this happens here?"
Jennifer Lawrence- indeed- Awesome!
I read the books. They were ok. Written as a formula, and very obviously for a movie. Some parts work much better in the movie- (the visuals duh!) but missing is the internal dialogue of the characters, so if one did not read the book- one has no clue.
Totally agree! I was clueless going in and pretty much the same going out.
I was completely in the dark about these books and this movie until I saw Ms. Lawrence on The Late Show with David Letterman earlier this week. I'm anxious to read the books and see the movie now. I'm too old (44) to fall in love with actors, but I might make an exception now.
I am 44 - and I loved the books. They are a very quick read - which is a bonus in this fast-paced world.
The first book is a great introduction. The second book ends in a cliffhanger that will make you immediately start reading the third.
You could probably read all three in a 3-day weekend.
I read the books a while ago on my Kindle. I admit that if I had gone to a bookstore, I probably wouldn't have picked them up as they are marketed as children's books. (even the NY Times bestseller list has them on the Children's list). But I really enjoyed the books. As an adult it is easy to see society parallels. Anyway, planning to see the movie. Hope it's done well.
Excuse me what? Children's books? I could see them as young adult books, but children's books? I teach children's literature. I'll have to mention that in class tomorrow.
I'm far from being a hovering person, but I don't think I'd encourage a grade-school aged kid to read these books. They're Lord of the Flies style creepy.
Disturbing. I couldn’t get past the basic premise of the games. Watching kids kill kids for the amusement of adults is not my idea of entertainment. By the end of the movie, 22 children have been brutally killed, but that doesn’t seem to bother anybody, the characters in the movie or the fans in the theaters. Why not?
Are we, the readers and the audience, just like the sadistic rulers of Panem? By going to the movie, we, too, are being "entertained" by watching children killing children. There's something wrong with that and I'm not quite sure what it is. I don't like the way it makes me feel.
Read the trilogy and maybe you'll feel better. It has a great message of peace and working together and not taking revenge in such a way that hurts the innocent (kids).
I think that the readers are touched by this book precisely because it is so disturbing. I don't think you can accurately draw the parallel. Do a quick search and you will see lots of activist movements fighting hunger as a direct response to this book. That doesn't sound like a fandom that is sitting back entertaining themselves with brutal death. This book forces people to question many of the inequalities of Panem and compare it to our own society and culture.
There are so many other violent entertainment films out there. It's actually refreshing to see the Hunger Games make violence appear somber and disturbing. If it bothered you, then that's exactly the reaction you should have had.
Yes, Texas Rex, the movie's neat trick is that it leaves us nowhere else to stand but with the sadistic rulers of Panem, not only because we participate in the blood and circuses by watching the film, but we also participate in the extreme wealth of our culture while whole areas of the globe are the "districts" kept forever in convenient squalor.
It forces us to look at ourselves. And not like what we see. It is good that you were not idly entertained, that you squirmed. I'd be more worried if you hadn't.
Also, remember that all watchers in the film are not unmoved by the deaths of the children. When the young girl from District 10 dies, and Katniss is so moved by it she gives her a funeral of sorts, which is also for the people of her district watching on the video feed. In the film, there are violent riots in that district.
And the three-finger girl scout salute. No applause on Reaping Day in the Districts. Those people know and do not celebrate the fact they live while a tribute or sacrifice dies just like in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery (this is also an ancient story too, of the Minotaur, and children being sacrificed to it-- a tale as old as time, you might say).
I don't remember if there are riots in the book. Maybe. More, in the book, I remember that the poor District 10 pools its money and sends Katniss a parachute, a gift of a sweet cake or something, in thanks.
Other writers have played with this ideo of a reality show, of Amusing Ourselves to Death, to quote Postman. Stephen King's story, The Running Man, isn't it? The Schwarzenegger film? The same hunting game, but without the audience being placed in the moral bull's eye with the film's villains quite so overtly.
The scapegoat. The sacrifice. The virgin thrown into the volcano? The people in the Emerald City are the gods. The people sacrifice to appease the gods.
Turn on what passes for MTV these days - a half hour of that and The Hunger Games seems like a Disney animated musical.
Whoops, I meant "bread and circuses," but wrote blood and circuses, I guess because I had blood on my mind.
I find A CLOCKWORK ORANGE a much stronger statement of these themes. More artistic. More entertaining. More potent.
RE: Clockwork Orange. MUCH harder to watch. Esp. for people who are sensitized to the graphic rape scene.
I think THE HUNGER GAMES should have been just as graphic to make its point. It wimped out on the violence.
anyone else remember the original star trek episode 'bread and circuses'?
Definitely. :)
I loved the books -all 3 were really exciting and now am really looking so forward to the movie (s) ! From what I can tell, the cast and sneak peeks look awesome.
I think the movie missed the point, which should have been about one girl's incredible survival skills and overcoming the cruel Big Brother dystopia. Instead was about a reality TV world that reduces individuals to commodities. Trying for the bigger social picture does just what you said in your review; makes a comment about young people and the media in society today. But unfortunately it reduced this amazing character (which is why the books work) to a simple pawn.
I think they nailed it.
Then give me an example in the film of where Katniss showed her disgust with the Capitol citizens. Pretty important but utterly absent in the movie.
I most definitely recommend you read the trilogy; gruesome but absolutely fantastic books. Katniss's own personality and sense of freedom it's a true challenge to the Autocracy of the Capitol. Let's see what secret is President Snow keeping from the people of Panem and almost everybody in the Capitol. In the meantime, I am totally with you, Katniss Everdeen for Senate 2016!
May the odds be ever in your favor!
Ooh, thank you R Elena, for that recommendation. I will now speedily hasten to the rest of the trilogy (I'm too cheap for hardback, but I'll get the Kindle version).
Kent, it sounds as if you saw a different Hunger Games than the religious right’s go-to movie review group, Movieguide. It’s upset about violence but worries more about the movie's “homosexual and cross-dressing implications” and characters who act “effeminately.” They seem to miss the film’s message about societal oppression and how people can become desensitized to violence, even claiming that the dictatorship at the center of the film is not rebuked “strongly enough.”
Yeah, because a black guy wearing gold eyeliner is definitely the most shocking part of the movie (insert sarcasm here).
Wow, really? Charley James, that is just insane. Do you have a link to it?
Now, if the Right is that upset I am definitely going to have to read the books and see the movie which, of course, will obligate me to see the sequels.
I'll just play catch-up like I did with Twilight and no one will be the wiser that until a few days ago I was completely ignorant of the whole series. ;-)
Haven't read the books or scene the movie, so let me make a higher level observation.
It seems to me that this series is pushing a meme of Paucity, there is not enough for everyone so society must be organized as a battle for scarce resources.
What ever happened to the meme of Plenty, enough to lift everyone to live the good life?
The OPEC Crisis of 1973, when the US lost its ability to loot the 3rd world for resources without any consequences, and shortly thereafter also lost its ability to dictate prices of finished goods to the entire world because other countries finished rebuilding after WWII. We came to think of the wealth we enjoyed between WWII and Vietnam, the spoils of WWII, as "normal." Is this really all that mysterious?
Actually, the implication of the series is that there IS enough for everyone, if only the people of the Capitol would stop consuming to excess and waste.
The battle is precisely because of this hoarding. They are not fighting for resources, but for the entertainment of the leisure class.
When I first saw Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, I told everyone I could that she would be nominated for an Oscar for her work in that film. She was THAT good. The movie was THAT good. I also predicted that her star was rising, that she was a special talent. So far, I seem to have called this one right. Keep your eyes on this woman, she's going to have a long and memorable career.
Thank you for posting this, Kent. I saw the film yesterday too, and came away with many of the same impressions you have.
The surprise for me was how much the political message was just out there in the film, not as a "message film" per se (uck, hate those anyway), but perfectly illustrated through the drama.
As I was walking home, I thought, this perfectly illustrates more than anything the slogan, "We are the 99%."
And as a bit of a microcosm/overdramatization illustrated on landscape, the maglev train traveling from the poverty-stricken districts to the lush capital brought it home.
I didn't think we were seeing so much a post-apocalyptic landscape (if it weren't for the film at the Reaping, who would have known there'd been a civil war or rebellion?).
It looked to me more like what happens right now between the "Coasts" or the major metropolitan areas of the US and "Everywhere Else." Like I said, an overdramatization, but perhaps one we are just one major Depression away from. You don't need a civil war to get to where Katniss's world is. A Great Depression without FDR, just Herbert Hoover forever, would have done the job just fine.
What it really illustrates is the effect of deep and guiltless polarization of wealth, with a will to let an isolated serf/slave population labor in squalor.
Others have compared the Capital to Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz (right down to the clean-up/buff up scene, minus the happy music). But why does the polarization between the two worlds exist at all?
And why does it exist now, not just in the US, across the globe? Because the people in the Emerald Cities wish it so. We, I (I live in NYC), must wish it so.
That was my big insight/takeaway that I wasn't expecting.
Jennifer Lawrence, yes indeed. Winter's Bone (I've also lived for some time in Northwest Arkansas) blew me away, hit me SO close to home. That film just crawled under my skin and stayed there, permanently.
A slight disappointment, but not really, is that we don't see (but it is also illustrated in the Hunger Games, in the costume design for the Emerald City peoples) how technology and wealth WRITES ON OUR BODIES. I'm not just talking about costumes. Body shapes.
And that is where The Hunger Games suffers, just a bit, from Jennifer Lawrence's fame since Winter's Bone. Because she is now famous, and because she is famous, she really doesn't look... HUNGRY. She looks round-cheeked and curvy. But in Winter's Bone, she really DID look like she was subsisting on venison and squirrels.
I miss some of that grittiness from Winter's Bone in The Hunger Games. I hate that she was sort of typecast to take care of small children while a child herself, with a mentally-broken mother, AGAIN. That seems a bit too easy. So instead, in my mind, I mashed the two movies together. Instead of West Virginia, I imagined District 12 as Northwest Arkansas, as hard and gritty as that was.
And I also had to wonder about all the flashy VR tools and simulations in The Emerald City. That stuff wouldn't have survived as robustly, as innovatively, if there really had been a civil war, a major rebellion. Why? Because any culture that destroys its own civil society to create and isolate a downtrodden serf class is also destroying its own future and cutting itself off from real intellectual and technological innovation.
As Jefferson would point out, people of real merit and intelligence would be dying off under-developed out in the District lands. The Emerald City would become desperately inbred, careerist, and insular.
And insular, careerist, inbred intellectual traditions don't foster the kind of technological innovation that the Emerald City elites were shown using. More likely, they'd be acting like landed gentry, generations of blood-marriages for money and consolidation of wealth, little real risk-taking, ennui and dissipation in the self-satisfied laziness of people who never had to struggle for anything.
Not that I necessarily agree entirely with his thesis, but that's the point Jared Diamond makes in his book "Collapse," about the fall of the Mayan Civilization and others around the world, cultures that seem to collapse when wealth polarizes impossibly between the myopic rich and the desperate poor.
Anyway, that's my take on the film. I have read the first book, plan to read the others, mostly because I am jealous of Suzanne Collins for thinking of such things first. I stayed away for a long time, because I can always go read the original works many of the themes this is derived from, The Lottery and others.
And because I am sick to death of reality TV and I suspect it is very soon about to go the way of "Candid Camera," "Real People," and "America's Funniest Home Videos." Because I would wish it speedily in that direction.
But in the end, I couldn't stay away from a story that had a strong female heroine, an embodied Artemis with her bow and arrow, surviving resourcefully in the woods. I am always a sucker for that kind of wonderful story, as surely as I was drawn to The Golden Compass books as well.
I guess I need to write my version pretty soon too.
When you reach the third book you realize that the only way the Capital functions is off the work and lives of the 12 districts. Without raping the 12 Districts, the Capital would cease to exist. Everything used in the Capital is grown, designed, manufactured, harvested, and mined in the districts.
Districts:
1- luxury items
2- quarries, weapons manufacturing, trains, and providing & training peacekeepers
3- electronics & technology
4- fishing
5- power
6- transportation
7- lumber
8- textiles
9- grain
10- livestock
11- agriculture
12- coal mining
13- nuclear (power & weapons) Destroyed in the first rebellion
WIth that review, I now will see it most def.
In the book, the Capital arranged the Hunger Games to pit each person against all the others, and the narrative consists of subverting that, over and over and over. Katniss imagines herself, at the outset, as fighting alone with loyalty only to herself and her sister, with her mother tolerated and Gale grudgingly recognized as a partner with no other emotions attached. Then she learns, over and over and over, that people are willing to back her and have been backing her all along. Every show of solidarity in District 12 surprises her. Crucially, from her willingness to die for her sister on, she inspires others to protect those near them--and that's what frightens the Capital. To me, both the book and the movie strike me as one long, well crafted, systematic rebuttal of Ayn Rand's individualism. It's fabulous!
Well said.
Yes, well put, sprocupine!
Yay, strong heroines.