I came across The Hunger Games the good old fashioned way; a friend saw the trailer and told me to watch it. At the time of me watching the movie I hadn’t read the books so initially I loved the movie. However, after working through my reading list I got to read The Hunger Games and now I have some serious qualms with the movie. For this review, since I’ve read the book, I’ll look at it two ways. First I will compare the movie to the book and then I will look at the movie as if I hadn’t read the book.
The Hunger Games takes place in an
alternate future after a great uprising. Now with the uprising settled the
country is separated into 12 districts and in honor of the uprising every year
two children, between 12 and 18 years-old, are selected to fight to the death
in the hunger games. We find Katniss Everdeen, Jennifer Lawrence, in district
12, the coal mining district, and after a very bad turn of fate she finds
herself volunteering to be in this year’s hunger games. But how will the games
end?
The director, Gary Ross, took some
real liberties with turning the book into this movie. He left out characters
for starters. Did you know that Katniss doesn’t buy the mockingjay pin in the
book? It’s a gift to her from the daughter of the mayor of district 12, one of
her only friends. But they don’t even mention the mayor in the movie so it
would have been hard for his daughter to give Katniss anything. Ross also
leaves out the two runaways in the woods in the beginning, all he does is leave
the hovercraft that scans the woods for apparently no reason. That also joins
together with the fact that he left out the avoxes that are present, as
servants, in the tribute tower. These may seem like little nitpick things to
complain about, but it makes me really wonder how they’re going to do the last
two movies without some of this stuff that they have deemed unimportant. Then
Ross felt he needed to make more changes after all that. In the book when
Katniss receives her parachutes all they contain is the object the sponsor
bought her. This means there were no notes included. Katniss simply figured out
for herself what she was supposed to do with the stuff or why she didn’t get
what she was trying for. I’d like to keep going but if I did then I would start
to give away the ending. So I will just move on to the next part of the review.
This movie on its own still wasn’t
that great. Ross put in somethings from the book without explaining what they
meant. This is why if you haven’t read the book you don’t understand what Gale,
Liam Hemsworth, and Katniss are talking about when they discuss how many times
their names are in. (I shall try to briefly explain this. The first year that
your name goes in the bowl it goes in once. Then the next year it goes in two
more times, making it in there three times, and it progresses like that until
you turn 19 and they take your name out. But your name can also be put in extra
times if you request food from the government and this is how Gale’s name was
in 45 times.) Ross also hints at what happened to Katniss’s Dad but never fully
tells the story or, for that matter, the back story to the incident with Peeta,
Josh Hutcherson, throwing the bread to Katniss. But moving away from that sort
of stuff I would like to bring up the rating. This movie is rated PG-13 for intense
violent thematic material and disturbing images - all involving teens and I
know they shot for this level of rating so the teens that read the books could
see the movie, but come on. The book was way worse than what they showed in this
film and their only trick to show the violence without showing the violence was
to shake the camera a lot. It’s really not a terrible movie, but I just don’t
see it as the great blockbuster that everyone makes it out to be. Sure they’ve
got a great cast of upcoming stars but that’s not how you make a great movie.
Ross had great material to work with but in the end he made it all very
average. I will say though I did like that he hinted at what happened to the
game maker after the games ended. Of course I’m going to tell you to watch this
movie at least once to see for yourself what you think, but I am also going to
say, READ THE BOOKS TOO!
If you're curious about The Hunger Games here's a link to the preview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMGRhAEn6K0
Also here is another person's views on this movie. Be warned there is swearing (mostly censored) and it does have spoilers. Everything Wrong With The Hunger Games
Don't forget to come back for my next review. Here's a little peak of what's to come A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Like my reviews? Sign up for e-mail notifications to be the first to know when the new one is posted. Also share the reviews with your friends if you want.
No comments:
Post a Comment