The Hunger Games: Grade, Review, Discuss, Sequel news **SPOILERS**

I just got back from it and I really enjoyed it. It's a very good adaptation that's pretty much faithful to the book and stands on its own well. As always, the book is much better.

I'll post more about it later in the week.

 

I had/have no real desire to read the books and only went to see it tonight because I had nothing else to do, but I enjoyed it. Two local radio/journalistic personalities who reviewed the film said that it worked better if you're familiar with the books, but I personally didn't have any trouble enjoying the story or becoming engrossed in the characters.

I did find myself wondering how the author was able to parlay the story into a trilogy, but that's really neither here nor there.

I really liked the cast, especially Jennifer Lawrence, Lenny Kravitz, and Stanley Tucci. I also git a kick out of Paula Malcolmson as Katniss' mother. I also liked Donald Sutherland, but was surprised that he didn't have a more significant amount of screentime.

One final thing: is it just me, or does Josh Hutcherson look like a younger Alan Tudyk?

 

As someone with no connection to the books or franchise (didn't even know it existed till I saw the trailer last month), I enjoyed it quite a bit. That being said, I feel like Battle Royale did a better job telling what is essentially the same story

 

$68.25 million on its opening day. For comparison, that's more than John Carter has made in over two weeks.

That puts it in line for at least $130 million over the weekend, though it will likely make even more (possibly $150 million). This is a record-breaker for sure.

 

Geeze. I had no idea this thing was this huge.

So it pretty much pays for it's production budget ($75m) and probably a good chunk of, if not all of, it's marketing budget inside one weekend.

 

I bought the book a while back, but still have yet to read it. Jennifer Lawrence is the only reason I'm curious about seeing the film at the moment, though I don't know if that will actually end up happening anytime soon.

In the future, set polls as public. Might cut down on that sort of behavior.

 

I saw it yesterday, and I'll post more later, haven't got time for much now. But I'll just I basically thought it was a very, very tame version Battle Royale, with silly costumes, daft wigs and beards, and too much teen angst stuff.

In essence, BR was a hundred times better

 

I watched The Hunger Games today and Battle Royale yesterday, so comparison comes pretty easily.

I liked them both, although I did like Battle Royale more in some respects.

Note: I have not read the novel of The Hungar Games, so my comparison is only based on the merits of the film.

I enjoyed the first half of THG. The set-up was quite different and more substantial than BR. I particularly liked the idea of the contest as a kind of extreme reality-TV version of Survivor or The Amazing Race. It also allowed us to get to know the characters (or at least some of them) before the fighting starts. Substantial use of shaky-cam, however, left me feeling like half the movie was out-of-focus.

The second half essentially was Battle Royale-lite, or Battle Royale for Teenaged Girls. I think the requirement of a PG rating hurt it quite a bit. Most of the deaths didn't even happen on-screen. I particularly diskliked how the plot was contrived in such a way that Katniss didn't have to really kill anyone. The bees did it! She was protecting the young girl! The poisonous berries did it! The dog-bears did it !(Bonus points for the "mercy kill.") Who knew you could win a battle to the death without getting your hands dirty? Again, Battle Royale for Teenaged Girls. In all fairlness, BR also suffers from this to some extent, but it is not as obvious and doesn't irk me as much.

One thing I liked about BR was that the characters all knew each other ahead of time. It made it more painful when they had to kill each other. In THG, they were basically all strangers. Also, by focusing the point-of-view mainly on Katniss, the other (cannon fodder) contestants are even more thinly drawn than in BR.

I did think the central romance was more involving in THG than BR. Jennifer Lawrence played her part well, and is pretty cute. The guy playing her dopey boyfriend was decent too.

Overall, I feel as though most of the interesting details that would make THG unique got left on the cutting room floor, or didn't make it into the screenplay. I am interested in reading the book sometime just to see what was missed. I would say THG has a more interesting setting and better characters, but BR is a better film.

 

Well the main thing that made the book stand out was the first-person narration, and the way the author was really able to put us inside Katniss's head. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I imagine that was something they were always going to have trouble translating to the screen.

Especially the way she constantly has to act for the cameras.

 

^I would say that there is very little in the novel that wasn't addressed in the movie. A couple side characters were either reworked or barely seen, but overall the movie did an excellent job of visualizing the book.

I honestly can find very little fault in the adaptation. The minor changes they made mostly served to strengthen the story for viewing. I found myself really liking the broadened point of view, seeing the behind-the-scenes workings of the game makers and President Snow in particular. Donald Sutherland is just as creepy as I've always imagined President Snow to be. *shudder*

All the memorable tributes from the books were well-represented by their respective actors. Those who are commenting that most of the tributes are throwaway characters are kind of right, but that's the way it was in the book too. Seeing their sweet, young, terrified faces on screen actually gave several of them more depth than they had in the book for me. The initial battle at the cournocopia was brutal.

I thought Rue was handled superbly, and the actress who played her did a stunning job. I think the most gripping moments of the film for me were the immediate aftermath of Rue's death - the reaction in District 11. The foreshadowing of things to come both in this event and in Snow's reaction to it had a greater impact for me in the film than they did in the novel, another area where the shift in point of view worked in the film's favor.

Jennifer Lawrence blew me away, and I confess I was somewhat concerned going into the movie. The clips released in advance had her SO subdued that I wondered just what emotion we might get from her. I was pleasantly and thoroughly surprised. The reaping was heart-wrenching, and her terror with Cinna just before entering the Arena was beautifully conveyed.

Aside from Jennifer's Katniss, the heroes of the film really were the side characters - Effie, Haymitch, Cinna, and Caesar Flickerman.

• Effie - I never much cared for Effie in the books. She always seemed so determined to ignore the horrors of the Games. But somehow in the movie, Elizabeth Banks made me love Effie - at least, once the reaping was over.
• Haymitch - Woody Harrelson wasn't really how I pictured Haymitch, but between his performance (which I knew would be brilliant) and the way the screenplay gave us more to see of and hear from him than the novel did was just excellent. Instead of Katniss imagining what the parachutes' implied messages were, we got the notes. It was a small thing, but that and the scene of Haymitch petitioning the sponsors on their behalf really added to his character.
• Cinna - I tell you, I was not impressed with the little I saw of Lenny Kravitz in the clips that were released ahead of time. What was missing was that unspoken bond that happened immediately between him and Katniss as soon as they met. Her reaction to him gave him more weight and importance than Kravitz did on his own. He was good, but he was great opposite Jennifer Lawrence's acting.
• Caesar Flickerman - Oh, what a joy Stanley Tucci was! He was the PERFECT choice for Caesar Flickerman and played him brilliantly. What you see on screen is exactly the character from the book. Absoultely flawless. Every scene with him was magic.

I despise all the insistence on comparing this series with Twilight. It makes me ill. The Hunger Games is an allegory, a cautionary tale with lessons for young minds to consider. It's not the first. It's not the best. But it is ABOUT something. It is what the best youth fiction is supposed to be, a springboard for teenagers (and those of us who refuse to leave that questioning time of our lives behind completely) to look at the world around them and ask whether what they see is what they ought to see, and what they might do to change it.

It's my hope that THAT is why this book-to-movie is blowing up so huge. People are seeing in this story something worth so much more than a poorly written vampire love story.

 

Damn. There's so much this movie gets right-- the tone, the characters, the tension in the buildup to the games...

Unfortunately the games themselves just never come across NEARLY as terrifying and visceral as they should, or as they do in the book. The movie seems to go out of it's way to avoid showing us anything truly brutal, and as a result the story can't help but lose a lot of it's impact right there. Even the initial bloodbath at the Cornucopia fails to really register with the sound turned all the way down (Saving Private Ryan did the same trick, but at least waited til after making us hear and experience how awful the battle was first).

With the heavy hand of the PG-13 so obviously at work, it just made it really hard to take the threat to Katniss all that seriously. Too many of the killings happen off screen, or are artfully disguised, that it makes the whole thing feel way too safe and artificial.

And I hate to say it, but as good as Lawrence's performance was... I did find her curvy figure and 20-something appearance to be a bit distracting and at odds with the story being told. She just does NOT look like someone from a poor, starving district, no matter how hard the movie tried to make us think so.

Which isn't to say I didn't like the movie. It was really good overall; just not nearly as powerful and visceral as I think it needed to be.

 

I thought it was a very good adaptation, aside from not being able to follow the close quarters combat because of the relentlessly shaking camera. The first half of the movie was particularly well done; I was concerned it would be boring.

 

I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Jennifer Lawrence was quite good as Katniss.

 

I never got the impression Katniss herself was supposed to be malnourished. She was a skilled hunter. She had to work a lot, but that would have meant she was in good shape.

 

No I never saw her as being malnourished. But certainly a lot less... healthy and well-fed than Lawrence appears to be.

 

They're now saying it made $155 million this weekend, the third-best opening of all time (after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 and The Dark Knight).

 

I think the success is even more impressive that this isn't a property that has fairly universal recognition relative to some of the others.

 

Yeah, I'm very surprised. The books' sales aren't really in the same league as Rowling or Meyer's works (though they're impressive nonetheless) and I didn't think the marketing was that good, but evidently something brought people in.

 

Indeed, which also makes it the best opening weekend ever for a non-sequel, and the best opening weekend ever for any film outside of the month of July (and some of us were wondering if it would just beat January-April records ).

On the international front, The Hunger Games brought in about $59.25 million, a solid amount, although obviously far less than what it's earned in North America. It's already opened in most foreign markets, so I don't imagine it will make any significant gains overseas in the coming weeks. I guess interest just wasn't quite as high in most foreign territories (perhaps the book series isn't as popular over there).

The film has made a total of $214.25 million worldwide, well more than twice its budget. Domestically, it's the second-highest grossing film of the year thus far, behind only The Lorax, which it will certainly overtake by next weekend.